All Fair and Above Board

Not only is our country celebrating our independence this week ( note the perennial Merdeka sales, the neverneding parade rehearsals in town and also the supposedly patriotic souls screaming down the highways at midnight with flags in tow ), more than a few Americans are doing pretty much the same.


A few good men from the sea...
Sailor boys on shore leave, I mean. Virile post-adolescent seamen fresh from the USS Kitty Hawk out celebrating their well-earned freedom from the cabinned, cribbed and confined bowels of their ship. Of course judging from the various celebratory banners and buntings around, the bars and nightclubs in the city are just waiting for the arrival of the squids with much glee. No doubt more than a few ambitious sarong party girls in search of the American Dream have already hitched up their proverbial printed pareos for a wanton display of their tanned pins.

I'm pretty pleased myself honestly. Seems like a decade since I last drooled over friendly sailor boys that one fine weekend in Penang during Fleet Week and today I had a spectacular front-row seat. Nothing like a fresh pair of faces to brighten up the place - blond, blue-eyed Abercrombie twinks aplenty for the fans - though I have to admit that the ones that I saw today were mostly second-rate versions of the ever luscious Chris Evans. Sigh. Have the standards fallen? Or have I grown up?

Or are the fanciable navy hunks travelling in packs somewhere else?

Believe it's the latter so anyone who's seen hunky Americans hiding out somewhere, tell me about it :P

Certainly nothing to draw my attention for long - which is why I later found myself in a dark theatre trying not to get all choked up over Yasmin Ahmad and her team's sweet, heartrending commercials for Merdeka. Friends. Family. Fellow countrymen. The things that matter after all.


Hope our politicians don't ever forget the hopeful message above.

And for my friends - most of whom have forgotten my favourite controversial ad of them all - and surprisingly one suspiciously censored from the ones we viewed in that dark cinema. Adorable chinese hunk falling heads over heels for this delicious Malay temptress of a neighbour with Indian music playing in the background? Then said temptress licking the forbidden fruit while the besotted boy tries desperately not to drool - whlie keeping the pretence of teaching her maths? Not surprised the close-minded conservatives threw a damned fuss.