Bull Hunt 2009

The Champions of Bull Hunt 2009. From left, Kok Seng (organiser), VK Chong, Razif, Alex (CoC), Teoh, Mawar. That guy (in red) yang beria-ia handling the winners' hamper is Sharin. I honestly don't know what he's doing in this picture!

From left: Goh Teck Koon, Venka, Jayaram and Alex.

Dinner shortly before the answer & prize presentation.

Fellowship while waiting for the answer & prize presentation.

Commotion during the pairing of teams.

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Holy cow! What a hunt!

The Bull Hunt 2009 must be the toughest motorised hunt I’ve ever joined so far. A tradition established by those freak hunters in conjunction with the Chinese New Year celebration. The CoC for this year, Alex Hoh, was in the mood to punish us all with his questions—he threw in all sorts of interesting dishes including salads, multiple semicolons, the Kepala Batas MP, and most of us became blind because we had to deal with masturbation too!

Immediately after the answer presentation, the organizer, Kok Seng, turned to me to ask if the questions were OK. With everyone staring at me, I had no choice but to give my approval. But of course I would really disappoint all my fans if I did not comment at least on some of the interesting questions.

I found Alex’s style somewhat different from the other grandmasters in that although he’s without doubt a celebrated cryptic ace, he threw in plenty of extra words which had nothing to do with the intended answers—they were included in the questions for the sole purpose of confusing the solvers. In some cases, those words had something to do with the storyline of the questions, but did not really add any value in assisting the solvers to arrive at the answers.

Alex also had an interesting tendency to repeat a particular format in his questions. Several of them boiled down to:

It’s not X but Y;

Or,

It may be X but Y is…

These are some of the questions:

Q11) Vehicle journeys back not in kilometres but in miles.

Q12) This is not a financial institution but margin trading is available here.

Q15) No red card but only a caution when it comes to a broken shin.

Consider the following question which also adopted the above style:

Q8) This Kepala Batas Member of Parliament may be sitting in the cabinet but isn’t aligned to any political party.

Of which at least 30% to 40% of the words in it were not necessary. But I will come to the specific discussions in separate threads later.

When compared to Jayaram’s and Margaret’s questions, I prefer theirs. They are more true to the cryptic rules in their questions. They hardly ever include words which do not assist in arriving at the intended answers.

Whenever I set hunt questions, I challenge myself to be economical on the words I use in the questions. Apart from connecting words for the purpose of satisfying grammatical requirements, e.g. the, is, are, a etc, most, if not all, of the words I use in my questions are there because they are necessary to be there. Those are the words I use to give instructions to the solvers on how to play with the letters to arrive at the answers; but also at the same time, I also use those very same words to deceive the solvers. I try my best not to include “useless” words which have nothing to contribute in arriving at the answers.

To be fair to Alex, however, it must be emphasised that the Chinese New Year hunts are designed as “no holds barred” outings, and the setter is expected to “hit bellow the belt” to a certain extent. Therefore it is possible that if Alex were to set an open hunt, he might not adopt a similar approach as that adopted in his Bull Hunt questions.

The team members were selected randomly by means of drawing cards, and I ended up with Sharin, Eng Siang and Rahmah. I was quite surprised that we quickly blended in well with each other. Exchange of ideas was also quite natural and free-flow. And there were plenty of occasions where we laughed out loud when someone came up with amusingly far-fetched ideas.

Sharin, who I’d consider the ad-hoc team leader for our team set a modest target of answering only 10 questions—a target which proved to be very realistic in the end. For the most part of the hunt, we struggled to achieve that goal. And by the time we passed the half-way point of the hunt, we were fairly alarmed that we might not even achieve that embarrassing target. Thankfully, however, we were able to come up with some brilliant analysis and barely conquered the 10 questions.

In the end, only 2 teams passed (more than 50% score) in the Bull Hunt. But the scores aside, I must say that we had lots of fun. I’m really glad that decided to join this hunt, and I am looking forward to the next one!

Perak PKR Checkmated?

"Just as Barisan Nasional had accepted the results of last year’s general election, Pakatan Rakyat must now accept a new government in Perak."

—Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi

Except that the Barisan Nasional lost Perak through the election process, whereas Pakatan Rakyat lost it through the defections of allegedly corrupt politicians.

It is not, however, a surprising thing for us Sabahans—we've all experienced it a little over 10 years ago. And many of us, seeing the slim majority held by the Pakatan in Perak, knew that it was just a matter of time before Barisan, sooner or later, gets back into the driver's seat.

Money talks; bullshit walks.

But of course according to the Deputy Prime Minister, the defectors joined Barisan on their own accord—no inducements have been offered to them.

Inducements or not, it seems a bit cheap to seize control by means of defections, as opposed to the election process. And in order to be back in control, Barisan had no choice but to accept defectors who are still up for trial to defend themselves against corruption charges, the bribes of which were in the forms of sexual gifts. Now that these people are in the Barisan camp, it remains to be seen whether they will eventually see a day in court, let alone the prison.

Now this thing about defections of elected representatives is a big thing. Obviously, Barisan saw that coming. If they had a choice it would have been ideal to regain control of Perak without relying on the defectors. But it's been almost a year since the General Election of 2008. Trying to force a fresh election in Perak did not seem to be a promising strategy based on the results of several by-elections which have since taken place in other areas after the General Election.

Therefore, the only logical way to play the game was by means of defections. But first the preparation of an excuse—the setting up of the defection gambit. A scapegoat from Barisan shall first "defect" to the Pakatan. The Pakatan, in its excitement, fell for the trap. That's what can happen when one fails to think before he leaps. And then a few days after the scapegoat's dramatic announcement, he defected back to Barisan together with some others, thus tipping the scale in favour of the Barisan.

Barisan is now in a position to say that if Pakatan can accept defectors, so can Barisan; that it was Pakatan who started it.

And so, the Perak Pakatan is checkmated...

Or is it really the end of the game yet?

A Different Animal

I have in the past expressed my disgust on men who rape very young girls; even babies. Speaking from a man's point of view, I can understand if a man finds a sexy woman wearing revealing clothes too inviting. It is debatable if it's because of such "provocation" that the man fails to control his natural instinct and acts like an animal.

But I can't understand the attraction in very young girls—they don't have the built, shape and looks. Yet every now and then we hear crazy news of very young girls getting raped. I can only guess that it must be a case of mental illness on the part of the rapists.

Never mind the child rapists; now we have granny rapists too. I'm trying to visualize raping a 62-year old woman. Now what is frickin' wrong with these people? Of all the targets, why the granny? A momentary pleasure—if it was pleasure at all—and now he's in court with a possible 20 years behind bars and liable to be caned under Section 376(1) of the Penal Code.

I really hope that it was worth it, sucker!

Unintentional

Imagine that you are a political party; and although you claim that you are a "multi-racial" party, you are also known to represent a specific race in Malaysia.

A festive celebration for that race is coming up soon; you plan to celebrate by throwing a party and inviting your supporters. However, because of the expected crowd, you need a sizeable venue to accommodate your guests. So you apply to the City Hall to use one of their halls for the event. The City Hall replies with an approval; you are happy and proceed with all the necessary chores—you print circulars and go down to the ground to meet the people and invite them personally; you make the announcements through the papers; you put up billboards by the roadsides too. Everything is going fine; people are anticipating the event.

Then imagine that at the eleventh hour the approval is cancelled by the City Hall. The billboards you put up, which are paid for, are also taken down. There is hardly any time to rearrange for an alternative venue for the celebration. All the invitations are out; announcements made. Your celebration party is screwed! Obviously, it doesn't look good on your reputation.

And what is the reason for the cancellation of the approval? Well, according to the Mayor, it's because of "unintentional but due to a technicality of the matter".

Now imagine that you are a component party of the ruling Barisan Nasional; and that you're hosting the celebration for Hari Raya. Just imagine what kind of trouble the City Hall folks would be in. Some people would probably shit in their pants.

But thankfully, you are just an insignificant DAP trying to celebrate the Chinese New Year with your supporters. So the City Hall folks need not lose sleep over the matter. We are after all just human, we unintentionally make mistakes on technical grounds.

Clear Conscience

"We urge all Muslims to renounce membership in the Rotary Club and the Lions Club. Otherwise they can consider themselves infidels."

—Atian Ali Mohammad Da'i

Many people don't know what is Rotary all about. Most of them have some vague idea of our charitible existence. They know us simply as fund raisers to help the needy—and that is all we do.

But truth be told, we are much more than just charitible engines. To write a couple of hundred words in an attempt to describe our purpose will not do justice to Rotary. So I will just mention a few here in the hope that there is a better understanding of our organisation.

As a whole, we seek to make the world a better place by forstering friendship—the fellowship amongst members is a unique feature of the Rotary Clubs all over the world. People from numerous backgrounds work together for a better world. Rotarians go out of their ways to contribute their time and efforts. They do all those without monetary returns.

We raise funds and then help to build hostels for the children in the interiors. We brave floods to deliver food supplies to the kampong folks. We sponsor young students as Interactors and train them to be leaders and instill the spirit of wanting to help others. We carry out community services—gotong royong, tree-planting to rehabilitate the environment, and installing gravity-fed water to several villages, to name just a few.

Globally, we've done our part inter alia in polio eradication. We have contributed over US$600 million, leading to the inoculation of more than two billion of the world's children. Over the years, we have done so many good things for humanity.

It is therefore somewhat heart-breaking when some people hurl baseless accusations upon us—that we have a different agenda instead. I don't know how or why these people arrived at such a conclusion.

I can only speak for myself—and for other Rotarians, I'm sure—that I am proud to be a Rotarian. For whatever it's worth, I have a clear conscience, and I know that my fellow Rotarians and I will continue with our noble cause.

Credit Card—Late Payment Charge

Some time during the second half of 2005, a staff of AmBank came to our office to promote their credit cards. The cards were offered on the basis of "free for life" and with some kind of benefits under "RealRewards Programme". I had at that time several credit cards from other banks, but because I wanted to support a friend, I signed up for the AmBank Mastercard anyway. The selling points of "free for life" and "RealRewards" had no effect on me at all; and up to now, I still don't really know what's the "RealRewards" all about.

After I received my Ambank Mastercard, I've been using it quite regularly—again, for the sake of supporting a friend. I don't have an account with Ambank, but since they're located on the ground floor of the building wherein my office is located, there's never been a problem as far as payments of bills are concerned.

The other 2 credit cards I'm using actively are those of HSBC and Alliance Bank. But because I have existing accounts in those banks, I need not worry about payments of bills, as I've given written instructions to simply deduct the amounts due from my accounts. I have this phobia with late payments, no matter how small the outstanding amounts are. This is particularly so because I was told that all the banks are able to trace through a centralised computer system on any bad records by anyone throughout the nation. A black mark might lead to some difficulties when and if I ever apply for a loan from any other banks in the future.

Now as a habit, whenever I settle the AmBank Mastercard bills, I'd usually pay a little extra than what's due—I'm not bothered with the exact amount; I just pay a round figure. As long as it's a bit more, then I am safe.

Unfortunately, during the festive season in December, I totally forgot—for the first time, ever—to settle my AmBank Mastercard bill. I did not charge the card for that month, but there was the AirAsia insurance (RM24.00) which is automatically charged to the card on a monthly basis. As a result, there was a net charge of RM16.78.

A couple of days ago, I received the latest AmBank Mastercard bill and was surprised to find a RM10.00 late payment charge because of that outstanding RM16.78. How embarrassing! Over a period of a little over 3 years, I've only charged perhaps around RM40,000 to the card. I still have a big chunk of the so-called "RealRewards" points, which I never bothered to understand up to now. I can only guess that it's something which I can claim, perhaps for merchandise or services and other benefits.

Well, I don't really need the AmBank Mastercard anyway. So just shortly ago, I went downstairs to AmBank to settle the bill and cancel the card at the same time. I was given to understand that it would take about 3 working days for the cancellation process. I hope when and if I apply for a loan in the future, my application won't be rejected on the gounds of this miserable RM10 late payment charge.

Fitting Into The Shoes Of Lara Croft

I used to be a big fan of the video game, Tomb Raider, featuring the role-playing character, Lara Croft. I sort of accidentally found the game when I bought the first Playstation console. The first version of the Tomb Raider series was very crude—the graphics were nowhere close to what they are today. But one was still able to make out the intention of Lara's creator—that Lara was to be a very sexy archeologist. Some years later, the graphics have improved substantially, and the above is an illustration of Lara Croft.


And this is another view of Lara in an acrobatic maneuver.


A few years after the launch of the Tomb Raider video game, it was adapted into a movie, and the role was acted by none other than the godsend Angelina Jolie. Before the Tomb Raider movie, I must admit that I didn't really know Angelina Jolie. I've read about her a couple of times, but I did not know what she looked like back then. When I saw the movie, I was very impressed with Jolie. In my opinion, she fitted into the shoes of Lara Croft the video game character perfectly. She's sexy—pretty, long legs and all that. That first Tomb Raider movie became a huge success, and soon after that another sequence followed, although apparently not as successful as the first one.

Those were the only two Tomb Raider movies up to now. Then last week there was a stir amongst the Tomb Raider fans when rumours had it that a new Tomb Raider movie is in the pipeline. However, Angelina Jolie will not be in it. Instead, the Lara Croft character will be acted by Megan Fox.


And again, I don't really know Megan Fox. Apparently she's been famous for a while now, but I only know her from the movie, Transformers. In that movie I saw her as a beautiful and sexy girl.


Being a die-hard Tomb Raider fan, I don't really favour Megan Fox as Lara Croft. I can't see her fitting into the shoes of Lara Croft. For one thing, I think she's too young for that character. But of course the story teller can easily make a movie of a young Lara Croft. The other reason I'm against Megan Fox is, although she's a very sexy woman, somehow I think her legs are just too short for the Lara Croft of the video game. Perhaps the many photographers are not doing justice to Megan Fox—maybe the angle of the shots had resulted in short-looking legs, I don't know.

Thankfully, however, subsequently to those wide-spread rumours, it's now been confirmed that Fox isn't involved in the up-coming Tomb Raider movie after all. Maybe it's still possible that Fox will be chosen in the end, but if it's not her, I wonder who's gonna be the next Lara Croft.