The Butt of Jokes

I was at the Sime Darby Heathcare Toastmasters meeting this evening because I had been invited by their President to take on the role of a speech evaluator for Wong Siau Fui. I was incidentally, the evaluator for the former (i.e. Shirley) when she herself did her project speech at IEM on Christmas Eve. There were ten of us at this meeting – 5 members, 3 visiting Toastmasters and 2 guests – but even with this small number, we made this meeting a success.

As blogs and emails continue to make a monkey of the RMAF with the embarrassing tale of engine thefts (mind you, these engines weigh about 200 kg each and a crane would be required to lift them onto a lorry to take them out of the guarded? base) – one blogger called them Royal Malaysian Air Farce – Pauline Ng (Webpage

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/opinion/breaking-views/47750-all-eyes-on-najib-to-come-clean--pauline-ng, posted December 28, 2009) inked these words: “Not surprisingly, the disappearance of the engines has made Malaysia the butt of jokes and heightened concern about its role in the black market arms trade. The Armed Forces chief's comments that the lost engines could be just the ‘tip of the iceberg’ only added to the sense of dread.

As opposition DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng put it: “How can they protect the country when they cannot even protect their own base?”