LITTLE PENANG STREET MARKET 26.11.2006

Winding up for the spin!













A tourist from England is fascinated by the spinning top.






















Little Penang Street Market is held on the last Sunday of every month at "Upper Penang Road"
to showcase local culture and handicraft. Today there was a top spinning demonstration which
proved to be entertaining to the locals as well as the tourists.

THE THINGS THEY SAY BECAUSE THEY ARE THEY! (6)

 
In today's (15/11/2006) Star, under the headline "Khairy hits out at call to abolish NEP" it was reported that Kahiry slammed the ASLI report that claimed Malay corporate equity had reached 45%.
"They are manipulating figures. If we want to use the ASLI figures, let's set a new target. Let's make it 70% for the Malay equity," he added.
I don't understand why Khairy stopped at 70% and not ask for 100%. Khairy and his cronies should demand to take over all the businesses owned by the Chinese and run them into the ground, the way his foray into buying a stake into a company with borrowed millions ended up making him lose a bundle in double quick time. Perhaps Khairy should go and read the article in The Age, Australia, under the headline "While Malaysia fiddles, its opportunites are running dry" by Michael Backman. 

THE THINGS THEY SAY BECAUSE THEY ARE THEY! (5)

 
Just as I thought the president of the Penang Municipal Council would be a gentleman, unlike his other "towering" politician colleagues, and refrain from blaming the press for misquoting him, he has come out with the predictable
declaration that he was misquoted!
Today's (14/11/2006) New Straits Times:
He claimed to have been misquoted although all reports on Sunday had virtually the same report on his remarks.
"I merely said that there should be a dress code for reporters covering council meetings.
I then gave an example of sexy dressing; meaning no sexy attire.
I never said the reporter involved was dressed sexily; I was misquoted", he said yesterday.

The DAP has called for Datuk Abu Bakar's resignation and rightly so because the president of the Penang Municipal Council has made it worse for himself by claiming to have been misquoted. If he did not think that the reporter involved was sexily dressed, then why did he come up with the stupid suggestion that there should be a dress code for reporters covering council meetings? Do the people in Penang deserve to have a president of the Municipal Council who cannot think straight? 

THE THINGS THEY SAY BECAUSE THEY ARE THEY! (4)

 
Very often when our politicians open their mouths and put their feet in, they will put the blame on media reporters and claim that they have been misquoted or misinterpreted but in the case of the president of the Penang Municipal Council it was Datuk Dr Teng Hock Nan who opened his mouth in defence of the president and in the process put his foot in. Dr Teng was quoted in the Nation of today's (13/11/06) Star as saying that "Abu bakar's remark on the sexy dressing was probably a miscommunication or uttered in jest."
It doesn't matter to Dr Teng that if the remark was made in jest it was a joke in poor taste. A man like the president of the Penang Municipal Council had no business to make a joke out of something that is tantamount to outraging the modesty of a young woman. It's people like Datuk Abu Bakar and Datuk Dr Teng Hock Nan who give datuks a bad name and it makes us wonder why people like them should be so honoured! If Datuk Abu Bakar was a moron for coming up with that tasteless remark, Dr Teng was being an even bigger moron for coming up with that lame excuse to defend him. It just goes to show that getting professional people as councillors will not guarantee that we will be served by intelligent people. 

THE THINGS THEY SAY BECAUSE THEY ARE THEY! (3)

 
In today's [12/11/06] Star under the headline "Council: It's the sexy dress", Penang Municipal Council president, Datuk Abu Bakar Hassan was quoted as responding to a complaint that the closed-curcuit television camera in City Hall was zooming onto the thighs of women journalists instead of council proceedings, "The issue is the sexy dress worn by the journalist. If it was not sexy, the incident would not have arisen."
Datuk Abu Bakar reminds me of the dim-wit politician who declared that women get raped because they go about flaunting their physical attributes in sexy dresses. Why is that in the 21st century we still have such morons running our country? Does the biggest political party in the country have to dig into the bottom of the barrel and come up with people like Datuk Abu Bakar to be president of the Municipal Council? Datuk Abu Bakar should be proper attire consultant to Wanita and Puteri UMNO since he is such an expert on what constitutes a sexy dress! 

BEGONIAS, ANYONE?

 
 
 
 
Gardening has always been one of my favourite hobbies and recently I have gone into gardening in a bigger way. I have started a collection of begonias, each plant costing me an average of RM7, but I haven't been very successful yet, having managed to kill a few plants through "over-watering". Initially, I went into the internet to read up on begonias and I learnt that the soil for begonias needs to be damp all the time. The soil must not be allowed to dry out completely. Later on, to my regret, I learnt that too much water also leads to rotting of the stems and leaf stalks and ultimately the death of the plant. I am still in the learning stage and would welcome advice and guidance from anybody who has had experience and success in growing begonias. I would also welcome identification of the different begonias in the photos above. 

THE THINGS THEY SAY BECAUSE THEY ARE THEY! [2]

 

Under the headline "More men marrying foreigners" in the Star today [9/11/2006], the Deputy Home Minister, Datuk Tan Chai Hoe, when asked the reasons for the trend among local men, said, "It is difficult to explain why people fall in love. Maybe foreign women are less demanding than local women."
The Deputy Home Minister's statement has made me take another look at my wife of 45 years. I am wondering whether I should trade her in for a 25 year old, less demanding, foreign wife! 

THE THINGS THEY SAY BECAUSE THEY ARE THEY!

 
In today's Star (9.11.2006), under the headline "Hisham: Build trust for good ties", it was reported that:
"The UMNO Youth chief said there were those who were tempted to look at issues purely based on their racial group to gain temporary popularity with their race."
[Look who's talking! Among Malaysian political parties UMNO is the one where "half-past six" politicians have nothing intelligent to say except to resort to pandering to their own kind along such lines.]
"In the long term, that will not be beneficial to the party nor the individual because that approach has been proven in history not to be acceptable by the majority of Malaysian people," he said.
[You wonder whether Hisham believes what he says! If he does, it makes you wonder why Hisham and his ilk in UMNO continue to sing to that tune.]