The Bridge Express Shuttle Transit (Best) system between mainland Penang and Penang Island has been launched. Definitely a move in the right direction – and we cannot afford to let it fail.
For a start the buses are running from Sunway Carnival in Seberang Jaya, where people can park their cars, to the Bayan Lepas industrial zone. Let these buses run for a month or so and then conduct a review to iron out the chinks kinks – or better still conduct weekly reviews.
Over the last couple of years especially, property market prices have shot through the roof as investors and speculators and sellers worked themselves up into a frenzy. Prices have almost doubled in some places.
In some countries, the real estate bubble has long since burst. For how long more can we see prices rocketing in Malaysia? House and apartment prices are being priced out of the reach of many working- and even middle-class Malaysians. That is why housing loans for the purchase of residential property have soared from RM167bn in May 2007 to RM230bn in September 2010.
Entering the Great World Park of Penang or Tua Seh Kai was like being teleported into a dreamy entertainment world, the stuff of fantasy and gastronomical delights, recalls tunglang.
This was definitely a happy world of nightly entertainment for Penangites of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Located at the present Prangin Mall, it was like entering another dimension of amusement arcade, cinema, food and merry-go-round. Just pay 10 cents and you were teleported into a world of great entertainment. (Mind you, 10 cents then was like a bullock cart’s wheel).
Former senior CIA analyst-turned-peace activist Ray McGovern was forcibly ejected and injured when he stood up and turned his back towards Hillary Clinton in silent protest during her ‘Freedom Speech’.
Protests are picking up against the 30-year rule of Sarawak Chief Minister Taib Mahmud. This one was held in the UK on 28 February.
Taib completes three decades in power on 26 March 2011.
The Federal Court has fixed 28 April 2011 to hear a full appeal on a couple of cases involving native customary rights to land that could have far-reaching implications.
The main issue before the court: is Section 5 (3) and (4) (on the land acquisition procedure) of the Sarawak Land Code ultra vires Article 5 read together with Article 13 (on the right to life and right to property) of the Federal Constitution?
The level of illicit cigarettes in Malaysia remains high.
According to a press release by JT International Berhad, the results of an Illicit Cigarettes Study, commissioned by CMTM, showed “the incidence of illicit cigarettes from June-August 2010 remaining critical at nearly 40%”.
The revolt in the Arab world is not just about getting rid of authoritarian leaders and dictators. It is also about ending economic injustice and exploitation.
The media would have us believe that the popular discontent is solely due to the dictatorships and repression in the Arab world. But there is more to it than that. A lot of the disenchantment is also the result of people’s hopes being crushed by an exploitative economic system that undermines essential public services, reduces nations to little more than sweat-shops, and concentrates wealth in the hands of a wealthy elite and their well-connected or crony corporations.
Tunglang takes us on a journey half a century back in time to relive his childhood experience of savouring street food in George Town:
In my half slumber mode, if my memory is still intact, I can visually relive a moment in the early 1960s, standing at the junction at night in front of Craven A Cafe.
I am a small child in pyjamas looking up to a tall, passing rickshaw with a running puller. I guess this is the last of the rickshaw breed in Penang.