Highlights of the week for me were the Malaysian election upset and my new course on aquaponics.
Malaysia Boleh (Can)! The people had spoken on Wed and booted out the incumbent BN party in favor of the main opposition headed by the former leader Mahathir Mohamad. There were so many twists and turns in the campaign that was worthy of a Dan Brown novel.
For the last few years, Malaysian were fed up with the blatant corruption stories that were circulating on the web, embarrassed that the country’s political standing in the world stage was becoming a big joke. The 1MDB saga was reading like a soap opera and various central banks had already accumulated enough evidence to conduct serious investigations. Yet within the country, arms were twisted to constantly provide an air of innocence from the authorities. I have personally heard of the Goldman connection from insiders in 2012 on how the investment bank managed to earn the highest fees pulling off the 1MDB bond issuance.
The subsequent cover-ups were sometimes so hilarious I wonder if the script was written by a Hollywood screen writer. Oh, its OK, the $680 milion of funds in the Najib’s personal account was “actually” a gift from a Saudi prince and it has been returned. The Wolf of Wall Street, a movie about corruption, was funded by the same 1MDB monies. The irony!!! The whole saga is worthy of a future successful Netflix series – proposed title : “Rosmah & I”.
I guess the house of cards is finally crumbling. How all these will end is anyone’s guess. Mahathir has stated that he is not going to rule for more than 2 years given that he is already 92 now. He has also immediately obtained the pardon of Anwar from the king as promised. His son is now 53 and probably will aim for the PM post after Anwar.
Overall, this is really an amazing ride. Ex-PM (22 years!) Mahathir previously jailed right-hand man Anwar and groomed Najib to be PM. Then ex-PM joined forces with Anwar in the opposition to topple Najib and the ruling BN party (for > 60 years) in a bloodless election coup.
Where do we go from here? I hope that Mahathir is sincere that he is trying to right a wrong where he had a part to play in creating and aim to have a lasting legacy of his time in power for the people to remember him by. Malaysia is capable of greater things and the people should come together to make this happen now.
On the other event this week, I started my new 6 weeks course on aquaponics. It is the symbiotic relationship of growing vegetables without soil by using the waste from fishes which may also be harvested as food. It is eco-friendly and self-sustaining when done right.
I had been maintaining my fish pond for over 10 years. The weekly cleaning of the filter tank has a bit of a therapeutic effect on me and watching the ornamental fishes swimming around does calm me sometimes. For the past year, I had also started growing herbs and edible vegetables in the backyard garden. Trying to see if I have green fingers or a blue thumb…
Hopefully, this course will provide me with enough information to combine my interest in both areas into a higher level of satisfaction and achievement.
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