Far Away and Long Ago

We're moving into our second week of Ramadan.  It's a time for pondering about long-lost days, about how and whether I have put to good use my time on this earth.  Despite the advancing years I stll feel there's a lot more to be done and to be shared.

When the day gets hot and fasting becomes more and more challenging, I escape into my treasure room of books.  The act of opening a book and touching and turning the pages bring much more joy than clicking a keyboard.  You can flick back and forth through the pages while you're horizontal  or vertical. There's no need to plug it into a socket or fear the battery packing up.

I have this set of Malay story books, done in a very handy size of  5 inches x 6 inches.

Call me old-fashioned, brand me as a remnant from the dinosaur period!  I still prefer the old spelling with the e tanda and I detest bahasa baku.

I love the simple artwork in these books just as I remember with much affection the colour and art of my English textbooks from the 1950s.

Here are a couple of pages from Tiga Orang Sahabat.

The three good friends found themselves embroiled in helping a mother hen to save her chick from the wolf.
And it all ended happily with the help of the pelanduk, arnab and kura2.

And so, all's well that ends well.  Perhaps there's a lesson to be learned from this simple story.  Malaysians have to beware of the wolf and/or the wolf in sheep's clothing.   It would be wonderful too if as in this story there are warm and kind friends like the pelanduk, arnab and kura2 - all  amiable and peaceable creatures with no hidden agenda.

I guess in this holy month of Ramadan. one is allowed to dream - to wish for the good of all.

Selamat Berpuasa.




This is a truly groovy, jazzy version - full of vitality and warmth  ...... shooby, dooby dah!

Here's another version, the original one I grew up with  - from 50 years ago.  It turns on the tears when it's sung this way, just like 50 years ago.

The original lyrics before the creation of 'Malaysia' were -
Sungguh gemilang negri ku
Yang ku cinta oh Tanah Melayu
Di merata dunia harum semerbak nama mu oh Malaya.

Songs  like these fired the spirit and fervour of "Merdeka" before and after 1957.
For someone of that generation I do feel short changed  - that the name Malaya for the Peninsula (Tanah Melayu) had to be expunged,  when Sarawak and Sabah (British North Borneo) could maintain theirs.






                                                                 

 A rose by any other name smells just as sweet!


                                                T  A  M  A  T

MALAYSIA BOLEH tak bertimbang rasa?

What is the link between ikan bakar .......

....... the Euro 2012 mascots, Slavek and Slavko ..........

  and our venerable  Berita Harian ......

 More to the point - how does this affect peace and tranquility  for the benighted dwellers of Setiawangsa?   For three nights, in the early mornings of 28 June, 29 June and 2 July, from  0130 hours to almost 0400 hours they were assaulted  by the raucous screechings of the presenters .....

followed by the direct transmissions of the two semi-finals and Final of Euro 2012.        The noise would have reached many hundreds of homes in this residential area.

I'm no party pooper,  I support healthy sports and sporting activities, but this cacophony - emanating from an open 'hall'  ....

..... (which also served as a Wedding Hall for rent) -  ....

.... is beyond the pale and an affront to human decency.

Our neighbour was so frustrated,  and all he could do  was to yell pitiably at 2 am from his window against the infernal  noise - but who wanted to hear him?

Call the Police?  Ho hum!   How did they get the permit to conduct this racket in a residential area?  More hums and hahs!

While the cash tills at Ikan Bakar Sekinchan and Berita Harian keep on ringing, we small fish kena bakar, we were grilled to the bones.

The next time such culinary and national newspaper corporations  dream of opportunities to enhance the profit for themselves and their shareholders,  please conduct it around the plush residential  homes of the Senior Executives or in the padi fields of Sekinchan.

Baby, It's a Jungle Out There

Tourism  has become, for most countries without resources, a most profitable industry.  This year the Olympics will bring to Britain, hopefully, a great deal of prestige and earnings.  But this 'sceptred isle' has no problem in touting her history and culture as a selling point to tourists from all over the world.

-

I saved that cutting from a long time ago - to remind me why London has more tourists than natives, why you must avoid the Lake District in summer because it is Beatrix Potter country and Stratford-upon-Avon is a must for many Americans.
 
Sometime in May this year I saw this product for sale at our local Evington Road Co-Op, Leicester.  More than the product itself, it was the advertisement that caught my attention.

Buy Capri-Sun and you have the chance to win an all-expenses paid wildlife adventure.  This adventure promises :

Watching elephants batheing? breakfast with orang utans? fraternising with deers and lions and tigers??
Is this jungle deep in the Amazon forest, the jungles of Borneo or the Congo Equatorial Forest?

No, it's in a country that's just 682 sq. km in area but which has 3,000 km of roads.  It's the largest exporter of ornamental fish ( 25% of the world's market).  The highest man-made waterfall is located here and at 30 metres high it's about one-sixth of the country's highest natural point.  It boasts of having the largest fountain in the world.  All these in the second most densely populated country in the world  (after Monaco) and where 90% of the population live in high rise flats. 

It once described itself simply as an island, but now that teeny-weeny pockets of land and sand and reefs can be 'stitched' up to the mother island  (like the Southern Islands in the south-west) to create an extension - the existence of 63 other tiny islands have been included in the CV.

Well. this is the location of the Grand Prize.

Perhaps the most enticing part is the Night Safari, which has been well publicised in the brochures.

 

NB : Bukit Timah at 164 metres is the highest point, the waterfall is at Jurong Bird Park,  the fountain is at Suntec City,  SE Asia's largest gambling joint and the Night Safari is the pride of the Zoo, the first night zoo in the whole world!

The people who made all these wonders possible live here.



Thank you Lely for this photograph

I wish all the winners a great time prowling in this promised  jungle theme park.  I wonder if George in Leicester got the prize.   Perhaps I should have made an effort too!

"The barbarians are copulating at the gates"

     Shocked?    Well, Tim Black from "Spiked" wrote the above when he reviewed Eric Kaufmann's  "Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?" in July 2010.  He summarised Kaufmann's well-regarded treatise as  " A new book (that)  hysterically imagines that the crisis of Western liberalism is being brought about by fecund foreign fundamentalists."

     Kaufmann is but one of many fearing the rise and rise of the poor, the coloured and non-western inhabitants of the world  - especially the Muslims. 

     These doom-mongers range from academics to environmentalists, to religious fundamentalists and even bankers from the Bundesbank.

1. Two highly regarded environmentalist-neoMalthusians, Paul and Anne Ehrlich, gave an urgency to the campaign of saving the planet from people in their 1968 best seller "The Population Bomb".  In their 1990  "The Population Explosion"  they claimed -  there are differences  "......... but the low status of women in Islamic societies caused high birth rates and infant mortality rates."  Although they conceded that it's "not Islam itself that causes high growth rates but poverty and inferior status of women."

2.  Of course, there are plenty of secular-liberal and Christian extremists hammering at the fecundity of Muslims.  But this one comes from the Anglican Establishment itself - from the Primate of Nigeria.  (A Primate, not primate, is the most important priest in a country especially in the Church of England)




Archbishop Nicholas Okoh - Primate of Nigeria

     In 2011, during a sermon in Kent, he voiced the threat of Muslims mass-producing children to take over Africa.  "If you have 4 wives four children, sixteen children, very soon you will be a village."  Indeed,
this would be a dire scenario for Christians in Africa.

    Although liberals (both secular and Christian) are embarrassed by such statements they are quick to point out that this concern has been swept under the carpet for too long and the taboo needed to be broken.  But like the old fear of the "Yellow Peril"  (the Chinese)  this is no taboo.   The fear of Islam is inherent in Judaeo-Christian culture - and today, that includes not just the whites but also the non-whites who are non-Muslims.



NY Times August 14, 1910. Copyright The New York Times.
(From  http://blogs.aljazeera.net.blog/   Imran Garda)

3. In January 2010 Miloslav Vlk, a Vatican Cardinal  (previously Archbishop of Prague from 1991) expressed a worry that Christians are allowing Europe to be Islamised - that immigration and the Muslims' high birth rates will take over  "the vacant space created as Europeans empty the Christian content of their lives".

     And this bogey of multiplying Muslim rabbits has also been analysed by rational, intelligent academics from pukka Western universities.

4. Eric Kaufmann (mentioned above) a Canadian reader in politics at Birkbeck College, London  noted "...the fecundity of fundamentalists from the Amish, Israel's ultra-Orthodox and the Mormons."  So far, so good.  But the most potent ingredient in his crucible of fecundity were the Muslims - a fecundity aggravated by their increased migration to the West.  He estimated that "Switzerland could be 25% Muslim by 2100 - Austria 36%."  These are alarmist figures - boosting the ridiculous belief of a "Eurabia" -  AND breeding more Breviks in Europe!

Although his thesis also took into account the rising birth rate of the non-Muslims,  and the fact that the increasing number of immigrants in Europe also includes Christians (60% of London's churchgoers, for example, are non-whites) - Kaufmann falls short of his liberal credentials as he believes that " in the future the rift will be between increasing numbers of Muslims and the rest of everybody else."

5.  American academic Jack Goldstone, in his "The New Population Bomb" (2010), puts a different slant on this population 'bomb'.  More crucial than the number of inhabitants in the world are the composition and distribution of this bomb and the movement of people across the globe.  He reckons this movement or 'forces of supply and demand' of labour  " will act strongly on the Muslim world where many economically weak countries will continue to experience dramatic population growth.  ....... By 2009,  (Bangla Desh, Egypt, Indonesia, Nigeria ) ... the most populous Muslim-majority countries  .... have a combined population of 886 million ........ expected to increase by 475 million between now and 2050 ... during which time the six  most populous developed (meaning white mainly) countries are projected to gain only 44 million.  Of the 48 fastest growing countries today - those with annual population growth of two percent or more - 28 are majority Muslim or have Muslim minorities of 33 percent or more."

In this conception of the West having an ageing population and a low reproductive rate and the Muslim world enjoying the opposite the threatening scenario will be no different from the one which the Archbishop, or Kaufman, or a dozen other doom-mongers are promoting.

6.   In August 2010, Thilo Sarrazin, a prominent board member of Germany's Bundesbank, published "Germany is Digging its Own Grave" where he expressed his fear that the immigrants are not integrating into German society, especially the Muslims.  They are blamed for 'dumbing down' society and he especially points out that at the rate Muslim women are reproducing, Germans may become 'strangers in their own country.'

There are however three facts that all these theorists have decided to play down :


Firstly, Muslim birthrates are falling worldwide.  According to the UN"s World Population Prospects, only two Arab countries, Yemen and the Palestinian territories, have high fertility rates.  In Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait and Lebanon, fertility rates have fallen to near-European levels, less than 2.2.  When the Shah of Iran was driven out in 1979,  the rate of reproduction was 6.5.  By 2000 it dropped to 2.2 and today it's 1.7.

The UN estimated that for the years 2010-2015, the fertility rate of Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim
 state will fall to 2.02, Bangla Desh to 2.2 and Pakistan will just reach replacement level at 2.1.
For more details read : http://www.worldcrunch.com/myth-soaring-muslim-fertility-rates/4990

Secondly, Christianity is still the world's largest religion with one third stating Christianity as their religion.   The only change is that while the majority of Christians are still found in Europe and the Americas, their share has fallen from 93% in 1910 to 63% today.  Sub-Saharan Africa ( where Archbishop Nicholas Okoh is situated), which holds one quarter of the world's Christians, has seen the largest increase. In the Asia-Pacific region there were 17 million Christians in 1910; in 2010 that number grew to 285 million.  More astounding, Indonesia accounts for more Christians than all 20 countries in the Middle east and North Africa combined.  These shifts in the global Christian population have been the result of  zealous and successful  missionary work as well as the high birth rate of the local Christian communities.

So who's the Bogey?

Thirdly, while Muslims are accused of migrating in droves to populate the West,  the overwhelming proportion of  international migrants  are Christians.

SAY  NO  MORE.

Breeding Like Rabbits

In 1798, the priest and economist Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) concluded from a study of plants and animals that man's excessive rate of reproduction would lead to overpopulation and eventually cause a shortage of food supply resulting in famine and poverty.

He suggested a reduction in family size, especially for the poorer class.  ( Does this remind you of Singapore's worry in the 1970s and 1980s onwards over the poor fecundity of the Republic's graduates?)

The study of overpopulation has resulted in copious and diverse academic research.  The subject has also been taken up by environmentalists and racist/religious fanatics to warn the world about the bogey of a rising birth rate and overpopulation in the Third World -  amongst the poorest classes of the globe.

There's a growing concern in the West about its low reproductive rate and its increasing elderly population.  It has been predicted that by 2050, 40% of Europeans will be over 60.  The typical population pyramid where the young form a large base and the elderly make up the the tiny peak will be turned on its head! 

More worrying is the idea that all forms of social problems can be solved by cutting population growth.  Even more disturbing is the belief of celebrities like David Attenborough, and environmentalists like Jonathan Porrit, that population growth has to be curbed  to preserve the ecological balance of the globe.  In 2009 the UK based Sustainable Development Commission regarded that human reproduction contributed to global warming.  The Optimum Population Trust ( a Malthusian Population Campaign  Group) calculated that each baby born in Britain will cost 2 acres of woodland in terms of the CO2 they will burn!!  And Malthus only had to worry about food supply!

Let's look at one real reason for the fear of these western pundits.   In 1900 the West ( including Russia and Eastern Europe) made up 35% of the world's population.  By 2012 this had dropped to 17%, and by 2050 it is expected to be 10%.  On the other hand, by 2050, Africa's population will be more than four times Europe's population.   How terrible!   Imagine the economic and ecological strain on the planet.  Think of the 'carbon footprint' stamped on the planet by these rising millions of Africans!

But, there is another issue - more important than overpopulation - that the developed countries are not willing to own up to because this places the responsibility for global warming at their doorstep.  It is the unsustainable consumption of the world's resources by the wealthy West and other non-Western countries like Japan

1. Out of 6.5 billion people in the world today, the 1 billion  in the developed countries  (North America, Western Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand) have a relative per capita consumption of 32.  This means that 'the average rate at which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like plastics and greenhouse gases" is 32 times higher than  the developing world.   Numbers in the Third World may be increasing at a higher rate, but it must be remembered that the average American/Briton consumes as much as say, 32 Kenyans.  (From Jared Diamond, Professor of Geography at UCLA)

2.  In terms of carbon emission, the world's richest half-billion (about 7% of global population )  cause 50% of the world's CO2 emissions.  However, just 7% of CO2 emission is created by the world's poorest 50%
(From Princeton Environment Institute)

OR, to put it another way.  India, China, Pakistan, Nigeria and Ethiopia will be responsible for most of the world's population growth.  But, the CO2 emission of one American is equivalent to 4 Chinese, 20 Indians, 30 Pakistanis, 40 Nigerians and 250 Ethiopians.

3.  On the use of land for maintaining a sustaining lifestyle, the average American takes up 9.5 hectares, 7.8 for Australians, 7.1 for Canadians, 5.3 for Britons, 4.2 for Germans, 4.9 for Japanese, 2.0 for Chinese and 1.0 or below for India and Africa.

So we need a rethink.  Should we really be paranoid that the developing world are breeding like rabbits?  Or that the well-off parts of the world are gorging like pigs?

But there is an even more dire scenario.    In my next posting I'll tackle another 'population' fear - that the Muslims are "copulating like barbarians at the gate".

Back again, like two bad pennies

The view from my window during our stay throughout most of April, May and June

Well, what a journey!  Firstly the flight from London to Abu Dhabi  for 1445 was delayed by half an hour .  When we finally got going to board  the plane we found ourselves in a  slow moving queue.  Passengers were directed through just one of the two entrances to get to their seats.  The other entrance was blocked by a collection of people, passengers and crew, huddling over some sort of problem.

  When we finally settled down in our seats awaiting departure, we were informed that a passenger had fallen ill and there would be a further delay.  That explained the blockage during boarding.  Flight EY 020 did not leave until 1615.

We were pleased when the Travel Agent informed us that transit at Abu Dhabi would be just two hours.  Because of the one and a half-hour delay leaving London,  we got to Abu Dhabi with just half an hour to spare.  A wheelchair awaited the spouse at Abu Dhabi, and it became a Formula 1 Wheelchair Race to the boarding gate for Kuala Lumpur.  It was at the other end  of the airport and I must have shed kilos of fat in catching up with the speeding wheelchair!

At KLIA, another 2-wheel limousine awaited the three- legged spouse.  He got through the fast lane for Immigration  and I had to wait only five minutes for  his clearance.

But it was worth it just to see Maria and Hidayah waiting for us.  The two girls took over - not only the luggage but also the geriatrics - ma'ngah and  Uncle Iain in his wheelchair.  Our nephew-in-law Nadzim was waiting  (with the little rascal Ilyas) in his People Carrier and we eventually drifted along KL's roads, like the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh on the Jubilee Royal Barge sailing on the Thames just a few days ago.

Maznah and my brother-in-law Harun, were already at our house with pisang goreng and tea and asam pedas ikan merah, sambal goreng tahu/tempeh and ikan goreng for our dinner.  My brother popped in before he left for College.

Certainly our welcome home reception matched whatever the Queen received for her Jubilee celebration - with one difference.   There was no rain on our parade.

Tis good to be back - and to rummage through the contents of three suitcases!

Eight hours ago we made a call to Jack , our dear friend in Leicester and he said it's raining buckets - it's supposed to be flaming June.



It's four in the morning and I'm still a lert  (alert). HELP!!

Trains and Boats and Planes

We have taken many great train journeys, from big ones like the journey across the Deccan Plateau from Bombay to Madras to little ones like the North Yorkshire steam train.    And  I remember with special affection the little rail journey in 1983 from Beaufort to Tenom in Sabah.

Tenom Railway Station

We have enjoyed spectacular sea crossings too -  from Wellington to Picton in New Zealand and on my own I made the romantic journey from Marseilles to Corsica in 1972 where I got as sick as a dog and threw out my dinner into the Mediterranean Sea.

As for planes, that started in 1972 as a huge thrill and now it has become one big yawn, herded like cattle from one airpen to another.

Now, when you get to the autumn of your years, one's mobility is circumscribed not by distance but by the state of the knees, the back, the hips and umpteen other parts of the body.  It is no more a question of traversing wild open spaces by trains or boats or planes.  It has been reduced to modest little steps  (with the aid of various thingamajigs like a Zimmer frame, walking sticks and a wheelchair)  like hobbling from the bedroom to the bathroom, from upstairs to downstairs and vice versa.  Little sorties to the kitchen for a cup of tea are such a treat.

And when you refuse to succumb to the impediments of a decrepit body and you make a dash-it-all  traipse to the Park or the shops, then you deserve a pat on the back  (Ouch!) even though you pay for it later with a pain that yells at you for being foolhardy.

But then you observe a friend like Loz, a few years younger than us, stuck in a wheelchair for the last 30 years.  He never fails, whatever the season, to 'take a walk' to Victoria Park with his dog every morning.  His gloves are worn from grasping and pushing the wheels of his wheelchair as he 'strides' to the Park.  His dog doesn't need a leash.  He knows how to walk at the same pace as his master on the pavement and when he gets to the Park, he goes hell-bent-for-leather for a good run, while Loz 'ambles' along the path in the Park.  Looking at that dignified joy for life, why should we complain?

On June 12th, we take another plane trip to Kuala Lumpur.    This time the spouse has a wheelchair - and this time he travels upmarket so that he can keep comfortably horizontal for most of the 16-hour journey.  I shall keep a close eye on him from the other side of the partition to make sure he doesn't run around chasing the stewardesses!!

Just two days ago, Maria and son Ariff, Hidayah and hubby Faiz played musical chairs in the KL house.  They have been shunting boxes of books, a huge bookcase, and a heavy metal 'treasure chest' to make room for a single bed in the Library - to make a day care room for Uncle Iain.

From here Unc can stagger along to make little forays into his garden,  totter to the kitchen where he will brew loads of  teh tarik for the young ones.  Most of all, the cats .........


Rusty and Socks



Professor Socks the academic reviewer

Comot the resident hedonist

.............especially Comot and her little fellow-travellers (aka fleas) to give him mental stimulation and buckets of love.

I cannot end this post without thanking with all our hearts Maria (orange top in the back row), Hidayah and Faiz  ( the laden couple standing to the right) and little (?) Ariff  ( in the greenish-blue t-shirt  in the front row)  for all  the caring help and support.  Bless your cotton socks!!

We will miss summer and our home in Leicester but it will be wonderful to get home too - on a plane and on the wings of a prayer.