The CO's Identification Tag

Titled, 'Conduct and Duties of Commissioners of Oaths', there is only Rule 13 here with two subsections with Subsection 2 enumerating 7 duties of a Commissioner of Oath  (CO).

Section 1 of Rule 13 stipulates that a CO must display an identification tag at the top left shirt pocket. Form 5 details the characteristics and dimension of this tag. The length and breadth dimensions are:

• 2 1/2 cm breadth and length not more than 10 1/2 cm. The section where the crest resides will be a 2 1/2 square size. 

•  It must have a black background with white letters.

The words that must be imprinted on the tag are as follows:

• Full name of the CO
• His Title as CO
• Identification Number

These information must be on the left side of the tag with the length not exceeding 8 cm.

Commissioner of Oath Examinations-No Standard Format

There were years when you need not remember the various sections of the law.

It was all in MCQs or multiple choice questions. Know your law and you will sail through.

Then last year they turned innovative. They went subjective and you have just that same time to scribble the answers hoping the examiner can read what you wrote. Such a  handicap!

Then, they also throw in a few questions about the Judiciary like who is the head honcho? It can stump you for sure.

So this year I have little choice but to 'hafal' or commit to memory the important sections so that it is worthy of my time to go all the way to Putrajaya.

In the next few postings I intend to dissect this law and squeeze out the essence as well as create an association game to facilitate memory.

A Fighter's Lines-Marzuki Ali

Hollow Sacrifice 

Patriotic melancholia; that is in a nutshell, the prose of a poem called A Fighter's Lines.


The persona is now old and wheel-chair bound.

He reflects.

He saw how he fought for independence. Was it against the Japanese or the communists?

He must be wounded because he is suffering in bitterness. His valour goes unrewarded.

Today, confronting a changing world, he knew there is no longer any fight  left in him.

He watches as deceit spreads all around to envelop the country that its independence he might have fought for.

He seeks the next generation to have the same kind of commitment and  bravery to rid the country of the 'deceit' be it corruption or racism. Will they do it patriotically as the world has changed when  global economics rule the world.

This is one dark tale of a soldier's patriotic melancholia. There will be no reprieve.

Leisure-If Only We All Could

Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.


No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.


No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.


No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.


No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.


No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.


A poor life this is if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare. 

This poem of 7 rhyming couplets is truly pastoral. 

William Henry Davies writes ever fluidly  as he focused on the need for leisure while not forgetting sustainable living.


If you should just work, work and work....


If Atlas-like you carry the world on your tired shoulders.... 


If you do not stop to smell the roses along the way....


Then yours if a life that is sad, sad, sad. You will become but a passenger of the world; all tired and tied to the burdens of the world; to your obligations.


Even  in the Bible, Jesus has advised that we let tomorrow take care of itself. After all even the birds find sustenance in the Lord's world; why not the Children of God?


I like the pastoral catchwords such as boughs, sheep and cows,the woods, the squirrels and their nuts and the glistening streams.


The lessons to be learnt. Know how to appreciate God and the wonders of this world.


Take time to appreciate beauty. 


Savour the moment of joy as a lady's mouth turned into a lovely smile. 


Looks at her eyes as she beckons you to come hither.


Look into her eyes and fell in love


Treasure the spring of life and the dance of joy.


True, a poor life, if you do not see the world and the beauty that it has to give. 

Heir Conditoning-Different Challenges

The Author

M Sanmughalingam's Heir Conditioning must be looked in the proper perspective so that we know there is just no comparison between the two generations. There should never be, not even with poetic licence.

Written more as a prose in a poem format, this piece has a child questioning the grandparents about how they could possibly survived without modern comforts and conveniences.

As each era has its new knowledge database, innovations, inventions and discoveries, there is advancement. From the wheel to the motor-car engine and the airplane, there have been tremendous progress for mankind.

For the current era, the telephone, the fax machine and now the wundebar internet has open new vistas into the new uncharted world for man to reach out further and find insights he never knew existed on this earth, not to speak of remote interplanetary travel or the fictitious time machine.

The poet's' limited reference' to age-old inventions,  innovation devices such as the fan, the telephone  and the ubiquitous air-condition is considered dull on all counts by the Generation Y people with their ipod, i-pads and the much sought after tablets. Can they relate with such products or issues?

The questions asked by the child are most mundane. Hardly inspiring. Out of time.

The second stanza where the grandparents tried to explain away to the child about the lack of science and technology during their earlier life-time can also be viewed as possibly begrudging the modern generation.

To accept a  mundane life devoid  of technology comfort is understandable. To blame the younger generation for the ills of modernization is most unfair especially when capitalism and greedy governments rob the land blind for their own aggrandizement and glory. That is sadly replaced.

Anyway for a scholarly work, it has passed muster.

Thefts and Threats-Living in a New Housing Estate

Easy Targets for Asset Rip-offs

The NKRP on Crime Reduction is most rosy on all counts. Yest, everyone knows crime has not abated. In fact, on the contrary. it is on the rise in Malaysia.

Lately, muggings of lady shoppers  in shopping complex car parks has become more rampant. From The Curve to Mid-valley, the dark elements are on a constant move. Almost like living in Gotham City without Batman. There was an abduction at the Curve, a beating up at Mid-Valley  as well as a kidnap at an international school.

A Hollow in the Window

As, usual lies and false statistics are trumpeted out by the authorities. We know better.

One interesting phenomenon is the petty thefts and asset destruction in new housing estates.

Between the time when you officially take the keys to your unit until the time a resident association is formed to look seriously into security, it is anybody's game - a demilitarised Pakmunjong!

I remembered a friend who used to stay in Sri Petaling when it was just built many eons ago. There were not many houses which were occupied then and lalangs grew majestically in that small plot of garden land in each unoccupied house. During one of the evenings after he had  just moved in, a motorcyclist and pillion rider stopped in front of his house and demanded RM50 from him as monthly protection money. Failing which, they showed him a brick which they will throw into his front door glass panel. He paid up pronto, as he did not want no trouble, my friend.

Easy Dough but Dog Days for the Owners

Then we have the petty thieve in connivance with the current foreign guards who will crowbar your casement windows to get in to steal away lightnings, piping fixtures and fans. They are most specific-some will just take away piping; others washing basins and even shower roses.

So, if you intend to buy a house in a new place, do put in your grills and firmly rivet these as well for they can also be fenced off profitably by these petty thieves to greedy middlemen who oftentimes are small-time contractors. Forget about aesthetics in Malaysia, grill every possible entry point.

When things get better, you can remove some of the grills to restore the beauty of the house's design and architecture.

It is also the signs of the times as the economy slows down such crimes moves up. 2H is definitely bad from all the returns of the PLCs on Bursa KL. I think unlisted SME's are faring much worse if they piggy back for business on these listed SMEs.

Do you see Greece, Cyprus and possibly Spain at your door-steps?

Wide-eyed Wondering- Jeannie Kirby

I Wonder, You Wonder, No Wonder!

'I Wonder' by Jeannie Kirby


This is a classic poem almost fit to be a nursery rhyme.


Except for the sixth couplet which hardly rhymes, all the earlier five did.


So, what is this poem all about? What is that sublimal message that Jeannie wanted to convey?


Was it justified ignorance or plain innocence that is central to Jeannie's thoughts when she wrote this poem? 


The poem touches on the elements of nature. The grass, the wind, trees, the moon,the stars, lightning, the rainbow and clouds. Even the birds and their nests were not spared.


The little boy or little girl is the persona.


In first person, that child asked these valid questions that even adults may be stumped for an answer.


How does one explain to the child about colours and the science of it being so be it in magenta to violet?


Again, we feel the wind but why does it sometimes blow to stir the air around us so violently until gale-force in some instances?

Who taught the birds to built a nest?

The question about the birds building nests without being taught is a very deep question for a child. How does one convincingly explain that it is just as  instinctive just like birds flying to warm southern skies to escape the bitter winters in the cold north? Or just as bears catch  catch salmon trouts that are programmed genetically to swimm  upstream to spawn eggs? No clear answer except to accept as fiat or faith.


Do trees really take a rest? Possibly because the imaginative child could envision that trees could move and just like humans need to take a rest now and then. Perhaps they do walk once in a long-long while like Treebeard in the 'Lord of the Rings' when calamity come their way. If JRR Tolkien can imagine that, why can't we believe this questioning child? 


The shape of the moon being round and not so round at times can be explained these days by planetary science. Not so, in earlier days without Google. That is why we have tales about dogs and hounds eating the moon and the sun and those Chinese people banging on their metal pails and cymbals to frighten away those dastardly canines to get back their adoring and romantic moon.


The stars that comes out only at night and disappears when day dawns. Did someone light them like century old street gaslights and snuff out the flame as morning comes. Another valid question that beggars an answer.


Lightning flashes? Did they come from Mount Olympus and from Zeus's thunderbolt? Can you explain the science of positive charges and negative charges to an inquisitive growing up kid? Is the child ready to understand scientific principles?


Looking for a pot of gold? Then look no further; seek your rainbow after the rain has gone. Tell the child about the wonders of science of light and water. Will she understand this too?


Cottony clouds hanging up high in the sky. So, did someone hang them there or do we need to tells the child about water vapours and condensation?


Then, the last couplet is the coup de grace. Touche!


Did my father have all these answers and yet did not tell me? Why, oh why?


Disquieting for any adult, I am sure.


So, Jeannie pray tell. Are you mocking the adult or throwing thoughts through the perception of an innocent child? Is the child a prodigy?


Where is that middle ground that we must seek for to provide an explanation that soothes both adult and child?


I remembered clearly a scene from the movie, "A Passage to India". 


The Professor met the protagonist in a lake-house in Kashmir. He had a a letter with him to give to that person  coming to meet him. Visibly angry when he found out that the letter was kept by the Professor for such a long time, he demanded an answer. "


And the answer..................." You were not ready for it then, you are ready to receive it now".


In that same vein, the child will get her answers by and by and only when she is ready to digest and learn the facts of nature. 


Otherwise, it will remain a mystery and a marvel until she grows up. 


Remember William Blake's 'Songs of Innocence' and 'Songs of Experience'? 


Joyful innocence and sombre experience. Bitter sweet refrain.