Reading Materials-Four Stages of Life

This 4-piece cartoon screams out at us.

How true.

If you are in your forties now, you can reflect back on the times where everything was not important except for the funny pages. Then the sports pages beckon as you jockeyed to be a jock and not a geek or a nerd at school and college. Once you join the work-force and mosey up the ranks on the corporate ladder, news became the central interest. After 60, obituaries are the first pages you would turn to. Who has died? Your relatives, friends, colleagues or enemies? Do you feel saddened or do you gloat at their demise?

Ahoy there! Big Brother speaking here.................

It started with an incursion into territorial waters in oil exploration in the Ambalat Block. Then Manohara escaped from a hotel in Singapore to tell the world of the atrocities inflicted upon her by a Malaysian prince.Then there was last month's bombing of two hotels in Jakarta where the mastermind was purportedly a Malaysian terrorist now at large somewhere in Indonesia. Then it was a A brouhaha in Indonesia over Malaysia’s usage of the Balinese pendet dance in a tourism commercial. Today they went for the bullet! They are asking how the Malaysian anthem seems to sound like their song “Terang Bulan” (Moon Shine).

Wow, Big Brother in Nusantara is not letting up!

Malaysia's answer as usual was scripted. They summarily apologized for the use of the Balinese dance but said the mistake was made by a third party who was paid by Malaysia’s Tourism Ministry to produce the commercial. What bunkum and another political blooper! The Malaysian embassy in Jakarta tried to soothe frazzled nerves by playing the lawyer. It issued a statement: “Nobody in Malaysia claimed that the pendet dance originated in Malaysia.”

But that is not the end of the story.

A report in yesterday’s Jakarta Globe newspaper quoted an executive from a state-owned recording company asking why Malaysia’s national anthem “Negaraku” sounded like the Indonesian song “Terang Bulan” (Moon Shine).Ruktiningsih, the head of recording company Lokananta, urged the Indonesian government to act on the “violation of intellectual property rights”.“We have to unite against Malaysia, as they keep stealing Indonesia’s assets,” he added.

An Internet search found that both songs do indeed share the same roots. Malaysia acknowledges as much on a government website detailing its monarchy system.

The song “Terang Bulan” comes from a popular French melody in the Seychelles, which spread to the Malay archipelago in the early 20th century.It was adopted as Perak’s state anthem in 1901. And in 1957, it became the national anthem for Malaysia with the lyrics changed.

This tangle is just one of many controversies between the neighbours. Indonesians see Malaysia as appropriating their cultural assets, while Malaysians say these have been part of their culture for as long as anyone can remember.

The controversies include batik designs and the popular “Rasa Sayang” ditty. The neighbours have also not settled overlapping claims in the oil and gas-rich Ambalat area in the Sulawesi Sea.

What next, you may ask?