Sacriliege. Desecration. Just another day in the life of Malaysia.

A lot of what's going on in Malaysia slips by me these days. It's hard to keep tabs on the country when you don't live in it. One that I would have completely missed, if not for a chance email I got from a friend, was the 'investigative' piece written by Al-Islam magazine.

Two 'intrepid' reporters from the magazine were tipped off that Muslims were being surreptitiously converted into Catholicism by churches in the country and saw it as their duty to go undercover to find out if it was true.

As a journalist with pretensions to being an investigator myself, I can understand their excitement in getting the tip-off. After all, I too would be similarly excited if I were to get onto a story that was so obviously sensational and so obviously up my alley.

So, these two men went to a church one fine Sunday and decided to find out if the allegations were true. They discovered it wasn't. Their curiousity satisfied, they should have done the right thing and left.

They didn't. Instead, they stayed on and during the Mass, joined the Catholic congregation in accepting the Holy Eucharist.

After that, they left, spat out the sacred wafer and took pictures of it, probably not even realising the gravity of the sacriliege they had committed.

What they did insulted, infuriated and hurt Catholics around the country. The government's predictable lack of a response only made matters worse.

Emails began flying around (I got one of them). Police reports were lodged. Angry missives were sent to the magazine (once again, I was one of the writers). Blogs and letters, including input from people like Martin Jalleh (who wrote a fantastic open letter which was picked up by many outlets), Khairy Jamaluddin (the cockroach probably wanted to score points), and Lim Kit Siang (also never one to pass up the opportunity to score brownie points), were plastered all over the web.

And ultimately, nothing has happened.

Some time back, Herald - the Catholic weekly got into a court battle with the government over the use of the word Allah. They were threatened with closure if they didn't rescind the usage of the word.

Cast your minds back to an incident that took place sometime before that, when the Danish publication drew a caricature of Prophet Muhammad. The furore that greeted that piece was awesome. Even in Malaysia, there were calls for public apologies, threats to boycott Danish products, etc.

Yet, when the shoe is on the other foot, these same people, these defenders of the faith, are nowhere to be seen or heard.

The lack of respect, the lack of grace and the lack of understanding shown to other races and religions in Malaysia is becoming worse by the day. From having to deal with catcalls of 'immigrant' and 'squatter' to playing on uneven fields during court cases to now having our most sacred religious rites - Catholics believe that that little wafer is literally the transfigured Body of Christ - desecrated and defiled.

Our Muslim brothers in Malaysia are in an enviable position. They have the full machinery of the government, an Islamist opposition party and the institution of the Sultanate to protect and speak out for them.

What do we non-Muslims have? Only the leaders of our churches, temples and tokongs. That's it. I suppose that makes us easy meat - sitting ducks for all would be crusaders to target.

It's precisely these kinds of things that make Najib's high-falutin' 1Malaysia campaign come across as just a lot of wind being released from the rectum of another political gasbag. All this talk of unity and togetherness, my dear P.M., rings shallow when you don't walk the talk.

I can bet that if the situation were reversed, that if, say, a journalist for the Herald were to go undercover into a mosque, he would be locked up under the ISA faster than you can say Al-Islam. I bet that the paper would have been shut down unceremoniously in the blink of an eye. I bet politicians would have jumped up and down spewing all the rhetoric that they could come up with. I bet that the more fanatical of our Muslim friends and politicians would have taken to the streets, swearing the bathe the keris in blood. After all, they've threatened to do so for far less before.

And what do we do? We gather in our churches and pray for things to become better. We write our letters and wait, mouths open, for responses that never come. We lodge our police reports and get fobbed off with fine words and empty promises. We turn the other cheek, while at the same time, keep getting slapped over and over and over again.

~ I'm not concerned with you liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you respect me as a human being ~ Jackie Robinson.

Flouncing about in Florida.

Going to Florida was always going to be the highlight of my July. Meeting my fellow Fellows, seeing Katie again, checking out sunny Florida - all these prospects had me in a state of high excitement.

I was also actually looking forward to Poynter itself. All my colleagues at the Post-Dispatch had told me what a cool place it was. Former Friendly Fellow Audrey Edwards also said that the mid-term seminar would actually be the point where I would start to see things differently and begin to settle down.

So, it was no great surprise to find out that they were all right. On all counts. Poynter was a really cool place and it was the point where I began to see things in a different light and feel more settled. Which, if you think about it, ain't that great a thing, considering that I'm settling just as I'm beginning to get ready to return. - _ -

The weeks preceeding Poynter were relatively quiet for me. I did a couple of interviews - one a follow up on an earlier story, the other a Q&A with a college student who gave up his studies to volunteer with the American Red Cross in Baghdad.

Going to Poynter, I had a pretty set idea on what I wanted to learn. And multimedia wasn't really high on my list of priorities because my paper back home seemed hell bent on having the world's worst (and ugliest) newspaper website.

In a happy coincidence however, they revamped the site to give it a more streamlined and multimedia intensive look, giving me the impetus to actually learn more about multimedia myself.

And we certainly did learn about multimedia. There was so much information given to us that at times I felt my brain would just go kaboom! Soundslides, Audacity, Audioboo (for my Iphone), Bubbleply and the entire battery of online tools we got from Ellyn Angelotti (though most of them aren't available outside the U.S.) all open up such an array of storytelling possibilities for reporters. I'm still so excited about them!!!

And it wasn't only multimedia. Roy Peter Clark focussed on plain, old-fashioned writing skills and that was just as interesting, challenging and exciting as all the multimedia sessions. After all, no matter what happens, I'll always consider myself a writer first and foremost.

One of the most unexpected things was the heavy focus on training our fellow reporters when we go home. I really enjoyed this part, especially since I do enjoy guiding and mentoring my younger colleagues anyway. To be actually given tools and knowledge to do this better was an enriching experience. To be given these tools by folk as seasoned as Bill Mitchell and Paul Pohler was both humbling and uplifting. Humbling because seeing them in action made me realise how far I had to go if I really want to be a good teacher and mentor. Uplifting because it showed me that these gentlemen, men who'd been there and done that, were still humble, approachable and down-to-earth despite their experience and their achievements.

I took what I thought was a vacation to Disneyworld with Hoon after our Poynter session. However, I - quite cleverly if I do say so myself - managed to sell the idea to my editor. On top of that, I also managed to work in a multimedia slideshow to go with it. Not bad, huh?

I've managed to also get quite a nice gig at work now - doing club reviews. So, essentially, I'm going to be paid to eat, drink and be merry. Not the worst job in the world.

Life's looking good.

Bullshit, bullshit and yet more bullshit.

Is it just me or has my newspaper's claim to being the most literate (a position not too difficult to achieve in Malaysia) paper in the country gone to the dogs lately?

Yes, we are BN flunkies. But at least we've (almost) always been BN flunkies who wrote in polished, grammatically accurate and intelligent-sounding English.

The quality of the writing these days however - and this is down mainly to one culprit - has made us the laughing stock of many a reader, blogger and reporter out there.

Using multi-syllabic words and lengthy sentences is a tricky enough proposition when the writer knows what he's writing about and has a good command of the language.

When the writer doesn't and has, at best, a tenuous grip of English (and reality, judging by the content of his comments), the results are farcical articles couched in absurd turns of phrase (like 'Anwar Ibrahim moshes his way surrealistically to the House') and totally inappropriate usage of words (like 'cadre' to describe an individual).

Here's my particular favourite - 'If you are to base last week’s rampage of putting the blame solely on the MACC and implicating senior Government leaders, Pakatan Rakyat minions will insist no less than a guilty verdict, that some MACC perp pushed Teoh Beng Hock out of the 14th floor to his death for no reason other than wanting to torture the young man.'

Forget about the incredibly unwieldy length of the sentence. Forget about the weird choice of words and the inappropriate use of the second comma.

Just think about the last part of that sentence - 'some MACC perp pushed Teoh Beng Hock out of the 14th floor to his death for no reason other than wanting to torture the young man.' Is it just me or is pushing somebody to his death a little counterproductive to torture? I mean, you ain't gonna get no joy out of torturing a dead man, are you?

I can understand grammatical slips. I'm as guilty of bad grammar as the next person. Not all of us know when to use the semicolon instead of the comma, whether to hyphenate the words or not and when to use '...' instead of "...".

But what I don't get is why use so many big words when you can say the same thing more succintly and clearly with small words. What are people like this trying to prove? That they're clever? Even Hemmingway and Orwell were able to get by without the 'benefit' of such idiotic bells and whistles, for crying out loud!

If they would just google their name, they'd find out what people actually think about their 'command' of the language. I'd prefer to be repeatedly kicked in the balls while at the same time have root canal work done without anaesthesia rather than be subjected to an article like that. Seriously.

Even more baffling is how such shameful goings-on can...well...go on, with absolutely no intervention by the editors and the powers that be. Toeing the party line is one thing. Doing it in such a shambolic manner is another entirely. When us 'normal' reporters fuck up our articles, they usually end up on the wall of shame at the office. But when some people routinely inflict grevious bodily harm on the English language, the result is an online posting trumpted on the home page of the newspaper with the grand tag of 'Online Exclusive' attached. It would be funny if it weren't so damn embarrassing.

There are so many good and potentially good writers in the company. Writers with wit, grace, insight and charm. Many of our sub-editors are handy with a pen too. Yet, it is the grotesque work of certain twerps that we are promoting. Why? Why? Wwwwhhhhhyyyyyyyyyy????????

The paper is moshing its way surrealistically to the bottom of the junk heap.

My week as a shutterbug.

<---- This is probably my favourite picture ever taken. I love the emotion.

It's been a good couple of weeks at work. The training plan that I worked out with Elisa and Christopher saw me spending a week in the photo desk right after my stint at the editorial desk was over.

I had really been looking forward to this because the new camera had given me photography fever. In a big way. I've been so taken up with it that I spend hours online looking up Steve McCurry pictures (Thanks for pointing out to his website to me Kamsie!), and visit websites that give photography tips.

The craze has gotten so bad that I'm beginning to see the world in terms of pictures! I'd be minding my own business, walking down the street and then I'd see a person, a tree, an animal or even something like a doorway or a window and I'd get immediately excited about how it would look in a picture. Then I'd cuss myself out for not having my camera with me at the time.

<---- This father-son moment at the Central West End Art and Taste Fair brought back memories of my own childhood.

But anyway, back to work. The week spent in photo desk was fascinating, probably the most educational time I've had since coming to the Post-Dispatch.

I covered the Central West End Art and Taste Fair, the Missouri Botanical Gardens' 150th anniversary and adventurer Dan Cook's visit to St. Louis, among others.

<--- I experimented with being arty-farty. Not too bad, if I do say so myself. :)

Some of the pictures were used as slide shows online while others were published in the paper. The week culminated with me being sent for an assignment on my own (the previous ones had me shadowing Elie Gardner). I was assigned to do a portrait of a lady who collects and makes blankets for sick kids in hospitals. The assignment went well and the picture got published a week later.

All in all, I emerged from my week as a photographer with a greater understanding of the technical aspects of photography, such as how aperture, shutter speed, lighting, etc affect the quality of a picture. At the same time, I also managed to develop my 'eye' for a picture better, improving my composition and framing skills.

<---- What's Oscar de la Renta or Versace compared to the beautiful gowns mother nature dresses her children in?

To me, these skills are very important because I want to ultimately become a self-contained journalist who's output will include articles, pictures and multimedia and will need minimal, if any, editing before being ready for the paper or website.

With the added knowledge and increased confidence in my photography skills, I'm just that little bit closer to getting to where I want to be.

Once the photography week was finished, I went back to the newsdesk only to find that Iran was in the throes of its post-election unrest. Christopher suggested I do a story on local Iranians and how they felt about what was going on in their homeland.

Getting the story done was a little tricky, because I didn't have any connections here. I got one contact from fellow reporter Doug Moore, but the guy didn't want to be interviewed. I also tried going to a mosque to see if I could find anybody. The first time, nobody was there. The second time, the only one there was the imam, who said the last time he had been interviewed, the report got skewed, resulting in him losing his job and being interrogated by the CIA. Needless to say, he didn't want to talk.

So, I googled up Iranian restaurants in St. Louis and started from there. I spoke to the owner of the restaurant and once I had interviewed her, asked her for other contacts in the area. From then onwards, it got progressively easier.

Their stories were compelling and I think the editors agreed with me because they decided to out it on the front page. :) One of my stated goals in my fellowship application was that I wanted to get a front page story for the paper I would be working at. Looks like that goal has been achieved a little ahead of time.

And so, as July beckons, I'm working on what has become something of a pet project for me. As always, I'm a little paranoid about giving out details of a story before it's published. But let me say this - the angle is interesting and if the pieces fall into place, it'll be an interesting story and hopefully my second page one. :)