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This week, Wide Angle joins Thelma in the advice game, dipping into the mailbag and answering some urgent queries from readers.
DEAR Wide Angle, Can you help me save my marriage? Ever since he lost his job two weeks ago, my husband has been gloomy and despondent. He has been bringing home hundreds of boxes of documents. I am very distressed because the house is full of these documents. They even cover the dining table! In the evenings, my husband sits gazing at these stacks of paper. Sometimes he appears gleeful. He cackles to himself, “Heh, heh, heh! The bastards won’t be able to do a damn thing!” At other times, he tears his hair out, crying, “They’ll find out! They’ll find out! I’m finished! I’m doomed!” Late at night, I find him slowly tearing up pieces of paper, one by one, tears rolling down his face. I don’t understand what is going on. He refuses to communicate with me. What can I do to repair our relationship? Desperate Housewife, Shah Alam Dear Desperate Housewife, Your husband is going through a very difficult time right now. What he needs is love, understanding, and the Destroyit 4107 Cross Cut Paper Shredder. It is capable of mincing up 82 pages at a time, at a speed of 53 feet per minute. Its hardened steel cutting shafts can destroy CDs, VHS tapes, and hardbound documents, such as tender submissions, joint venture contracts, and “consultancy arrangements”. It is not cheap, retailing at US$11,999 (RM38,396) but why don’t you just sell some of the diamonds your husband has given you over the years? As you and your husband stand there in the lonely evenings, loading the evidence of his wrongdoing into the Destroyit 4107, perhaps you will regain some of the love and tenderness that characterised the early days of your marriage. This will sustain you in the trying times ahead, when you have to queue up in the hot sun every month to visit him in prison. Remember: Couples that shred together stay wed together. Dear Wide Angle, I have just escaped from a detention centre in a neighbouring country, where I was being held on suspicion of terrorist activities. Now a fugitive, I am trying to decide whether to sneak into Malaysia or another neighbouring country. What advice do you have? How can I go unseen in Malaysia? Safe Gold, “South Johor” Dear Safe Gold, If you want to remain unseen, I suggest you purchase half a dozen songkoks and take them to No. 77, Jalan 20/9, Petaling Jaya. Posing as a travelling songkok salesman, ask for an appointment to sell songkoks to the DAP Selangor headquarters. No one will see you. Dear Wide Angle, I played badminton the other day against a young man. It was a tough match and I beat him by just one point. He conceded defeat and shook my hand, congratulating me. However, when I left to buy an isotonic sports drink, he and his friends locked the doors of the multi-purpose hall and announced that he had won the match by 10 points! I am so angry! This is not how the game should be played. What can I do? Cheated, Chebong Dear Cheated, Badminton has always been a dirty sport. We Malaysians tend to romanticise the game, because we imagine that once upon a time, in the depths of our childhood, badminton was a gentle pastime, with cherubic brothers and sisters innocently hitting a shuttlecock back and forth over the gate of their house. But think back: are those memories really that happy? Didn’t your sister offer you 10 cents and a red bean pau to not show up at the time of the match so she could have a walkover? Remember? And wasn’t it your brother who, when it looked like you were going to beat him, invented the concept of “postal points”, which he just happened to have 15 of? You must lose your illusions and face the facts. Frankly, it’s better that you switch to football, which is a very clean sport, especially in this country. Dear Wide Angle, A few weeks ago you praised the long-serving Minister of International Trade and Industry in your column, saying that she is “very effective and greatly respected overseas”. Following this, however, she was dropped from the Cabinet. Was she removed because of your column? Conspiracy Theorist, Kemaman Dear Conspiracy Theorist, Just because Wide Angle praises a BN leader as being “very effective and greatly respected overseas”, it doesn’t automatically mean that the PM will remove him or her. It is absolutely not true that there is such a thing as the Wide Angle Curse. In fact, I deny it strongly. For example, the Deputy Prime Minister is very effective and greatly respected overseas, but I don’t think the Prime Minister has the slightest desire to remove him. They have a very good relationship, largely because the Deputy Prime Minister is, I repeat, very effective and greatly respected overseas. Dear Wide Angle, As editors of local dailies, we find ourselves in a difficult position these days. It used to be easy to know what to put in the newspaper and what to leave out. There was no question of “neutrality”. But in the new political reality, with change in the air and reforms afoot in the post-racial era of the New Malaysia, what on earth do we do? New Age Editors, KL Dear New Age Editors, What you should do is give all your staff a raise. They work long and hard and frankly are quite tired from all the cheering they were doing that night in the newsrooms as the election results came in. So please give them a pay increment. And all your columnists, too. We are all exhausted from writing essentially identical opinion pieces analysing the failure of the Barisan Nasional at the 12th Malaysian General Elections and the task ahead for the new State Governments, and we would like a small token of your appreciation, perhaps 10 cents and a red bean pau. But don’t worry about being trying to be neutral. Really, all you need are buzzwords. Dear Wide Angle, If am boycotting the mainstream media, how will I know whether you’ve answered this question? Paradox, Pontian Dear Paradox, You won’t, and I didn’t. Huzir Sulaiman writes for theatre, film, television, and newspapers.
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