Yoga Ban

What is yoga? The Indians started it, some Buddhist and Taoist monks practice it. It is simply a form of body exercise. Twisting your legs, hands and body here and there until it is hard to disentangle them. You can sleep upside down and towards the later stage when you begin to embrace mediation, you can fly like David Copperfield. No joke, yogis when they reach a high level of consciousness can experience astral travel and body lightness.

The National Fatwa Council prohibits Muslims from practicing it. Their reasons are “yoga had been practiced by the Hindu community for thousands of years and incorporated physical movements, religious elements together with chants and worshipping, with the aim of being one with God”.

Some of our leaders rejected the ban as long as it does not deviate Muslims from their religion. Muslims from Singapore and Egypt are prohibited from practicing yoga but the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) is not against it.

If a yoga practitioner chants “God help me, God protect me” as she does a difficult posture, I do not think it “is a step towards erosion of one’s faith in the religion”.

Somali Pirates

I read about pirates from the Mill & Boons and Harlequin romance paper packs. Sons of English lords and Ottoman sultans, they were the outcasts of society. Undeniably handsome, dangerously irresistible and as the story unfolded, they possessed golden hearts like Robin Hood. They usually ravished the heroines and ended up seducing them and lived happily ever after. So sentimental, so touching, just stories, woven by romantic writers to steer us from reality.

Still equally exciting are the pirates from the movies “Pirates of the Caribbean ” and not forgetting the comical & hateful pirates from “Hook”. When I leave all these fantasies behind and drifted back to the real world, I now have the Somalis pirates to fill my mind. What a bad dream to wake up from.

Their faces shining charcoal-dark. You can’t figure out their features near or far. They look all alike. They are no rakish individuals with flowing cloaks and flashy swords. In their mercenary uniforms with those evil machine guns, they are threatening.

Coming from a world with no meals menu, a glass of milk is probably a luxury. Fasting is a daily ritual and killing for survival is their daily agenda.

My paperpacks pirates would be delighted with every cargo they seized. They enjoyed them, they used them and they sold them. But not these Somalis. They have a difficult time finding a buyer for the goods they hijacked. So they only captured ships that carried commodities they can exploit like weapons, oil & humans. These they further apply to extort money from the victims’ home-country.

Did the Bible tell us that suicide killers and pirates are part of our end-time tormentors? Who’s next?

Chinese Calligraphy

Nobody can beat me when it comes to Chinese calligraphy. I got excellent marks for it! First I outlined the character I wanted to write. Then paint over it.

And Mrs Ho, my Chinese teacher never realized it. She gave me A+ for every homework I passed up. I did not think it was not cheating, it was just I never knew the correct way to write. Until one day, we were required to write in class. She came and stood besides me. She corrected me and till today Chinese calligraphy is no fun anymore. I still prefer my old method.

Some of my classmates had different style of their own. They placed a fresh page over the samples and traced them. No wonder they finished their homework so fast and I had to spend hours outlining and painting mine to perfection.

This is how Banana Chinese learned their Mandarin. No wonder the Chinese educated people called us “1/2 bucket of water”. But I am not insulted by what they called me. For I am bless with two worlds and I understand life better this way.

The Big Boss

The big boss from Bremen visited us quarterly. As usual he never stays long, only in the morning. After lunch he would leave for the airport to other branches in the Asia Pacific region.

Herr Pieter Khulman is many heads above me. He is huge, probably thrice my size. He has piercing eyes and a chubby, jovial face. He reminds me of Shrek. Maybe due to his size, he walks slowly, swaying from side to side like a pendulum. Observing him, one would think he is afraid the ground he trod on is paved with delicate flowers and he is trying to avoid stepping on them.

We are not encouraged to carry a conversation with him for he does not stop long for us to do so. A normal greeting, “Good Morning”, a nod or a smile is sufficient enough. Managers do not have the chance to conduct a one to one meeting with him. Communications are often held in the presence of our GM.

With no interactions with the staff, he does not know exactly what happens in the office. So why does he bothers to visit us? Anyway he does not have the chance to speak to any of the managers for they were told to ‘disappear’ whenever he visits.

Change we need

The world welcomes President Barrack Obama. The first black President of the United States. God bless him, guide him and protect him as he serves his term in office.

Personally I prefer him to a Republican like McCain. Republicans are more stringent and aggressive in their approach to political policies and their reactions to people's sensitivities are bordered on racial supremacy.

We will expect a more peace-loving American government after today.

Dachau, the graveyard without the tombstones

It was wet the day we visited Dachau. The ground was scattered with puddles of water. Apparently before our arrival it had rained. In the sky grey clouds were inching slowing toward each other to fall again at a later time. That might be why the weather was so bleak.

Dachau, the first of the many concentration camps Hitler built to torture people he hated. A place everyone during his reign feared to go. Except for a lucky few all who filed through the black gate with the word “Arbeit Macht Frei” never came out alive. Work never set them free.

The compound is huge. We had to walk quite a distance to get to the barracks which were converted to exhibition halls. Some of the buildings had been torn down and what left were their cemented floors. Where there were no sands, small white pebbles were spread over the surface of the grounds.

The brochures obtained there revealed that Dachau was established to house political prisoners which half were Jews. The photographs displayed on the display panels revealed the harsh treatments inmates received during detention. Reading materials were lengthy and due to time constraint I did not pause long enough to finish a paragraph. Flipping through the pages, a glimpse of the images was sufficient. So my knowledge of what actually happened in Dachau was shallow.

The living quarters were particularly gloomy. The wooden bunks solid and strong. The washroom area is nothing to boast about. And the execution chamber with the torturing devices.

With so few visitors that day , the place was awfully quiet. Respecting the dead, I dared not raised my voice to speak aloud. Our conversations were in whispers. With so many lives lost here no wonder the atmosphere feel so eerie. I expected to hear the souls of the inmates crying for release, moans of pain after being tortured or the weak mumblings of the hungry. All these made me sneak from room to room like a thief, glancing around me to see whether I chanced upon a specter.

I was happy to leave the last exhibition hall. If we part with a small token, we could help towards the maintenance costs and come home with some reading materials. Our tour guide, David advised we relieved ourselves before leaving. Dutifully we lined up at the washroom to follow his instruction.

By road travel, Dachau is approximately 13 miles (22 km) from Munich. As the Bavarians were broadening their roads it was a long journey back to our hotel.

Melamine a competitive product

Melamine in milk? Hey, how can that be? I could not believe it. Melamine is plastic used for manufacturing my plates and bowls! Yes, silly you are not hallucinating. They grind it, they mix it in your milk and you drink it. Simple and clever.

This problem created by the greed of the Chinese milk producers has really caused havoc to our lives. So much inconveniences and losses to manufacturers, despair to sellers and fear to consumers.

I am sure I have stored some melamine in my body system besides other alien substances since I am one who consumes quite a substantial amount of Chinese products. I champion their pharmaceutical and herbal products. I eat their fruits and vegetables. I swallow anything manufactured in China. And look what they have done to me. Disappointment, distrust and vengeful anger crept into me each day. However I can only blast off helpless air. What is done is done. Chinese are Chinese, devilishly resourceful, full of mischievous ideas and endless daring monkey business.

My initial response to the melamine contamination is “we are not importing any dairy products from China, we are safe”. But on scrutinizing closer it is more than that. All products that contain milk or by-products of milk which are hidden as raw materials of consumer products imported directly or indirectly from China are affected.

Although our powdered creamer was sourced from Holland, we are still not satisfied whether they are indirectly milked from Chinese cows. A letter from our supplier’s supplier is insufficient to rest our doubtful mind. We insisted our supplier produce a lab report for total clearance that our Nigella Mineral Coffee is safe for human consumption since this global milk-scare has caused great concern for all. They sent our product to a local laboratory for product testing and the result is void of melamine. We are still waiting for the release of the document and when our distributors demanded a proof we can produce the lab certificate for assurance.

To stay competitive you have to source for competitive raw materials. Melamine is a competitive raw-mat that produces results by leveling up your protein nutritional value.