Sex And The City

Goddamn, it's been too long. And it ain't been because I had nothing to say. I did. I just didn't say it. Because I was too tired, because work got the better of me, because some of my staff resigned for jobs with better pay, because I was too busy figuring out whether or not I still wanted to stay in my current workplace or look for something else.

Because of all that, the shutters have stayed shut for a while. In fact, for a while I wondered whether this blog was dead. I even started thinking of an appropriate send-off.

Then, something got the better of me. I had tea with a couple of old friends while skivving off work on the pretext of networking and the conversation just took too interesting a turn to keep to myself. It's that same old devil again, except this time he seems to have multiplied.

Apparently, word in town is that there is a new Klan of the triple K kind - Khairy, Kalimullah and Kamaludin. The plan - national domination of GLC companies. The battleship of choice - ECM Libra. And the sacrificial pawn - Hishamuddin.

Apparently.

I don't know how true it all is, although from where I sit, frankly it all seems too clear.

I also have it on dubious authority that someone didn't show up for work for two whole days after he was passed over for the Khazanah COO's position.

Which goes back to my fundamental reason for questioning some people's readiness to govern - and I use this term loosely. If you are not mature enough to accept that the best man does sometimes win, how can you recognise what is good? If you don't know how the farmer feels, how can you drive policies that will improve his life? If you've never read Mangga and Joran, how do you expect to understand the soul of the Malay youth who outnumber us urbanites? The Mat Rempiks and Abang Masjid, the Mat Dispatch and the Pak Tani.

I don't know them, and I don't pretend to. But if I needed to, I would roll up the cuffs of my baju melayu, trade the gold brocade samping in for a kain pelekat and go hang out in a village for six months or so. Listen to the pulse of these people's lives. Eat from the same plate. Sip tea from the same kedai kopi's rickety table. Maybe even figure out how to fix it.

Not declare that we're on an all-out search for Oxbridge-bred boys to run the ramshackle companies we've been saddled with in the Daim aftermath. Look where it got us the first time. And you still think it will work. In one fell swoop you've alienated those who have the most to gain from being nice to you. The Bumi entrepreneurs with little education and lots of drive, the Jaguh Kampungs whose motivation to do good is to still lift his family's name out of the village and into Wangsa Maju.

Honey, the first rule of sex is that you don't pull out all the stops if you want to keep them coming back for more. Heck, that's the first rule of anything - a movie, a stage performance, a novel, a career, stardom, infamy.

I used to worry about this young man we've all been gifted with. Now I've moved on. If his Triumvirate keeps propelling themselves forward the way they have been of late, they're bound to get stuck in a rut. After all, there's a reason wheels are round and not three-sided.

Phewh! That felt just like good sex on a moody Saturday afternoon with angry Miles Davis playing.

It leaves me spent and on fire at the same damned time.