Monday, January 23, 2012

A Rainy Chinese New Year, a Vespa Scooter and Propaganda News - Pictures tell stories

About a month ago, I mentioned that the hot dry season is coming. Well, it lasted for a week  at most,
then the rain came back with a vengeance, causing flash floods in a number of neighbourhoods
in my city. So note to readers: Don't use this almanac as a weather blog. 
I saw this colourful scooter yesterday morning. It was emblazoned with the tricolours
of the Italian flag, which of course makes sense since the scooter is the Italian-made Vespa.
I was walking on my way to buy breakfast.
I read this Flying McCoy cartoon today in the daily Sun newspaper. I think it is a little funny because
I suspect that most people have kinda made up their minds that 99.99 % of newspapers in the world
all serve some vested interests or other. Fox News is flayed by liberal and progressives as the un-News
television news network. But to some degree, EVERYONE has an agenda, be it a government television
network, a privately-owned news organisation, a non-governmental group or even a blog. It is not wrong
to have an agenda, the important question is whether your agenda is to promote understanding or hate,
circumspection or hubris, peace or violence, unity or division?
Update: On Chinese New Year holidays, and especially on the first couple of days, almost 99% of
Chinese restaurants the country over would be closed, which means brisk business for Indian, Indian Muslimand Malay eateries everywhere. We arrived for brunch and found a vast crowd of humanitytrying to get sitting in this famous Indian banana-leaf restaurant (Raju's) in the leafy neighbourhoodoff Jalan Gasing. They were all here - Malays, Indians, Eurasians, Caucasians and even a smattering of Chinese, taking a break perhaps from the festivities at home.
Have a good Monday, sunshine. It is a public holiday here in Malaysia, being the Chinese New Year. We have many, many, many public holidays. Gong Xi Fa Chai! 

wa min Allah at-taufiq

Hate has no place in Islam
Love will show the Way

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