Malaysia: Fobs too sexy for jobs

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It’s pretty common for bigots to complain that outsiders are intent upon luring, seducing and despoiling their women. The defense of the motherland is intimately linked to the defense of mothers, and women in general, who have to be protected from the depredations of the evil other. It’s also common for nativists to complain that there are too many immigrants, and that those who arrive under legal cover often stay to do something else. However, it’s rare to complain that illegal immigrants pose a national danger because they’re just too good looking.

Warning: Bangladeshis will not be allowed into Malaysia if they look too much like this man!

Until now.

Malaysia is being swamped by thousands of illegal Bangladeshi workers who are gaining entrance on the pretext of being students, according to reports… Home affairs minister Radzi Sheikh Ahmad said the men end up doing menial jobs in response to a labour shortage. [Link]

Malaysia has a manpower shortage, and Bangladeshi men are arriving in Malaysia to fill the gap, to give Malaysia what it needs. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in this – it’s completely natural. Why should the minister object, then?

Home Affairs Minister Radzi Sheikh Ahmad said Bangladesh workers were still spotted on construction sites and in restaurants despite a ban on their employment two years ago over concerns they were causing “social problems”. “They have blue eyes and look like Hindi film actors and they create social problems here,” Radzi was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times of the reason for the ban…. Hindi films are popular amongst Malaysian women, as are handsome male Bollywood film stars. [Link]

Ahhh … that explains it. Bangladeshis are too sexy for their jobs (too sexy for their jobs, so sexy, they’re fobs). Can you just imagine the Malaysian ambassador asking the Bangladeshi PM to make sure that only ugly “students” go to Malaysia? [Give us your tired your poor, your ugly masses yearning to be free, the unattractive refuse of your too too sexy shore … ] And what does it mean that no such restriction is imposed upon Indians?

I’m sure that today, all over Dhaka, Bangladeshi college students are walking around, catching reflections of their butts in shop windows, and comparing each other to movie stars. “Dude! You so look like SRK! I’m not kidding man, you really do! You’ve got the same blue eyes as he has!”

[Thanks also to technophobicgeek who blogged this story on the News tab]

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BBCD on Marriage

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Stories about marriage in which South Asian women are treated like property, used as a means to obtain money, married off at the tender age of twelve, or attacked by their in-laws, understandably generate certain feelings, including shock, anger, disbelief, and sadness. Another expected reaction might be to think that these incidents occur on the fringes of a society: in an “old school” world that should be increasingly marginalized and whose degrading and stereotypical practices need to be exposed as such.

Categorizing these stories in this way not only stigmatizes certain vestiges of the “old school,” but also places or elevates the critic into a different world, a “modern,” “civilized,” or “Western,” one in which specific qualities — such as individual choice and gender equity — are at a premium. But, while disassociating one’s self from the old school has its psychological benefits, it would be a mistake to think that the women born and raised in the West are free of humiliation in the marriage or courtship process.

Recently, I have been reading a blog called British Born Confused Desi (BBCD). The author describes herself as:

a Londoner who has her foundations firmly rooted in her Pakistani heritage. I face a constant state of confusion as I battle between trying to be a good Pakistani girl and a modern British woman.

She writes candidly of her experiences as a prospective bride. Her posts give the impression that she is an unwilling participant in a draft, where the male suitor and his family thinks they have the final say as to whether they want to select this “free agent” girl.

My folks have a family coming over to see me tomorrow, I hate doing things the traditional way. It really is a meat market situation and for some reason the “boy side” always seem to think that its their meat to buy. [Link]

And when the family eventually came to “view” BBCD:

Today after a very long time I was made to feel like a piece of meat…. . We got on pretty well for a first meeting.. His mother on the other hand spent two hours staring at me making me feel so uncomfortable, I dont think she liked me at all, Im quiet sure that i was too “modern” for her. His father didnt smile at me even once, i think both the parents have been on a course as too how to intimidate a person…. Anyway as per usual in our silly community system of arrange marriages, lets just wait and see what “they” say. At least with last weekends bunch I wasn’t interested in him at all. [Link]

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Best of the Best 2

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It’s time once again for the annual Best of the Best competition. It will be held on April 15th in New York City:

Michigan represents at last year’s BOB

The 2nd Annual Best of the Best Indian Dance competition with participants coming from all across the nation will be held on April 15th, 2006! The show consists of three types of Indian Dance: Bhangra, Raas-Garba and Fusion/Bollywood, where competing teams are invited after placing first at a previous competition. The landscape of Indian dance competitions is filled with a variety of shows, each highlighting a different category of Indian dance. Best of the Best is unique in that it is the first large-scale non-profit competition to bridge the gap among these different dance styles and crown one winner among the top teams. The second annual Best of the Best competition will provide an entirely new and memorable experience for the audience and competitors alike. The show consists of three categories: Bhangra, Raas-Garba and Fusion/Bollywood, where competing teams are invited after placing first at a previous competition. A total of four prizes will be awarded among the nine competing teams: a cash prize to the winning team from each category as well as an overall Best Performance prize to the team that truly is the Best of the Best. In addition to the competing teams, the show will feature internationally recognized artists.

If you have never seen Indian dance before, then Best of the Best promises to provide a birds eye view of the wide-spread landscape of Indian dance. For more information and updates please visit www.bobnyc.com, or e-mail us at info@bobnyc.com.

Performance Schedule:
Saturday, Apr 15, 2006 at 7:30 PM… [Link]

The BOB website features some great pictures from the past show as well as more detailed event info. As usual the NYC kids get the fun events in their backyard.

See previous post: Portuguesa flips the ‘Bird’

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In the line of fire

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The International Herald Tribune has a fascinating look at the headaches/near-heart-attacks that the Secret Service endured in securing Bush’s visit to Pakistan. It also includes a particularly insightful comparison to Bill Clinton’s 2000 trip. This may go a ways in providing an answer to a post on The Acorn a few days ago that posited some notions that I found a bit far-fetched.

How did it happen that the president spent a night in Pakistan, the assumed haven of Osama bin Laden and one of the one most dangerous countries in the world?

The short answer is that Pakistan’s president, General Pervez Musharraf, insisted. The long answer is a tale about the nightmare scenarios of the Secret Service and the calculated risks of presidential travel…

The fuzziness [of the travel plans to Pakistan] was to keep terrorists guessing about the timing of motorcades and the arrival of Air Force One, basic precautions passed down from a cloak-and-dagger trip that President Bill Clinton made to Pakistan in 2000 that had the Secret Service in an uproar. Six years later, accounts of the trip from former Clinton administration officials are far more harrowing than was known at the time.

“In the preparations for the 2000 visit, the service dug its heels in, repeatedly confronting the top NSC officials with horror scenarios,” Benjamin and Simon write. “There was danger to Air Force One from ground fire. No one trusted the Pakistani military to keep travel routes in the country secret or secure. The service said it could not perform its mission: It could not protect the president. In a meeting with Clinton, Larry Cockell, the head of the presidential detail, told him so.”

Clinton overruled the Secret Service, although he decided that his daughter, Chelsea, who was to accompany him to India on the same trip, should not make the stop in Pakistan. Clinton ended up slipping into Islamabad for less than six hours on a small military jet owned by the CIA while an Air Force One decoy flew in to draw a possible attack. It was a dramatic and, for Musharraf, embarrassing difference to the five previous days that Clinton had spent out in the relatively open in India. [Link]

Very cool. I would love a job planning out stuff like this. Especially after watching 24 last week. I like seeing gutsy calls where the President overrules his bodyguards at his own peril. Continue reading →

Are you ready for some "Football?"

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There still aren’t that many desis on the field in U.S. sports. However, that hasn’t stopped us from being an important part of the game. We’ve mentioned young Paraag Marathe in the 49ers front office. Over the weekend Sunil Gulati was elected the head of U.S. Soccer:

U.S. Soccer’s membership elected long-time U.S. Soccer executive Sunil Gulati as president of the U.S. Soccer Federation by unanimous consent on Saturday at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. Gulati succeeds Dr. S. Robert Contiguglia, stepping down after two successful four-year terms. Gulati, who ran unopposed in the election, has served as U.S. Soccer’s vice president since 2000.

“I am honored to serve our membership in this capacity and look forward to helping to continue to guide our sport through the most prosperous period in our history,” said Gulati. “Across the past decade, a platform for this sport has been built that did not previously exist, and we now have an opportunity in the coming years to achieve more for soccer in the United States than anyone could have ever envisioned 15 or 10 or even five years ago.” [Link]

Gulati has spent many years in the trenches, including in the front office of the New England Revolution. It is no fluke that he was elected to this position.

Gulati, a native of Allahabad, India, has played a major role in the development of U.S. Soccer since the early 1980’s and is currently U.S. Soccer’s Executive Vice President. Previously, amongst a number of roles, Gulati has served as Managing Director of National Teams, Chairman of the International Games Committee, Chairman of the Technical Committee and Managing Director of U.S. Soccer’s Project 2010. [Link]

In addition to his soccer job, Gulati is also a professor in the Economics Department at Columbia University. I happened upon a website where students get to rate their professors. This is what they have to say about Gulati:

# Ratings: 5
Average Easiness: 1.8
Average Helpfulness: 4.2
Average Clarity: 4.6
Hotness Total: 0
Overall Quality: 4.4

Also check out our frequent commenter Kush Tandon’s picture. These two must be long lost brothers 🙂

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How they learned to stop worrying and love the Bomb

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The British rag The Economist once again criticizes the U.S.-India nuke deal for breaking the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, claiming there’s some kind of comparison with the pariah government of Iran:

In striking his deal with India, allowing it to import nuclear fuel and technology despite its weapons-building, Mr Bush has not for the first time seemed readier to favour a friend than to stick to a principle… His gamble is a dangerous one… Rule-bending for India is bound to encourage some other countries to rethink their nuclear options too. [Link]

Meanwhile, here’s how the same country is treating the NPT and the Iran argument in a report out the same week (thanks, RC):

Rabinder Singh

Over the past few years the [UK] government has quietly been pouring hundreds of millions of pounds of extra funding… in pursuit of a replacement warhead for the Trident ballistic missile system…. the data produced by the test were part of a much wider, secret research programme to build a new nuclear weapon that some experts say will breach the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)…

… the law firm for whom Cherie Blair works, has drawn up a legal opinion… that any replacement of Trident would constitute “a material breach” of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The opinion has been prepared by… a professor of international law at the London School of Economics, and Rabinder Singh QC, a barrister who challenged the legality of the Iraq war…

Under the NPT, which came into force in 1970, Britain is committed to prevent proliferation and to “pursue” disarmament… “Replacing [Trident missiles] wrecks any standing we have when we preach non-proliferation to countries like Iran…” The reality, as one US official put it, is that whatever the public political niceties, “Britain is focused on a successor to the Trident warhead”… [Link]

‘In striking his deal with the UK, allowing it to import nuclear missiles despite its weapons-building, Mr. Bush is taking a dangerous gamble. Rule-bending for the UK is bound to encourage Iran to rethink its nuclear options too.’ Innit, gander?

There is no real equivalence between the UK and Iran, nor between India and Iran, only a cartel negotiation. It’s strictly business.

Related post: The worst of ‘Times’

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It’s Raining (Little Green) Men

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Red rain is coming down…
Red rain is pouring down
Pouring down all over me…

— Peter Gabriel, ‘Red Rain’

In 2001, Kerala residents heard a sonic boom in the sky followed by two months of mysterious red rain. A physicist in Kerala took samples of the downpour and found what looked like cells without DNA. He believes that the material came from a meteor which exploded while aloft and speculates that the specimens were aliens hitching a panspermic ride. He’s pretty sure they aren’t red earth in pouring rain (thanks, masale.wallah):

On 25 July, 2001, blood-red rain fell over the Kerala district of western India. And these rain bursts continued for the next two months. All along the coast it rained crimson, turning local people’s clothes pink, burning leaves on trees and falling as scarlet sheets at some points.

Investigations suggested the rain was red because winds had swept up dust from Arabia and dumped it on Kerala. But Godfrey Louis, a physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam, after gathering samples left over from the rains, concluded this was nonsense. ‘If you look at these particles under a microscope, you can see they are not dust, they have a clear biological appearance.’ Instead Louis decided that the rain was made up of bacteria-like material that had been swept to Earth from a passing comet. In short, it rained aliens over India during the summer of 2001…

Dr. Godfrey Louis has just released these magnified images of the cells in a new paper in Astrophysics and Space Science (via Digg).

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Sakina’s Restaurant

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This NYT essay is a 5fer: mangoes, mehndi, curries, spices and cooking all in one piece (thanks, WGIIA). Brilliant marketing, Ms. Jaffrey! It’s not only King of Fruit, it’s Queen of Clichés and Hermaphrodite Bastard Child of Book Marketing.

mangomehndimayhem — sorry, sari

This essay itself is interesting, not really exotica — it’s about the fruit literal, not a metaphor:

The aim in India had always been to get sweet, melt-in-the-mouth, juicy mangoes with as little stringy fiber as possible… When these same mangoes entered Florida in the 19th century, they were mainly dismissed as “yard” mangoes. Too soft for shipping, they were considered lacking in commercial qualities. So all the fiber that had been bred out of them over thousands of years was bred right back, giving America the hard, pale rocks we see in stores today…

What America will be getting is the King of Fruit, Indian masterpieces that are burnished like jewels, oozing sweet, complex flavors acquired after two millenniums of painstaking grafting… One generous tree in Chandigarh bore about 30,000 pounds of mangoes every year for 150 years until it was hit by lightning…

A customs inspector, possibly noting my shifty eyes, asked me quite directly, “Are you carrying any mangoes?” … The mangoes were confiscated. This would have been bearable had I not been able to peep through a slight crack in the customs office door…

The officers were cutting up the mangoes and eating them. That hurt. [Link]

No, friends, desis, countrymen, lend me your ears for the text ad at the end. This PR placement shills for a mango-spice-curry memoir by everyone’s favorite actor auntie, mother of Sakina:

Madhur Jaffrey is… the author of “From Curries to Kebabs: Recipes from the Indian Spice Trail” and the forthcoming memoir, “Climbing the Mango Trees.” [Link]

Related posts: Mmmmmmmangoes!, Anatomy of a genre, M-m-me so hungry, Buzzword bingo, Sick of spices, Indian enough, Sailing the Seas of Cheese

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The Legend of the Flying Elephants

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“In the beginning of time, the skies were filled with flying elephants. Too heavy for their wings, they sometimes crashed through the trees and frightened other animals.

All the flying grey elephants migrated to the source of the Ganges. They agreed to renounce their wings and settle on the earth.When they molted, millions of wings fell to the earth, the snow covered them, and the Himalayas were born….”

I went to an amazing exhibit of sepia photographs earlier today at a “nomadic museum,” four stories high and made of cargo containers, on the Santa Monica pier. The exhibit was titled “Ashes and Snow,” and will be in Los Angeles through May:

Gregory Colbert’s Ashes and Snow is an ongoing project that weaves together photographic works, three 35mm films, art installations and a novel in letters. With profound patience and an unswerving commitment to the expressive and artistic nature of animals, he has captured extraordinary, unscripted interactions between humans and animals.

His 21st-century bestiary includes more than 40 totemic species from around the world. Since he began creating his singular work of Ashes and Snow, Colbert had mounted more than 30 expeditions to locations such as India, Egypt, Burma, Tonga, Sri Lanka, Namibia, Kenya, Antarctica, the Azores and Borneo…

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Bombay Shining

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According to the latest Forbes ranking, the global center of desi wealth is Bombay, not Silicon Valley (thanks, WGIIA). India is the only South Asian country with billionaire private citizens (though a Sri Lankan Tamil émigré to Malaysia made the list), and Bombay has the most.

Vinod Khosla fell below the cutoff, as did most desi American techies except Ram Shriram, an angel investor in Google who is now apparently the wealthiest desi in the U.S. So with India’s recent economic growth, Indians are making more money by staying home than emigrating, quite a reversal, even though most who emigrated were not born into ultra-wealthy families. And these figures are in dollars, not even adjusted for purchasing power in the desh.

I suspect the stats are off though. If you were to treat national wealth as personal wealth, as several South Asian ruling families do, I bet the stats would change.

Where the wild things are

The U.S. is still far and away the best place to generate wealth, and New York City alone has more billionaires than any country except Germany:

While New York has the highest number of resident billionaires with 40, Moscow is second with 25, and London comes third with 23. [Link]

Indian billionaires have surpassed Japan’s in terms of total wealth:

A worldwide economic boom has yielded a record number of dollar billionaires in the past year, according to Forbes. Their number rose by 15% to 793 with India taking the lead in Asia… India’s 23 billionaires have a combined net worth of $99bn, surpassing former Asian leader Japan’s 27 billionaires with their total worth of $67bn. [Link]

India, whose BSE SENSEX market was up 54% in the past 12 months, is home to 10 new billionaires, more than any other country besides the U.S. Notable newcomers include Tulsi Tanti, a former textile trader whose alternative energy company owns Asia’s largest windfarm; Vijay Mallya, the liquor tycoon behind Kingfisher beer; Kushal Pal Singh, India’s biggest real estate developer; and Anurag Dikshit (pronounced “dix-sit”), another online gaming mogul, who made his fortune when he and two Americans took their PartyGaming poker company public in London last June. [Link]

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