From rocks to island

Can you beat this? Foreign minister Rais Yatim is talking about merging the rocks called Middle Rocks (next to Batu Puteh which we lost to Singapore) into one longer and wider formation.

At present, the collections of rocks are 500-600 metres apart and our grand plan is to somehow join them so that it would become a bigger single rock (or perhaps island) than Batu Puteh.

So what would we gain by this mega plan? The Utusan Malaysia report which carried this story quoted Rais as saying that the bigger rock (or island) has the potential to have a weather station and marine observatory centre.

Perhaps the unsaid plan is that we want to have an island to overwhelm Batu Puteh and halt Singapore’s development plan surrounding that rocky outlet.

Or maybe the grand design is to build a bigger and taller lighthouse to totally eclipse the one in Batu Puteh.

Let’s see how far the government will go with this grand plan.

Read Utusan Malaysia story here.

Shame on you lot

A story in NST today on a group of Mat Rempits robbing five women at a petrol station in Jalan Travers, Bangsar caught my attention.

According to the report, the incident happened at about 3.30am last Saturday.

What enraged me was the public apathy while the incident happened – no one went to help the ladies! Not the three petrol station attendants who were safely holed up inside the station convenience store or several other motorists who were around.

The Mat Rempit gang must surely know that no one will stop them, thus their brazen behaviour. Disappointing even is the fact that the Travers police station is just up the road!

Apparently three police patrol cars arrived at the scene soon after and police obtained CCTV footage from the premises, but no arrest has been made so far.

Hmmm…..If I may suggest an easier way - just round up all the Mat Rempits (this is not difficult to do) and squeeze the truth out of them.

This is easy. The difficult part is to get our fellow citizens to be more civic conscious!

The ultimate battle

Football or sex?

Apparently, a recent survey in Europe found that half of European football fans would prefer to watch important matches than have sex.

I wonder if the statistics would stand in the Malaysian context!

Read the story here.

A clip that riled the local Malays

A 40-second clip shown in the UK has got some Malaysians upset.

Actually, the 40-second clip showed a man on a beach firing a machine gun into the air and shouting in the Malay language: "I'm the most evil man in the world. Come fight with me. I will kill you all."

Apparently he appeared to be ethnic Malay or Indonesian.

To be precise, the clip was a recruitment video advertisement of the British Navy.

What got our diplomats to be upset? Well, no prizes for guessing but it was the portrayal of a Malay man as a terrorist.

A letter writer had expressed his indignity in Utusan Malaysia two days ago after have watched the advertisement.

And then, since it involved an issue of Ketuanan Melayu, the senators got all worked up and then the foreign ministry got involved and as a result, the British Defence ministry withdrew the advertisement from the Royal Marines Web site.

The clip will not be shown in British cinemas as well.

Excellent! Out top mandarins surely know how to rectify a situation urgently, as long as it was committed by others.

When it comes to such insensitive activities against certain other races locally, we seem to have to wait forever for any action, let alone an apology to those effected.

Read story on the ad withdrawal here.