Rantings byMM

Dear everyone,

I know, I know, I've been very bad. Haven't posted anything since August. But life has been ridiculously busy with so many different projects. In November I launched my new book Telling It Straight which is a compilation of some of my columns from around 2001 til 2012. The excuse was that I was invited to the Singapore Writers' Festival and it seemed like a good occasion to launch a book, seeing as it's been 15 years since my first one, In Liberal Doses. (My second was 50 Days which was a compilation of my blogposts about my Dad's operation in 2007 and was published by ZI Publications). My publishers, Editions Didier Millet, agreed and that was how the book came to be.

So far it's been doing pretty well.

When the Arab Spring happened in January 2011, our leaders reacted in a very odd fashion. The first response was to bring all our students in Egypt, all 11000 of them, home as if Egypt had just turned into a warzone and our students were in grave danger. It was very clear however, from what the students themselves said when they got home, that there was no physical danger at all.

My daughter took this video

It was the barbed wire that did it for me. Up til Friday afternoon I was still unsure about going. My hubby thought I'd already made my point last year. I was annoyed with continually being asked whether I was going or not, more so with the non-story that came out in M'kini which basically said I hadn't decided yet. I mean, does it matter?

Then I saw the photos of the police rolling out the barbed wire and I saw red.