Education is what remains after you’ve forgotten everything from school – Albert Einstein 

This morning I read about one of my final-year university classmates becoming Malaysia’s first scientist to be made a Fellow of the United Kingdom’s Royal Society.

That’s no mean feat as her peers would include Charles Darwin and Stephen Hawking. Clearly she’d drunk deeply from the river of knowledge that life presents us.

Then there is the guy who’d been staring at me the other day at the Selangor Club. He came over and said he thought I’d been his science teacher in 1979. 

I had. 

He seemed delighted to see me. Alas, It was more a reflection of my public relations’ skills than anything of a pedagogic bent: he confessed to   flunking out of school and now sold insurance. 

Remember said river? He’d probably only gargled its waters but appeared no worse off for anyone’s wear.  

In 1979, I was playing guitar in a pub band and was happy as a lark until a news daily featured us. My father read it and was understandably furious because I’d told him I had a temporary job with the university. 

The band had to find a replacement guitarist and I went back home to become a “temporary” teacher. 

I wasn’t happy but, truth be told, it paid a lot more than gigging in a pub. 

The replacement guitarist is now the chairman of a  think-tank while my  other two bandmates settled and thrived in the US, but in non-musical careers. The pianist though still tinkles the ivories at weekend gigs in Tampa, Florida. 

Back in Seremban in 1979, I didn’t have a driving license which meant I had to do what I generally did when I went home – use the bus. When you’re a teacher in charge of the “rougher” classes in the Anglo-Chinese School – said insurance salesman et al – that can get tricky.

The mornings were fine because my father generally dropped me off. But the afternoons had to be managed. 

The trick was to wait a prudent half-hour after the bell when the bulk of the students would have left. 

There is precious little moral high ground or dignitas to be had when you board a bus only to find your students sitting while “Sir” has to stand because there are no more seats. It’s even worse when, God forbid, a student actually offers you their seat.

I think that’s what Shakespeare meant when he babbled about “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”

That’s the beauty of the half-hour wait. There are enough seats and most, if not all, students would have left.

During weekends, I went to the Seremban Bowl with my old classmate, Chris, because it served good beer.

One evening, a large person looked us over for an uncomfortable while before sending over a complimentary jug.  

He joined us and said we were all in the same class but we wouldn’t remember him because he was in a “lower class” and “you  were the Smarties” (his words).

He said he dropped out after Form 5 to help in his dad’s pig farm. Now he ran “all three.” 

He asked me if I’d been to university and what I did now. I told him. 

“Teaching” appeared to genuinely grieve him. That made two of us. 

Then he asked how we got to the Bowl and I confessed I’d used the bus. 

As if to reinforce his point, he pointed to a gleaming Volvo in the parking lot.

“I can give you  guys a lift,” he said. 

ENDS

I found out recently the most common reason we head for A & E (Accident and Emergency) rooms in Malaysia is to obtain relief from stuck fish bones in the throat.  

In New York City, it’s for gunshot wounds. OK, the US doctor gets better on-the-job training but I think we’ll stick with fish. You could argue the point but this is neither the time nor the plaice. 

Speaking of fish, I’m  reminded of a story I heard about Justice Eusoffe Abdoolcader. The man had a brilliant legal mind but occasionally could get tripped up. 

While hearing a case in Ipoh, the Judge was irritated with a lawyer who, in his opinion, was belabouring a point to death. 

He called a timeout for lunch and, glaring at said lawyer, advised him to “repair in haste” to a shop nearby where there was fish head curry. Fish, remarked the judge tartly, “is very good and might help your brain.”

“Very good, My Lord,” replied the unrepentant  belabourer. “And you will be joining me?” 

I interviewed Justice Eusoffe for a profile in the early 1990s and he was all he was reputed to be – sharp and testy. 

When I asked  for some judgments he was proud of he summoned his secretary. Ms Lee was asked to fetch MLJ (Malayan Law Journal) Vol 26 and photostat pages 124 through 148. 

The man had a photographic memory. 

But his writing could be over the top. There was one particular sentence that I read with incredulity. It went through word-thickets and muscular metaphors, through comma, semi-colon, parenthesis and colon, winding its way in perfect grammar to  its bitter end, 220 words later. 

It was during the late 1990s when I heard of a case being heard in the High Court involving Japan’s Yomeishu.

I was working for a foreign newsmagazine and it was a dry news-week so I went to court. 

Yomeishu is a potent medicinal liqueur that’s claimed to promote vitality through its boosting of circulation.

The Japanese firm was outraged that a local company was selling a similar product with a similar sounding name and was suing, claiming patent infringement. 

The judge hearing the case was one V C George and things got interesting when Yomeishu’s President took the stand. 

The President was extolling his product’s virtues using words like “health” and “blood circulation” when the Judge wondered aloud if it had any effects on male virility. 

The President replied in the affirmative, so certain was his opinion that Viagra itself would have folded its tent and stolen away into the night.

But the answer didn’t satisfy the Judge because he followed up with a question so keen and penetrating it reduced the courtroom into hysterics. 

Judge:  “Do you drink it or does one apply it?”

All this with the deadpan gravity of a Walter Matthau. 

The Japanese interpreter had a fit of giggles before he translated the question. 

After the President digested the question, he had a giggling fit himself  before he composed himself sufficiently to inform the suddenly-interested courtroom that one had to drink it for full benefit.

Remember, you read it here first. 

ENDS

Before we were sent off on our postings, the Ministry of Health sent us to the Institute of Medical Research (IMR) for “training.” 

I don’t remember much of the training but I do recall being taken by a senior colleague to the best chap fan restaurant east of Suez.  It was along Jalan Pahang and the trick was to get there before 12.30, after which the hospital’s hungry hordes laid waste to its spread. 

After three months, we were dispatched to the front-lines. I got Perak. 

I reported to the state’s Chief Medical and Health Officer, a suave Sikh, who informed me that The Plan – he liked to Declaim in Capitals – was to send me to Teluk Anson. No one had heard of Teluk Intan, not even Intan herself.

The prospect filled me with alarm as the place was only a district hospital with a rudimentary laboratory. 

Sensing my unease, the CMnHO suavely slid in this caveat: “Pending your  transfer, you’ll serve in Ipoh General Hospital.”

It was 1980 and the government wasn’t computerized so I wandered around in abject  poverty for three months! Then my file reached whoever it was supposed to reach and I was deemed salary-worthy. My first salary came in a rush, all three months of it. (In the IMR, we only received an allowance).

Apart from the blood bank, the biochemistry department was the largest component of the pathology department. In Ipoh, we had two labs. There were smaller labs for hematology (bloodwork including the preparation of slides for biopsies) and serology (tests on serum).  

You might see how a young man might rapidly get disenchanted amid such cheerful company first thing in the morning, three years in a row. But that’s another story. 

At the time, medical lab work was primitive. Only the blood gas machine was automated. Everything else was done manually. Hundreds of titrations a day and it had to be reasonably accurate because the results mattered.

There were two of us and we needed to know the basic work as well in case of  emergency.  Nowadays almost all blood tests are automated. Back then, it could be soul destroying. 

I had great admiration for some of the medical lab technicians: they performed very skilled work rapidly and uncomplainingly despite not being paid much.  

Most of them depended on overtime pay: someone had to man the labs on weekends. 

When I joined, Mrs Ang, the senior biochemist, immediately told me to take over the OT assignations. 

I quickly realised why. Many of the MLTs, who depended on OT, were highly suspicious of whoever doled it out. Try as I might I couldn’t convince some people of my scrupulous neutrality. 

You can only be a good guy for so long. One day, I lost my temper and I threatened to transfer a constantly grumbling staffer to Teluk Anson. 

I had no such power but he didn’t know it. Neither did anyone else because no one ever questioned my methods again. Even Mrs Ang gave me an approving nod. 

I think it was then that she went to bat for me and I got off Telok Anson’s hook. 

ENDS 

Brains, you know, are suspect in the Republican Party – Walter Lippman, American intellectual

All is not well in Scamelot.  

President  Donald Trump and First Buddy Elon Musk have fallen out faster than a speeding Tesla. 

When the world’s most powerful man clashes with the planet’s richest man, expect fireworks! Even Don King, always quick to give odds, scurried for cover. 

A week ago, the President presented Musk a golden key to the White House amid lavish praise for his contributions towards cutting government jobs. 

Now the White House’s  changed its locks. The reason: Musk criticised Trump’s tax-and-spend legislation, his ”Big, Beautiful Bill” which aims to enrich the wealthy and, among others, cut medical care for the poor. He called it an “abomination.” 

It isn’t exactly clear what Musk objected to but it’s unlikely he disliked lower taxes or reduced welfare. 

And things rapidly escalated to DEFCON 3. That’s when Musk alleged Trump didn’t declassify the Epstein files – which he’d promised – because it incriminated him. Jeffrey  Epstein was a party-throwing socialite who killed himself after being arrested for molesting minors. 

Apart from the minor kerfuffle, it was just another day in Trump’s America, his Home of the Knave and the Land of the Fee. 

If Obama had attempted even a little of what Trump’s done so far,  he’d have been tarred and feathered.  Since his inauguration, Blomberg reports that the Trump family has raked in US$2.1 billion through investments mainly from Middle Eastern countries anxious to gain leverage in Washington. It’s barely elicited a disapproving tut-tut from the Republicans. 

The inflows haven’t stopped either. Trump recently accepted a US$400 million jet from Qatar, ostensibly to replace Air Force One although he made it clear that the plane’s his. Again, there’s been little domestic criticism apart from some embarrassed hand-wringing among both parties. 

For the record, the acceptance of gifts by a serving President from foreign nationals is barred by constitutional statute. It is, therefore, illegal. 

The Grifter-in-Chief simply did things no one expects a  President to do. And so far he’s gotten away with it. 

In his first week, for example, he fired all 17 Inspectors-General in federal agencies. IGs are independent executives charged with protecting taxpayer money from fraud, corruption or conflicts of interest. 

Their offices are set up under Congressional Act so their firings were, and are, blatantly illegal. Despite press alarm, Congress was loudly silent.

The passivity of both Houses –  Republican controlled, both  – appears to have emboldened the President and he’s not looked back since: he’s left no turn unstoned so to speak. 

He’s taken a wrecking ball to the universities, museums, the arts, even “soft-power” agencies like USAID. The latter is dispiriting as it cuts aid to the poorest of the world. 

Then he ignored Congress altogether and began a global trade war that’s still playing out. 

The only ones holding out against him are the courts but he seems to have brushed that away by ignoring its rulings. No one has cited him for contempt. 

Yet. 

Even so, the Sacker-in-Chief’s only real threat may be his former best bud, the Nazi-saluting, ketamine-ingesting, multi-children-having zillionaire Elon Musk. 

The tycoon  reportedly spent US$300 million helping the Donald to the Presidency. 

How much do you think he might be willing to splurge to get him out?

ENDS