Of Beauty Queens and Pirates (2009)

 JULY 25 — Another week rushes inevitably by heading us towards the fasting month. We speed towards fasting days and feasting nights, with thoughts, which should be on more ethical matters, spent thinking of the treats to come at the break of fast. Celebrating 100 days of the new boss’s reign, the nation ticks a “good work, but could do better” box on his report card and moves right along looking forward to learning Maths and Science in Malay, rather than in English. We shall see how, exactly, this benefits Malaysia’s students, later, when they become graduands. But, at least, according to one parliamentarian, they will not now end up as maids. This, apparently centennial, week appears stigmatised by also being a seemingly slightly salacious week. Though protests and perturbation are all around us, I am trying, desperately, not to make mention of anyone’s rear end, bottom or derriere; for it is an ostensibly never-ending fairytale concerning what did, or did not, happen to one man’s posterior. The story of one damp squib politicians’ innocence, or guilt, has become passé, scarcely worthy of the millions of ringgit spent on the trials and tribulations. But I did manage to see one interesting snippet, this week, concerning the stripping of one Miss Kum (an unfortunate name) of her beauty title of Miss Singapore. It seems that Miss Body Beautiful and Miss Personality posed with objects of a phallic nature and a rubber doll, for some risqué photos which were subsequently distributed over the internet. The photos are innocent enough; some taken at a Halloween party, others at a 21st birthday, and would barely raise a spiced titter from the most decent of people, let alone be considered offensive, or beauty pageant threatening. In the suggestive world of TV’s 30 Rock, or Desperate Housewives the photos would barely have raised an eyebrow. They are the photos of virtually any group of young people engaged in post alcohol consumption horse play, er without the horse. Well, if a girl can’t have her cake, eat it, and play with her dollies and sugar daddy too, what is this poor world coming to. It’s not as though Miss Kum was photographed girl on girl a la Miss America 1983, or caught snorting illegal substances, (allegedly) like Miss USA 2006 or having to resign due to pregnancy like Miss N.J. USA 2007. Other, bigger, celebrities, closer to home, have done much worse and seem to have had their actions condoned by scores of faithful fans and society at large, but then, it’s an unfair and unjust world we live in. As we are talking of piracy, but not of other women’s husbands; there is no apparent correlation between Malaysia’s first submarine, the KD Tunku Abdul Rahman, recently seen leaving France, and the importation of Apple’s new iPhone 3GS into Malaysia, though it is a remarkable coincidence. Vendors at Low Yat Plaza, Chow Kit and Petaling Street mobile phone venues were seen scratching their heads, in abject consternation. There is also no truth in the rumour that said submarine, along with its sister vessel the KD Tun Abdul Razak, are to be used as ferries to the proposed Disneyworld in Johor. Nor are they to be re-painted yellow as potential submersible homes, for aging Beatles fans, or painted red for display in Penang. While sailors in Lumut are no longer seen puffing on pipes, not even those aspiring to become Prince Namor (homo mermanus) the business of pipes still looms large in Perak, even decades after their disuse. Heritage buffs wish to cling onto the last few metres of pipeline, around Gopeng, Perak, erected by the Gopeng Tin Mining Company early in the 20th century . Enthusiasts claim artefact status for the pipeline, which is one of the few remaining reminders of the tin mining which made Gopeng, Perak and Malaya great. The private company, which now owns the pipeline, seeks financial redress should they be prevented from dismantling it and selling it off, possibly abroad, indicating that the Perak state should put that in their piece of pipe and smoke it. Though, of course, we hope that the company and state smoke the pipe of peace, eventually. In a bid to attract more international tourists into Perak, no doubt to view the last few metres of the old pipe, it has been suggested that tourists are poached from Penang, via a Perak Tourist Information and Promotion Centre. I’m just not quite sure what Penang Tourism will think of the idea of their most lucrative foreign tourists, being poached. There again maybe this is how Lumut sailors plan to use the new submarines – to transport tourists, secretly from Penang, when those submersible vessels are not being used by students in Alor Star, to navigate their flooded classrooms, that is. Elsewhere in the land named by Ptolemy as the Golden Chersonese, its environs and outlaying states, amidst the hot, steamy, luscious rainforests revellers gathered to play pipe and drum, guitar, Sape and the haunting vibes of gypsy folk music. The Rainforest Festival, a magnet equally to lovers of authentic music and to aging hippies, rolled into its twelfth year, adding the carousing sounds of questionable human melody to that already extant within nature’s forest. No doubt, as they gathered, tribes of man from shores distant and different, many were inclined to smoke their own brand of pipes, when not playing them, but few, I would have thought, would have arrived by submarine. It is doubtful whether the event was actually planned to succeed a certain gentleman’s hundredth day in office, but the festival was timely nevertheless and maybe even visited by former, present or indeed future beauty queens, with or without rubber dolls, oddly shaped cakes, imbibing copious amounts of intoxicating fluids and having their photos taken, by friends, for the world to view over that wonder of the internet. Still, it does take the mind off more political matters, the eternal dance of politicians, the showmanship and furore perhaps better suited to a festival.