In today's newspaper

NST today seems to be brimming with stuff I just have to read, despite having three stories unfinished and two bloody products to review:

1] Johor bah!
Sorry my Sabahan friends, when I say bah, it's not to replace lah. I meant Johor is underwater. I don't know from which state that term came from, but bah means flood from where I come from.

And folks had to be moved from their homes, lifted into boats and sent to camp out at makeshift shelters.. hope rain stops quickly and the water levels will get back to normal. I hope that cat, Piper who saved her human family from becoming landslide victims is safe somewhere too. Good cat!

And some of my mates are on their way for "Xmas" shopping in Singapore.. Er, more like motor shopping, we're talking about Arai helmets and Honda fairings and Ohlin dampers etc.. I hope they'll not get stranded and get to go on with their programme.

2] Thailand stock market semi-crashed
That report by Mustapha Kamil on the Bangkok stock market dipping by 14.8 per cent (and brokers keep thinking they'll wake up tomorrow and things will get better) reminded me of 1997 - it was a sad time - though on a microscopic level I'm glad that I don't have to leave home to further studies and still get government money running into my account.

Then, many of my college mates were upset that the government decided to pull the plug off the overseas studies program (imagine, of all sectors, education is one that seems easiest to scrape), but some snakes did get to fly and they promised their TESL mates who had to be transferred to UPertanianM that they'll bash Soros on their way to their class. (None of them get to do that, bunyi je lebih.)

Can you blame anyone for enjoying the silver lining? Hey, I'll not be one of those people pouring money into foreign economies. So I bought jeans and tees and belanjaed my family at a local restaurant with my studies allowance - the least I could do to get Ipoh's economy upbeat at that moment.

3] Houston rapist after boys
Apparently a clean-shaven man, 18-21 years old, a botak armed with a gun has been randomly stalking, robbing, and sexually assaulting boys. So far five late-teenaged boys has come forward to lodge reports, but police suspects there are many more victims relunctant to do so.

Sometime ago a guy - unfortunately he's quite jambu - confided about him being violated twice and each time by a different dude. The first time he was so shocked, he narrowly escaped. The second time, despite being attacked from behind while playing on a games console, he managed to kick the fella's balls and cabut.

There's been studies that show rapists are less eager to proceed if the victim continues to fight. However at gunpoint..

4] The rags and riches Singapore story
It was about that comment Wee Shu Min, daughter of Singapore MP Wee Siew Kim, left on a guy's blog post about him worried about losing his job ("one of many wretched, undermotivated, overassuming leeches in our country", signed off with "please, get out of my elite uncaring face"; and later topped by her father's comment "her basic point is reasonable").

Apparently despite being Asia's second-richest country (Japan still tops) with GDP per capita of +/-US$27,000 (RM97,000), in terms of income disparity the country's Gini index, which measures inequality of income distribution among households, Singapore scores 42.5, sandwiching it between Burundi and Kenya (so shows UN Human Development Report 2006) .

Biar betul? It was just like hearing from Oprah that a big percentage of Americans are living in poverty. I take for granted what I see on Puah Chu Kang and Under One Roof (assuming they're just like Gilmore Girls and Everybody Loves Raymond - so called reflection of the American lifestyle, vv).

I take for granted that the country looks so modern and the population is not that big, so guess it would be easier to make sure everyone is taken care of, right?

Wrong. Running a country - humongous, big, so-so, small, tiny, unknown, whatever the size - is hard work. Now I know. (I guess in a smaller scale, running a family is also tough for most parents nowadays huh, as we've seen what one offspring can cause. Bet I'm a cause for my parents to worry as well.)

So with that, thanks to all of Malaysia's true leaders, (especially my politically-active-even-in-her-70s aunt who's always reminding us cousins to remember our roots) and tabik hormat!

5] Letters to the Editor: Goodbye Bok House
For this I gotta thank photography instructor, Mr Eric Peris for making us visit that magnificent but dilapidated, little, old bungalow.

6] 50 new species found in Borneo
And one of it is a tree frog! I'll be thinking of that the next time I'm going for the Sarawak Rainforest World Music Festival!