Help the paupers, please.

The Second Finance Minister of Malaysia, Datuk Seri Ahmad Husni Hanadzlah had recently said, in Ipoh, that those earning less than RM3,000 per month will be helped to get through the rising cost of living.

This really baffles me a bit. In my small town of mine, namely Taiping, if one were to even mention that he was a RM2,000 per month earner he will get some respect. He should be a senior staff or something. For RM3,000 one could be a manager. From what I have seen most of the people in the private sector are getting monthly salaries of way below RM1,000. If people getting RM3,000 per month are taken as low wage earners, then the latter ones are surely paupers.

One day we may see the managers and the paupers queuing up together for some food stamps. I hope the government takes care of the paupers first. Me? I am a pauper, too!

A believer of all religions.

Hari Raya Puasa is just around the corner, most probably, on the 30^th of August, 2011, and I am sure my Muslim friends should be eagerly waiting for their great day. A day when they can openly consume food and drinks without looking over their shoulders for the Puasa enforcing authorities. 

Oh, no, this does not mean I am saying all my friends do not observe the Puasa obligation. There do exist a few whose stomachs seem to be unable to go without food. They don’t seem to have the will power to do as the religion of Islam asks them to do; to fast during the day for a month.

I am a great respecter of religions and their faiths and when I see hordes of Malays queuing up to buy breakfast and lunches at the kedai mamaks, I don’t know whether to be understanding or to give them a look of disapproval.

Seems like there is a great deal to be done by the Islamic authorities to convince these puasa-faulters to observe the requirement of Islam.

Obedient Wives Club - my friend has a FCP for a wife! Thanks to Dr. Rohaya!

There they sit, my good friend and his loving wife, at a table in a popular restaurant in town, chatting away happily. They have been married for thirty years now and they are still as loving as when they were newly married. Quickly, the words of the Malaysian OWC’s vice-president, Dr. Rohaya Mohamad came into my mind. Could it be that the reason why they are still together and loving was because his wife had been a FCP to him? If you are thinking that the acronyms, OWC stands for Oil Wholesaling Countries and FCP for Football Club of Penang you are wrong. He he! OWC is the contraction of Obedient Wives Club which came into prominent news last month. FCP? Well, ask Dr.Rohaya Mohamad, she should know. She was the one who said women should serve their husband as a FCP or better so that the husband won’t look for other women.

More on OWC. It was formed by Global Ikhwan, a Malaysian business firm dealing in household materials and the miscellaneous. Global Ikhwan is said to have had dealings with the banned Al-Arqam Islamic group previously. The club was launched in Rawang, Selangor on Saturday June 4 2011. In Malaysia its founder member is Dr. Rohaya Mohamad. OWC has branches now in Jordan, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore. It says wives should take more than good care of their husbands (this is putting it mildly) to prevent them from straying adding that its concepts are based on the edicts of Islam.

To my friend in the restaurant, “sorry friend, you have a got a FCP there with you!” Well, I am just saying that in my mind, mind you. Can I say to him directly that he got a FCP for a wife? Of course not! He would kill me! Mmmm… that FCP word again! Quick, rush to Dr.Rohaya. She will tell you more! Ah, never mind! FCP stands for 'First Class Prostitute'. Sorry! Not my words. That's Rohaya's.

The queen is your neighbor

Once upon a time, long long ago and far far away, in a nation called Britain, there lived a girl called Catherine Elizabeth Middleton. She was the daughter of a simple man, who had worked as a flight dispatcher for an airline, and then became an owner of a successful mail order company called, Party Pieces. The company sold party supplies and decorations, and was worth millions of dollars. (Not a simple man, you say?) and the man had no notion that his daughter would one day become the queen of that nation. 

Well, you know what I am talking about, don’t you? Catherine Middleton, a graduate of the University of St Andrews, Scotland, married Prince William of Wales on Friday, April 29 2011 at 11am GMT, and they became the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, and future king and queen. 

Ha ha! I just had a strong desire to start off on Kate this way. Reading a lot of fairy tales when I was young had made me come to this! 

Oops, here am I now; calling the future British queen, simply Kate, as though she is living next door! Well, this is what the Internet does to you. Reading and watching news about people who interest you, make you feel closer to you, than they really are.

Statutory Declarations - documents of respect

Raja Petra Kamarudin, no more fondly called RPK, has lost his credibility in my eyes, the moment he made a U-turn by saying that the Statutory Declaration that he made involving Dato’ Sri Najib and his wife, in the murder of the Mongolian model, Altantuya, was not true.

He may give a thousand and one excuses, like he was made to believe that the couple was involved, or, maybe, like he was, there, at the place of the crime, personally, and two people looked like them but not them or, perhaps, like he had a strong vision in his sleep that the couple were involved, and only now he realized that, all along, it had been a bad dream. The fact of the matter is that, he had taken for granted, the making of a somber and an oath-taken document, such as a Statutory Declaration, and had been loosely exhibiting more than one such document in his online portal, Malaysia Today. He should have been very careful and conscious of the consequences before going ahead with Statutory Declarations.

I think an apology to his readers, like me, and an assurance that in future no such Statutory Declarations would be made, just to prove some points, should be coming out from him. However, prior to that, there is still one more final Statuary Declaration for him to make; one to nullify the earlier Statutory Declaration that incriminated the first couple! This is because a Statutory Declaration will always outweigh any word of mouth. Just ask PI Bala!

Having said that, I hope RPK won’t be known as 'a man of Statutory Declarations'!