room .....
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| Room with a view |
........ observing the bulbul and flowerpecker enjoying their breakfast from our senduduk (the wild variety) tree.
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| Senduduk flower and berries - not the garden nursery variety. |
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| Flower of the wild Senduduk - from Pickled Herring aka Lely |
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| Burung Merbah / Bulbul |
But sometimes, AsH indulges herself with happy memories of picnics in the past.
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| Picnic in the Peak District |
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| Picnic just outside the gates of Sandringham. |
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| Picnic (sort of) with Mus and family in the late 1990s, on the road somewhere between Scotland and Leicester! |
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| 2008 picnic along the canal in Saddington, Leicestershire with Lely. |
Read this piece of news yesterday and it set off several buzzers.
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| Is Ng Pei Ven a Chinese National? |
According to a Malaysian blogger :
....... Ng Pei Ven suffers from a learning disability. MENCAP, a UK based charity, describes learning disability as "a reduced intellectual ability and difficulty with everyday activities - for example household tasks, socialising or managing money - which affects someone for their whole life" They also "tend to take longer to learn and may need support to develop new skills, understand complicated information and interact with other people".
In Malaysia, people with such handicaps are classified as OKU (Orang Kurang Upaya) and they are allowed by law to hold a driving licence.
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Read : http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/six-myths-about-learning-disabilities-and-okus
But it takes more than a valid driving licence to enable people to jump on to a motorbike or to get into a car and be let loose on the highways and byways.
Psychologists tend to explain errant teenage drivers as youngsters who are prone to 'risky' behaviour. Not only that, this ego-ridden tendency is the fault of their "low self-esteem(!!) or immature thinking". Their distracted driving can also be "caused by substance abuse". Perhaps, though the 'substance abuse' has become a fad and fashion in the late 20th and 21st century.
However I must add a caveat here. It's not just teenage drivers who take risks with their lives and that of other innocent lives. They cut across the age, gender, socio-economic and racial groups in Malaysia. I've been driving here for the last 10 years and each day on the road you have to grit your teeth as you put your life and limbs in the hands (and brains) of cretins and neanderthals.
Here's one example from our middle-class suburbia.
Very,very frequently drivers would take an immature and illegal shortcut (which runs against oncoming traffic) to get to Jalan Setiawangsa 21 [see box in the map] instead of using the traffic light [see the tip of the arrow in the map].
One day, one fine day a dreadful accident will happen at the red triangle marked in the photo above. More innocents will pay the price for the asinine behaviour of others.
A few days ago it was an OKU wot did it. But the OKA (ORANG KURANG AKAL) in Malaysia have been having a field day on many a time and many a day!
In Malaysia the OKA rules okay.
Hush, this curmudgeon had better stop. Shall return to my retreat and look out for the birds and the tree shrew. Might as well throw in this nostalgic song from the 70s.
Must keep soldiering on - and dream of more picnics.
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