tremors

About half an hour ago, I felt a little lightheaded and not very steady, as if I had a little too much beer. And it came in waves, few seconds apart, each lasting longer than the lull. I thought it could be a sleep deprivation induced hallucination, but after a while it felt quite real. Could it be construction works gone bad downstairs? An earthquake?

I just learned it was indeed an earthquake, at magnitude of 7.9 in Sumatra.

There's a sinking feeling in my heart...

mad cows in Shah Alam

What?? There's a mad cow disease plague in Shah Alam?

Nono, just some people acting like cows, mad ones. Actually, I think it's rather offensive to the cows to use their namesake on those... those... bacteria, gunk in the fish pond, etc.

Huh? So why are there mad cows in Shah Alam?

On August 28th, a group of Malay-Muslim protestors, amid chantings of "Allahu Akbar" (God is great), marched to the Selangor state secretariat building with a severed cow's head, and left it at the entrance. It was said to be a warning and threat that there will be bloodshed if the state government proceed with the proposed relocation of the Sri Maha Mariamman temple from Section 19 to Section 23.

Ehh, why the cow's head?

As far as Khir Toyo is concerned, the cow's head was used because it is a stupid animal and it was brought to show that the state government had made a stupid decision. The cow also happen to be a sacred animal to the Hindus. But this has nothing to do with religious issues at all. Nope, none at all.

Wow. What are the residents so upset about?

Their gripes, in no particular order, includes the following:
1) They claim that noise from the temple will disrupt their daily lives and would disturb their praying (as opposed to the non-disrupting prayers blaring from every mosque and surau in the country five times a day?)
2) The building of a temple in a Muslim majority area is insensitive (with Shah Alam in itself being a Muslim majority city, I don't see how the state government have any alternative other than to move it out of Shah Alam)
3) They fear that the crime rate in their area would rise if the temple was built there (because a temple is not a place of worship and I can't be sure, but they're trying to say temples also houses criminals?)

Well then, let the temple stay where it is now.

Ah you see, the relocation was proposed because the residents of Section 19 claimed that the temple was not in the brochure when the housing project was launched, so they want it moved. It's quite ironic really when you look at the history of the temple. It was a place of worship for early Indian estate workers, and has been around for 150 years. The temple existed BEFORE the housing estate and they're making the temple that existed before them move away.

Now, there are talks that this is the doing of a certain political party, whose leader is passionately preaching 1Malaysia to air, in their misguided aim to discredit the administration of the state government. I laud them for being on the right track coz all we're waiting for is a repeat of the March elections, but on a bigger scale. To this I say thank you.

I'm glad the AG is supposedly charging those cow head protestors. I was under the impression that those people will go scott-free because you know, seeing it has been more than a week since the horde of Malay protestors took to the streets and an arrest has yet to be made, while 16 non-Malay people holding a peaceful candlelight vigil at Dataran Merdeka has been nabbed for illegal assembly. Just saying.