Sai Gon

Fri 4th. May 2018.

Our tourist guide, Nam, said Sai gon means "little town". Here the word is spelt in 2 parts, sai and gon, not the usual one word practice.

We left KLIA 2 on Sunday 29th. April, and returned Thursday afternoon, 3rd. May. There was Kak Long and her brood, no daddy (somebody has to look after the family's hotel back in Bangi), and there were us, yours truly and Idah. This was our second trip together, after Bandung, this time minus Bal. She had to be with her kak long, giving birth to her second offspring in Kuching. Of course we made sure we sent her as many photos and videos of Sai Gon as possible, just to make her sore ! She was, too !

The many pictures of Sai Gon, or the politically "correct" name Ho Chi Minh City, I'd seen before do not do justice to the town. Yes, the teeming motorcycles were there, in real life even more than imagined.  But otherwise Sai Gon seems like any modern town we see anywhere else. There are large well-appointed shops and nicely-designed buildings, both old and new. Old because of the early French occupation, and new with the post-Vietnam war period rebulding.

A big surprise was that in all the shops we went into, everybody spoke fairly good Malay, complete with the gen Y idioms like "murah gila"!  And they not only accepted Malaysian ringgit, they preferred it to their own Vietnamese dong. Our own tourist guide cracked jokes in Malay !

I enjoyed the drives out of town to the country side, to the River Mekong and one of the islands, and took walks away from the group to see as much of the local sights as time allowed. The ladies, of course, enjoyed the shopping more. Saigon is apparently great shopping for Malaysians. This explains the expertise in Malay and accepting the ringgit. In fact in many of the outlets our guide took us to, they were literally jammed with Malaysian women, with the men, like me, resigned to patiently wait outside. And the shopkeepers seemed to know this, because they put a lot of those little chairs outside. As I said, mostly I walked around the block, just looking around and watching the people.

Kak Long secured a nice apartment for our stay, right on the 24th floor of the 25-storey building, the "Icon 56". The place looked new, and the 3-room apartment was comfortable, with a well-equipped kitchen, a furnished combined sitting & dining room, and 2 well-supplied bathrooms. The wi-fi gadget made our mobile phones communicable, and the tv sets in each room carried many English-speaking channels beside the Vietnamese ones. This home-away-from-home made our stay that much more pleasant. Good for you, Kak Long. Or maybe it was Wani. Anyway, I made full use of the kitchen. I'd brought along some coffee, powdered goat's milk, and mee-maggi. I bought eggs and bread and jam from the store on the ground floor. Presto ! my breakfast for 4 days was accounted for, because, unlike in Bandung, this meal wasn't included in the tour arrangement, whereas lunch and dinner were.

Road traffic was something else.

Motorcycles rule Saigon streets. The place swarms with these two-wheelers, coming in many types and sizes, carrying people and everything else imagineable right up to breaking point. The honking is constant, from the motorcycles trying to clear the way, to the motorcars, vans, trucks and buses to warn the motorcycles weaving in thick droves around them. This is unlike Bandung, where there's hardly any honking at all. But like Bandung, I didn't see a single accident and any sign of bad tempers. How they manage not to crash into each other confounds me. You have to see it to believe it. The roads are wide enough, and round-abouts and pavements are clearly marked, and there's even a sprinkling of operational traffic lights, not many but they exist, and they change colours appropriately red-orange-green. But nobody follows them. And yet nobody crash. Amazing.

We went to the War Museum. This should be a must stop for all. It's a Vietnam War Museum, the 17-year war fought with the Americans. By comparison, WWII and the Korean War were each for 3 years. The hundreds of photos on display are truly moving, so moving I saw a young white guy quietly crying, standing in front of a picture. The atrocities committed by young American draftees are legend, and here we see plenty of them in horrific photos, with gruesome pictures of women and children killed by American teenaged soldiers in the name of fighting for democracy! The many white visitors I saw spoke American accented English and other European tongues, with familiar French and Russian sounds. Maybe some relatives, or someone they know fought in Vietnam. I wonder what went through their minds.

We took the 10.25 a.m. flight, this time to KLIA 1. We landed on schedule at 1.25 local, with the 1-hour difference in time. Dekna was late, although she herself said in her whatsapp I'd reminded her about 15 times.

That night I'd plan to attend the "Pakatan Harapan's" campaign at Kampong Kerinchi. GE14 is in full throttle. I want to watch Fahmy play.

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PD birthday party.

Monday 23 April 2018.

Yesterday, Sunday, members of the Ujang-Banun clan, or most of them, gathered at Telok Kemang, Port Dickson, to celebrate the 80th. birthdays of Klemot and Kak Munah ( I call her Omputih). The surprise attendee was Pin's wife. The organizers also took the opportunity to declare a celebration for  the coming of Ramadan, only 3+ weeks away.

I had to sacrifice my golf match with Tok Sleman for this. So we left for PD early, although our event would not start before Zohor prayers. There were just the two of us - Dekna had spent the night at Haniff's parents' place and were to drive from there. Since we were early, I made a detour to PD town and we stopped for mee curry at a seemingly popular restaurant at one of the roundabouts in town, all festooned with PAS and BN flags, the GE campaigning having unofficially already started nationwide.

We didn't know the exact location of the chosen venue, but given the name of the place at Telok Kemang, I just drove slowly, keeping our eyes peeled. Although it was Sunday, and this is a resort town, traffic was suprisingly light. So when we sighted the place, we casually turned into the compound, and with no difficulty secured a parking spot.

Since no one from our group was seen, I left Idah in the foyer and took the longish walk to the beach, through the swimming pool area filled with frolicking children, around the footpath at the back of the apartment blocks, on to beach itself. This spot, I realized, is right at the end of the Batu 8 Telok Kemang picnic area towards the Tanjung Tuan lighthouse. I'm familiar with this area. I went to school here in 1961, for about 6 months. RMC  was further back towards Batu 4. This was all sea front and a long, empty beach, then. And cleaner.

I remember speaking in the Dewan Undangan Negeri about the need to manage the development in PD in 1995-99 period. I'd said that when Phuket in Thailand was still a tin-mining and rubber planting area, PD was already established as a resort town. To-day Phuket easily outclasses PD as holiday destination. The one main difference, I said in the Dewan, was how the Thai Government took care to build on the landward side of the sea front, leaving their God-given beautiful beaches unscathed by any construction. In PD they have built their hotels right down to the water, even flushing raw sewage right into it, and the authorities don't seem to care. Whatever I said in the Dewan ( you can check the Hansards ) was lightly treated by the MB as a joke.

Our gathering went successfully. There were serious moments for prayers, but mostly it was a fun family day. Mak Di even managed to make it although she'd just returned from Turkey, and she gave us some Turkish delights to prove it. There was the usual karaoke session, dominated by Ari, who wanted to be part of all presentations, also as usual. As always he's game, even if not entirely musical.

We broke up at about 6, as planned, although some had started leaving  from 5. I think everyone enjoyed the party, and Mastura and Kak Long made sure all got their kurma from Iran, Tunisia and Palestine. I took back one extra box snatched from Mak Di's bag. The best dates were the Jericho dates from Palestine.

So, next gathering is at Hari Raya Puasa. Insyaallah.

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Mubarak NS Cameron Highlands trip.

Sat April 7, 2018.

My first Cameron Highlands trip was as a 16-year old RMC student on a camping trip 57 years ago. That was for one whole week. This time it was just three days and two nights. But Copthorne Hotel is also on Brichang, just as our RMC camp was in an ex-army base on a barren Brinchang hill-top. But while the hotel is luxurious by any standard, the camp was exposed and barely kept dry by the semi-circular zinc roof, and only the army-green mosquito nets kept the millions of flies from the nearby vegetable gardens out and made life just bearable.

I remember the tortuous drive from Tapah in the army trucks that made most of us sick, and the drive was forever. But traffic was sparse, and the weather really cold and we all lowlanders shivered to our tiny  bones. This time around, it was wet all three days and that kept it cold, too, especially the two nights, and especially on the Strawberry Resort dinner drive.  But, my God, the traffic reminded me of Bandung, with the same type of narrow, winding roads. This was nothing like my first trip and the many trips in-between. Somehow it spoiled the "holiday atmosphere".

I could talk some more about that RMC camping trip, the "locate C.T. camp" excersises, Mr. Sekhon's picking a chemical-dusted tomato and promptly falling sick for it, and so on, but that calls for a separate posting. This last Mubarak-organized trip was, on reflection, as enjoyable for its own reasons.

There were 20 of us old men and women, the oldest being 83, the youngest 60! But nonetheless we enjoyed ourselves. Except, maybe, poor Ponniah. All 79 years of him ! On the second day, a Friday, we had to make adjustment for a Friday-prayers break. The non-Muslims, Ponniah included, of course, were supposed to be "free-and-easy" while we were at the mosque between 1 and half-past two. At the appointed time and place, everyone was there except Ponniah. The problem is, he doesn't carry a mobile phone, or wears a watch. He must have been lost for time and unreachable, but had enough common sense to get a ride back to our hotel, while Chong, Alan and Yazid kept on looking until Alan called the hotel and got the information. Otherwise, our 3-day stay was pleasant enough.

The government clearly has made an effort to make C.H. a bona fide tourist resort, with its cool climate as the main draw. I saw many Thais and the European types, and they seemed to enjoy themselves. Many of the attractions are in fact privately managed, and clearly government funds should be channelled to make them better-run. As it is, everywhere I saw the "Malaysian malaise" of poor maintenance which somewhat downgraded many of the tourist attractions.

We all parked our cars at Royale Chulan, Seremban, and took the charted bus that left the hotel at about half-past eight, Thursday morning, and after making many pit-stops (we're senior citizens, man) arrived at our Brinchang hotel at about 6 p.m. in a steady drizzle. We left Brincang on Saturday (to-day) at 9 a.m., and after, again, many pit-stops, arrived back at Royale Chulan at 5 p.m. We enjoyed the 3-day trip, and many agreed to the idea of doing this again.  Maybe Australia ?

While in C.H. we heard the long-awaited news of the dissolution of Parliament to make way for GE14, now fixed for exactly on the same date as the last one, on 5th. May.  In fact the news was a bit of an anti-climax. Yusof Misai, Sainy and I got into some loud arguments with our opposing views - me, alone, for Mahathir, and the other 2 for Najib. Yusof Misai even challanged me to a wager over Sikamat, which was won by PKR in 2013 by a small majority of about 500! I said BN will lose again. I accepted the bet - one week's lunch for the winner.

I'm looking forward to the lunch.

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Mahathir in Seremban.

21.3.2018.

Maulud had whatsapp'ed me about Pakatan Harapan's Ceramah Perdana at Betaria Business Centre, Seremban, on Sunday, 18th. March, starting from 8.30 p.m., with Mahathir as the centre of attention, but I'd forgotten about it until that morning when Raob mentioned it at the golf club's reception counter. Of course I went. One, because I'm a supporter, and two, I wanted to see the crowd.

There were a few snafus. The sudden drizzle; the record track loss on the theme song; the cutting-off of the air-balloons from the two banners. But the drizzle was brief. The mc quickly switched over on the mike. And nobody seemed to notice the balloons floating away, leaving the banners behind.

When I arrived around 8 and parked my car at Centrepoint, the  shopping complex close by, others were also arriving in numbers. I saw young Chinese men and women, middle-aged Indian men, and young Malays of both sexes gathering, looking for parking space, and walking briskly to the venue for the forum. The GE has not been announced, but this sure looked like it. I emphasize the relative youthfulness of those I saw coming, because this is significant for a Malaysian GE. The youth has always shown apathy  in the past. And that all 3 major races were there in numbers is significant, too.

As a supporter I was hoping for a good crowd. In fact, there was a huge one, given the venue and the scant publicity, and that this was a private, not governmental event. The entire area designated in the empty street was filled up. The shop corridors on both sides had standing room only. The rest of the space remaining were filled up, and people were standing and sitting on the road and the road divider facing the big screen, following what was going on. Cars and vans and motorcycles were double-parked on both sides of Jalan Dato' Siamang Gagap from the Centerpoint Shopping Complex to the traffic lights at the Sikamat junction.

This was the second Mahathir's visit I'd attended in Seremban, the first one at Ampangan last year. I tell you, the old man still has pulling power.

If  GE14 is run honestly, if at all, I think BN has a lot to worry about, just looking at this one Ceramah Perdana. Negri's Mat Hasan is reported to have said that the youth should "turn the tables" in NS. Actually he used the Malay words "terbalikkan meja". I know what it means. I don't know if Negri's Mat Hasan meant it that way. But "turning the table" is reversing the existing position. BN is in power in NS right now. Turning the table on that means changing the government - from BN to others !

I give it to the old man. It's entirely because of him that Najib has ordered the ROS not to approve the registeration of Pakatan Harapan, and has even threatened to deregister Bersatu. A disjointed opposition works in favour of the BN. Only PAS has supported Najib (at least Hadi has) but 21 seats out of 222 in Parliament, and 82 seats out of 587 in the States don't carry much clout. Without a single united opposition headed by someone like Mahathir, Najib has a better chance of retaining power. Or so he thinks.

The last time UMNO's 88 ( 14 from Sabah ) had 7 MCA, 4 MIC, 1 Gerakan, and a massive 33 from Sabah & Sarawak to hold 133 seats in Parliament, but 59.9 % is the worst performance in the 54-year history of the Malaysian GE's up to that time. But BN clung to power.

But the table could be turned, Mat.

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Post 41 Tiger Woods.

Monday 19.3.2018

I'd sms'd Tiong Meng at the end of the 3rd. round of the Arnold Palmer Tournament and suggested that Tiger could be in contention if he made 6 birdies and no bogeys for a -13 come Sunday's final round. He made 6 birdies, but had 3 bogies for a -10, for 5th. place, 8 strokes behind the final winner, who started with -10 and had a -8 on the last day, for -18.

But this was only his fifth outing for 2018, 5 years after his last win. 2016 & 2017 he was out with back surgery. For the 5 competitions this year, Tiger has a mixed-bag of one missed-cut, 9th., 2nd. and at Arnold's a 5th. place finish.  Some US sports commentators say that his come-back from injury is too fast. Greg Norman, naturally, said Tiger is too old to win a Major again.

So what are his chances for the Masters at Augusta this April, the first of the 4 Majors he needs to draw level with Nicklaus' record ?

He used to hold the no. 1 spot for a total 683 weeks. (Greg Norman is second with less than half as many weeks.) Now his WGR is in the hundreds. His 14 Majors is second best to Nicklaus' 18. His 79 PGA titles is second best to Sam Snead's 82.  His last win was 4 years ago, making it a total of 5 winless years if you add 2010. His last Major win was the US Open in 2008,  a long, long time ago. Doesn't sound great ?

But 14 Majors over a span of 20 years as a pro works out to 1.42 years between them. His record at Augusta is nothing to be ashamed of: in 18 years between 1997 - 2015, he had 4 wins and 9 top 10, making it 13/18, or 72.2% of the time.

His first win at the Masters in 1997 at age 21 was his 3rd. professional win, and his first Major, in his 2nd year as a pro. 

He has won the other 3 Majors a total of  10 times.  In fact he has a "Tiger Slam" - holding all 4 Major trophies between 2000 -2001, the only one to do so.

He's won the 10 million-dollar FedEx Cup twice, the only one to have done it.

Before turning professional and quitting college in his second year, or a sophomore as the Americans call it, Tiger had won the US Junior and the US Amateur 3 consecutive times each from age 15, the only person who has done so.

Until the end of 2017, at age 41, Tiger has won 111 tournament in 26 years. This comprises 6 amateurs, 14 Majors, 65 other PGA's, and 26 international titles, which works out to 4.27 wins per year.

The last Major Jack won was at age 46. Tiger is 41.

This is a game. Forget about all the accolades which all come after. You have to have game. At Arnold's, Tiger had 20 birdies. That alone, without any bogies, would have beaten the winner's score of -18. But he had 8 bogies and a double-bogey. His drive went OB on the 16th. hole on the last day. He had the ball stuck unplayable to the side of the bunker. And he missed a handful of makeable birdies. Others were dunking the ball into the hole from all over the place, birdieing from bunkers and eagling from the fairway. You can join all the lucky strikes and all Tiger's bad bounces, and you see chance tipping the scale against pure talent.

So, to answer my own question about his chances at the Masters in 3 weeks time, I'd say pretty darn good!

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Acik

Sat. 3rd. March, 2018.

Acik was the last of my aunties from atok Hassan and wan Tiamin. Acik died in her daughter's arms Thursday, March 1st., at 6.10  p.m. in her house in Beting. An auspicious day to be called to the Lord. Ati called at about 7. I left Seremban after Magrib, with Calit and my wife. 

Nosa ngat-ngat said her mother had not been feeling well the last 2 days, and had asked for water, and when she was trying to put the liquid to her lips, she simply slipped away. She was 81.

I remember when our family of  6 were in a taxi, all ready to move to Tanjung Malim in 1950, where dad was being reassigned to S.I.T.C., when Acik cried and cried, wanting to go with her elder sister, my mom. She was hanging on the taxi's window, and mom was consoling her from inside the car, and wan doing the same thing from outside it, and Acik was not consoled until mom pulled either her gold necklace or gold ring, I can't remember which, and gave it to Acik, saying she could come later, and only then did Acik let go of her hold on the car. 

She did eventually come to Tanjung Malim much later, and in fact attended Standard 6, I think, at the school there, for about a year. Klemot, my future sister-in-law, was with her there, as Cikgu Ujang and family were also there. Simple arithmetic puts Acik at about 12 years old then.

Acik was always close to mom, right until mom's death 10 years ago. She'd come to the house almost daily from her house in Batu 46, about 3 km away, and especially when mom wasn't well, as she was often in the last years of her 87 long years. Acik was the one who took care of the details when mom died in her own bed, and would often visit even when the burial and the "doa arwah" and other stuff were all long done. It's sad that in the last 2 years Acik had not been well, and had memory loss and all the aging afflictions. I would come as often as I could, from Seremban, but could never feel I'd done justice for the love and care Acik gave to mom. 

I'd tried to never miss my Raya visit to her house in Batu 46, and later when she moved into Nosa ngat-ngat's house in Beting. I would have visited more often, but for the horrendous Seremban-Kuala Pilah drive, especially on weekends and holidays. In the old days Seremban-Kuala Pilah was an easy half-an-hour drive. Nowadays you're lucky to do it in less than 2 hours. Last Chinese New Year's holidays, I had to even take a detour to Inas-Kampong Batu, Rembau to come back to Seremban, and that itself took two and-a-half hours.

Being the youngest, Acik was much attached to wan, her mother, who died 64 years ago, as her tombstone inscription says " 4.5.64", an easy number to remember. Now, in death, they're close again, in the same burial ground, about 100 feet apart, at the Kg. Jawa Muslim cemetry, in Melang. Both my parents, and the two grandparents, are interred here, as is Mak Tam, my other aunt, my niece Iza, and Udin Hj. Aso, Acik's  second husband, just next to her, so there's a whole family here.

Did I say "second husband"?

Idah, among others, was surprised to learn that Acik was married before marrying Udin Hj. Aso. It was Pak Bai and Amok Jompo, Acik's other elder sister, who were responsible for Acik's first marriage, to a soldier, Mustaffa. But it didn't last long. I remember Acik and wan going with Mustaffa to his camp, after the wedding. I can't remember where that camp was. But I remember Mustaffa, because he commented on my drawing when I came back from school. We were all staying in wan's house in Bukit Temensu then. After a few months, wan and Acik came back from wherever Mustaffa's camp was. I remember wan and Acik sewing a tear in the mosquito net that they brought back with them. It struck me as strange then, their sewing the torn mosquito net. Only later I learned that Acik was home for good, minus Mustaffa. To this day I wonder what caused the separation and divorce. I heard just now, at Acik's funeral, that wan didn't like Mustaffa for not being "alim" or something to that effect. Mustaffa remarried, and is back in Jempol, and must be in his 80's, like Acik. In fact Basit Abai brought Mustaffa to visit Acik some months ago, now that Acik was ailing. And in fact his daughter to that second marriage also came for the funeral.

The night before the Friday funeral, I lifted the veil covering Acik's face, and said to her, eyes closed and face pale in death, "do good, Acik" without knowing why I said those words that she could no longer hear. But my sadness was real. May God have mercy on you, dear Acik.

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It's been 10 years!

Mon. 26th. Feb. 2018.

I read that "the Scribe, Kadir Jasin" posted that his blog is 12 years old. So I checked. Why, my blog started in 2008. So I'm 10 years old!  Not bad.

I used to write to the reader's column in the "Straits Time". I thought my friends didn't notice them, but they did, and commented about them. I remember a fellow golfer I called "Lu Tipu" especially well, because he commented on that piece about the long, long names used in Brunei. He used to teach in Brunei, and I went to Brunei in 1966, and was there with the group from the Geography Department, University of Malaya, doing some research there for 8 or 10 weeks, I can't remember exactly now. It was my first flight, and from the brand-new Subang Airport. I think we flew in a "Comet". There was an overnight stop in Jesselton, as Kota Kinabalu was then called. From there we flew to Brunei in a "Dakota."

In 2008 I fiddled around on my newly acquired pc and got my blog going, and thus ended the newspaper commentry.

Unlike Kadir, though, I only have 2 or 3 followers. But I'm not a journalist, and I'm not anywhere near the circle of Kadir's. I write for myself, though I've mulled the idea of collecting all my posts into a short journal, or even a small book. Just a sort of memoir. Something I could slid into my stack of books and look at from time to time.

I choose English because I feel more "flexible", not because I'm not proud of my Bahasa Melayu. I also believe that I should add to the number of Malays doing this, as a supporter of well-written English by Malays, or even Malaysians. To this day, I can't resist correcting my children's English, the badly-written English produced by my golf club, or even when reading the in-flight magazines in the local airlines. You might come across such magazines, if they haven't been thrown out, and see my ball-pen corrections of simple grammartical mistakes and my unsought notes "poor edition!" and such similiar ones.

Halim says my blogs are all "political". Maybe so, but it's not intentional. I have to be in the mood, as you can see from the variable pauses between blogs. But nothing raises ire for me like stupid politicians talking to us as if we are as stupid as they apparently are! And one more thing, Halim, I was a politician once.

Let's see now. My average posting has been about 400 words. I've posted 383 times these 10 years, giving about 157,000 words in total. I'm re-reading an old golf book published in 1981 - "The Inner Game of Golf" by W. Timothy Gallwey which has 238 pages with probably 78,000 words. That makes my total blog equivalent to 2 of this book. As I said, not bad !

Hopefully 10 years would extend by another 10. And another 10.

We'll see.

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