The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once. –  Albert Einstein  

If you think life is inherently fair, that what goes around will, indeed, come around, than this observation by Lucy, of Peanuts’  fame, is right: 

“There must be one day above all others in each life that is the happiest.”

There’s only one problem with that and it’s obvious.

“What if you’ve already had it?”

 Alas, there’s the rub. There always is – in a world bordered by linear time. 

When I was young, time was relative – it moved excruciatingly slowly during the school hours and fairly zipped through the holidays. I was right about it too because all my classmates agreed. 

Then I hit adolescence and couldn’t wait to grow up and meet girls – somehow female classmates weren’t considered in that light.  In my case, it was pretty much a constant preoccupation during my university days: I wasn’t successful at all but that, again, is another non-story. I have even rationalised it away: glory may be fleeting but obscurity is forever. 

Ironically, I consider that time in the 70s to be among the happiest periods of my life. I’m not sure why but it may have to do with making friendships that have lasted decades, meeting the girl who became my wife, and growing up in an environment that asked nothing of you but to pass an annual examination. 

You can have an awful amount of fun in between. There was but one rule: don’t put off till tomorrow what can be enjoyed today. 

OK, it sounds like “the good, old days” syndrome and there are those who would say that the main reason for that tosh is a “bad memory.” But that’s the beauty of nostalgia: it softens the hard edges, the grimmer aspects of those days so no one’s the wiser.   

Things keep moving though. Suddenly, you’re in your thirties and before you can yell Mahathir Mohamad, the years begin flashing past. 

They should have warned us, all those years ago. That sometime in our 30s, the Great Programmer would quietly press fast forward on the cassette deck of the rest of our lives and we’d spend most of that time playing catch up. 

And maybe we are playing catch-up if anyone remembers a 1960s cartoon series called The Jetsons.

It was about George Jetson and his family who lived in a future where space colonisation was a given: where capitalism and competition thrived in a future where man lived in aerial colonies.

Except for its flying cars, everything else on that 60-years-ago-show has come to pass: robot servants, talking video screens, mobile phones.  

Surely flying cars and talking dogs can’t be far behind? 

Nothing should surprise us where time is concerned. “The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.” 

The statement was uttered by Harry Fosdick, an English clergyman ahead of his time.  He predicted it in the 1930s. 

Where we’re concerned, we might as well take a leaf out of English comedian Benny Hill’s book: “Live each day as if it were your last…because one day, you’ll be right.” 

ENDS

I have a friend who generally reacts to a joke he’d heard before by way of a quip. “Same dog, different lamp-post,” he’d say.

No one likes a critic. Indeed, writers generally regard critics with the same enthusiasm lamp-posts  reserve for dogs. It explains Mark Twain’s burst of spite after his newspaper columns were panned: “No one’s ever put up a statue to a critic.”

Twain may have had the last laugh: there are multiple statues of him in the US but none to a critic.

Even so, Western education highly prizes critical thinking. One of the key books for General Paper in our Form 6 examination was John Doraisamy’s Understand and Criticise. It signaled the shift away from rote-learning to a more evaluatory approach to education.   

In any case, criticism’s good for the soul. “I like criticism,” said basketball great Lebron James. “It makes me strong.”

Occasionally, however, book, film or theater reviews can be vastly entertaining. “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly,” said poet Dorothy Parker in a review of a book sent to her for that purpose. “It should be thrown with great force.”

Or take this laconic review of the film Ben-Hur. “Loved Ben, hated Hur. (The name of the unfortunate actress who played the female lead in the movie escapes me).

The Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini was said to be temperamental. Once, after a recital, he turned on his hapless orchestra: “Assassins!”

Comedienne Joan Rivers can be acerbic but this put-down of actress Katie Holmes borders on the cruel. Holmes played the wife of John F Kennedy in a role that Rivers described as “so bad that he shot himself in the film.”

The music critic Bennet Cerf gave a thumbs-down to a performance he attended. “The Detroit String Quartet played Brahms last night….Brahms lost.”

Listen to Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle’s defense of Donald Trump. “Trump’s nothing like Hitler…there’s no way he can write a book.”

Could there be anything more scathing than Roger Eben’s review of Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles: “I’ve seen audits that were more thrilling.”

When pressed for advice, actress Tallulah Bankhead had this to say to a young actress; “If you really want to help the American theatre darling, be an audience.” 

When you live in glass houses…. This is what critic Alexander Woollcott said about Bankhead’s performance as Cleopatra on Broadway: “Tallulah Bankhead barged down the Nile last night….and sank.” 

Only Mark Twain would be egocentric enough to put Henry James down: “Once you’ve put one of his books down, you simply can’t pick it up again.”

This is guaranteed to lightly turn the minds of a young writer to thoughts of suicide. “He is a writer for the ages…..for the ages of four to eight,” grumbled Dorothy Parker, that eternal malcontent.

But one doubts if Jeffery Archer would be fazed by this comment: he used to be a politician anyway.

“The last time I was in Spain, I got through six Jeffrey Archer novels: I must remember to take enough toilet paper next time,” groused English entertainer Bob Monkhouse.

We’ll leave the final word to the incomparable Groucho Marx: “From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter: someday I intend reading it.” 

ENDS

It’s amazing how fast later comes when you buy now! –Comedian Milton Berle 

We went to church on Christmas morn punctually, 30 minutes before Mass. But the cars parked there already signaled a massive  turnout.

Sure enough, we couldn’t find a seat inside but had to settle for three seats deep in the madding crowd. All the three halls upstairs – which were live- streaming the service – were packed. And there were many who stood throughout. 

The excess was due to  people like us, who hadn’t been to church after Covid made on-line Masses respectable; those who went to church twice a year; and those who felt compelled to go because the year was ending. The excess was  the majority. 

The end of a year always has an effect on people because an end, any kind, signifies new beginnings, a fresh start,  and such things generally go better – to the prudent at least – with divine help ergo Church on Christmas morn: six days before the New Year. 

Time just zips by doesn’t it? Example: Do you know it was a year ago today? 

Its rapidity, the eternal change, can give you hope. “History is the sum total of things that could have been avoided,”  was how former German Chancellor and eternal optimist Konrad Adenauer saw it. 

Or it can be understood as useless and hypocritical. “What is history but a pack of lies agreed upon,”  snorted the great, if cynical, Napoleon Bonaparte. The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy was equally disbelieving: “History would be an excellent thing if only it were true.”  

Everything’s relative. When I had my first job and living away from home for the first time, there was this recurring thought:  why is there so much month left at the end of the money?  There’s also the question of whether a minute is sufficient. Answer: it depends on which side of the bathroom door you’re on.

Then there is the opposite sensation, the feeling of sudden clarity, the lucidity of powerlessness.

I was looking around at the people in the house during Christmas Eve and realising that these were people I’d known for years, and accepting that time does, indeed, go on and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. 

It may be a great healer, but time’s a lousy beautician. It marches on, and as singer Dolly Parton complained, “sooner or later you realise it’s marching across our faces.” 

2024 taught us that Abraham Lincoln wasn’t quite correct. You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time. And that,  Donald Trump knew, was sufficient. 

So let’s brace for the future and cheer the present. Let’s welcome the New Year with pomp and circumstance, and begin  making resolutions for a Better You that you have  5 days to formulate. If time is any teacher, you will promptly start paving the road to hell with those intentions in the very first week of 2025 but don’t worry your pretty little head about it.

You can always start again next year. 

ENDS 

“Life is like an onion: you peel off one layer at a time and sometimes you weep.” – Writer Carl Sandburg

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

For one thing, my wife’s finally back from Singapore, and my daughter’s home for the holidays. 

Then my brother’s family is down from the US. So are various cousins and their offspring. They will be at our place for Christmas Eve as I am the only Catholic in my family: the rest are either nominal Hindus, serious ones – those who actually understand the philosophy – and those who’ve read too much Richard Dawkins for anyone’s good. 

But Christmas isn’t just a day, it’s a frame of mind. Which most people  instinctively grasp: my family is no exception.

They like and appreciate the scene: the tree, the carols, the pineapple tarts, the wine, dinner, the atmosphere. And don’t forget the beer: that’s why there are carols like It’s a Wonderful Time For A Beer.

As for us, we’re doubly secure  because we’ve assuaged our consciences by going to church first thing in the morning. 

But the ones who most love the season are the children. Raisa bought presents for all 4 of them and they will believe that it’s from a bearded, jolly, fat man with a limited dress sense living somewhere in the South Pole. 

Raisa had no trouble believing the same thing until she was almost seven. Then an embittered cousin whose belief had been shattered by a Grinch-like priest decided to spread his disillusion and Raisa suddenly found out that Santa was, actually, Daddy. 

I was furious with said relative: he was clearly a Rebel without a Claus.

On an ecclesiastical note, Satan can metaphorically be described as the “scarecrow in the religious cornfield”. Pity the dyslexic devil worshipper then: he could end up worshipping Santa.

The season makes you reflective. I look around and I realise I’m a lucky fellow, to have family and  friends in a reasonably happy and secure environment during a period of intense upheaval and suffering in other parts of the world.

So I think, OK, maybe I don’t deserve any of this. Then I think, I have food allergies that I don’t deserve either so maybe, what the hell, that’s just how the cookie crumbles. 

That’s just life. As the Jewish author and humorist Sholom Aleichem wryly observed: “No matter how bad things get, you’ve got  to go on living, even if it kills you.” 

Or as Dr Mahathir Mohamad night have noted: “It’s good to be here…but at 99, it’s good to be anywhere.” 

But I digress, and to get back on point, it‘s good to be here during the Christmas season. My daughter said she began perspiring the minute she stepped out of the airport’s air-conditioned chill into the humidity of Sepang. It had been 7 degrees in Amsterdam when she left.

I’ll take the equatorial  swelter any time. The rains ensure December’s the coolest month in the year, which helps. 

Not quite a White Christmas but a Right One will do nicely, thank you.

At the end of the day, perhaps we should just count our blessings, touch wood, and cross our fingers. Because it could be far worse. 

As  comedienne and actress Lily Tomlin predicted: “Things are going to get far worse before they get worse.”

Merry Christmas everyone. 

ENDS

Man is the only animal that blushes – or needs to. – Writer Mark Twain 

You learn all sorts of things from other people. 

One of the jobs magistrates do is to witness hangings, at least in those days when they were still administered. This was what R told me about the first hanging he witnessed as a magistrate in the 1980s.

He had to be at Pudu Prison early because the deed was always done at sunrise. 

But what really struck him was what the hangman did after the fact: he stooped and washed his hands in the early-morning dew on the grass. 

Of course, R asked. The man, a devout Muslim, replied he’d just “washed the (sin of the) hanging off” his conscience. 

So, the ever-careful R did the same. You never can tell! 

Early in my career, I had occasion to meet Mokhzani Mahathir, then an up-and-coming businessman. His first question was curious: what sort of Indian was I?

I normally try and dodge such questions because I find most non-Indians are puzzled by the distinctions. But he persisted, saying he knew of the differences.  So, I replied I was Malayalee, and my parents were from Kerala. 

He shook my hands, grinning.  “Countryman,” was all he said. He clearly didn’t have any hang-ups about his ancestry. 

In the early-1990s, tycoon Vincent Tan began buying shares in MUI, a public-listed conglomerate that, among other things, owned a bank. The tycoon kept buying the stock until he was on the verge of a hostile takeover. 

It was either that, and a relatively cheap way to get a bank, or greenmail: a tactic where an investor buys enough shares to threaten a hostile takeover, only to force the company to buy back the shares at a premium.

The markets were agog and the business press were in a frenzy. I asked to meet Tan and, to my surprise, he invited me to lunch. 

 Would he sell? 

“You’ve to understand something about me,” answered the magnate. “Except for the family, everything’s for sale.”

(For the record, Tan sold off his MUI block for a handsome profit.)

I’d asked Ananda Krishnan for a meet but didn’t get a reply. Then out of the blue, he called and asked me to come to his office at 3pm the next day. 

His office took up an entire floor in the Maxis Tower. It was lushly carpeted and full of artwork, so much so there were paintings stacked on the floors. Masses would be an understatement. (“I love art and buy too much. Someday, I’ll create an art museum.”)

AK said he hadn’t eaten the whole day and tea was served. A cake was rolled in and he cut slices while saying it had no butter or fat and was, therefore, healthy.

It tasted like it too, but he ate with every appearance of relish. I’d heard he was a health buff: he swam 50 laps a day without fail. 

It was a pleasant enough interview and when I stood to leave, he said he had a present.  

It was another cake. 

In the car, I asked Hassan, my driver, if he liked cake. He said yes. Enthusiastically too. So, I gave him a present. 

I’d forgotten about it until Hassan rounded on me the next day. He didn’t believe my story that it had been from a billionaire.  

It was terrible, he said, and so he’d fed it to his chickens. 

They sneered at it too. 

ENDS

Wrinkled Was Not One of the Things I Wanted To Be When I Grew Up. – Bumper sticker 

There is a gymnasium in the apartment block where we live so I suppose I belong there.

Let me rephrase that: I don’t belong there at all but I go there. 

I guess the Bible’s right, everything is Vanity. You don’t get my sort of body just like that. It takes years of neglect. 

I admit it: I have finally reached that stage in life which Bob Hope described as “the time when even your birthday suit needs pressing.” 

So my wife decided to get me a physical trainer, to beat me into shape so to speak. I feared the worst the minute I saw him: he looked like Sherman.

The tank I mean, not the cartoon character.   

Worse still, were the  people patronising the place. They were, to a man, trim, fit and athletic-looking. I use the word “man” here loosely, of course. There is, for example, one woman who didn’t need to lift weights at all: she did that every time she stood up. 

The muscly Rahul – that was the trainer’s name – even had his ears ridged in abs and getting into shape was clearly a Holy Grail to him. The man simply didn’t seem to care, or realise, I was pushing 70. 

For the hour he was hired, he kept me on a relentless, non-stop pattern of exercises that, at its end, left me exhausted, panting and, despite the air-conditioned chill of the gym, soaked in sweat. 

If you think about it, we are always being judged on how we look or comport ourselves. First impressions matter. 

I remember the first time I met Rebecca’s father. I was playing a cricket game for the university when it broke for lunch. 

Becky had invited me over for lunch and so I just jogged over as her place wasn’t that far. 

But it still was some distance away. I had long hair to boot so you might reasonably conclude I wasn’t looking my finest when I reached said destination. 

Her father opened the door thinking I was the pizza boy. When I informed him of my bona-fides, maybe I should have expected the reeling away in shock, and the stricken look.

In real life, he was a policeman and a no-nonsense one at that. 

Looking back,  not my  classiest entrance perhaps. Alas and all that, but these things happen. 

It could be worse. Some people actually comment on appearances for a living. And it can be withering. 

Take fashion critic Richard Blackwell’s description of Camilla Parker Bowles back in 2000. Camilla is now the Queen Consort of England. 

“In feathered hats that were once the rage, she resembles a petrified parakeet form the Jurassic age: a royal wreck.” 

Fortunately for Mr Blackwell, he died well before she became Queen. 

Mark Twain was more acidic than Blackwell: “Last week I stated that this woman was the ugliest woman I’d ever seen…I have since been visited by her sister and now wish to withdraw that statement.”

You probably want to know how my exercise regimen is working out. All I know is that I now have aching parts in places I didn’t know I had muscles. 

ENDS

Education is what you have left over when you subtract what you’ve forgotten from what you learned. 

A long time ago, my father woke me up early because, as he explained, I had to “go to school”.

But he’d not prepared me sufficiently because when he woke me up the next day, I was incensed: “What, again?” 

Schooling takes time, doesn’t it? There’s the thirteen years in primary and secondary school. There’s four years of university and ten years later, a post-graduate stint in the US. 

What remains after all that is what pedagogists call “an education.” In my case, it’s lots of information about inconsequential things: not very useful stuff. In my wife’s succinct precis, I am “a sewer of useless information”.

Don’t get me wrong: it has its moments. Jeopardy and word games spring to mind. I’m also a dab hand at Trivial Pursuit.

On hindsight my degree – biochemistry – was a mistake. It steered me towards a job in healthcare. When it comes to a hospital laboratory, that can be seriously debilitating. 

Running a laboratory in a hospital is, literally, a bloody job. And four years of it can drive you to think: either Urine or you’re out!

Journalism was a relief.  It was when, like Mark Twain, I never let “my schooling interfere with my education.” It was when I finally moved from cocksure ignorance to thoughtful uncertainty. 

I’ve learnt a few things. Your vocation isn’t a matter of degree because life itself is the teacher. Experiential living may be all anyone needs. 

Journalism saved me because all the lessons might have turned me into a learned idiot. According to Ben Franklin, that’s grim: “A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.” 

On an unrelated note, Ye Olde English isn’t half-bad, no? Blockhead is nicer, and more humorous, than idiot. 

I forgot to mention that enroute to Ipoh Hospital and journalism, I spent a year teaching high school chemistry, math and general science. 

Sexism, again, reared its ugly head and being male, I was assigned the “problem” classes, the ones where the Neanderthals outnumbered homo sapiens.  

You should never allow the type into any laboratory. One day, I was teaching a Chemistry class a procedure that involved Bunsen Burners.  

These were the portable types that were attached to its gas source by fasteners that looked secure enough. 

Not to the Neandertal, they’re not. One rocket scientist sitting in the back had the patience of Job and used three spatulas to prove that no fastener was secure when confronted by the Curious Cro-Magnon. 

And, yes Houston, there was Lift-off – ten minutes before the bell rang. 

Luckily his burner wasn’t lit but it missed fracturing said Cro-Magnon’s jaw by a few centimeters. The sound of its takeoff was frightening enough but the smell of gas was enough to cause cardiac arrest: there were naked flames around! 

I yelled for everyone to get out and, together with the lab assistant, shut off the burners without incident. 

Half the school was outside the lab by the time we emerged, sweating.  

Admittedly, not my finest moment. Not by a long shot. 

It could have been worse, but the headmaster didn’t seem grateful. No, icy would be the word. He wanted to know if I planned on a career in teaching. 

Bad form. Very. 

Meanwhile, Cro-Magnon Man was suspended: he was delighted, which seemed to miss the point altogether.  

Woody Allen probably had him in mind when he quipped: “Some drink deeply from the river of knowledge; others merely gargle.” 

This happened over 40 years ago, and I don’t know what happened to the Inquiring Gargler. 

But I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s a Member of Parliament. 

ENDS

Vladimir Putin must be worried. 

When the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ – a blast from the past, the USSR – invaded Afghanistan in1979, it cost the Union perhaps 15,000 lives, 9 years and an Empire. 

The war’s cost, its pressures, brought about the disintegration of the union: it broke up in 1991. 

When Putin invaded Ukraine in early 2022, he thought it would be a cakewalk, a couple of weeks at best. It’s going to be three years next February and Russia, according to Western intelligence, may have lost as many as  200,000 men. 

All in all, the Wall Street Journal estimates at least a million people have been killed or injured on both sides. 

Military analysts estimate it costs Russia US$500 million a day or more to keep its war machine going. 

That’s a lot of terrifying and needless waste. Putin might be well advised to claim victory and retreat. 

That’s not happening either. Instead, the war seems to be ramping up and Putin is getting himself some new allies notably his new bestie, North Korea’s tubby tyrant Kim Jong-Un.

The multi-chinned Kim  was so grateful that he’d found a new friend that he  thought it perfectly reasonable to offer 10,000 able-bodied North Korean troops to Vlad’s meat grinder, to fight a war they’d no business doing.  

Even so, the dumpy despot thought it best to offer his departing troops these words of advice: “Do not  needlessly endanger yourselves until I say so.” 

It was no wonder he was hailed publicly as Glorious Leader. Privately, however, he was called Shithead. 

There was no disPutin the Russian leader knew how to push Kim’s buttons. Earlier this year, he presented the ample autocrat with 24 pure-bred horses, reportedly as thanks for artillery shells provided by North Korea.

To underline Russia’s gratitude for the North Korean troops, Moscow recently gifted  Pyongyang’s Zoo with 70 animals including a lion, a couple of brown bears, two yaks, five cockatoos and dozens of pheasants of different species.

The menagerie also included a couple of antelopes, the oldest of which was immediately dubbed Vlad the Impala.

That he would consider trading people for animals only served to underscore Kim’s love for endangered fauna and highlighted why his countrymen think he’s The  Wrong ‘Un.  

Meanwhile, an unperturbed Glorious Leader was kept busy with work, usually reported as Very Important Duties: if he wasn’t threatening South Korea, the US or Japan with nuclear annihilation every four days, he was exhorting the faithful to float balloons filled with garbage over to Seoul. 

He was the quintessential big-picture leader, never sweating the small stuff like the occasional famine or sky-high food prices. 

Instead, he concentrated on the really important stuff like his nuclear arsenal or sending assassination squads to Kuala Lumpur to eliminate potential enemies. 

Here was certitude for you: Vladimir Putin knew he had to win. Only the victors decide who the war criminals will be. 

In the end, God supports the bigger army, the larger country. That is why the big loser in the conflict’s epilogue will be Ukraine, dismembered and in dire need of economic aid.  

It would have a memory too, an anthem both haunting and desolate.

Crimea River always sounds that way. 

END

The Driver Involved in This Incident Asked That Her Gender Not Be Revealed – Careless headline 

In the newspaper business, sub-editors rank right up there: they clean the writer’s copy – correct the typos, the grammatical howlers, etc. – and assign titles, headlines if you like, to the story. 

It is at this stage when the gifted sub comes into his/her own. It might be a mundane story, but a clever or witty heading almost always lifts the page and gets attention. 

That’s the newspaper’s business: the ads are attracted by a paper’s readers, the number of “eyeballs” it attracts. 

The eyes, as they say, always have it. 

So when Sara Marie Frankenstein, a desirable damsel from the Dakotas, took part in a beauty contest, she, inevitably, won and the newspapers the next day carried pretty much the same headline.

“Frankenstein Crowned Miss South Dakota.” (People always forget that Frankenstein wasn’t the creature – he was its creator)

On another note, the generally staid Wall Street Journal isn’t renowned for side-splitting headings, but its subs are no slouches. I once remember reading a story about the American postal service because I admired its headline: “U.S. Post Licks Stamp Problem.”

After Chinese statesman and diplomat Chou En-Lai passed away in 1976, the Communist Party decided the nuts and bolts of his funeral. One Japanese paper ran this headline the next day: “Chou Remains Cremated”. 

It isn’t clear if the sub in charge had his tongue firmly in cheek or he wasn’t aware of the double entendre or if it was a simple case of being lost in translation. 

Even so, one suspects that Chou, reputed for his sense of humour, would have enjoyed the joke. 

This headline is witty – “Midget Sues Grocer, Cites Belittling Remarks.” 

The following one is equally pointed but it does not bear explaining; “Shanghai Adult Toy Fair Hits The Spot.” 

Occasionally, however, a sub slips up and miracles are revealed. Surely this was one – “Priest In Fatal Crash Improves.” Or they come up with non-sequiturs – “Homicide Victims Rarely Talk To Police.” 

You think? 

One suspects that the sub who drafted the next heading wasn’t all there. Either that or his spelling’s terrible. 

“Situations Vacant: Cleaner Required, Must Be Contentious.” 

In Malaysia, we’d say the sub’s ‘England not so good’ – he probably meant conscientious.

Sometimes, you have to just know. Now “Elf To Sell Major North Sea Assets” sounds like something out of Harry Potter but Elf-Aquitaine is a French oil company. 

Similarly, “Lazy, Fat Dragons Forced To Diet At NY Zoo” is missing the word Komodo but the sub got our attention. 

Then there are the “yeah, right” headlines. Like “The Sun Is Leading Cause of Sunburns” or “Bugs Flying Around With Wings Are Flying Bugs.” 

Some are simply stupid. It’s either that or the sub wanted to demonstrate that said legislator in question was palpably stupid: “Legislator Wants Tougher Death Penalty.”

Now here’s an outraged headline that tells the whole story. “Risqué Business:  Misguided Skating Officials are Cracking Down on Pelvis Pumping and Lap Dancing – As Though People Actually Want To Watch Olympians Skate.”  

And, finally, the hands-down winner for double talk and the splitting of hairs: “MSI Owner Denies Lying, Admits Not Telling Truth.” 

ENDS 

Everyone knows that Shih Huang Ti  was the great Emperor who first unified China.

By all accounts, he was a busy fellow. If he wasn’t involved in standardising the country’s system of weights and measures, he was busy exhorting his countrymen to build a Great Wall to keep China’s  borders safe. 

Donald Trump wants to do the same with his Mexican border: going forward, it could make him renowned as America’s Shih. 

The mighty Emperor was also obsessed with immortality which might help explain the 8,000 odd collection of life sized terra cotta soldiers that present day tourists to China come to gawk at. 

In his relentless pursuit of immortality, the busy wall-builder was often prone to travelling across his vast empire often seeking new spices, herbs, poultices, foods, anything that might prolong life. 

It was a chilly fall evening when the empire builder stumbled into a seaside village in the east-central region of the country. The terra-cotta admirer was hungry, thirsty and disgruntled: so far his pursuit of immortality had been fruitless. 

As he was the Biggest Boss  of the Land, he was quickly directed to the home of the hamlet’s best cook, Lee Shang Hai.

As luck would have it, Master Lee was in the throes of making a new soup.

Master Lee was also a regular Da Vinci as he’d recently invented something that he called tofu. He was now working with it to ward off the cold and he thought he’d finally succeeded.  

“Eureka,” he yelled in triumphant Mandarin. The Emperor heard the exultant shout at the same time he smelt the soup. It made him vault the low wall that surrounded Master Lee’s house. 

A veritable ambrosia was simmering on Lee’s stove. There was ginger,  mushrooms, fungi coupled with beef strips and his remarkable tofu, all simmering in beef stock. As the Emperor burst in, the culinary craftsman slowly added eggs and, in an ingenious twist, threw in a generous amount of white pepper dissolved in vinegar. 

Unable to contain himself, the creator of one of the World’s Wonders – the Wall not the Soup – helped himself.  

Technically speaking, the dish should have been named  Emperor Jumped Over the Wall because that was what actually happened and that would have certainly elevated Master Lee’s status. But it was called Hot and Sour Soup for a reason that’s since been lost in the mists of antiquity. 

Even so, a grateful Shih lavished much honour on Master Lee, even naming the  humble village after the artist. Now you know why the city’s called Shanghai.

The Emperor also insisted that Master Lee become his personal chef and follow him back to Beijing.

Even so, the story didn’t end well. Convinced that Lee’s soup was the elixir of life, the Emperor consumed it so often and so frequently, that he developed gastric ulcers. He was also taking mercury on the side which Anthony Fauci will tell you is never a good idea. It was a short reign as reigns go and as reigns go, he went. 

Bereft of his patron, the great cook took to alcohol. From then on, he only cooked with wine and sometimes he added wine to his cooking. 

ENDS