The Year That Was

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.

Launch of my book at Select Books, Singapore.

So far it's been doing pretty well. We sold out of the first printing within two weeks and now the second printing is out ( each print run is 5000 copies). It's number 1 on Borders' best-seller list which is unsurprising because Borders has done a lot to promote it. So far I've done five booksignings at various Borders stores including three in the Klang Valley and two in Penang. This Sunday Dec 9 I'll be at MPH at Subang Parade from 1-2pm if you'd like your books signed.

Reading and booksigning session at Borders, the Curve.

This week also is another first for me, which is the release of the e-book version of both Telling It Straight and In Liberal Doses. So those of you who live far away can download it from Amazon, Apple store, Kobo and Asiabooks, and probably other sites as well. So exciting!

So thank you everyone for your kind support! If you have been following my column Musings in the Star, you'll know that some of them don't get published or are severely cut. Three of those are in the book, as well as some short introductions to each section of the book. So you'll find some new things to read as well in there.

Meanwhile....my column today got axed again. I should have expected it I suppose since it's a review if you like of some of the issues raised at the UMNO General Assembly. And I guess I wasn't too subtle about it. But some things need to be said outright I think.

Anyway, read for yourself:

World AIDS Day just went by with all the usual newspaper features on the current statistics in our country and the problems limiting our ability to contain the epidemic. Chief among these is stigma and discrimination, the perpetuation of myths and falsehoods about both the disease and the people who live with it, causing fear, secrecy and, sometimes, outright violations of the human rights of HIV-positive people and those around them.

It seems ironic to me that while World AIDS Day features in the papers aim to enlighten the public about HIV/AIDS, at the very same time, a group of people gathered to triumphantly tout their ignorance, their prejudice and their hate. Blaming all the ills of society on those most marginalized and vulnerable, they hooted and cawed their fears and directed their disgust towards a group they cannot clearly identify. Yet they claim that society may only be saved if we put the different and defenceless into camps, much like the people of Gaza are put into a large prison camp, to be punished for their ‘mistake’ of trying to choose their own destiny.

There is nothing more fascinating than watching a group so devoted to displaying such willful hate. Some even called themselves God’s chosen ones, a familiar phrase to those of us who follow Zionist politics. The implications of such a claim is obvious; if God has chosen some people to lead us, why the need for elections when voters would make the likely mistake of choosing the wrong ones? Why not just abandon elections and let God choose? Where have we heard this before? Is this theocracy-lite, without the turbans and beards?

So retrograde was the discussion at this assembly that it felt like a 1950s movie. Once again, we were told, by a woman no less, that we already have gender equality in this country and therefore there is no need for any women’s rights activists. Coming from someone who has done very little to advance women’s rights in this country, this can only be expected. After all, while demanding 30% of the seats for women in the next General Elections, the same person had to ask a man to represent them to get permission for such allocations. Why ask yourself when you can ask a man to do it for you? Now that’s 1950s activism, none of this feminism business!

I must say it was a sublime moment: the leader of a woman’s movement triumphantly stating that there are no issues for women to fight for because everything is OK. Tell that to the many single mothers fighting for their rights in our courts, the many women who remain legally married but in reality have no spouses, the women who lose their property when their husbands die, the many women black and blue from beatings at the hands of their dearly beloveds every day. Tell that to our young women who after graduating find that some jobs are cut off from them because of their gender, or those who find jobs and then have to endure a workplace that is uncomfortable and subtly hostile through crass comments and even physical affronts. Or the many women bypassed for promotion by less-qualified men.

Like the targeting of minority and marginalized groups, this trumpeting of ‘non-activism’ is only a distraction from the pressing problems of the day. The word ‘corruption’ was barely heard at all, unless it referred to sexual mores as if those are the only ones that can be corrupted. ‘Ethics’ was not in anyone’s vocabulary, much less ‘justice’. So insular was the talk that I don’t even recall the words ‘Gaza’ or ‘Rohingyas’, even while thousands of our fellow brethren are suffering.

The trouble with insularity is that it ignores one simple fact: the world is watching. With smart phones, broadband and social media, what is said within any gathering is transmitted outside and all round the world in a second. Playing to the gallery may be a valid strategy within the confines of an exclusive group but with technology, there are now many different galleries all watching at the same time. I hope some people within the group had the decency to at least cringe at the more outrageous pronouncements.

If this is the pre-election rah-rah session, it truly baffles me how it would work. Those of us outside pay attention to get some idea of what we can hope for when we cast our votes in the next few months. But I’m probably not alone in finding little to hold on to except for a group that looks like it’s under siege and is blaming everyone but itself for its own failures.

 The rest of us, meanwhile, are already ticking our voting ballots.

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Um, yes.. 

Anyway the year has been eventful in many ways. And yes we all labour with the cloud of pending elections over our heads. Can't wait for it to be over and maybe, just maybe, people will go back to being normal again.

Meanwhile let me wish all of you a very merry festive season, Merry Christmas to all who celebrate and a 2013 that will be more sane than 2012 has been.

Peace!