I read the news today oh boy

I’m try­ing to get into the habit of buy­ing news­pa­pers to read. And it is a dif­fi­cult habit to form, given that I’m so used to read­ing news online.

I thought it’d be refresh­ing, the smell of ink, and the tac­tile dun­nowhat and all that. But I didn’t count on the added bonus of the dif­fer­ent news angles, and the news­pa­pers’ dif­fer­ent agendas.

Such as still try­ing to pro­mote the free online (as opposed to the paid online) sec­tion of the Straits Times, known as Stomp.

“You’re the reporter!”, yells the five coloured fancy font head­line accom­pa­ny­ing this Sunday’s cit­i­zen jour­nal­ist scoop, which com­prised a series of pho­tos depict­ing police­men lead­ing a jew­elry shop rob­ber out of the jew­elry shop where he’d just com­mit­ted the crime.

Just makes you want to shout — “And we’re the news­pa­per get­ting all these pic­tures for free because we’re empow­er­ing you as cit­i­zen jour­nal­ists! No we’re not giv­ing you free sub­scrip­tions, but there’s a chance of win­ning a car! Some time! Soon! When we decide to have another giveaway!”

But you really don’t want to be “the reporter” or “the jour­nal­ist”, because I hear some of the “real jour­nal­ists” eat their own kind. They say so themselves:

And she looks like she means it

But what really dis­turbed me was the sheer num­ber of bad hap­pen­ings in Malaysia. I know there was some sort of ker­fuf­fle over what MM Lee Kuan Yew said, though I don’t know exactly what it was that irked the Malaysians so, because, hey, I just started read­ing the news­pa­pers, as I was saying.

But the Straits Times, thank good­ness for the Straits Times, else I would’ve packed every­thing and dri­ven up north in hope of a bet­ter life. Now I know bet­ter. Malaysia sucks:

Mea­sures have been taken to pro­mote pretty ones

In our coun­try, price caps are a good thing, and never used as a threat

Soar­ing prices! Ugly divorces! Soar­ing prices of ugly divorces!

And if you think the issues are not linked to some sys­temic dys­func­tion of Malaysia as a whole:

Are we really con­sum­ing so much sugar?

Hell, yeah!

OK, Not linked. They drink it black. And we know there’s no sign of the cult’s revival because sales of giant teabags have dwindled

Pity no one reads the Straits Times in Malaysia. Because if they did, they’d know that Sin­ga­pore and her peo­ple are all ready to lend a help­ing, guid­ing hand to lead them out of the Dark Ages:

…for a fee

iTunes is play­ing an ille­gal copy of A Day in the Life from the album “1967–1970 Disc 1″ by The Bea­t­les of which I have the orig­i­nal CD.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Malaysia, Sin­ga­pore, Straits Times