Plane fine, pilots good, so where is MH370?

More than 80 hours after it vanished from thin air, Malaysia Airlines said that the B777-200ER operating flight MH370 breezed through checks 15 days earlier – compounding the mystery over its fate.

The Malaysian flag carrier had earlier said both pilots were experienced to fly the aircraft, Boeing Co's best-selling wide-body plane, and remain stumped over its whereabouts.

The search for the plane carrying 239 people onboard has expanded as far as Sumatra on the west coast of the Malay peninsula and Hong Kong on the far reaches of the South China Sea but more than 40 ships and as many aircraft have yet to find any trace of the lost passenger jet.

Why is it taking so long to find the aircraft that was last seen crossing the Gulf of Thailand towards Beijing early Saturday morning?

In a special report, the Christian Science Monitor compared the search for MH370 with that of Air France flight 447.

In both cases, there was no "Mayday" or distress call from pilots. The planes just "disappeared" from the sky, the report said.

In the case of AF447, bad weather was a factor.

The Air France pilots didn't radio for help because they didn't realise, until it was too late, the severity of their problems.

And as some pilots have noted, they don't see a lack of communication as necessarily a sign of a terrorist bomb or the catastrophic failure of the aircraft.

How can a plane disappear?

How can a plane carrying 239 people just disappear over the ocean for more than three days?

As puzzling as it sounds in this age of modern technology, what happened to Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is not the first reminder of how vast the seas are and how difficult it is to locate something lost in them, said a report by the AP news agency.

It took two years to find the main wreckage of an Air France jet that plunged into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009.

It also took a week for debris from an Indonesian jet to be spotted in 2007 after it crashed near the area between Malaysia and Vietnam where Saturday's flight vanished.

Today, the mostly intact fuselage still sits on the bottom of the ocean.

"The world is a big place," Michael Smart, professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Queensland in Australia, told AP.

"If it happens to come down in the middle of the ocean and it's not near a shipping lane or something, who knows how long it could take them to find?"

To add to the confusion, officials had said that MH370 might have made a turn back towards Kuala Lumpur, making it even more difficult to find as it might have been hundreds of kilometres from where it last made contact with air traffic controllers.

Aviation experts say the plane will be found — eventually. Since the start of the jet age in 1958, only a handful of jets have gone missing and not been found, the AP report said.

"I'm absolutely confident that we will find this airplane," Captain John M. Cox, who spent 25 years flying for US Airways and is now CEO of Safety Operating Systems, was quoted as saying.

A case of broken promises – again – to minorities, say analysts

Caution to Malaysia's minority groups: beware of a government bearing promises and agreements before an election.

Several analysts interviewed by The Malaysian Insider said that this was one of the lessons to take away from P. Waytha Moorthy's resignation from the Najib administration and Putrajaya's inability to make good a 10-point solution with Christians over Malay Bibles and the use of the word “Allah”.

While they agreed that the Hindraf (Hindu Rights Action Force) leader was equally to blame for his hasty move to sign a pact with Putrajaya days before the May 5 elections and for accepting a deputy minister's post after Barisan Nasional's (BN) victory, it was an obvious case of broken promises by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

"Should Hindraf decide to engage in a public campaign to denounce the PM  and government agencies for their cynical disregard of the Indian electorate after making use of them during the recent elections, the damage to Najib personally and BN as a whole could be considerable and long lasting," said political analyst Dr Lim Teck Ghee.

He said that apart from Indians, other minority groups, especially in Sabah and Sarawak, had also been monitoring the progress of the Hindraf agreement with Najib.

Hindraf had said Putrajaya had been “dragging its feet” in delivering its promises to aid the poor Indian Malaysians in return for their support in the elections.

All’s not well for MCA, MIC and PKR

PETALING JAYA: Political squabbling in Malaysia since the 13th general election has not taken a back seat as yet.

It has not only impacted the average Malaysian but also political parties from both Barisan Nasional (BN) and Pakatan Rakyat (PR).

MCA and MIC are still licking their wounds post election, compounded with internal conflicts especially after their internal party polls.

MCA’s representation in parliament went dwindling from 15 to seven seats that prompted the then party president Dr Chua Soi Lek to announce that he would not defend his post in the party’s election held in December last year.

Nevertheless, Chua was not in the mood to give his then deputy Liow Tiong Lai an easy ride into the president’s chair. Instead the two took their verbal spat to public; to the extent Chua even used a major daily to highlight Liow’s perceived weaknesses.

Chua, who had been the health minister before, even blamed Liow for MCA’s dismal electoral performance, thus pushed for an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) to censure the latter. Anyway the bid failed miserably.

The legend that was Balu Mahendra

Balu Mahendra, born as Balanathan Benjamin Mahendra in 1939 in Sri Lanka, left behind an army of his fans and disciples in deep sorrow when he chose to reside with the Almighty this morning.

 

A career spanning more than four decades in the creative industry in different portfolios as cinematographer, editor, director and finally an actor in Thalaimuraigal, Balu Mahendra created a new lexicon for film making.

 

Drawn into the world of celluloid with a casual viewing of David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai, Balu Mahendra pursued his passion and passed out of the Film Institute in Pune with a gold medal.

 

He started with a bang as a cinematographer in the Malayalam film Nellu and for the Tamil audience, he made his entry as cinematographer in Mahendran’s Mullum Malarum and from then on, it’s no looking back for this prolific creator.

 

He has worked in all the south Indian languages in different capacities and his directorial ventures were always a class apart that stood out for its unusual grammar and lighting style which he maintained till the end.

 

In a recent interview, the doyen had said “Good cinema is a tricky area. When a director who has absolute command of his craft narrates a story in a simple and honest manner, there is a possibility of good cinema”. He says ‘possible’ because, “A magic MUST happen to make it a good cinema”, he adds. And he remained a skillful magician who weaved his wand and drowned his audience in a spellbinding magical experience through his films which were one of its kinds.

 

His maiden directorial outing in Tamil, Azhiyaadha Kolangal dealt with adolescents and gave a totally different viewing experience. And the immortal tracks of Raja in his films augment the feel even now after many many years. His liaison with the music maestro remains the most beautiful aspect of his films, transcending the time barrier. While Moodu Pani was a thriller of sorts, Moondram Pirai introduced the Tamil audience to a condition called amnesia and extracted a mind-blowing performance from Sridevi and Kamal Haasan.

 

Veedu very interestingly talked about the middle class aspirations to own a house and Sathi Leelavathi was a hilarious take on a man attempting to take few excursions from his marital life.

 

It was Balu Mahendra who discovered talents like Shoba, Archana and Chokkalinga Bagavathar and told the gen-next populace what it is all about to stay connected with your roots in his last film Thalaimuraigal. It was in this screening that the septuagenarian got highly emotional talking about Tamil language and its culture.

 

It would not have been enough if a creative genius such as Balu Mahendra got stopped just with him. And that’s why his Cinema Pattarai is churning out talents after talents in the form of Bala, Seenu Ramasamy, Ram, Vetri Maaran, Naa Muthukumar and many more.

 

To borrow few lines from his film

 

"கிழக்கினில் தினம்தோறும் கதிரானது!

மறைவதும் பின்பு உதிப்பதும் மரபானது!"

 

And the legend will continue to rise in in his prodigy's works and remain immortal for ever!

 

Long live Balu Mahendra!

By Jyothsna Bhavanishankar 

Heritage body slams KL City Hall over failure to see historical value of Brickfields quarters

Shy of a century, the 100 Quarters in Brickfields could come under the wrecking ball soon unless the Kuala Lumpur City Hall draws up a plan to save a part of the capital city's history, says heritage authority Badan Warisan Malaysia (BWM).

The two-storey buildings have served as homes to railway families for 99 years but BWM says that underneath the simple and plain facade lies a wealth of history.

“Badan Warisan urges the mayor of Kuala Lumpur to hold a moratorium on this redevelopment until a comprehensive cultural mapping of this area is done,” its president Laurence Loh said in a letter to The Malaysian Insider.

“We need to put some brakes on the escalating erosion of the character and identity of KL before we lose the very reason why KL can still be an attractive destination for work and play for its citizens as well as transient visitors,” he added.

Built in 1915, the 100 Quarters comprises three rows of houses along Jalan Chan Ah Tong, Lorong Chan Ah Tong and Jalan Rozario – and was mainly occupied by those working in the then Malayan Railways.

It is to make way for three residential towers to be developed by Malaysia Resources Corp Bhd (MRCB), which is partly-owned by Malaysia's largest pension fund, the Employees Provident Fund (EPF).

Datuk here, datuk there, datuk everywhere. So what's in a title?

QUICK TAKE: If you pick up a stone today and throw it into a crowd, chances are you will probably hit a datuk, if not two. No, I'm not suggesting violence here. My point is: Datuks are everywhere nowadays.

For the uninitiated, the title is "supposedly" equivalent to the British knighthood (which carries the title Sir) in days gone by.

Unfortunately, the prestige that is supposed to come with the title is gone because as a friend of mine used to say "the title is being sold on the back of a bicycle." Or worse, it can even be traded in a pasar malam. How many datuks are really worthy of the title?

Recently, the police picked up a 26-year-old fake Datuk who allegedly abducted and beat up three men, including a foreigner, in the city.

The man claimed to be good friends with high ranking police officials and even had a name card embossed with the title Datuk.

The man clearly had illusions of grandeur associated with titles and tried to channel it the wrong way.

The fact is there are many fake datuks around today. Having acquired titles from dodgy sources like the Naning chieftain or the Sulu Sultanate in exchange for huge amounts of money, they hope the titles can help them secure contracts and gain other benefits that a titled person can gain.