Election buntings

Everywhere election posters, buntings and banners are making their presence felt. Along the road where I live, they are strung up high and low on trees, lamp posts and anything that can serve as a tying point.

My teenagers asked me, “What use are these banners and buntings? Will people vote for them based on the banners and buntings alone?”

Actually, they’ve got a point. But I said, “They’re out there to persuade fence sitters to vote for them.”

Yes, what’s the use of all those buntings showing the party logo? At least the banners with the candidates’ face and name serve a purpose : to tell constituents who is contesting where.

As it is, the exhibition paraphernalia seems to be good for :

1. showing which party has more money to splurge.

2. winning the poster war with their opponents.

3. wasting money.

Come election day on March 8, there will be party supporters outside the polling centre telling you to vote for their candidates. Kevin Cowherd, the Baltimore Sun’s columnist wrote this about the hot election going on in US now :

Here you are, walking into a polling place, seconds from casting your vote, and people are handing you campaign literature and shouting names of candidates, as if this is going to do any good.

Who’s going to be influenced by a pamphlet thrust at you at the last second?

Who takes one of those and thinks: “Well, I was going to vote for Obama. But it says here Senator Clinton will provide experienced leadership. So I guess I’ll vote for her instead.”

The presidential campaign has been going on now for what, 15 years?

If people don’t know the issues by now, or whom they’re going to vote for, then instead of handing them a pamphlet, you should smack them upside the head.

This is not like sitting down at a diner, thinking you’ll order a slice of apple pie, and then you get a glimpse of the nice, fluffy lemon-meringue pie in the glass case and change your mind at the last minute.

Substitute Obama and Clinton for say, BN’s Datuk Dr Lee Chong Meng and DAP’s Fong Kui Lun, the apple pie versus lemon-meringue pie for roti canai versus chee-cheong-fun, and you’ve got a Malaysian situation depicted.

We’re 8 days away from D-Day. I hope the election committee makes sure all the rubbish are cleared away properly after that.

Honk! in Spring

Popular is having a special promotion for 88 books and Honk! If You’re Malaysian is one of them. It’s priced at RM21.88 for a limited time only. That’s 24.5% off the regular price of RM29.00. Now’s a good time to buy it if you haven’t got it. Cepat, cepat, 2 more days only!

Bad taste

At the Big M

If you’re ordering McDonald’s delivery, please make sure you check your order before you send them away. Chances are you might be shortchanged. Recently I ordered 4 burgers for my children as hubby and I had a dinner to attend and I didn’t cook dinner (Sunday is the cook’s off-day). Only two burgers were delivered. We asked no. 1 to call up to complain but as written in their order sheet, calls for refunds will not be entertained. I have a feeling that dishonest workers are taking advantage of this clause to filch from customers. No more McDonald’s delivery. Or if we really have to use them, we’ll have to go through each item meticulously to make sure everything is in order.

At the small m

Last weekend we ate dinner at a mamak restaurant near our place. We’ve been there many times but service this time was a -1 on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being worst.

When we arrived, I indicated to a waiter that we need a table for six, as the long tables were all taken. No response. We found one ourselves by joining two tables. Then we waited for about 10 minutes for our order to be taken. At the mamak’s we shouldn’t have to wait for longer than 5 minutes.

When we finally managed to flag down a waiter, he insisted on taking the order of the next table where the diners had only just arrived.

“We came first,” we told him. After being instructed by another waiter to serve us first, he acquiesced.

As usual, no. 4 ordered roti bomb and we asked for this dish to be served first as she is the slowest eater among us. But Murphy’s Law always see to it that hers is the last dish to be served, including this time.

No. 2 ordered fried maggi mee without chilli. The noodles turned out spicy. This waiter has a hearing problem I think or maybe his mind was on other things. He had an absent look on his face, as if he wasn’t not quite there. We sent back the noodles and asked for one without chilli.

When I paid for the bill at the counter, I complained to the boss, a young man wearing a bright red shirt. He listened quietly, then he beckoned to the waiter who had served us. Another waiter joined in the fray and asked what was wrong. I repeated my complaints to him which he repeated to the offending waiter. I had no clue what they said to each other as their exchange was conducted in Tamil. In the end, I didn’t receive a word of apology from them or anything by way of explanation. I walked off in a huff. As I passed by our table, I felt like overturning all the plates of sauces and spitting on the table so they would have a messy table to clean. But civilized people don’t do such things, so I had to be content with just ‘plotting revenge’ in my mind.

We won’t come here again,” I told the kids.

Looking for Eh Poh Nim?

Each time my article runs in The Star’s Mind Our English page, this blog experiences a spike in hits.  My url appears under the article, both in the paper and online version.  In the plug, I wrote that other Eh Poh Nim stories are available here.

I have recently removed all Eh Poh Nim stories from this blog but you can still read the more recent ones at The Star, the latest being yesterday’s piece, Kicking Up A Stink Over Junk.  This is because I’m in the midst of compiling the articles into a book and I don’t want to jeopardize my chances with publishers by offering the stories online.  One of my book editors thinks that this is a wise move.

I’m still scouting for prospective publishers, so if you ask me when the book will be out, my guess is as good as yours.

Inspiration from Tom Clancy

When I read something inspiring, I like to jot them down.  The jottings end up in little notepads here and there.  I think it’s a good idea to record them here so they don’t go missing.  Here’s something from Tom Clancy.  If I remember correctly, I got this information from the January 2001 issue of Writers Digest.

Suspense is achieved by information control. What you know, what the readers know, what the characters know : balance these properly and you get suspense.

Keep at it.  The one talent indispensable to a writer is persistence. You must write the book, else there is no book.  It will not finish itself.  Do not try to commit art.  Just tell the damned story.  If it is entertaining, people will read it, and the objective of writing is to be read.