This week on A Stray World:
- Oily skins missed;
- Not the face! Not the Face!
- A. Asohan goes Stray
This week has been particularly hectic.
Oil hits $100.
Jon Stewart returns with A Daily Show.
And Malaysia, the second largest producer of palm oil world, ran out of palm oil.
Fascinating. Almost fictional in fact. It's like saying Thailand has ran out of prostitutes, or Kelantan without muftis, or George W. Bush without lies.
Without realising it, we citizens have failed to notice the convenient subsidies on cooking oil quietly nestled in place somewhere in the bowels of this immature democracy. Keen to keep prices low in our favourite char koay teow stalls, proprietors seemed to have caught on to the subsidies placed upon store bought cooking oil.
The larger barrel-like ones woefully forgotten.
Incredible as it seems, people refused to buy anything but cooking oil for the first two days of the apparent oil crisis. Like the geopolitical factions at play for its non-edible distant relative, storekeepers were accused of hoarding attacks were carried out by government officials, and general chaos from media coverage and frustrated oil-dependant citizens brought about a final agreement to raise production.
Alternative to oil-fried food - water.
People are addicted to oil.
Quite fascinating.
Bullet
Datuk S. Krishnasamy. One slug to the head. Close range.
Reading Gunslinger Girl has given me morbid insight into the mind of professional assassins.
The set-up was perfect. Here's my theory.
This mid-ranking member of the MIC was murdered in an MIC branch. Not on the road in some secluded junction. The building would be guarded, and with elections around the corner, very likely to be rather busy with human traffic.
Why take the risk? Why kill him in an elevator in a political building buzzing with pre-election activity?
This implies a political message.
A straight gunshot to the head implies rather obviously, an intent to eliminate, not intimidate the victim.
Since the MIC could easily replace one of their fallen with another mid-ranking representative, it could be postulated that this was a warning.
It would be naive to assume Datuk S Krishnasamy was completely innocent in the entire affair. He was embroiled in some business with some dangerous individuals.
People who aren't afraid of public execution as long as the message is delivered clearly, vividly.
The question now becomes, what is the message?
Stray Thoughts
One of the most senior members of The Star, A. Asohan, whose work I have acquainted myself with since his In Tech days has been awarded a column in the Sunday Star.
I have no hard feelings that he used the phrase above in bold as the name of his column. After all, Stray isn't a patented word.
However, it does make me wonder whether or not I should request a trademark for my blog's name when I move it away from Blogger.
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