Rrrribbit

It's only 3pm but I'm exhausted. It's taken me only four hours to explore everything South of Plaza de Catalunya in Barcelona. Maybe I walk too fast, but I think it's lots more likely that I've simply missed lots of interesting stuff. And there is a lot to miss, every winding alleyway a host to dozens of delightful, hidden secrets. But I'm simply too tired and jetlagged and so I've beaten a retreat to my hotel, that's thankfully right on La Rambla, the main tourist street. More on Barcelona later. Right now, I'm more interested in things happening at home.

The country was in an uproar less than a year ago when the opposition managed to steal several states from under the nose of the incumbents. But now, the term "frog" isn't reserved only for the French. After three assemblymen resigned from the Pakatan team to become Independents but friendly to BN, the incumbents seem to have the majority again and have now seized the opportunity to take over the Perak government. I suppose it was the opposition's fault to start with, after all the talk back in September that they would steal enough people from BN that they would have the majority in Parliament. But no matter who started it first, this isn't the way politics should be conducted.

In Malaysia, people vote for the party just as much, if not more than we vote for the person who's running for the post. So if a politician should suddenly decide to jump ship, no matter which party (s)he's jumping to, the people should have a right to decide if they still want the person to be their representative. In short, a by-election should be called. To make things simple, perhaps the constitution should be ammended to state that anyone who decides to switch parties while holding a post in the government should give up that post and start again in his/her new party. That would get rid of the incentive to jump ship and cut down on all the bribing that's going on.

In any case, it's high time Perak, and Malaysia in general, leaves all this childishness behind and concentrate on the task at hand - leading the country out of the current economic mess. It's mind-boggling how the PM is still in denial about Malaysia being in a recession. Sure, we may not be in a technical recession, but look how long the US denied their problem and look how well that turned out.

One of the suggestions to combat this recession that we're not in is to buy Malaysian products, but I saw the most amusing article in the New Straits Times the other day about how vague the term "Made in Malaysia" actually is:

What constitutes Malaysian-made goods include pre-packed goods with the name and address of a manufacturer in Malaysia on it; products that are made, assembled and modified locally; goods that go through the final process in Malaysia; and foreign goods manufactured under licence in Malaysia.

Apparently this ranges from anything that is completely sourced from and made in Malaysia to something that is merely assembled or modified locally. In other words, that Starbucks latte in your hand is Made in Malaysia because the barrista assembled it here and so is that McDonalds burger. Oh and those Peugeot cars sold by Naza are also Made in Malaysia. Suddenly the boycott American goods campagin during the recent Gaza war just got so much harder because guess what - everything is Made in Malaysia!