Bourdain on Beirut

Safe at home, Tony B finally put down his feelings on the aborted Lebanon shoot for his No Reservations series. A full excerpt is available here, if you find the original ad-riddled article at Salon.com a bit tedious.

There is no overwhelming anger towards the warring parties. He does not point fingers, or issue any clarion calls. Just pangs of regret at not being able to party, mingle, eat yummy Lebanese food, shoot it all and tell the world to drop by and get a taste of what might have been a great Lebanese adventure.

Along with the senseless fighting and loss of life, it's really among the saddest things about the current Middle East situation.

What's In A Name?

This journalist, like many others, fervently believes the hand poised on the Made-in-Iran Launch button is connected to a brain with sub-code wiring. The proof is in statements like these.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered government and cultural bodies to use modified Persian words to replace foreign words that have crept into the language, such as "pizzas" which will now be known as "elastic loaves," state media reported Saturday.

— Associated Press (AP), via Yahoo! News

Drastic, yet absurd measures to preserve the purity of the national language from the onslaught of corruption by foreign influences. By golly, it sounds so dreadfully familiar. But the prospects for comedy are good. I look forward to the day when I can yell, Roti liat, satu! (One "elastic loaf", please!) at my neighbourhood mamak stall, while enjoying a "short talk" with whatever friends I have left after twenty-odd years of separation, and mulling over the building of a "small room" somewhere in Langkawi.

I'm sure my "elastic loaf" would taste great, too.

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And why didn't I hear of this in the local mainstream news? Is this the reason why the Government has its entire digestive tract in Gordian knots over unfettered, free-for-all reporting via online media? Checking the related news sidebar on the BBC page, I'm starting to see a pattern, and for once, I can't blame them.

What takes the cake about this ban is that the names of animals, insects, fruit, vegetables or colours are involved. If this piece of legislation is actively enforced, it presents a particular dilemma for a certain minority. Words like huang (yellow), lan (blue) or ma (horse) are used as Chinese surnames, while long (dragon), feng (phoenix) or lin (unicorn) are powerful names for those with high expectations for their offspring. There are other words like feng (bee/wasp), hou (monkey), or ying (firefly).

No matter. As this post demonstrates, creativity is boundless.

If You See Red, Don't Go Green

Will Greenpeace See Red?
I've always been ambivalent towards green groups like Greenpeace. Over the years public sympathy and funding have morphed them from a free-floating fringe group into something akin to a political party. As everyone knows: When a group professing altruism becomes political, things invariably go wrong.

I remember an old Readers' Digest article about how their "Save the Seals" campaign, led by that witch Brigitte Bardot, ruined an Inuit community by depriving them of a livelihood. Today, the Inuit are hunting seals again, as well as - what I regard as a slap-in-the-face for Greenpeace - Canadian fisherman, who partake in an annual seal slaughter to eliminate the competition for cod, pollock and salmon, while earning a profit doing it.

How long will it be before they cross over to the dark side and employ the terrorist tactics so favoured by loony legions like PETA and various animal welfare groups, who pick the easy battles and ignore the good fights?


Life After Whales
It confounds me that Japan, a well-spring of innovation and improvisation, is in no hurry to find a solution for the sword of Damocles hovering over dozens of fishing communities who supplement their income by killing or capturing whales and dolphins: "What the hell do we do, once we drive them all to extinction?" There's one Japanese fisherman who has given up whaling and dolphin hunting to organise whale watching tours. Others may not be as receptive to the radical idea that a live whale is just as valuable as a dead one.

Maritime patrols would be a good career path for former whalers. Pirates? Terrorists? Straying North Korean vessels? Suicidal Greenpeace pontoons? Imagine the large metal shank of a harpoon several feet long protruding out of the eye-socket of some stubborn captain of a trespassing ship. What other "Don't Bleeping Mess With Us" message could be more straight-to-the... -point?

Being Real Sports

So they're dumping RM490 million into a sports complex in the UK? The lifestyle changes brilliantly proposed by the Government must be working; they've saved enough for another prestigious monument. Personally, I don't think it's necessary, since we've already got the infrastructure and training plans in place.

Don't believe me? All the runarounds the civil service and government departments put us through has the whiff of a secret exercise regime. Once the wild goose chase ends, you'll feel the after-effects of an entire Iron Man race, complete with the mental and physical agony. We do, after all, love our flatbreads and sweet pulled tea.

Our Government cares. Really.

Whale Safari, Redefined

Whale-watching tourists in Norway were given a first-hand look at the country's whaling industry when an animal they were watching was harpooned. The carnage was not taken well by the tourists. I wonder if any children were on deck at that moment?

The blood flowed and it wasn't a pretty sight. This really wasn't what we came to see.

— Leontien Dieleman, Dutch tourist

No shit, Leon. Whale-watching-slash-whaling tours, while economical and possibly educational, will never catch on. Not until the nasty bits of the business are resolved, anyway.

While Japan stoops to bribing poorer countries in the International Whaling Commission (IWC) for control over whaling restrictions, Norway doesn't even bother with politics or pretensions. This, however, goes beyond "rubbing it in your face".

How Not to Start the Day, Part III

Turns out Cleo might be a "he". There weren't a lot of androgynous names in my vocabulary that day when I sat down to write the post. The name stays. After what happened this morning, neutering the feline is now an option.

This morning, under the porch, sitting next to the broom next to the lower half of a mouse was a small pile of regurgitated meat. Up to now, I always thought only big cats would hoard left-over kills for a rainy day. Following that thought is a sense of relief, knowing that lions, et al never evolved the attributes needed for domestication. I'd have a very difficult time explaining the presence of a partially-eaten neighbour in my front yard.

I'm sure they had a great night of hunting, and it'd be rude not to share, but we hairless apes live on a different kind of diet. And Sisters #1 and #2 are a bit more squeamish than I am. The last gecko they brought home sent Sister #2 into an angry, insecticide-spraying frenzy - to no avail, I should add.

As I was disposing of it, Cleo and the other black cat (whom I shall label "Cloud") walk past the gate. I quickly conclude my business, clean up, lock the gate and drive off to work. If it was their doggie-bag that I'd just dumped, I do not want to be near either one when they're hungry. At least they'll be able to eat. My appetite, meanwhile, checked out for the rest of the morning.

The Rude KLite

The Deputy Prime Minister objected to a Reader's Digest poll that ranked Kuala Lumpur among the top three rudest cities. While the results don't exactly indicate the true nature of KL (which is also a mixed bag), those who took an online poll organised by The Star Online begged to differ.

The overwhelming majority of the 286 readers who took part in an online poll found nothing to disagree with in the Reader’s Digest survey that rated Kuala Lumpur the third-worst among 35 cities in terms courteousness.

...with many voicing concern that people in the city seemed unable to say "thank you" or "sorry".

There's something else they unanimously agreed on: motorists are the rudest. Being one myself, there's nothing I can do to refute that. But there's no way you can get the whole picture based on input from 286 pollsters, especially when they're only airing their grouses, rather than genuinely contributing to the survey.

Non, one of Mix FM's better DJs, took up the issue with callers in his evening shift, and asks, "If the rude person is someone you know (or recognise), would it change how you feel?"

You know what? It does, and it explains the DPM's sheltered world-view - who would dare to be rude to the second-most powerful man in the country?