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

Crime does not pay as well as politics – Anonymous, but probably Malaysian 

His elders thought he might have a career in politics given his gift of the gab. Only later would the gift of the grab emerge. 

Fast forward 70 years. 

With nothing but time on his hands, former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak thinks he’s hit on a new and wholly original get-out-of-jail card, something that might finally spring him – an apology. 

Make that an “unreserved” apology which is better, but still falls short of “grovelling,” which might have been more appropriate in the circumstances. 

Actually, Jibby’s circumstances are getting better. Originally  sentenced to 12 years for corruption in the multibillion-dollar One Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal, his term was halved by Malaysia’s King in February.

The disgraced former leader is now set to be released on August 23, 2028. Moreover,  the fine imposed on him was reduced to RM50 million from RM210 million.

Even so, Jibby remains on trial in multiple cases related to 1MDB, a state fund he established as prime minister to spur economic development. The total allegedly plundered from 1MDB could top RM50 billion. Najib has only apologised  for the fact that it happened. In addition, the man conceded that yes, the scandal did, indeed, occur during his tenure.

 Why now? 

Well, it revolves around “much reflection” amid his “26 months in jail.” That, for anyone who  missed it, is A Strong Hint that Justice Might Already Have Been Served. 

Anyway, he has had an epiphany of sorts. “It pains me to know the 1MDB debacle happened under my watch.”

I don’t want to put too fine a point on it, but if he just realises that now, he’s seriously a couple of chapattis short of a curry. 

The chapatti-deficient ex-premier expressed his “deep shock” over the extent of the plunder. 

On hindsight, Ah Jib Gor  acknowledged he should have acted differently when suspicions about 1MDB first arose.

You think? 

“I did initiate various investigations but I was inclined to believe the explanations by the board and management.” 

During trial, some members of the board begged to differ. 

At one point, His Jibsworth had over RM2 billion in his personal account. “As hard as it is for some people to fathom, I was advised and honestly believed at the time that the funds I received were political donations from Saudi Arabia.”

It isn’t clear if the Tooth Fairy was involved at this juncture. 

In any case,  the man is “deeply regretful” over the turn of events at 1MDB, and thinks that being legally held accountable for actions he “neither initiated nor knowingly enabled” is “unfair.” 

Meanwhile, Jibbington Esq is still facing four charges of abusing his position to obtain RM2.3bil from 1MDB and an additional 21 money laundering charges involving the same amount.  He will know his fate on October 30.

Mario Puzo, the author of The Godfather could not have had us in mind because the book came out in 1921. But it is curious: “A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a thousand men with guns. “

ENDS

He was so cheap, for example, that when his wife asked for diamonds for her birthday, he brought her two of them – the eight and the Queen. – Comedian George Burns, presumably referring to Warren Buffett.  

A friend of mine sent me an article on Warren Buffett yesterday.

Now there’s a guy buffeted by the slings and arrows of “outrageous fortune”: a pot of gold so monstrous it was estimated, in June, at an  eye-popping US$135 billion. 

Let’s put that in context, with said article in mind. You’re going out for dinner and there’s always someone in the group whose hand immediately goes into his pocket the minute the bill arrives, right? Warren’s that sort of guy, only his hand remains in said pocket until the scores have been settled so to speak. For him, the price of financial liberty was eternal vigilance. 

According to the article, Buffett decides to take his pal Bill Gates for lunch and instead of Spago’s, the big spender chooses McDonald’s instead. When the bill arrives, old BS digs into his pocket and comes up with enough, plus coupons, to make up the difference. 

Consider, also, that this is the world’s tenth richest man buying his pal, the globe’s third richest fellow, a burger. 

What does the guy at the counter do? 

A. He goes  amok, leaping over the counter with his pals, Smith and Wesson?

B. He’s overcome by acute embarrassment and offers to pick up the tab?

C. The Omaha Owl’s legend of penny-pinching parsimony grows to Olympian proportions. 

Actually, old BS had a different plan in mind originally: he thought he’d drive and planned to back into the drive-in so that the cashier would be on Bill‘s side but the idea had been foiled because Bill insisted on walking.

No wonder he was third richest, thought the Omaha Oracle resentfully. He hadn’t seen that coming.

It’s not easy staying rich. You have to plan on all eventualities including lunch: a lightning quick decision between, say, Spago’s or McDonald’s, could translate into immediate savings of over $100.  

The really rich think differently. When asked if he’d ever read the Bible, Jean Paul Getty, a man who made his money from oil, replied he’d heard it said that the meek shall inherit the earth and then added, “but not its mineral rights.” 

Asked about his formula for success, he replied: “Rise early, work hard, strike oil.” 

He was also the fellow who famously said “if you can count” your money, “you’re not rich.” 

The actress and playwright Mae West bridled when someone suggested she was a gold-digger: “No gold digging for me. I’ll take diamonds, thank you.” The writer Jackie Collins was more down to earth: “Money isn’t the most important thing in the world, love is. Fortunately, I love money.”  

I’ve met many very, rich people during my reporting career but I suppose the best answer I ever got was from Lim Goh Tong, the late founder of the Genting gaming conglomerate.

It was early in my career and I’d read that you had to ask entrepreneurs what their philosophy was – Don’t blame me, point your fingers at Fortune!  

So, I popped the question, and he looked nonplussed. His answer, however, was and is a classic and it illustrates why a translation from the original language never quite does it justice. 

After giving the matter some thought, he replied simply: “Gua tengok lubang, gua masuk-lah. 

My translation: “When I see an opportunity, I seize it.” 

Close, I suspect, but no cigar.

ENDS