Let's be Independent

Commonwealth Games: Tenpin Bowling - Malays strike out for first gold 

That was an article from UK's The Independent published in 1998.

Former Mailsport editor Tony Mariadass came across the said article and showed it to me at his office recently. We shook our heads in disbelief.

Paragraph six read;

But if the experience was faintly bemusing for Prince Edward, for the Malaysians it was one of almost unalloyed joy as their doubles' pairing of Kenny Ang and Ben Heng earned the home country their first gold medal of these Games.

Paragraph nine had this;

Prince Edward was not the only guest of honour - the Malaysian Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad, watched Ang and Heng respond to the incessant chanting of "Malaya Boleh!" - "Malaya you can!" - to maintain a comfortable margin of victory over Bermuda and Australia.

While paragraph 12 said;

The Americanism on view went a little further. Every bowlers' effort of any merit was followed by an extended ritual of high-fives and partner patting. At first glance, an astonishing number of the competitors appeared to have artificial hands - but these turned out to be wrist supports. For the congratulations presumably.

It is such big foriegn organisations that still refer Al-Qaeda dead leader Osama bin Laden as bin Laden, as evident in CNN's report here. For the record bin means 'son of' thus Osama should be called Osama and not son of Laden.

Likewise a Sikh temple is called a Gurdwara. And one would expect the local dailies, as seen here, to have some knowledge about such a fact.

Perhaps some people are still stuck in their colonial past.

HD says: To quote Steve Polyak; "Before we work on artificial intelligence why don't we do something about natural stupidity?"