Most of us have taken the necessary preventive steps to try to avoid getting infected by regularly washing hands and staying away from crowded places. Some of us have cancelled our travel plans that would have entailed spending time in crowded airports and airplanes, hence reducing the speed of the swine flu outbreak.

Tamiflu is an effective way of treating the swine flu and governments all over the world has been stockpiling this drug for their eventual use.

If you would like to ensure that you have a supply of Tamiflu, ask your local or national government for information as the demand for the drug has increased tremendously as the swine flu continues to spread worldwide.

Technorati Tags: H1N1, h1n1 virus, swine flu, swine flu outbreak

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand that we are facing a big problem here. There is no vaccine nor any good way to stop the disease from spreading (you cannot expect all people to stay indoors for weeks to come in a tourist country like Malaysia where foreigners keep on flying in to spend their holidays…).

So basically we are all sitting ducks for the swine flu. All you can do is make sure you boost your immune system as good as possible by eating organic food and sleeping a lot. Breathing fresh air is quite impossible due to the haze that keeps on hanging above Malaysia:

You could pray that nothing happens to you, but why would a God spare you and kill all people around you? That doesn’t make much sense either.

Technorati Tags: death, death toll, H1N1, h1n1 virus, haze, Malaysia, swine flu, swine flu outbreak

For those who have been reading the French newspapers, no need to repeat
the controversial death of a Mongolian girl related to the highest politician
in office in Malaysia as for today.

If you followed the new political strategy in place once the new PM came
in office, you have noticed that they take out the opposition one at a time:

• be it by the usual Sodomy trial against Anwar Ibrahim,
   
• putting pictures of naked Elisabeth Wong: a female opposition member in the newspapers and
   
• holding by-elections in each constituency each time a chair gets vacant due to death and when it suits the majority right (because there weren’t any by-elections in the state of Perak at a time a chair got vacant)

But do you really need to kill people in order to get a vacant chair? Or is all this an "accident", just trying to scare the hell out of somebody in order to get a vacant chair?

Talk in the streets has it that it’s the latter when it comes to the murder of Teoh, 30: a political secretary to Selangor Exco Ean Yong Hian Wah who was found dead on July 16 on level 5 of Plaza Masalam after giving a statement as a witness into alleged abuse of state government allocation at the Selangor Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission office.

Technorati Tags: french newspapers, killing, politician, Teoh

First time we heard about the swine flu – Mexican flu – as it was called those days, my Mexican sister in law told us not to worry, as the flu only kills the poor people that don’t have access to basic medical treatment.

That was then… Latest outbreaks of swine flu are indicated on Google’s operated swine flu map.

Meanwhile Australia reported their 29th death swine flu patient out of about 11,000 confirmed cases nationwide. The last few patients that passed away lived in Sydney. Knowing that Australian health care is easy accessible to its citizens, we can no longer ignore that the swine flu is "only a poor men’s problem".

Add to that from the about 1000 confirmed cases in Malaysia, half are imported by tourists of which roughly half come from Australia.

For those who want to be better safe than sorry: avoid being in airports and avoid destinations to or hub airports between Australia and the rest of the world.

Do like me: avoid flying all together.

Technorati Tags: australia, flu, Great Britain, H1N1, h1n1 virus, medical treatment, sister in law, swine flu, swine flu outbreak

Almost 800 swine flu cases in Malaysia and haze above Kuala Lumpur: breathing air in Malaysia becomes dangerous.

Although the Malaysian government says that they have everything under control, simple mathematics shows that there is a big problem looming: Malaysia keeps on having new H1N1 – swine flu – cases each and every day:

• imported by tourists, mainly from Australia
   
• domestic infections

The bad news however is that the swine flu is more aggressive than first said: since the many deadly cases of swine flu recorded in nearby Thailand and the Philippines, the US has stated that swine flu attacks the respiratory system more severely than the regular flu, causing pneumonia more easily than was first reported.

Add to that the haze that’s looming over Kuala Lumpur: you can smell that "somebody is burning some bushes"… Bad news for many Malaysian tourists that were expecting clear blue seas and fresh air…

Technorati Tags: breathing air, flu, flu cases, h1n1 virus, haze, kuala lumpur, swine flu

He looks like a retired French farmer full of "Joie de vivre"…

Like the French love their liberty, RPK is the only Malaysian freedom blogger with balls to write what he thinks about his beloved country Malaysia and its politicians.

All in good fun, he even jokes about us expats, or about our wives, as if expats are only men…

Unlike we expats can be poked around and take some constructive criticism, the wife of the actual Malaysian Prime Minister has a different sense of humor. That’s why she accused him of criminal defamation.

Now we all know that when you enter Australia, you have to declare and sign a paper that you have or haven’t been convicted.

If RPK failed to make such a declaration, he could be stripped of his visa and sent back to Malaysia immediately. Yet RPK is not convicted of anything in Malaysia, he only has some court cases running against him.

On the other hand, RPK can also claim Refugee status in Australia to obtain a protection visa, because all Malaysians know that RPK will be dead meat once he shows his face in Malaysia.

So if RPK is really in Australia, I hope Australians remember where they came from: convicted prisoners sent in exile… Please embrace the most funny of all almost convicted Malaysians: RPK. 

Technorati Tags: australia, France, freedom, french farmer, liberty, protection visa, raja petra, raja petra kamarudin, refugees, RPK

The majority was ruling nicely until the minority bought over a member of the majority and became the new majority.

As in any constitution and using normal sense, one should dissolve the government and start new elections, because no voters intended to vote for people that were about to jump ship.

Of course Malaysia does things "my way" as Mahathir would sing. So simple:

• no new election but
   
• kicking out the mentri besar because his party has no longer majority and
   
• replacing him with a mentri besar from the new so called majority.

Not to mention the numerous police interventions in and around a house of representatives and of course court and royalty has to intervene as well.

Now Najib has put the hot ball back in the camp of the sultan to solve the problem. Which as far as I understand constitution is not the right way of procedure.

Then there is another statement hearing Najib saying: there are other ways to solve the crisis in Perak than calling for new elections.

So I was wondering if this other way was already historically proven when Malaysia cut out Singapore but forgot to cut out the ‘SI’ from Singapore in the name ‘MalaySIa’.

The good news however is that this time there is no ‘P’ from Perak in Malaysia, so the name of the country can be safeguarded and Perak can be cut of:

if your eye hurts you, rip it out…

For those traveling to Melaka, fear no more as since today the government declared Malacca to be meningitis free.

This came after releasing the 3 last quarantined citizens one week ago from hospital. No new cases of meningitis have been reported since the outbreak started beginning this month.

Traveling however continues to be hazardous when you travel by plane: airplanes just circulate a limited amount of air, so whoever has a flu, you most likely will breath in his or her germs.

That’s what happened with a Japanese citizen of Malacca who traveled on board of a Malaysian Air Lines flight where one of the passengers got the H1N1 virus. Meanwhile his girlfriend got the H1N1 virus (swine flu, Mexican flu, Influenza A) as well, but the Japanese expat is confirmed to be as healthy as a fish.

Which makes Malaysia again a healthy country to travel to, just make sure you protect yourself against aedes mosquitoes in order not to get dengue fever nor the milder chikungunya disease:

• make sure you use mosquito repellent all the time
   
• be aware that the mosquitoes normally fly between 17.00 pm and 09.00 am and
   
• they attack "below the waist", so protect your feet, ankles and legs especially.

Meanwhile 10.000 people worldwide have been recorded having the swine flu, luckily it’s not that deadly but it’s quite a headache, literary!

Gordon Brown pays his brother £6.000 for "cleaning services".

How many corporate firms have a policy of not hiring family members of employers? Of course in the corrupt political world, brothers of MP’s fair equally well as the MP himself.

They range from $3.93 charged for Tampax by a (male) Tory MP to a $4,000 king-sized bed billed by the leader of the centrist Liberal Democrats to $252,000 billed by the Tory deputy speaker for expenses related to a country house he owns mortgage-free.

All this is possible because the British have a law that states to reimburse every of the 646 MP’s for any expenses related to:

• procuring and keeping one house in London (for easy access to Parliament) and another in their constituency, on top of their original house (Yes, you have your maths right: 3 houses) and
   
• for the travel between those three houses.

Every public listed company has a yearly audit for all the shareholders to read how the money is used. Why is this not common practice for the way taxpayers money is used by the public chosen government?

Technorati Tags: britain, England, gordon brown, politics, scandal

Today started a big scare at Tuanku Ja’afar Hospital where a policeman died today. People got scared when they saw the hospital staff handling the body wearing face masks and gloves.

The use of face masks and gloves in hospitals is normal procedure to prevent the spread of any contagious diseases.

The body of the policeman has been sent to Kuala Lumpur Hospital for a post mortem to find out whether he had died of any contagious disease such as:

• swine flu, in Kosher language: Mexican flu, and in Halal language: Influenza A(H1N1)
   
• meningitis, which resulted in the death of a 24 year old trainee in Malacca and has many quarantined and 46 people still remaining in an isolation ward.

We cross our fingers that we get real updates about this disease or that we will hear in the news tomorrow that Malaysia has everything under control, as usual.

Already there is a controversy in the schools of Tiang Dua close to where the meningitis outbreak started: kids where given masks to protect them from the bacterial meningitis.

The next day government ordered mask where not necessary as …

"not to panic the general public seeing kids wearing masks".

Of course the next day parents stopped sending their children to school. And I can predict you will read in the papers tomorrow that there really is no need to wear masks and all is under control…

Technorati Tags: H1N1, influenze a, Malacca, melaka, meningitis, Mexican flu, swine flu