DATELINE: Christmas Day.

DATELINE: 25th December 2023. MONDAY.

9.19 pm.

Melbourne: Christmas day. Another day is almost done. I have no thoughts of Christmas past. Now, I am staring into the abyss. Everything to live for - change, good governance, no corruption, and certainly the hope that in time, all will be well for Malaysia and Malaysians. But I doubt that the future will promise anything more than 'business as usual'.

I was in KL a few months back for almost three months and came back to Melbourne without too much hope of returning to KL anytime soon. The physical KL I left over fourteen years back is no more. In its place confusion and a veritable concrete jungle with no soul, no life, and certainly no promise of anything better to come, for its two million inhabitants. Truly a depressing place to live and work in. How can one live in KL and be happy? True happiness, it seems, lies somewhere else but many of its inhabitants are trapped in a life "kais pagi, makan pagi; kais petang, makan petang....most depressing!

My focus now is to write. Write about the things that matter to me and, I hope, also to you. Mostly politics and current affairs. Sometimes about life. Mine and yours. I would like a dialogue with those who read what I write. Do not second guess what is in my mind. I am writing in the moment. I write about the past and the future and sometimes I write about all things bright and beautiful. I have no agendas except the one I will, from to time, embrace as the spirits move me. In truth, I write because I like to write.

DATELINE will be a commentary on how life is for me. The good and the bad. At 76, I want to cram as much of the good as I can into my life for I am very aware that the future, for me, can be as fleeting as Ismail Sabri's time in office, or, may the lord hear me on this, be Mahathir like, in its longevity.