Saturday, July 04, 2009

What's politics?

In a nutshell, in plain English and a familiar environment, as in the family:

A little boy goes to his dad and asks, 'What is Politics?'

Dad says, 'Well son, let me try to explain it this way:

I am the head of the family, so call me The Prime Minister.

Your mother is the administrator of the money, so we call her the Government.

We are here to take care of your needs, so we will call you the People.

The nanny, we will consider her the Working Class.

And your baby brother, we will call him the Future.

Now think about that and see if it makes sense.'

So the little boy goes off to bed thinking about what Dad has said.

Later that night,! he hears his baby brother crying, so he gets up to check on him.

He finds that the baby has severely soiled his nappy.

So the little boy goes to his parent's room and finds his mother asleep.

Not wanting to wake her, he goes to the nanny's room. Finding the door locked, he peeks in the keyhole and sees his father in bed with the nanny. He gives up and goes back to bed.

The next morning, the little boy says to his father, 'Dad, I think I understand the concept of politics now.'

The father says, 'Good, son, tell me in your own words what you think politics is all about.'

The little boy replies, 'The prime Minister is screwing the Working Class while the Government is sound asleep. The People are being ignored and the Future is in deep shit!

The word shit reminds me of my recent two 'emergencies' when travelling up north. Like the saying, 'when it rains, it pours' or something to that effect.

For the first time, the lorry which we escorted had a breakdown just after the last toll before Butterworth. Luckily, it was just the dynamo (owner driver's description) which had its metal holder broken and being hands-on, he managed to use wires to tie it so that the power steering works again. It was a race again time because we had only an hour, to reach by 11 am. Just imagine the trouble with a full load and having to wait for the next day if we did not make it.
To add to the problem, a JPJ vehicle stopped right ahead of us about to look for 'victims' and probably wondering if we belong to those who pretended to break-down upon seeing them. Good job they did not suspect anything or else it would have delayed our journey.

Anyway, my first 'emergency' was before the lorry breakdown. Here, the renovation works caused the temporary supply of water cut off. Just imagine with modern facilities but no water from the hose nor cistern for flushing.

The other was later in Penang where I had to use the ladies in a small supermarket because I could not find the men's, probably on the first floor. This toilet had a container collecting water from the cistern to be used for flushing! No hose, which is now common in most toilets, and the cistern cannot flush!

On the way back, I began to think of my 'emergency' a few years back in Taiping when I used the one and only toilet in a mamak food shop, which squatting toilet happened to be blocked and there was already an inch of water on the floor!

Looking back, the three emergencies that I could think of in my local travel, and all of them had problems with the toilets. Was it me and my luck, or that those incidents proved without doubt that our toilets generally are not properly maintained as is well known among foreign tourists as well?

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