RAMBLE AND BABBLE NO 14: RAISE A RED FLAG FOR WINE SNOBS

Image from “The New Yorker Book Of Wine Cartoons”

Published by Mukulmanku, ON September 12, 2023, https://wineglitz.in/contact/

There are certainly many wine ( food, fashion, car) snobs. It’s a boast of knowledge, possession and values. However, in their whining, you see through them, and the readers either pick what they wish to learn, or ignore. We have choices, within our comfort zones. I prefer to sip my wine with friends. There is then no occasion to inflate the ego. In the calmed state, good to surrender the ego, to undress the burden of daily living. It is therefore not how much one consumes, or the cost of wine. The anti oxidant for the body, mind and spirit. Cheers for posting!

This was what I wrote on “my prompt” on the 12th September, 2023 . The above received many responses. Though many Malaysians have read my poetry over the years, there are hardly any interactions . I have decided to reverse the order of writing, prose first, then verse.

LIFE DISTILLATE (HAIKU/SENRYU)

life distil the best

love double distillation

brew bitterness off

(From : Healing Haiku & Senryu Dr. Lim Keng Huat, Wonkywizard)

BINGING ALONE IN A MOON-LIT NIGHT (POEM TRANSLATION , TANG DYNASTY POET LI BAI)

Among the flowers, there’s a pot of wine.

I binge alone in absence of friends and relate.

Raising my cup, propose a toast to the moon.

Its image and my shadow complete a trinity.

They are oblivious to my drunken pleasure.

The shadows tango with the body.

We are transient partners.

We seek instant gratification.

Whenever I sing, the moon stays motionless.

Whenever I dance, the shadows tumble on one another.

In regaining awareness, the trio commutes delight.

They part company only when intoxicated.

We hope to foster eternal bonds.

And seek unforgettable communion in timeless galaxies.

(Flickering Flame: poetic Echoes by Dr. K. H Lim, Wonky wizard. Trafford. Publication)

RAMBLE AND BABBLE 13: “ SORRY-AA” DR. M

RAMBLE AND BABBLE 13: “ SORRY-AA” DR. M

My kindergarten granddaughter was heard telling her siblings, “Malaysians are funny. They keep saying “sorry-aa” to one another many times. Initially, I thought she was very observant for her age, albeit a little cheeky, in the way she vocalised it. This was not until I read about Dr. M (our PM for donkey years) open apology to the nation for his misdeeds to the nation and people. Annuar’s daughter accepted the senior apology on behalf of his father, who had been imprisoned for crimes only “god knows”. I think the young politician has misunderstood Dr. M’s intention.

 

Apology does not equate with “I am sorry”. Feeling “sorry”, sore or sad, is not in the doctor’s marrow or blood; it’s pride that can do no wrong; whether it is currency or tin trading, sodomy charges or racial coding. Dr. M’s apology (apo: meaning away; logy: meaning speech) was never an admission of wrong doing, fault or guilt. We have not read the conditional “if”: only if we found it wrong – and it’s you, not him that should feel sored about it.  Perhaps he has learned from the Japanese in his “Look East Policies”.  The Japanese bowed very low, umpteen times, but would never feel “sorry” about the massacre, or even admit it ever happened. It must be Chinese hallucination to accuse such polite people for the heinous crime committed.

 

Politics aside, it’s a good tradition to begin a year with a sincere “sorry” from the heart; as a human being. We can’t jump over that hurdle at all, what more to expect.

 

RAMBLE AND BABBLE 12

RAMBLE AND BABBLE 12

We shall produce Nobel Prize winners en masse in the near future.  That is the dream of the dean of Malaysian National University. It was a very good wild dream, but uncertain whether or not he had soiled the bed sheets. In this country they took sperm culture on imagined mattress and orifices.

The Education Minister echoed his enthusiasm, in claiming that our standard of education was at par with the best in the Advanced Western World. Indeed, if it was true, for University of Malaya ranked 151 out of 200 in 2015; it was 167 in 2014. Well it’s an improvement, sufficient to cause dizziness.  His reason was many foreigners had chosen to enroll in our institutions of higher learning. Actually it comprised only about 10% of our varsity enrolment. Many came here because English was the medium of instruction; fees were cheaper and there were twinning opportunities with some famous partners. What was not mentioned was the country was also a place for easy springboard to another land and easy target for crime operators.  The strange thing was our own graduates were generally not efficient in English, and the same applied to many of their lecturers. Anyway what they would learn in this country was the measures and counter measures on corruption practices here, and the ways to go around the market in courthouses, hooded or unhooded. We also boast about our multiculturalism, but sooner even tourists will find out that it is a strange bi modal society, quite dislocated and unconnected in many domains and yet connected in ways that are often racial.

I tuned in the media last night, hoping to get some breakthrough news from Australia. How the hack our prisoner could swim or fly there was anybody’s guess.  Australian tax payers had to pay for this new guest, who read Shakespeare there, to say or not to say, what might be the offer and the motivation.  Anyway these are heresy, but the Aussies are human rights protectors, except to their own aborigines.

In a lighter note, with inflation and increased cost of living, attention has been focused on the jewelries and holidays our VIPs and their spouses are wearing. If they were imitations, there would not be any public cry, in the context that our lady was admonishing the citizens to be frugal in spending.  If we could have someone liked President Si, I think, all our tigers would be gone, except the flies in our toilets.  Well one fly has flown down under, with or without passport.