One Downer (I'm sad to report)...

At the BF table, my attention was drawn to Nanyang Siang Pau frontpage.

Boy Genius CHIANG TI MING
(27.7.76 -- 6.1.07)

A Furong's could-have-been greAt son passed away yesterday aged 31.
But his being a "national tragedy" of sort -- IMHO -- I won't
write more but ask my ER to say a prayer for one who I
sincerely believe could have achieved that Towering Malaysian status
IF ONLY ...


From The People's Paper, page 2:

Monday January 8, 2007


‘Boy genius’ Chiang dies

SEREMBAN: Chiang Ti Ming, the boy genius who was the youngest student ever to be admitted into the prestigious California Institute of Technology (CalTech) almost two decades ago, has passed away on Saturday morning.

“He passed away peacefully,” said a family member yesterday.

The family declined to reveal other details while Chiang’s parents, father Chiang Chick Liam and mother Lee Soo Hoon, were too distraught to talk to the press.

Only his family members were seen entering the house here yesterday afternoon and requested that privacy be given to them.

Press reports in 2002 said that he had been admitted into a hospital in Kuala Lumpur, for depression and withdrawal symptoms. The family also suffered a tragic loss when his sister Eei Wern, drowned at the swimming pool of the Seremban International Golf Club in 1993. Eei Wern was then four.

It was reported 16 years ago that Chiang, who was 15 at the time, was not only the youngest student to be admitted into CalTech but also among the top five percent where his results were concerned.

Chiang had achieved many firsts while at CalTech, including being the youngest ever student to receive the Undergraduate Students Merit Award two years in a row.

He was also an honorary member of the Tau Beta Phi, a national engineering society.

He had been accepted to study for the second year of the four-year Physics degree course at the university in 1989 when he was 13 after sponsorship from several organisations.

The prodigy later pursued and graduated with a doctorate in particle physics at Cornell University in New York.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Desi does not wish to linger in Melancholyland for that would defeat the purpose of a writer. Writers must enhance the quality of life, not depress it.
We must move Civil Society forward, not repress it.
We must feel the pulse of the nation and not be immune or dumb to its blips.
We must try to light up the Childe's smile, and not render it always wedNURSEdies,
always full of woe.
Let's learn from Tuesdays with Morrie.
Seek our dreams and help fellow Malaysians find the direction to theirs too.

Forget the crap churned out by Datuk Z, now involved in a power struggle with his deputy of the Selangor Badminton Association, V. Subramaniam, to whom he dished a letter of suspension dated Dec 19, citing him "for misconduct".

On balance, from theSun frontpage, to help lift us up a li'l cometh Sharir Samad, maverick MP for Johor Baru, speaking in his capacity of Public Accounts Committee chairman, on the transportation fiasco of the National Servive Department:

"If you are asking for a rocket
to the moon, then you can go to certain people
or have a negotiated contract, but now,
you are just looking for bus services!"


From theSUN today, page 10, I find a unique ad, and being a Curio cat, I clicked dare:

LOST
Passion for work.
followed by "arresting" copies.
Written professionally.
Yes, it's looking out for Copy Writers.

I traversed to its suggested website 95percent.blogspot.com,

and I reprised several shorts by one Dawn, and I hope she won't mind
as I am doing a promo for YOU, lust year's
PERSON OF THE YEAR, if you accept the passage of TIMEwillingly, gracefoolly:~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Monday, June 16, 2003

We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our hearts, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown to them.
Somerset Maugham


Dawn posted at 19:44


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.
Frank Zappa


Dawn posted at 12:15


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


This is my favorite Poe poem. It was also of one of his earliest. I think he wrote it when he was about 19. I could check the facts but I'm lazy.

Alone
Edgar Allen Poe

From childhoods hour, I have not been as others were
I have not seen as others saw
I could not bring my passions from a common spring
From the same source I have not taken my sorrow
I could not awaken my heart to joy at the same tone
And all I loved
I loved alone
Thou
In my childhood
In the dawn of a most stormy life
Was drawn from every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still
From the torrent, or the fountain
From the red cliff of the mountain
From the sun that round me roll'd in it's autumn tint of gold
From the lightning in the sky as it passed me flying by
From the thunder and the storm
And the cloud that took the from
(When the rest of heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view


Dawn posted at 02:05

Lonely islands of tears

The clouds have gathered for a meeting
they decry the landscapes wantonly man-raped below
vast islands of barren land as watery eyes can see
dotted by small clusters of green and brown

The Homo sapiens weep when the rains come to water their plants
but also get trapped by clogged drains
and large monsoon drains overfilled with debri and mud
Man-made debri in the name of development

Now Mother nature exacts more human tears
As risimg waters claim some lives
but what canafterath tears do but
ease the broken hearts for a day or two
Then human folloy rears its head
again and again
Until the next monsoon rains
visit
Preceded by the geeneral assembly above
of rain clouds without emotion

like the annual rites of passage
of politicians and business cronies
in the corridors of power at PWTC
and the busy walkways at Putrajaya
The privileged feet buttered by smooth turfy carpets
only for the connected
and anointed
they also shed tears
akin to crocodile and the crooked

while their condominium projects continue
to rape Mother nature's gifts
they debase and continue to shed
tears
that mingle with the flood waters
Taking a few more lives
Other innocents' lives less valued
than privilged and the anointed's.

For whom the bell tolls
I hear some chimes
on distant shores
God guide those stranded
behind
on small islands
surrounded by rising waters.

I:
S:
A: men

YLChong, kopileft
400pm, Jan 8, 2007