Lobo's Lessons

Image credit here . I used to always think it was strange that Dad was never able to sit through a whole movie with us when we were growing up. He would perhaps start watching one with us, and leave after about 30 minutes, to do whatever it was that he would rather be doing. That is, until I found myself challenged trying to finish a whole movie myself, without feeling the urge to hit the fast-forward button, at times, or even getting up and going to my study to do something else that was more productive. I can't remember exactly when I started behaving this way, but I think it could have started sometime during my PhD. Unless it was a movie that I really wanted to watch (and not my children), then I found that it was almost impossible to sit through the whole thing. Things that I normally found more engaging/pressing/interesting than watching through a whole movie: The Internet. Yes. That's right. Even though it was little more than scrolling through my Facebook ...

Photo credit here The 22nd of August was day of mourning for the whole nation. Malaysians from every walk of life gave a minute of silence for the dead as their earthly remains were transported from the coldness of foreign shores to the warmth of the embrace of their Ibu Pertiwi, their Earth Mother.  And yet, hardly a day had gone by when a headline rudely splashed across my Facebook newsfeed:  “PKR leader calls National Mourning Day an excessive affair”, which immediately raised my ire out of the sheer audacity and disrespect toward the dead, and toward a nation in mourning. How dare this upstart politician use this tragedy as a grounds to bash the government? Has he no decency? Has he no respect? I straight away clicked on the link to find out more about this person.  And I was surprised. This was no ordinary politician. He was a retired Admiral of the Malaysian Armed Forces, someone who had dedicated his life to the preservation of our nation’s well...