Pirates

It has been arduous to have to write for our web site these past months but as you have noticed the article format has changed, more so after that one comment by a reader that my long articles were boring to read and that it would take him/her days to finish reading it if it merits reading. I wanted to give it up for good after that, but I cannot resist the urge to continue to write my life’s observations. If these are not read by anyone, they are fine for me for the want of something to do with my lazy brain if it is not jolted every now and then with something exciting to my perception. Aida wisely came up with the idea of chopping it up by bits to make its appearance more acceptable to the readers on weekly basis.

Thus I realize my seven page articles are chopped up into bits and pieces that suit Aida’s fancy as the web’s sub-editor, while Farahat of course remains happily on the side to see that it is done. Sometimes I do feel something of the original came missing especially the recent one. When we came back from the States and had yet to write anything for the month I took a glance at the web site to find that something was left out then, because I remember that I did write an anecdote to humor the readers but it was not in any of them for the month. Thank goodness, this was made good by Aida for lack of contribution by me for our June updates. My anecdote has appeared! I wish to make this the punch line to my monthly articles although it is not going to be easy taking the sensitivities of some of our readers out there. On the other hand. You cannot have all censored stuff when the realities of life remains hidden for the sake of the few. Long live freedom!

Freedom is what we have these days when it comes to the news media. Just because the government expounds on the idea of transparency and freedom of the press, the papers these days come out with all sorts of things that alarm our society. For the media to take revenge on figureheads that they dislike by unnecessarily highlighting simple remarks made in private or confined to groups of people and thereby creating headlines for all to read and see, they forget the adverse international impacts of these news, which could backfire on the country’s potential investors. Such indeed was the outcome when the national stock market experienced massive setbacks and prospectors and investors incur losses overnight, an event which renders very slow market recovery after that.

I am no economist and nor do I participate in the shares market but it was very obvious to me that the recent shares market shock was caused by all these tales" by the media news giants. This is not the first time that it happens, and one of the worst recently was the squatting police suspect incident, which was blown out of proportion to involve a foreign country, which led to our minister to make his personal visit to the country concerned to personally extend the county’s apology for the mistreatment of the police suspect. The whole world came to know about the whole incident, which at the end of it all, it was found out that the suspect in the incident was a local ! What a shame to us all ! We are too ready to emulate the freedom of the press of such countries as the States and parts of Europe. We forget that even with all these others not everything is revealed publicly. Discretion still remains valour with them. So why with us!

I write here with freedom and even then I forestall my personal feelings towards the country’s happenings. Take the good side of life for all its worth. That’s the way to live long life and happily for that matter !

These days, one of my closes friend and business associate is Ali Jawad from Lebanon. Ali holds strongly to the principle of genuine products for sale. He abhors the idea of his wife buying cheap and pirated videos to the extend that he disallow his wife to even view one that belongs to a friend if such videos are pirated version. It made me realize I have been a culprit in this when in the past I did indulge in the purchase of these pirated videos for the want of good movies to keep. So, I resolve to change and recently when I went to Chicago I bought genuine dvds of my favourite movies and never regret doing so. After all these are really quality products of our satisfaction. Ali is right!

You readers out there, stop buying pirate videos. If you cannot afford to buy the originals, be contend with watching them on Astro. It is only sooner or later, every movie shown will eventually appear on your regular TV. I buy for keeps although at times I feel it a complete waste of money. Given the limited spare time that we all have to watch these dvd collections, just when do we really watch these old movies again? However, that’s what it is with the movie addict, such as I am! In my childhood days , after reading all those comics on Superman, Captain Marvel, the Phantom and Batman, I always wanted to fly like Superman and Captain Marvel and these thoughts appeared in my dreams as if it was all real to me.

Funny that they still appear at times even in my present life! We cannot escape from our childhood fantasies, the very fact why these super heroes movies still maintain their great appeals to all of us, young and old alike. LONG LIVE the Movies! By the way, buying the originals in Chicago prove to be a lot cheaper than those sold here. I saved half the cost there. So, I said to Ainul, "let’s go to Chicago to buy our next batch of dvds."

A good excuse to go there.