The posting that sparked fierce and passionate debate on how some Western men seem to go for plebian and slutty-looking Asian girlfriends in this and several blogs has gone mainstream with the Jakarta Post carrying Thang Nguyen’s article in its Oped pages on 30 October. Yu Phuc, whom Unspun suspects of being some kind of…
Month: October 2006
Aussies eschew cleric’s “women-are-meat” statement
The big issue when Unspun was Down Under last week was the controversy stirred up by Australia’s top Muslim cleric Sheikh Taj el-Din-al-Hilali who said in a sermon that women who did not wear the jilbab attracted sexual assault. His exact words: “If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside… and the cats…
Perth reflections
Unspun managed to hightail it off to Perth for the Idul Fitri break. The last time Unspun was there was four or five years ago. Perth is still a small, cozy city but there is a new buss to it. The economy is on the move, there is much building activity, lots of jobs to…
Crying in the wind
Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad issued this statement on 27 October 2006 because he was afraid his words woudl be spun by his successor Badawi’s “hatchetmen.” From what I know of Malaysian politics – the repression and the paranoid need to control the flow of information critical of the government – all that Mahathir…
Monte spins again!
You got to love the man’s chutzpah. Waiting to pounce on me in my mailbox as Unspun returned from the Idul Fitri break was an e-mail from the irrepresible Monte Monfore. Monte, as readers of this blog will know through previous postings (here, here, and here), is a man of some swimming talent that is…
P. Ramlee and the NEP
P. Ramlee might point out that a lot of people might want to portray the article below as a racial issue but it is not. really. It’s about one superclass of people, who happen to be Malays and recipients of largese, screwing the whole country. Read the Malaysiakini article (below) why a strong proponent of…
P. Ramlee and the Comfortable Malay Elite
What would P. Ramlee think about this article headlined A Comfortable Malay Elite, written by Philip Bowring in the International Herald Tribune today? HONG KONG Malaysia’s image as an exemplary pluralist Muslim nation is looking increasingly suspect. For Muslims, especially, there should be growing unease at the identification of religion with a Malay racial-enhancement program….
Chutzpah and the Bali swimmer
You got to hand it to Monte M. He has some lessons to teach large corporations in the art of Spinning, that is: chutzpah will get you far in a world where people are willing to trust anyone who says they are out to do good. As far as Unspun knows, he’s some Californian on…
P. Ramlee and the Malaysian Malay
Was in Singapore the past two days and between bouts of client-related wor, zoned out on a bit of TV. The hotel has a Malay channel and they were showing an old P. Ramlee movie. I love those P. Ramlee movies since I was a kid. To me they portrayed a very likeable race of…
The Browning of Singapura
In the Lion City for some business and guess what? The businessmen and professionals here are all talking about Hossan leong, aka Mr Brown’s video We live in Singapura. on Youtube. Its actually quaite funny and you don’t get Singaporeans taking the piss out of Singapore and everyone else, including the MM and Mahathir everyday,…
Hazing the argument
In rhetoric it is a common but cheap trick to introduce an extraneous point and try to make it the issue instead of the one at hand. Smoke and mirrors stuff, you might say. Indonesia’s House of Representatives members are particularly skilled at this art, as they have recently stalled ratifying the ASEAN agreement allowing…
The unshackling of English journos
One of the things Unspun misses living in Indonesia is the erudition of the English judges. This is a bad colonial hangover in the land where Unspun grew up. Unspun‘s formative years were spent following the pursuits of Rumpole of the Bailey and, when Unspun felt particularly in need of being in awe of a…
