Gripevine

As of yesterday we have our first SPM casualty of 2012. E. Prem Kumar apparently consumed pesticide after getting less than satisfactory results. There have been others over the years, those who rather take their own lives than face their parents after getting their results. Some silently ended their lives in the privacy of their rooms after getting scolded for performing poorly, getting average results or just getting less A's! Can you believe that? It seriously is insane, the kind of pressure parents put on their children to get top notch results. The thing is paper qualifications are not everything, and EQ (emotional intelligence) is just as important as IQ (intelligence). Many parents spend so much of emphasis on education, happily forgetting that imparting basic life skills - especially social skills is just as important. Future employers are not just going to hire you because they are bedazzled by your academic results and fancy degrees. They will also be judgi...

Early this month, tongues were wagging as to a certain piece of news. But this time it was not the bedroom scandals of politicians or the ownership of the word "God" that got people talking. Actually the news in question was rather positive, and should have warmed our hearts, but it didn't! As good as this finding looks in terms of public relations, the reality is far different for most of us, and this is why we will not be popping champagne anytime soon. Snatch thefts, snatch thefts, snatch thefts!! Many people have lost their lives to this rampant crime.  Public transportation is not safe. Remember those taxi rapes? And those are just the reported cases. Malaysian cab drivers have also been known to rob their passengers! Things are definitely not looking good for us in this sector. Rape by those in authority - Students have been molested and raped by teachers, National Service instructors and college lecturers. The acid splasher - has the dude ...

The Star came under a lot of heat for the picture of Erykah Badu sporting body art offensive to Muslims in Star2 - the entertainment section of the paper. Three senior editors were summoned to the Home Ministry and the story did not end there. Heads were destined to roll and they did. Star2 senior editor Lim Cheng Hoe and deputy editor for features Daryl Goh were suspended indefinitely. And to make sure the paper does not risk offending Islam again, associate editors Rozaid Rahman and Shah Dadameah were appointed to advise the daily on issues sensitive to Muslims. I'm guessing that this was done to appease those who were baying for blood. But it appears that this decision has far from satisfied certain parties. Pas Youth are still not content, they want a dialogue with the paper to discuss the Badu issue and the coverage of Valentine's Day - because it also apparently rubs some Muslims up the wrong way. In true Malaysian fashion this will all die down eventually. M...

Erykah Badu will not be the last international artist to be the object of controversy or have a concert cancelled at the eleventh hour. As long as hypocrisy prevails among certain sections of society and the government, this is bound to happen again. We are always neck to neck in competition with Singapore over many things, but one thing we can never wrest from them - is being the centre for performing arts and culture in Southeast Asia. The kind of restrictions imposed on artiste coming to perform here is ridiculous at best - don't take off your shirt, don't lie on the stage, no short dresses, nothing skimpy........with all these conditions, one would think ours is a squeaky clean society. Gwen played the good girl and decided to comply. But that is not the case. If it were, then fair enough, we wouldn't want the "rakyat" traumatised by the sight of a bare chest glistening with sweat or a woman's naked thighs on public display which would be oh so...

When I first got on Facebook in 2007 after much cajoling from some close friends, I found that it was a really cool platform that enabled me to keep in touch with people from different eras' in my life - school, university, former colleagues and family. FB was like my one stop button to touch base with all my "friends" on a regular basis. Fast forward to the present, the way I use Facebook today has changed markedly from way back then. Now Facebook has had many facelifts in the last couple of years - not all of it has been welcome. But one feature definitely has my seal of approval - "Facebook Subscribe" . Yes I know that the originator of this idea was Google+  and Facebook introduced it in a bid to retain its users. Good move! Thanks to this feature, I get to subscribe to and see a side of famous personalities that I otherwise wouldn't be able to. Yes a lot of them have fan pages, but a fan page is rather impersonal in my opinion. "Subscrib...