THE final week of this month has been (June) an auspicious one indeed. It has revealed the contrasting destinies of two communities, one with a firm grip on its future, the other barely wobbling into the new millennium. While one basked in the glory of success, the other had to endure the agony of defeat.…
IN one of Tan Sri P. Ramlee’s Do Re Mi trilogy, there is a take when the three heroes decide to go into the medicine-selling business. They bottle some mud gathered from the drain, set up a makeshift stall and play a catchy tune that describes the “benefits” of the so-calledmedicine. It is touted as…
REMEMBER Hirotada Ototake, the young handicapped Japanese who appeared on the front page of a national newspaper recently? The 23-year old graduate of Tokyo’s Waseda University is referred to by a huge number of his young admirers as “he no whole body” as he was born without limbs. The ever cheerful, laborious and spirited Ototake…
IT’S Monday morning and you’re racing to work in a traffic-snarled city. A quick glance at your wristwatch and you realise you are already way behind time. As you approach the last junction before turning into the road that leads to your office, a policeman suddenly waves at you to stop to give way to…
APART from intermittent showers and thunderstorms, the weather in this country has been relatively warm these past few weeks. The weathermen say that this is normal due to the inter-monsoon season. For many of us, this warm weather is a major topic of conversation. It is perhaps the number one ice-breaker, not only at top-level…
THIRTEEN years after being appointed the last prophet of God, Muhammad ibn Abdullah received a command to leave the city of Mecca to continue the struggle to spread Islam in Madinah. Mecca at the time was becoming unbearable for the Muslims. The Quraish were increasingly hostile, especially so when Muhammad snubbed their offer of a…
MALAYSIA successfully hosted the Second Global Knowledge Conference recently. Sporting the theme “Building Knowledge Societies” the conference outlined as its main objective the formulation of action plans to democratise the information revolution. This means that the world’s poor, especially, is to be given the opportunity to access information and, whenever relevant, use it as knowledge.…
WE are now into the twelfth month of the year 1420 of the Islamic or Hijrah calendar. Dzulhijjah means “the month with the haj or pilgrimage embedded within it.” Pilgrimage itself is not exactly specific to the teachings of Islam by Prophet Muhammad. It is actually a very old religious act. It was already described…
PEOPLE say that there are two sides to a story. There are also at least two ways of looking at things. “The glass is half-full” and “the glass is half-empty” which essentially indicate the same thing. But they of course have vastly different meanings. Your descriptions of things depend pretty much on whether you are…
MANY among us must have read about Dolly the lamb, but have you heard of Doogie the mouse? Doogie is actually more than a mouse, at least in terms of IQ. It learns faster, retains its memory longer and adapts to changes in its environment more readily than a normal mouse. Doogie was genetically engineered…
