A FOOL AND HIS MONEY ARE SOON PRESIDENT

You have to hand it to the United States. Everything is larger than life there. 

When they want to lay it out, they can lay it on as thick as molasses. Its movies can be as crappy as they can be superb. Their smart people can be as Nobel-sharp as their dimwits can give dumb a bad name. 

I mean, the average village idiot in Malaysia generally rants about the tightfitting attire of Malaysia Airlinesstewardesses, while simultaneously fantasising about the bounty it conceals. 

In the United Kingdom, they routinely rave about the imminent demise of Planet Earth from their soap boxes in Hyde Park. 

But only in the United States do they become President. 

When he was young, he thought he was so sharp he should become a surgeon. His father hastily talked him out of that after he noticed that young Donald could never tell the difference between “antidote” and “anecdote.” 

It still remains one of the enduring mysteries of the 21stCentury – how on earth did the US elect such a person to the highest office in the land, a man who, apparently, thinks that Covid19 is tweetable? 

Anyone who saw the village-idiot-in-chief’s interview with Chris Wallace last week would have been stunned. 

Mr Wallace might work for Fox News but he is a highly respected journalist who used to be a regular on 60 Minutes, the investigative news programme on CBS. 

Wallace politely corrected the President twice, fact-checking him so decisively that Trump felt compelled to call for back-up to prove his point. 

The back-up didn’t bolster his case but the President, never one to let facts get in the way of a spin, just talked over Wallace while repeating his false claims. 

But his idea of proving that he was smarter than Joe Biden, the Democratic Party nominee for President, made Wallace’s jaw drop. 

The President bragged that he’d “recently” aced a “test” whose last five questions were so hard that he doubted that either Wallace or Biden could have done as well. 

Here, the American people should be afraid, they should be very afraid. The so-called test the President was talking about is called the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test. It is not only easy – a fifth grader could ace it – but is chiefly used to spot the signs of early dementia. 

The question to ask therefore: why was the President of the United States having to take such a test? 

That he’s evidently proud of his feat is clear: he’s boasted about it several times including something to this effect to another Fox News reporter: that the doctors administering the test were so impressed with his last few answers they said that “few people could do as well.” 

The person interviewing him seemed impressed as all hell. Then again, he’s the same guy who was overjoyed the other day after he heard that he’d won the Nigerian national lottery. 

Between prescribing bleach for Covid-19 sufferers and railing against Obama for All America’s Ills, the President has begun shocking people in other ways. 

He’s actually beginning to sound intelligent. He’s advised people to wear masks and he’s cancelled the Republican Convention in Florida.

If you believe he’s changed, you’d also believe that there is no such word as “gullible.”

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE

Did you know that Listerine shares guarantee a royalty so long as people worry about bad breath? 

According to Bloomberg, bids were being taken last week on a share of royalties backed by Listerine mouthwash sales. These stem from contracts signed 140 years ago by its inventor and still cited in business law classes that require the maker to pay shareholders in perpetuity. No wonder over 100 bids for a single share reached over US$340,000!

While the share up for sale only paid $32,000 last year, it’s a payment that will keep coming as long as Listerine “kills germs that cause bad breath.” In modern terms, that’s like pressing the F5 key – it’s refreshing. 

And Listerine is by far the most popular mouthwash — it had a 37% share of a growing $5.2 billion global market for mouthwashes and dental rinses last year. 

The formula for Listerine was invented by Joseph Lawrence, a St. Louis doctor who originally marketed it as a cure for dandruff and/or a treatment for gonorrhoea. Those original objectives were not met: the unfortunate scalp sufferer’s hair fell out entirely. As for the other affliction – don’t ask!

But the good doctor’s invention proved to be a boon for his daughter Beatrice. While an apple a day kept the doctor away, the same could not be said for her preference of an onion a day which kept everyone away. 

The comely Beatrice discovered, however, that her father’s elixir proved to be the perfect counterbalance to the pungency of an onion diet and, lo and behold, not only was mouthwash created, suitors began arriving in droves. 

But Dr Lawrence’s true genius may have been his inspired choice of his product’s name. He named it after British doctor Joseph Lister, who discovered that disinfectants could reduce post-surgical infections.

Thus, Listerine became forever associated with antiseptic – synonymous with anything astringent, clean or fresh smelling. 

It’s become a word indelibly associated with freshness, almost an involuntary reflex like drooling over a roasting steak or vegetarians salivating over the smell of freshly mowed grass. 

Whether the dour Dr. Lister, who was as humourless as Donald Trump in a pandemic, approved of the use of his name on a soon-to-be-famous mouthwash is less clear. 

Dr Lister was a grim soul who disapproved of mouthwash almost as much as he did meat which was why he was resolutely vegetarian. 

But such was the nature of his unflinching soul that he was vegan not because he liked animals but because he loathed plants. So, most people appreciated the irony of his epitaph when it read Rest in Peas. 

It wasn’t all smooth sailing though. Dr Lawrence had to work at it, tinkering around with his Listerine formula until he got it just so. That was generally affected by the judicious use of a canary: if it keeled over dead, the dose was generally considered too strong.

This story has a decidedly happy ending. The innumerable descendants of the once-comely Beatrice have gone on have had wealth thrust on them thanks to Dr Lawrence and many heroic canaries.  

And, yes, it’s been good news for modern man and the transformation, willy-nilly, of too-many-to-count groomsmen into grooms. 

And it’s been for you as well. Picture for an instant, the lack of a good mouthwash in a crowded lift. 

I mean, it would smell bad on so many levels. 

WHERE’S THE BEEF?

Off a dirt road in Bukittinggi, West Sumatra, British celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay recently faced off against Indonesia’s famed chef William Wongso in a beef rendang showdown.

Set against a picturesque backdrop of cliffs and lush greenery, the duo were cooking for West Sumatra governor Irwan Prayitno and his family.

That was how old Irwan felt about cooking: he thought if you worked hard enough and prospered long enough, you’d get someone like Gordon Ramsey to cook for you. 

Still, food for thought, what? If you noticed, no one said anything about Malaysia having any claim on rendang.

It wasn’t like that two years ago. 

Remember when a culinary contestant on MasterChef UK got booted after her offering of nasi lemak – comprising chicken rendang among other components – was deemed inedible on the grounds the said chicken rendang “wasn’t crispy” enough.

At the time, Malaysian social media users thought that said fowl had been taste-treated most unfairly and said so in such numbers that it made the pages of the British press.

Even the then British High Commissioner to Malaysia Vicky Treadell got into the act.

“It can be chicken, lamb or beef,” she declaimed poetically, “And never crispy. Heaven forbid, chief.”  

Gordon Ramsey shuddered at the verse and recoiled at the idea of chicken in rendang. “Fair was foul and fowl was merely fair,” he agreed with the Bard, “But beef was the answer to life’s problems.” 

Still, Mr Ramsey dismissed Messrs Wallace and Torode – the judges in the MasterChef question – as confused cooks who thought that the dish might have been something you got out of Kentucky Fried Chicken

Actually, both the chefs were pretty good at their craft. Mr Wallace wanted to be a great cook because his mother had been terrible.

He only realised this when he was eight and began wondering why his morning toast had bones.  Another time he’d cried is when he saw his mum chopping up Onions. 

Onions had been his favourite rabbit. 

So, when he got to culinary school, he never took anything for granted. In fact, he was indefatigable. If the recipe might have talked about separating eggs, for example, the intrepid Wallace would invariably ask, how far? 

Chef Torode, the other judge in question, may have been equally sinister. He was famous for crating the concept of “pre-heating” which is the practice of heating up an oven for a specified time so that one might burn one’s fingers twice – when inserting in the food and when extracting finished product.

Of course, the whole fuss was nothing more than national hubris run amok. The problem was that Malaysians were notoriously touchy about their food. 

We shouldn’t be. Now it appears that Indonesia might be the home of beef rendang. It is a horrible thought because it might mean that Chicken Rice actually originated in Singapore. 

Maybe we should be less fussed about these things and be like the English. The country only contributed the chip to world cuisine but it’s an important invention nevertheless – to couch potatoes the world over. 

We should get over it. I mean, there’s bigger fish to fry.

A Tale of Two Tubs

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has described his country as a “shining success” in fighting Covid-19, according to state-run KCNA news agency Friday.

The pompadoured, platform-shoe-wearing Supremo of the secretive dictatorship was speaking at a Tuesday politburo meeting which discussed the novel coronavirus. 

Under Kim’s multi-chinned management, North Korea had closed its borders and put thousands into isolation more than six months ago.

Some of the state’s civil society elements argued, however, that these measures had already been in effect for decades, but did not make too fine a point about it as they were, 

1) civil to a fault;

 and,  

2) loath to be strapped to an intermediate range missile prior to an “extremer-prejudice” launch. 

It was yet another day in the hermitage. Ask a citizen how it went, and you’d invariably get the same response: 

“Can’t complain.”

KCNA reported that after reviewing His efforts, North Korea’s “baddest” butterball had pronounced the outbreak dead, saying it had “contained the malignant virus” and “maintained a stable anti-epidemic situation despite the worldwide health crisis”.

According to KCNA, the people gloried in the news and danced in the streets, crying “hosanna” and generally behaved as they did after every successful long-range missile launch, which was every two weeks, according to its rotund ruler.

His Multi-chinned Magnificence felt it was not just necessary but desirable to have as many missiles as possible because a portly president over the seas had threatened “flame and fury” on him if he ever stepped out of line or threatened his southern neighbour whichever came second.  

While not brooding about fire or rage, His Presidential Plumpness felt flamingly angry about America’s efficiency. It was too much testing that was the problem that was leading to too many infections. 

“Take away the testing and you would not have so many infections” he wound up before cunningly concluding in a poetic burst. “Quod erat demonstrandum (QED),” 

It was the sort of Trumpian twist designed to impress Latin America and iron-clad logic of such high school standards that even Paul Krugman was rendered speechless. 

The ample authoritarian in Pyongyang wished he could carry off something as convincing as QED and he thanked Heaven that he did not have to convince anyone in North Korea about anything.

 “Not by the hairs of my chinny-chin-chin-chin,” he laughed immoderately and felt immensely grateful to his far-sighted grandfather who’d built up the family business, so to speak. 

Indeed, the Twin Tubs had much in common, both were probably, to quote an eminent Speaker, “morbidly obese” although it was fair to say that Mr Trump had tried almost everything to lose that extra 20 pounds short of diet and exercise.  

Both were shameless self- promoters although it must be conceded that Mr Trump took bragging to rarefied heights not seen since Hilary scaled Everest.  

Both were highly egotistical and critical of one another. When asked what he thought of Mr Trump after Singapore, His Meaty Majesty snorted: “He’s an arrogant fellow who thinks he knows as much as me.”   

Both were at ease with hyperbole. Witness Kim’s “shining success” with the presidential “more testing that anywhere in the world” back in March. 

And both weren’t especially bright. Mr Trump thinks Finland is part of Russia while his Supreme Shrewdness thinks Kimchi was named after his late, unlamented grandfather.

The fate of East Asia might rest on them. 

Woe is us!  

DURIAN SENDS BAVARIA INTO LOCKDOWN

A foul-smelling package forced the evacuation of a building and sent six individuals to hospital in Germany recently.

Police were alerted to a suspicious odour coming from one of the packages in a post office in Bavaria, which led to the evacuation of some 60 people in the building. An elite team was then sent in to inspect the package.

Such was the paranoia that CNN reported that six ambulances, five first responder cars, and two emergency vehicles were deployed to the scene.

Terrorism was suspected. 

The terrorists were later identified to be three durians from Thailand.  Even so, Larry, Curly and Moe, sent six people to hospital for nausea. 

OK, it’s bad. But is it that bad? 

The writer Anthony Burgess – who taught English at the Malay College, Kuala Kangsar in the 1950s – in his The Malayan Trilogy compared eating a durian to “having sweet raspberry blancmange in a lavatory”.

And he meant “Malayan lavatory in the 1950s” too.

Privately, he told friends that it was like “rotten, mushy onions”. 

The travel writer Chitra Divakumari once described a morning thus “Each new day,” she observed, “has a colour, a smell.” 

Unfortunately, what wafted to the nostrils of the good citizenry of Bavaria that day were malodorous sulphur compounds associated with skunk spray, rotten eggs and dirty socks. 

Actually, the durian is mild compared to some Western foods that are off the smell-scale, as it were. 

Surstromming, a Swedish delicacy, is herring that’s fermented in barrels for six months and then canned for a year. The fermentation is so extreme that the cans actually bulge from the pressure. 

When opened its contents can stun canaries a mile away. 

Or Vieux-Boulogna cheese from the district of that name in France which has the dubious distinction of being the “smelliest” cheese in the world.  

It is a great delicacy in France though.

Kiviak is probably the most revolting though. It’s a Greenland delicacy and is made by wrapping whole small sea birds, feathers and all, in sealskin and burying it for several months to decompose. When it is dug up, the insides are decayed to the point of near-liquification and are reportedly sucked out. 

As Conrad might observe, the horror of it! 

The humble durian is the only food that isn’t fermented yet smells that way. It’s not so humble actually. Its prices have sky-rocketed, no thanks to the Chinese who seem bent on littering durian rind on the Road on which the Belt is located.

It has become a test of sorts for Western chefs hitherto given to assuming that blue cheese had been the only skunk stunner.  

Even the great Bobby Flay broke down and ran off screaming into the night when confronted by durians.

When told that some Malaysians considered it the King of Fruits, he began laughing hysterically and couldn’t cook for a week. 

But the durian could have new uses. Bottled and concentrated, its essence is said to have been found to strip bark from trees.

Alas, scientists are yet to figure out how that might conceivably be useful. 

WILL A REAL LEADER PLEASE STAND UP?

Looking on as Pakatan Harapan attempts to get its leadership sorted out is like watching grass grow. 

It seems interminable even when they are nowhere near the reins of government.  And now we have former Transport Minister Anthony Loke assuring us that it’s okay to have Dr Mahathir as PM-designate – in the event PH takes over, that is – because we “have safeguards” to make sure he will step down in favour of Anwar Ibrahim after “six” months. 

Says who? That might be classified under “famous last words” or as songwriter Neil Young might have summed up: “Helplessly hoping.”  

To the forgiving Tony, it’s about trust. Put yourself in the other man’s shoes for a minute: To Anwar Ibrahim, it’s been twice bitten already.  

And there seems something hopelessly lopsided about the whole dynamic. The story of Anwar has been spun so very deftly by various Dr Mahathir allies that we have generally taken it as gospel. 

It is this: that he is so ambitious that he will do anything to be premier. This was reinforced by Dr Mahathir himself saying: “He is crazy to become the PM.” And this, ironically after the ex-physician resigned as premier and set into motion the whole ball of unfortunate wax that we are now confronted with. 

Ambition is not a crime. If it were, Dr Mahathir should have been locked up years ago. “Even the smallest dog can raise his leg against the tallest building,” was how the word was once explained. It could be the perfect description. 

Peering through the same critical lens, what are we to make of Dr Mahathir now?

The man is neither young nor a visionary. Bluntly put, he is the Methuselah of world politics who blew his chance at redemption when given it on a platter two years ago.  

When Robert Mugabe continued ruling into his 90s, he was accused of “clinging on” to power. And Nelson Mandela retired at 80, when the applause was loudest. So, you’d think the doctor would know better. 

But no, not Dr Mahathir. He keeps returning like the proverbial bad penny.  

After 22 years as premier and another 22-month stint as the premier after May 2018, it seems the nonagenarian politician wants yet another bite at the cherry. 

Does it not strike anyone as being “selfishly ambitious?” A “lusting for power?” Even a little, “crazy to be the PM?” 

And if he does get his wish, are we then to believe, as the trusting Anthony Loke does, that he will step down in six months in favour of a man he has twice denied? 

No one believes that for a minute. Which brings us to the real question: Why does he want to come back?

If it is to lecture nations like the US, Singapore or India on how to manage their affairs, please spare us. 

If it is to start another car project or some pie-in-the-sky gold dinar trading scheme, perish the thought!

If it is to sell perfectly well-run government assets to private hands for no reason other than 1) they are your friends and 2) they might help spur other Bumiputera entrepreneurs, give us a break. 

It didn’t work before and ended in tears amid enormous debt. 

So, again, why?

Is there honour among thieves? Nah!!

Here we go again! 

According to a report in the New York Times, Goldman Sachs, the US investment banker that helped birth a gigantic fraud at the 1Malaysia Development Fund (1MDB), is attempting to get US federal prosecutors to ease up on the bank’s role in the scandal. 

The report stated that lawyers for Goldman Sachs had asked US Deputy Attorney-General Jeffery Rosen to review demands by certain federal prosecutors that Goldman Sachs pay more than US$2bil (RM8.5bil) in fines and plead guilty to a charge.

The report said that the bank was also seeking to pay lower fines and to avoid a guilty plea altogether. It quoted sources as speaking on the condition of anonymity as the talks were currently ongoing.

“The request, which was made several weeks ago, is not unusual for a high-profile corporate investigation and often comes in the final stage of settlement talks,” said the paper. 

“But it has been a point of pride for Goldman that it has never had to admit guilt in a federal investigation, and the scandal has already been a black eye for the bank,” the report said.

That could be understating it considerably. For its part, Malaysia got a lot more than a black eye. 1MDB’s protagonists earned the dubious distinction of perpetrating the world’s biggest-ever fraud.

But “point of pride” and “never had to admit guilt”? Surely you jest, Goldman?

It’s not as if the investment bank had an unblemished reputation.

In 2009, for example, a Rolling Stone article by Matt Tiabbi unforgettably described Goldman Sachs as a “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money”. 

So much for “point of principle.’ 

According to the US Justice Department, Goldman Sachs earned USD$600mil (RM2.56bil) in fees for raising US$6bil (RM25.6bil) for 1MDB.

Tim Leissner, the Goldman employee in Asia, had admitted that he and others at the investment firm  had conspired to circumvent the bank’s internal control to work with fugitive businessman Low Taek Jho – known as Felonious to friends and the police alike – to bribe Malaysian officials in order to secure the lucrative bond work for the bank.

A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since. 

A government has collapsed under the weight of 1MDB and its leader – Fearless to all and sundry – has been tried and is awaiting a verdict in July 

Felonious is still at large and he corpulently continues to cast a sizeable shadow over the Malaysian body politic. As is his wont, he prefers to cast that shadow as far away from Malaysia as possible. 

Fearless hasn’t changed much though. He continues to try and assert himself although it’s doubtful if he will ever be taken seriously again.  

He, however, does admit 1MDB might have been a mistake. 

He has since come to the revelation that Malaysia “had been cheated.” By Felonious! Peerless also claimed that “it was clear” that Goldman had also failed.

He had clearly been thinking the matter over the last two years and seemed to have all the answers. 

And like the Oracle of Delphi of bygone days, Fearless pronounced his Truth. It was actually everyone – “the investment bank, the lawyers and the auditors” – who had all let us, all of us, the whole country, down. 

Everyone but him. 

YOU CAN EASILY MEET EXPENSES, THEY’RE EVERYWHERE

The private hospital is a servant of humanity and it has done brilliant work in isolating new and increasingly innovative fees. 

That sounds cynical but I’m beginning to wonder if it rings true in the private halls of Medical Malaysia.

Recently, it was reported that a 39-year-old man, who takes his 64-year-old mother to a private hospital in Penang for dialysis treatment thrice weekly, cried foul after being charged an extra RM5 in each bill since April.

When he inquired what the charges were for, he was blandly informed that it was for ‘sanitiser use and a body temperature check.’

Now if that’s not profiteering, I don’t know what is.

At the Accident and Emergency Department, such charges are routinely parked under a general cover-all phrase as “Outpatient Precautionary Measures”, according to that plague of porcine-pandemic-profiteers, the Consumer Association of Penang or Cap.    

“During this Covid-19 emergency period, taking temperature readings of people walking into hospitals, offices and stores is a requirement of the Ministry of Health,’ huffed Mohideen Kader, the consumer body’s head. 

It is a mandatory requirement during the current Covid-19 outbreak and can probably be expensed off taxes. In other words, Mr Mohideen is right. 

In a pandemic such as this, you can see how charges like that might add up especially if everyone – from stores and government departments to hotels and diners – decides to adopt similar charges along the grounds that “precautionary measures” don’t come cheap. 

Hospital administrators should be careful what they wish for. 

We all know that private medical care in Malaysia is one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy because it encapsulates a rather unsavoury principle of capitalism: it is what the market can bear and in the case of private healthcare, it’s a lot. 

Standout example: there is an elderly Malaysian billionaire, for example, who’s been living 24/7 in a leading Kuala Lumpur private hospital for almost four years now. He occupies a suite of rooms there where he chairs meetings without stress as medical treatment is just a click away. 

To the hospital, he is an important, and recurrent if not ever-increasing, revenue stream and is probably listed in its annual report as such. And to him, the expense is probably just a droplet in his dividend stream. 

But imagine his peace of mind if he is the kind of hypochondriac that checks into a hospital if only for everyday reassurance. 

He is truly living the hypochondriac’s dream: to be surrounded by doctors of all specialties, waiting alertly to spring into action at his first ache, twinge, cramp, spasm or grimace of pain that all but screams out to the assembled throng: “I told you I was sick!”  

But he is a billionaire who probably would not deign to examine his monthly bills nor carp over extra charges designed to squeeze blood from stones. 

But the ordinary Malaysian does, because his or her money usually has to go a long way. 

And rapaciousness of the sort exhibited by the Penang hospital is revolting and gives credence to the belief that pawn brokers and private hospitals are cut from the same cloth – fleece. 

HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND NOT INFLUENCE PEOPLE

It has long been said that the stock market is a barometer for the economy going forward. 

The current global conditions – the enormous printing of US money, the monetary stimuli and easing everywhere else – has made nonsense of that notion and then some.  

The coronavirus has claimed the lives of over 100,000 people in the US – the most in the world – and over 30 million people are currently jobless. Recession is not just in the air, economists like Paul Krugman are saying it’s The Great Depression all over again.

The wolf is snapping at the door and it’s been the worst economic shock the world’s ever known in a century, but you don’t see that reflected in the stock exchange. 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is only about 11 per cent off its all-time high which was achieved, incidentally, in February this year.

It’s, like, almost a ho-hum moment amidst the carnage and mayhem going around everywhere. Still, the US stock market lost almost 90 percent of its value between 1929 and 1932.

That is unlikely to happen this time around given the ample liquidity worldwide but that’s about it: until a vaccine comes along, no one knows anything else about the future. 

Which brings us to 2020’s Burning Question: are we going to have another four years of The World According to Trump? 

It’s astonishing that Americans not only voted him in, they still continue to support him in large numbers. 

And according to enough people to be seriously dismayed, he still has a good chance of winning re-election in November.

How on earth does he do it, this charmless, corpulent commander-in-chief?

He does not seem to have a sense of humour unlike his various predecessors. When John Kennedy was attacked for allegedly using his father’s wealth during his 1960 campaign, for example, he cracked reporters up by revealing that he’d just received a cable from his father.

Kennedy, pretending to read a wire: “Dear Jack, don’t pay for a single vote more than necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide!” 

Trump, on the other hand, is not known for using humour to deflect anything unless one is to believe that his reference to drinking bleach to prevent coronavirus was really a “sarcastic jibe” at a reporter. 

In an arena where self-deprecation and subtle promotion are appreciated, he does not care that he is vain and boorishly boastful. He seriously considers himself a “stable genius” and an expert on everything from the Taliban and the art of war to foreign policy and making deals.

And he has a lousy memory. When Obama was President, he criticised him for playing golf, once, during the Ebola crisis and, often, on the taxpayers’ dime. One person died of Ebola in the US and, over his eight years, it cost the government US$2.8 million for Obama to play golf. According to MSNBC, it’s cost over US$153 million to facilitate Trump’s golf games largely because he insists on playing on his own courses in Florida.

And there are the lies. When Twitter challenged him on fact, he turned around and screamed “free speech.” Now he wants to change the law simply because he was caught out. 

He wouldn’t win dog catcher anywhere else. 

FLIGHTLESS ON THE FEDERAL FREEWAY

Do you know why the ostrich wanted to cross the Federal Highway?

I can mow reveal – in the strictest confidence, mind – that said ostrich was of Roman descent and it was afraid that someone would Caesar!

It was the talk of Kuala Lumpur on that Thursday evening. An ostrich identified only as Chickaboo – Italian for “why am I always surrounded by turkeys?” – made a run for it after it leapt out of its truck near University Malaya and pelted down the Federal Highway at speeds of close to 35 kilometres an hour. It was, however, not charged for impeding traffic as it was travelling much faster than the traffic around it.

The fast, feathered fugitive then embarked on a hour-long, flightless frolic of its own. According to this newspaper, the fowl fiend was finally flummoxed and pinned down at around 4.15pm by two rescuers, identified only as the heroic Agus and Shunmugavael.

The bird had, apparently, belonged to an ostrich farm in Semenyih although no one can explain what it was doing driving a truck near University Malaya.

Agus and Shunmugavel should be considered for medals of valour in the face of overwhelming might. Ostriches are the largest and heaviest birds on the planet. They are between seven and nine feet tall and can weigh up to 350 pounds.

OK, the poor fellows cannot fly but, on the other hand, you don’t see them getting sucked into jet engines either. You have to put these things in perspective. The sinking of the Titanic, for example, was both a tragedy and a triumph – a tragedy for its passengers but a triumph for the lobsters awaiting the chef’s ministrations.

Listening to the radio then, I was struck by the number of people calling up to profess concern for the feathered fugitive There is no doubt about it: human beings generally do care about the creatures on this good earth especially when they are not eating or wearing them.

What, you might ask, will happen to Chickaboo of no last name, that defiant Italian chick with long legs and massive sprinting ability, now impossibly stuck miles away from Rome and in the green, bowels of Semenyih?

Nothing apparently. We have been told that it belonged to an altruistic farm peopled by brave but benign gentlemen with no last names – Agus and Shun, for instance – and the mighty Chickaboo will live out its speedy life, eschewing pasta, and getting used to Malaysian cuisine. 

In short, Chickaboo was born free and, much to the chagrin of red-meat lovers the world over, would never be a candidate for the cooking pots of Asia.

In short, like the sheep that gives us steel wool, Chickaboo had no natural enemies except for disease, old age and high cholesterol associated with an unvarying Malaysian diet.

It was free to roam the meadows of Semenyih and do whatever it was ostriches do when they are left free to roam the meadows in Semenyih.

I can almost hear you sigh, dear reader. Was that a sigh of contentment, of things ending up in their proper place and of happy endings fading into the sunset?

Or was that a sigh of vexation at bleeding-heart, animal-lover liberals who had risen to the top of the food chain only to become vegetarians?

Meanwhile, back at the farm in Semenyih……

This first appeared in June 2016