We’ll drink a cup of kindness….yet

Obesity, apparently, is a growing problem in Malaysia. 

In fact, it is so problematic that a lot of people in Malaysia are overweight. Indeed, the number of overweight people in the country could very well constitute the majority, which means the overweight person now constitutes the average. 

There you go. That’s nailing your main New Year resolution right there.

A new year is dawning, and we stand poised to leave the last teen year of our lives. And what we approach – 2020 – is a bellwether because it used to represent an ideal first articulated by Dr Mahathir in 1991 when all Malaysians might “walk free and equal under the Malaysian sun.” 

Fat chance. 

We are becoming more polarised along racial and religious lines. And, alarmingly, it is almost always seen as a Malay-Non-Malay schism, a phenomenon that’s been boosted by the alliance between the primary Malay opposition parties.

Minor matters are being blown out of proportion. The return, and disposal, of Chin Peng’s ashes has stirred up such a fuss and such anger against the government, you’d think communism was alive and well in Malaysia!

Unfortunately, that’s what some people think. A Muslim preacher said that recently; while another student warned that the country could face race riots if the Chinese educationist group, Dong Zong, was not banned. 

Meanwhile, the ringgit stubbornly remains below RM4 to the greenback while the stock-market is trending near four-year lows. And this despite very reasonable economic growth for last year and this. Let’s face it, a 4-5% expansion in real gross domestic product in these economic times is very good. 

And notwithstanding the defence put up by Mr Kadir Jasin, some of that blame must rest squarely with the Prime Minister. Markets hate uncertainty and, faced with it, almost always vote with their feet. 

By adamantly refusing to set a definite date for a transfer of power, Dr Mahathir has cast a pall of uncertainty over the PH government. That is not only irresponsible – he is 94 – but downright distasteful.

It seems to suggest that he can no longer bear to be out of power after having achieved it again, and against all the odds. For a man who willingly surrendered power in 2003 when he was unchallengeable, that is not only sad but pathetic. 

To say it’s because he does not trust Mr Anwar Ibrahim is almost disingenuous. Could not that be said for all his potential and real-life successors?

Which reminds me. In early 1994, I was invited to a three-day seminar in Langkawi. Dubbed a camp to build a “Premier Nation,” its participants were all non-Malay Malaysians comprising politicians, prominent businessmen and others including journalists.

On the last day, Dr Mahathir held court and he did so candidly. At question time, I thought I would also be frank and asked him about Vision 2020, something along these lines. On hindsight, I never thought it would be ironic. 

“2020 expects equality and a blurring of race. But that will arouse opposition and it’s likely that you won’t be around. What guarantees do we, the Non-Malays, have that your successor, whoever he is, will share your allegiance to the policy.”

Dr M then ran through his potential successors – Musa Hitam and Ghafar Baba, respectively – whom he then proceeded to disparage. 

He then assured us that “if anyone can, my successor Anwar Ibrahim” will deliver 2020, adding surprisingly, “he reminds me of myself when I was that age.”

OK, that was 26 years ago. But who knows, maybe 2020 will be a good year, perhaps even better than its predecessor. Let us hope so. 

Happy New Year folks.

HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS!

The tree in the lobby of the Shangri-La is beautifully lit and so tall it almost brushes the roof. Around it are scattered wrapping paper and presents on a bed of snow. And a milk-white polar bear nuzzles her cub much to the delight of tourists who crowd around the tableau to pose for pictures. 

You can tell Christmas had come to Singapore.  

And they really take it over the top here. The Christmas music is relentless and unending, cheerful carols ho-ho-ho’ing everywhere you go. Thankfully, I like its sound, but I can understand how its omnipresence might drive some people around the bend. And if you’ve seen one Santa, you’ve seen a mall. 

Orchard Road at night is spectacular, all two kilometres of its length brightly lighted up, a strutting visual phantasmagoria that’s flaunted for the gawking visitor. The shopping complexes, meanwhile, strive to outdo one another in their own visual displays.

It’s been like this since early December although only 18% of the republic is Christian. But it makes for good tourism. 

We return home tomorrow. Unless, you hang out in Pavilion a lot, Christmas in Kuala Lumpur is decidedly more muted. Indeed, growing up in a Hindu family in Seremban, I didn’t know anything about Christmas beyond the fact that it was a holiday and my father didn’t have to go to work.

It all changed when I met Rebecca. But it only came home to me when Raisa came along. You only understand the “joy of giving” business when you appreciate the happiness a child feels upon receiving something from Santa. 

I liked it that Raisa believed and I loved if when she oh-so-seriously wrote to Santa requesting stuff. Nor did she ever ask for very expensive things, she was always pretty considerate. I have since discovered that there are three distinct periods in a child’s life: when you believe in Santa, when you don’t believe in Santa and when you are Santa. 

The bubble burst when she was eight. Her cousin Emmanuel told her there was no such thing as Santa. He was feeling particularly aggrieved because Father Leonard, then of Jesus Caritas Church, had pooh-poohed his belief in the fat guy in the red suit. Emmanuel just wanted to pass on his disillusion, but I didn’t appreciate it. 

This will mark the first time that Raisa will not spend the holidays with us. She will, instead, spend it with her in-laws in Austria where it is truly beautiful and like all the movie clichés because I have the seen the pictures she sends: the house lights aglow amid the snow falling outside on to a landscape shrouded in white.  

But we return tomorrow, and I know Rebecca will bake her pineapple tarts as soon as she gets home and although I am not crazy about them, I am crazy about its idea and the smell of the fruity jam that will pervade the whole house.

That’s the smell of the season right there. Its very notion cheers me up. Throw in a beer, my wife supervising children opening 

presents, laughter and my cup runneth over…

…Merry Christmas everyone. 🎄🎅🏽

Something’s living on my skin

Did God who gave us flowers and trees also provide the allergies

E Y Harburg, lyricist

When we went to New Zealand for the first time, Raisa was only two.

We remember the trip vividly because it was there that we discovered that our child had asthma. She suffered breathing difficulties at a friend’s home and had to be rushed to hospital where she was speedily and efficiently treated. 

The pollen count – a difficult job, that – especially if you’ve got allergies. As the doctor in the emergency section of Auckland’s hospital informed us: “This is the asthma capital of the world.”

I’m happy to report that Raisa is now an asthma-free young adult mainly because she took up swimming as a child and became a strong one. This was also thanks to a doctor who advised just such a course of action when we returned home from New Zealand. 

But it was the first time I was confronted with the savagery of allergies. 

Then in my mid-30s, I found my fingers swelling after a gig at a pub where a pal and me played once a week. You could say I itched to see a doctor only to be casually informed I was allergic to nickel. 

I told him I’d been playing guitar since I was 16. He shrugged indifferently: “It happens.” But it was cool: I switched to phosphor-bronze strings and that was that. 

But that was certainly not that in my mid-fifties. I became aware that certain foods distressed me. It peaked after a trip to India when it became obvious that I had at least one thing in common with bees – hives. 

The specialist I went to see suggested I do an allergy test and drew blood for the purpose. When I went back for the results, he informed me, with a raised eyebrow, that I was allergic to crustaceans, peanuts and wheat. 

I wasn’t crazy about prawns or crab and I could easily give peanuts a miss but wheat?

“Welcome to old age,” said my doctor cheerfully. “Nobody said life was fair.”

Allergies are no joke. Essentially, it is a damaging immune response by the body to a substance like food or dust that it has become hypersensitive to. 

Some allergies are a mere nuisance. My daughter, for example, is allergic to dust mites. On a recent visit to our apartment in Singapore, she sneezed repeatedly in the living room and we diagnosed the furniture: its cushions probably hadn’t changed for the longest time. 

The management of our service apartment kindly brought in new furniture and, voila, problem solved. 

But other allergies like a nut aversion are potentially fatal. That’s anaphylactic shock for you in a nutshell. 

But the strangest one I’ve heard came from an ex-journalist friend of mine who’d returned home to Texas to pursue a new career in information technology. 

On a recent trip to Singapore, Matthew told us he’d been bitten by a tick while hiking through the woods. He thought nothing of it until after he’d had a steak dinner that night. 

He woke up in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Austin to be told he had developed a rare condition passed on through tick bites: a violent allergy to mammalian meat. Matthew could still eat chicken, turkey or fish but beef, lamb or pork were potentially fatal choices. 

Like all allergy sufferers, I have learnt to live my life by never leaving home without it: antihistamines. Singer-songwriter Paul Simon must have been a fellow sufferer because he wrote a song about it. 

I also agree with his conclusion on Allergies.“You get better but you never get well.”

Being friends for the world to see

It was like Batman turning on Robin or the Lone Ranger disavowing Tonto. 

There was Low Teck Jho doing what fat fugitives do best, sunning himself surreptitiously in some swank spa at an undisclosed destination that Abdul Hamid Bador had yet to figure out…

… when the bombshell hit. 

His pal, helpmate and all-round best buddy threw him under the proverbial bus. 

Fearless Leader’s defence had been called in the case involving SRC International and Fearless rose to the challenge with his usual manly spirit.

 “Who, me?” screamed FL in shock and promptly professed his innocence by blaming everything and the kitchen sink on his plump protege and four other mysterious Middle Eastern gentlemen, none of whom planned to be around for the duration of the trial.

It was a crafty ploy built around a tried and tested legal philosophy: blame it on the bossa-nova also known as “if you can’t convince them, confuse them.” And it wasn’t surprising either because Fearless lawyer was a learned barrister who long ago had made nonsense of the saying “talk is cheap.”

Mohamad Shafiee Abdullah knew that talk was not cheap and legal work was never charity. That he preferred to leave to U2’s lawyers because they always worked pro-Bono. 

Even so, it was an astonishing admission that beggared belief. According to it, the real captain of the ship that saddled 1MDB with RM42 billion in debt was a beefy brigand whose name did not feature anywhere on its official records and whose whereabouts remained a mystery.

You might say confusion not only reigned, it poured. 

The bulging bandit was appalled by the news and didn’t know whether to be elated or angry. Like Fearless himself, the fat fiend had always professed innocence where 1MDB had been concerned.

He claimed he could not come back to Malaysia because he would not be given a “fair trial.” And when he invariably gave in to the American courts that seized his ill-gotten assets, his well-paid flunkies always added the proviso that the surrenders did not constitute an “admission of guilt.” 

Still, the chubby charlatan has steadfastly chosen to remain silent on the option of returning to the United States where he still faces several money laundering charges. Presumably the penal system there was not quite up to the mark. 

Secretly, however, the rotund rascal was pleased with Mr Shafiee’s description of him being the “leader of the pack” and the “brains behind the scheme.” The measure of that pleasure was almost always conditional to his distance from Malaysia and was inversely proportional to the Inspector General of Police’s ignorance of his whereabouts. 

The lamentable larcenist was getting increasingly philosophical in his old age and felt that the Malaysian authorities were getting too judgmental. For his part, he was all for letting bygones be bygones. 

Refreshed by the thought, the portly pirate dashed off a “Wish You Were Here” postcard to Fearless that generously allowed the detected defendant to heap even more blame on Fatboy. 

Because that was how real friends behaved. 

Not quite dead enough

If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

The latest, and needless, controversy over the return of the ashes of Chin Peng to his home state of Perak is much ado over nothing. 

It was reported on Tuesday that the ashes of Asia’s last revolutionary and the former leader of the Communist Party of Malaya had been quietly returned in September and scattered, partly in the sea and partly in the jungles of Perak, his home state.

Ever since the peace agreement with the Malaysian government in 1989, various CPM leaders have returned home under the terms of the accord. All except Chin Peng who was refused entry despite his oft-stated wish to be, at least, buried there. 

It was not for want of trying. The unrepentant communist took his desire to return to court and finally lost in the Federal Court only because his lawyers could not prove that he’d been born in Malaya. 

Even when he died in 2013 – in Thailand, of cancer – he continued to remain in exile as the then-government barred the return of his ashes. 

Be that as it may, his ashes have not only returned but have been scattered in Malaysia. But the tumult over the matter is astonishing. OK, so some octogenarian ex-colleagues of the former insurgent may have brought back his remains without permission. 

That’s a crime?

It’s a waste of time and money to devote resources to investigate the matter. More astounding was the hypothesis put forward by at least one UMNO leader: that the return of said remains might somehow re-ignite a communist revival in Malaysia. 

That is about as absurd an idea as the notion of chocolate-covered ants.

First off, the communists were not at all popular by the time the 1970s rolled around. Although its movement persisted until the late 1980s, the fact that it agreed to almost all the Malaysian police’s demands showed that its back was broken and it was more or less a surrender, albeit an honourable one. 

The fuss over the late communist’s remains also underscores no little hypocrisy on the opposition’s part. The reason why the CPM lasted so long was because it was, for the longest time, supported by the Communist Party of China.

It is also something that all Malaysian governments – past and present – prefer to conveniently forget. When it comes to China, it appears, it’s better to err on the side of caution.

A resurgence of communism?

Nuts! 

The collapse of the USSR has almost completely strengthened the hand of capitalism in one variety or another. Lenin is dead and the old Communist order represented by Chin Peng and his ilk have vanished along with the Berlin Wall and the Warsaw Pact.  

If you disregard a paranoid North Korea, the only remaining communist countries in Asia are the three that essentially practice state capitalism – China, Vietnam and Laos. 

It is clear that it isn’t an issue of communism, it’s just the politics of nuisance and race. 

“What do you expect us to do?” asked Dr Mahathir quite reasonably. “Pick up all his ashes?”

Quite. 

The man is dead after all. There is nothing left there but the ghosts of Communism Past. As the police chief character in To Kill a Mockingbird says towards the book’s end: “Let the dead bury the dead Mr Finch.”

“Let the dead bury the dead.”

THIS WILL GIVE YOU GOOSE BUMPS

Rural dwellers in France are feeling threatened by city slickers moving into the countryside. 

Indeed, a series of court cases lately have pitted the traditional way of life in rural France against modern values which, country-dwellers say, are creeping in from the city.

It all started with Maurice. 

Maurice was a loud, strutting rooster who was so cocky that he was the pride and joy of his owner Monsieur Louis Gaspard who extolled its virtues to all and sundry. 

But Monsieur Sundry did not like the cacophonous cock. He had newly moved in from Paris, a civilised place where roosters did not frighten the daylights out of neighbours at daybreak. 

A civilised city such as Paris would know what to do with the raucous rooster, thought the much maligned neighbour vengefully. Render it into a mouth-watering marsala perhaps?

Some hot fowl curry on a cold winter’s day is always nice, thought Monsieur Sundry wistfully. This shocked the prudish Monsieur Gaspard: he knew that fowl was a four letter bird. 

And that was how it ended up in court. 

According to Reuters, the case was heard in Soustons, 700 km south-west of Paris, which just showed how far Monsieur Sundry had fled to obtain some peace and quiet. 

His lawyer said the piercing noise emitted by the cacophonous cockerel each morning exceeded the permissible levels permitted any rooster holding French citizenship. The ensuing bedlam, argued the lawyer, prevented the Sundrys from sleeping with their house-windows open. 

In short, he wanted damages for his anguish and suffering.

The judge thought the barrister was talking cock and he said so. He ruled that the consequential cockerel was free to do what it did best which was to cock-a-doodle-do until the cows came home or the buffalo roamed.  

He was not known as Monsieur Cliche for nothing. 

Meanwhile, the legal cases have spread. Case in point: the ducks and geese on a small French smallholding may carry on quacking, a French court ruled on Tuesday, rejecting a neighbour’s complaint that the birds’ racket was making their life a misery.

About 60 ducks and geese had been kept by retired farmer Dominique Douthe in the foothills of the Pyrenees and the daily commotion they made had driven the neighbour, newly moved from Paris, to distraction, not to mention drink.

Madame Douthe felt compelled to defend her flock lest her goose be cooked. Her lawyer rose to heights of eloquence in court arguing that her newly moved-in neighbour was on a wild-goose-chase and Madame Douthe’s flock was no less than nature’s bounty.

Even their occasional trips to town were a treat, he argued. It  was sheer “poultry in motion.”  

The disgruntled neighbour is planning to appeal on the grounds that the judge was biased. 

The judge was well known in his rural neighbourhood for his unrelenting dandruff. During the trial, he was only seen to perk up when a witness for the defendant – an expert on shampoo – testified. 

The expert testified that his company only obtained its dandruff-resistant shampoo after a study on the dietary habits of geese. It showed that the addition of gluten to the final formula worked wonders on the scalp.Bread was good for the birds and so, what’s good for the goose was good for the dander.

Listen to what the man said

You’d think the Minister would leave himself some wriggle room. 

But no, there was Entrepreneur Development Minister Redzuan Yusof in Parliament, stubbornly sticking to his story that the country could see its “flying car” take off by the end of the year. That’s a month and a half away. 

In Malaysia, there is only one vehicle with wheels and flies. It’s called a garbage truck. 

To Malaysians tired of Dr Mahathir’s near-delusional obsession with a “national car of our own,” this flying car idea seems like more garbage of the sort first trumpeted in 1984. Mr Redzuan should get real. 

If after more than 30 years in the business, we are still incapable of nurturing a genuine auto industry that can innovate, we should give up the ghost, stop throwing good money after bad and call it quits. 

Proton, Dr Mahathir’s brainchild and the country’s first national car, has been a monumental failure. Even with continued protection, it began bleeding because its models were of inferior quality and the company had to be delisted to prevent a national embarrassment. Only after China’s Geely bought into it in September, 2017, and took over its management, did its fortunes improve. 

A smart leader would have declared a Malaysian victory at this point and moved on.

But no, this administration is a glutton for punishment and has since announced plans for a third national car. It has promised, however, that no government funds will be involved in the venture. Unfortunately, no one believes it for a minute.

All this is, of course, separate and distinct from Mr Redzuan’s flying car. No one will be surprised to hear plans for a “car without wheels” next. I bet they’d work on it tirelessly too.  

Mr Redzuan was speaking in Parliament because Khairy Jamaluddin had asked him a question about the “ecosystem” for flying cars. Methinks he shouldn’t take the Rembau MP too seriously. Let’s face it, he really didn’t do anything remarkable when he was the Minister of Youth and Sport in the previous administration apart from bemoaning the fact that Malaysian youth rarely exercised. 

You could not say the same about YB Khairy and exercise: he was generally surrounded by dumbbells.

Indeed, the one thing that sticks in the memory about the MP was a videotaped conversation between him and the former Prime Minister which was widely distributed over social media just before the general election on May 9 last year.

Mr Khairy can be seen talking soberly to Mr Najib about the challenges posed by the election. He ticked off three points that he said the opposition coalition was using against the government. In order, it was “slander, incitement and false hopes”. 

I’m not sure about the “incitement” bit and there might be something to be said about the “false hopes”. If I remember right, however, most of the so-called “slander” revolved around 1MDB and its alleged pillages of government institutions. 

Earlier this week, Mr Najib was asked to file his defence against seven charges of abuse of power, breach of trust and money laundering all involving 1MDB, brought against him by Malaysia’s Attorney General. 

In response, Mr Khairy tweeted something to the effect that the ex-PM, and his former coffee shop mate, was still innocent until proven guilty. 

That is an obvious and quite unnecessary statement and one wonders why the Rembau MP felt compelled to issue it. 

Almost like saying that any car can be damaged. Like Mr Redzuan driving his car into a tree to show how a Mercedes bends. 

THE BALLAD OF BO(SS) AND JHO

Despite allegations at him hurled,

The fat fraud’s been circuiting the world,

With a ‘ticket, and a ‘tasket,

A whopping currency basket, 

A heist so big, Dr M’s hair did curl.

It wouldn’t do; a million or three,

It had to be billions going to me. 

Look after Boss was the remit, 

Beyond that, the sky’s the limit.

All one had to do was remain free.

For six glorious years all was fine:

A yacht, a plane, women, fine wine.

Until the cracks began, 

Which the Edge duly fanned

Into the blaze that became May 9. 

With one voice the people had spoken,

Finally, the Bee-N got broken;

Umno-cat was belled;

The mighty were felled;

From slumber, the voters had woken.

Shocked, the Boss could run but could’t flee.

“It’s all someone’s fault, not me” wailed he.

As for Jho,

He laid Low

And deeply dreaded the IGP.

The plump pirate planned to run forever,

So far so good, but never say never.

St Kitts was a bust,

Macau bit the dust,

A haven was what he needed, if ever.

The Boss himself had little or no shame, 

To Sharol, even Jho, he assigned blame.

While playing his fiddle, 

The country got diddled.

In court, he now has his fair share of fame.

Jho thought he’d everyone paid for and bought.

But all his best laid plans had come to naught. 

The moral of this story

Is positively hoary:

A crime isn’t wrong until one gets caught.

The global noose for Jho is tightening,

And in nowhere is it ever  brightening.

Like this plain rhyme,

It will take time.

Alas, poor Jho, it must be frightening!

For Fatso, all roads are leading to jail, 

That’s enough to make even Rosmah quail.

He will only know his fate after he loses some weight,

During the time he’s imprisoned without bail.

One man’s pleasure is another’s treasure

Indonesia has struck a mighty blow against inflation. 

In a battle for market share in South-East Asia’s biggest economy, e-hailing rides Gojek and Grab are giving discounts of as much as 50% and more on purchases made online or with e-wallets.

It’s making food more affordable especially fried rice, the country’s national dish, whose price has dropped by half. It’s even allowed the country’s central bank to cut interest rates. 

The Indonesian obsession with fried rice, or nasi goreng as they call it, goes all the way back to 1842 when the country was still under Dutch colonial rule. 

Pa’ Kapuas had been one of the cooks in the kitchen of Pieter Van de Voort, the then Dutch Governor when the word came down that the great colonialist was sick of pea soup and would appreciate something different.

PK was racking his brains for an idea when his eye fell idly on some steamed rice, salt, eggs, onions and chilli in that order. A superstitious man might have shuddered and thrown some of the salt over his left shoulder to avoid the evil eye. 

A weaker man might have gone for the safe option and prepared an omelette. But PK was made of sterner stuff and he stir-fried the whole combination, delicately garnishing the result with some crisply fried garlic.  

Laid before the potentate, it made for an appetising sight and it pleased Pieter powerfully. Indeed, the personage pronounced it patently pleasurable and promptly named a river after the delighted chef. 

This was how Indonesia’s longest river – the Sungai Kapuas – got christened. And if the dish was good enough for a Governor, it was good enough for the people. 

In fact, Jakarta is considering applying to UNESCO to recognise its fried rice as an “intangible treasure”, a valuable heritage not unlike India’s yoga, the US’ Dylan and Italy’s pizza.

The Italians knew they deserved the honour because Dean Martin himself had equated it to love in his famous Amore.  But they weren’t happy that Chinese fried noodles had also been given the same status. 

It made the Italians furious actually because they thought it was nowhere near its Roman equivalent. That’s why they were convinced it was an impasta. 

For their part, the people in that country could not understand why everyone kept referring to its cuisine as “Chinese” food. In China, everyone just called it food. 

Like the Indonesians, the French also yearned for its breakfast roll – the baguette – to be UNESCO heritage-listed. In fact, when not marrying his teacher, France’s President Macron was constantly writing letters to the UN organisation reminding it of its forgetfulness. 

The baguette has a proud and noble role in French history. 

It sustained many a French army marching towards surrender.  Marie Antoinette even lost her head over a careless reference to the revered dish. 

When told sometime in the 17th Century, that the French people were starving and needed food, the queen replied irritably: “Let zem eat baguette.”

You could see why some people might get testy over such a remark.

Malaysians might be pleased to learn that the traditional dance of mak’yong has been heritage-listed by UNESCO as far back as 2005.  Unfortunately, the Kelantanese traditional dance has also been first banned, then degraded by the Islamic party PAS which takes great pride in being Holier than Thou. 

“Holier Than Thou” is also the name of a tattoo and piercing parlour in Jinjang. 

When justice is no longer a decision in your favour

Most people thought they knew all about Low Teck Jho.  On matters of style, for example, they knew he had the best taste money could buy.  

It now turns out that the corpulent conman known as Jho Low to pal and prosecutor alike also kept his cards close to his chest. In those days before the wannabe wrongdoer morphed into the fat fugitive he is now, his regular three-nation tours abroad were assumed to be visits to his money. Now it seems it was not just the US, Switzerland and Singapore that held his assets, it was the United Kingdom as well. 

And, if you thought he only owned realty, art and jewellery think again: he owned a lingerie firm in London as well.  

We know all this because of the US authorities. The London office used by the Malaysian miscreant for his luxury lingerie company is to be sold under a forfeiture claim by the United States because, according to US authorities, the property is one of many acquired with money embezzled from IMDB.

And, as per his wont, nothing was too good for him. 

The office as well as a nearby penthouse and apartment was acquired by the tubby thief in 2010 on Stratton Street in the upscale Mayfair neighbourhood. The bad news for the plump pilferer is that he is likely to surrender those monies to the US and Malaysia. 

But he was an optimist. It could be worse, reflected Fatso philosophically, “I could still have been living there.”

You didn’t have to be a philosopher to figure the reasons why he dived into underwear. 

The ample alumnus of Stanford liked to be brief. His speech was clipped and short. His emails were short and generally coded and even his meetings were kept short to discourage questions. 

It explained his foray into lingerie which his associates knew rhymed with “gingerly”. But the bulky brigand put it differently. “Brevity is the soul of lingerie,” he explained and they knew they were in the presence of The Master. 

The dapper delinquent thought he’d masterfully handled his Stratton offices which were used by Myla, the said lingerie company that Low thought could be leveraged into film and profit seeing how he’d bankrolled Red Granite, a film production firm that had, incredibly, produced at least one award-winning film. The firm was headed by a stepson of Fearless Leader who, unlike his chubby consigliore, was facing the music and not safely ensconced in a country that denied it was China. 

In a 2014 email the plump Penangite sent from his Myla account, he introduced a Red Granite Pictures representative to Myla executives to follow up on “any opportunities for Myla in the movie space.

But Hollywood turned up its nose at “Lost Encounters of a Brief Kind” and, instead, happily agreed to “Dumb and Dumber.”

There was no accounting for some people’s tastes, thought the thick thief tranquilly. 

But life was no longer tranquil and the voluminous villain was belatedly realising that the odds of retaining his overseas assets were sinking faster than his associates could mispronounce “Titanic”. The US had brought thirty forfeiture suits against him and, cumulatively, was seeking real estate, investments, art and jewellery valued at US$1.7billion (RM7.14 billion) that Fatty and his accomplices had bought with their ill-gotten gains. 

He could not go to the US to defend those suits because he would be arrested if he did.  But as long as he wasn’t there, he would lose.  

It was ironic, he thought, but it was better than Fearless’ position. 

Crime meant never having to say you were sorry.