July 11, 2009

Plantation Childhood

I really do not know what band group, Boney M was singing about in their 'Plantation Boy' song. Good and catchy number,though.

I was a plantation boy. Let me tell you something about life in the rubber estates before 1965.

Even though I was supposedly born in a General Hospital in the state capital,my childhood,as long as for 15 years,was spent in a dull,dreadful rubber plantation.


No, we do not own it. How we wish we did.My parents work in one. The plantation or as we called it a rubber estate (It later converted to an oil palm estate) then was owned by Harrisons and Crossfield of UK. My parents were paid wages to work there. They endeavoured and supported me through school and the university.

Let me tell you a little about life as a plantation boy.

The harsh realities.

Generally there is nothing much to do in a plantation but to toil. Low wages and dull work. Workers worked from dawn up to late afternoon and to evenings as well on rainy days.

My mother was a rubber tapper and she tapped rubber trees in the morning. When I got back from morning school, I would go to the plot of rubber trees she will tap the next day and clean the rubber cups and collect the dry rubber crumbs. During school breaks and the final year-end holidays, it only meant one more extra thing for me-to help her while she tap rubber trees (like tapping some trees as well) and to collect the latex and sent it to the weigh station to be weighed. After that, we washed the pails and went home. My mother will spend at least an afternoon or two sharpening her tapping knives with a round file.

Tapping days are really dreary. Believe me, on such days, you would wake up in the early hours sometime between 5.00 to 5.30 am. A quick breakfast of coffee and hard bread, and I was on my way. I either walked or cycled to the plot. With mosquitoes buzzing all round, I removed the dry rubber crumbs from the dangling ceramic or glass rubber cups as well as from the tapping tracks on the tree barks.

Every month, on a week-end, there was a film-show in the community hall. Except for an occasional Malay or Chinese film, we had mostly Tamil shows. My father was the projectionist. I guessed they pay him an allowance to do that.

Apart from shows in the hall, we also have companies like Nestle coming by and showing cowboy and indian English films in the open field with a white screen stand. They gave us free Milo drinks. On such days, we thought heaven was here.

For the estate workers, the other respite they had was cheap toddy-fermented coconut spirit. Drunkenness was normal in a plantation especially on pay-days.

I left plantation life when my parents sent me for my secondary education in Jasin.

Plantation days were hard days which I pray I will never return to.

Covet and Kill!

The Silence of the Lambs is certainly worth a re-visit on DVD.

It is a beautifully rendered movie encapsulating the use of psychology in the solving of serial murders. A bonus-the hauntingly crafted music score that follows you throughout the movie to evoke suspense amidst the mayhem.

I append from Wikipedia - the interesting story plot.

Promising FBI Academy student Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is pulled from her training at the FBI Training Facility at Quantico, Virginia and dispatched by Jack Crawford, head of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit to Baltimore, Maryland, tasking her with presenting a VICAP questionnaire to the notorious Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant forensic psychiatrist turned cannibalistic serial murderer currently incarcerated.


After learning the assignment bears some relevance to the Bureau's pursuit of vicious serial killer Buffalo Bill, Starling travels to the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. The hospital's director Dr. Frederick Chilton leads her through the bowels of the hospital and past security checkpoints to Hannibal Lecter, a sophisticated, courteous and cultured man restrained behind thick glass panels and windowless stone walls.

Although the initial conversation is full of pleasantries, Lecter grows impatient with Starling's attempts at "dissecting" him with the questionnaire and viciously rebuffs her with an eloquent, surgical psychoanalysis before sending her away. As a battered and defeated Starling departs, maniacal patient "Miggs" in the adjacent cell flings fresh semen onto her hair and face, enraging Lecter who calls Starling back and offers a riddle containing information about a former patient. The solved riddle leads to a rent-a-storage lot where the possessions of a missing Benjamin Raspail are found, including a jar containing his severed head. When Starling returns to Lecter to inquire about Raspail's remains, Lecter links Raspail to Buffalo Bill and observing the hope in her eyes, offers to help profile Buffalo Bill if she can have him transferred to another facility away from the venomous, careerist Dr. Chilton.


Hours and miles away, Buffalo Bill abducts Catherine Martin, the daughter of United States Senator Ruth Martin. Days later, Starling is pulled from Quantico and sent with Crawford to a funeral home in the Midwest, where the body of Bill's recently-discovered sixth victim resides. Initially uncomfortable with the surroundings because of her childhood memories of her father's funeral, Starling helps perform the autopsy on the victim and extracts the chrysalis of a Death's-head Hawkmoth from the victim's throat. Back at Quantico, as news of Catherine Martin's abduction sweeps the country and amid the heightened stakes, Crawford authorizes Starling to offer Hannibal Lecter a fake deal promising a transfer to an upstate New York Federal penitentiary should Lecter provide information about Buffalo Bill that results in the rescue of Catherine Martin.

Rather than consider the terms, Lecter begins a game of quid pro quo with Starling, offering a comprehensive list of clues and insights into Buffalo Bill's mind in exchange for events from Starling's traumatic childhood. Unaware to both Starling and Lecter, Dr. Frederick Chilton listens in on the conversation and after revealing Starling's deal as a sham, offers to transfer Lecter to another facility in exchange for consenting to an exclusive, in-depth psychological profile and helping the authorities rescue Catherine Martin, alive. Lecter agrees, and following a flight to Tennessee, meets with Senator Martin, where he surrenders Buffalo Bill's real name, physical description and past addresses. As the FBI begins the manhunt, Starling travels to Tennessee and confronts Lecter in his special cell in the local courthouse, where Starling confronts him about the false information he gave the Senator. Lecter refuses Starling's pleas and demands that she finish her story surrounding her worst childhood memory.

After recounting her arrival at a relative's farm, the horror of discovering their lamb slaughterhouse and her fruitless attempts at rescuing the lambs, Lecter rebuffs her, leaving her with her case file before she is escorted out of the building by security guards and Dr. Chilton. Later that evening, Lecter escapes from his cell and attacks his two guards. In the courthouse lobby, the local police notice elevator activity and hear gunshots and storm Lecter's cell, discovering one of his guards barely alive and the other disemboweled and strung up on the walls. Paramedics transport the survivor onto an ambulance and speed off while a SWAT team searches the building for Lecter. As the team discovers a body in the elevator shaft, the survivor in the ambulance peels off his own face, revealing Lecter in disguise, shortly before killing the paramedics and escaping to the airport.

After being notified of Lecter's escape, Starling pores over her case files, analyzing Lecter's annotations, clues and riddles before realizing that the first victim, Frederica Bimmel, knew Bill in real life before he killed her. Crawford sends Starling to investigate the victim's hometown, Belvedere, Ohio, where she discovers that Bimmel was a tailor, and that dresses in her closet have templates on them identical to the patches of skin removed from Buffalo Bill's victims. Realizing that Buffalo Bill is a capable tailor transforming himself into a woman by fashioning himself a "woman suit" of real skin, she telephones Crawford, who is already on the way to make an arrest, revealing that Lecter's notes cross-referenced with the Johns Hopkins Hospital database revealed Jame Gumb, a man living outside Chicago who was denied sexual-reassignment surgery. Crawford instructs Starling to continue interviewing Bimmel's friends while he leads a Chicago SWAT team to Gumb's business address in Calumet City, Illinois. Starling's interviews lead to a house owned by one Mrs. Lippman, whose door is answered by a man claiming to be "Jack Gordon." As Starling interviews Gordon, she notices a fluttering Death's-head Hawkmoth, the chrysalis of which was found in Bill's murder victims. Starling, realizing Gordon is James Gumb, draws her weapon just as Gumb ducks out of the living room and disappears into his basement. Starling pursues him, discovering a screaming Catherine Martin in the dry well and a fetid rotting corpse in a bath tub just before the lights in the basement go out, leaving her in complete darkness. Gumb, wearing night vision goggles, stalks Starling as she blindly wanders the basement before preparing to shoot her. Starling, hearing the machinations of his revolver, swivels around and fires repeatedly, shooting and killing Gumb.

Days later at her FBI Academy graduation party, Starling receives a phone call from Hannibal Lecter in the Bahamas, assuring her that he will not pursue her and that he expects the same courtesy from her. While interested in speaking with her further, he reveals that he's "having an old friend for dinner," before hanging up and following Dr. Frederick Chilton, who has just arrived in the country, through the streets of the village.

A real tongue in cheek in a cat and mouse film.

Enjoyable thrills and spills. Have fun!

The Balalaika Tale of Stolen Love

I revisited this classic love story some time back.

Some movies are like wine. The older they are, they better you like them. David Lean’s Dr Zhivago is one such movie.

Dr. Zhivago is beautifully filmed. The music is astounding and reverberating. The main actors like Omar Sharif, Julie Christie and Rod Steiger were consummate artistes in that classic, showcasing their acting prowess that never seems to fade.

The love story of Zhivago is as natural yesterday and it is today; relevant and poignant. The story-telling is superb and the direction unparalleled.

See the DVD and feel the romance between the protagonist Zhivago, beautiful Lara and enchanting Tonya.


The music score is heavenly! Have fun in nostalgialand!

Atonement by Another

Atonement is a bizzare classic!

A fairly well paced movie that unravels slowly to expose the trajectory of a young girl's coming of age, fancy and the atonement that the various characters in the movie had to endure to the end of their lives. One bad mistake and everyone has to take the rap.


The movie is visited by cold beautiful images, powerful rushes, abrupt stops and flashbacks. For those who love period dramas during the war years, this is one great movie though it trudges too slow sometimes, particularly during the Dunkirk portion of the movie.


Kiera and James McAvoy put on a good show but the show was mostly stolen to Saoirse Ronan as the self-serving Briony and her fertile mind gone wild.

Telephone Assassinations

Sublimal Triggers and assassinations!

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
And I have miles to go,
Before I Sleep..."


Robert Frost's first four lines of his classic poem has been used as a sublimal trigger to provoke action in moles left in the USA before detente between US-USSR took place.

That was the setting for this movie. A revengeful operative who knew of this trigger started phoning moles to blow up old "targets" got both the CIA and the Kremlin riled and confused. So, they dispatched Charlie to get the man and stop the bombings and explosions.

Enter the cherubic and angelic Lee Remick in a more cheerier role. Acting as a double-spy, she was to dispatched off Charlie when he has 'fixed the problem'.

For an old 1970's movie, it may have lost its sting. Be that as it may, interestingly the ending was great.

Teenage Pregnancy

Juno is a coming of age movie. It's innocence and the desperate need to try sexual intercourse at an early age, without the presence of love.

Another movie about unwed mothers after Knock up.

Same feelings are aroused but this time it is more about a precocious young collegian experimenting sex after a sex-education class. Feather-weight comedy with Ellen Page in a bold role.

A chatty movie with a lot of liberal attitude to sex and unwed motherhood issues.

Can be fun if you are in the mood for such semi-art comedy.

Colonel Bogey's Bridge

The movie should have been re-titled Mad Nicholson's Bridge.

Mad British pride built the Bridge on the River Kwai. Fighting the Japanese disregard of the Geneva Treaty, ego-maniac Nicholson withstood the cruelty of the Japanese camp commandant, Colonel Saito and eventually took over the building of the bridge from the Japanese.

Good dialogue and some side-show provided by William Holden and Jack Hawkins as the commando group sent out to blow up the bridge.

Memorable 1956 fare especially for the mesmerizing Colonel Bogey whistling tune.

Good movie by Sam Spiegel and David Lean.

A Grade A Bee Movie!

One helluva movie! Colourful and fun.

Build around the ecological premise that everything in nature is inter-related and symbiotic. The premise: If bees suddenly stop pollination and honey making from flowers, ecology will be destroyed and the food chain will actually go down the tube. That will spell the end of humankind on earth.

I think all the actors and actresses who lend their voices here from Zellweger, Matthew Broderick to Chris Rock had fun.

The court-case when the bees won against humans for honey theft was a riot!

Underdeveloped Love Affair

Irritable unsatisfying station romance! That is what the original Brief Encounter is all about.

This earlier David Lean effort is chatty at best. Action plods from one scene to another; accompanied by a dull dialogue by today's standards. Perhaps Noel Coward is to be blamed for this dry script. Or maybe, it was considered good in those bygone war years. Never can tell.

Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson were quite good in this irritable romance. Celia was particularly good, playing the uncertain wench, in need of love and attention from a passionless husband who was more interested in solving crossword puzzles than taking notice of her.


As such, a chance encounter at the fictitious Milford Junction Refreshment Shop by the two protagonists played out to a dry and unsatisfactory end, in spite of the hidden possibilities of sexual romance. The war years could have averred from such developments, I think.

Watchable. I wonder how the newer version fared?

Stupid Comedy

What a Farce about Nothing!

A Billy Wilder fare, this is one good movie spoofing the oldest profession in the world-the streetwalker. In a world where every streetwalker has a Mac (a pimp) who takes money from her so that she felt owned, Irma found the persona of Jack Lemmon.

To get her off the street, he impersonates a British Lord and gives her 500 francs per night twice weekly, just to play cards. To get that money, he slogs the whole night long at the Paris market. some funny moments here, though

It was fun when I first saw it during my teen years but the fun seems to be thin at best now.

Watchable fare especially to see a young Shirley Maclaine in the role of Irma La Douce or Irma the Nice

Frivolity Accentuated


Frivolous Silliness!

This 1965 fare is sheer silliness centering on the antics of a hedonistic magazine editor who truly wants to marry his steady girlfriend but is virtually besieged with beautiful women all the time.

A rare movie to show Peter O'Toole fooling around. Peter Sellers is his old self as if playing out his Indian character in The Party. As for Woody Allen, he wrote more meat into his role in this movie than in Casino Royale.

The casting of the actresses here is genuinely beautiful. From Ursula Andress in her prime, Romy Schneider, Capucine to Paula Prentiss. A sight for sore-eyes as they pranced around in Paris! Thank God for celluloid!


If you have the time, relive the 60's and immerse yourself into the humour of that era.

Island of Dreams


Adventure and Fun on a Deserted Island!

Talk about Indiana Jones, Alex Rover is another in the genre.

An agoraphobic author, took a chance of a lifetime to live some of the possible risky adventures her hero only takes in her books.


Good fun with Abigail Breslin, Jodie Foster and Gerald Butler.

Good movie to watch if you have the time.

It's Not Time alone...

It's not the amount of time alone that will be the controlling factor. As such increasing time for English by 70% come 2012 was be inadequate. The more important thing is teaching methodology and the ancillary scaffolding structures that must be put into place to ensure practice and usage brings about language use fluency.

Currently, given the the present curriculum, English could only be increased by another 14% in terms of time.

It is definitely a big laugh to learn that English was taught with scant attention to grammar. Without the structural form, no wonder Manglish is allowed free reign to destroy English standards in Malaysia.

Again, as there was no English literature to foster reading and deeper understanding of the language,most students speak only rudimentary English and the lack of a good vocabulary bank is one of the biggest stumbling block in English learning.

Muhyiddin, who is Education Minister, said the increase in the number of hours would allow for the introduction of new elements in the teaching and learning of English such as English literature and more emphasis on grammar.

The Education Minister seems to be mouthing all kinds of worn-out strategies these days ranging from appointing more skilled teachers, review the types of textbooks used and the setting up of English laboratories.

He claims that English will henceforth be made into a main language. How so, begs the question?

As for the translation initiative by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka and the Malaysian National Institute of Translation, it is at best a flawed argument as translation itself is a big problem as we lack bilingual experts in science and mathematics.

To the minister, it seems the about turn on English as the medium of instruction is now written in stone and cannot be changed.

Where is your flexibility, Mr Minister?