Bishopnose

'A good boss, attentive and careful spender'; in other words, a Mr Nice Guy. That quote from Datuk Asrie Kadir, of his ex-boss Datuk Osu Sukam, the former Sabah Chief Minister who has fallen from grace for failing to pay a RM7 million gambling debt owed to a London casino, made it to the headlines on page 12 of today's Prime News of the New Sunday Times (picture) as if on cue. (See post below) It is one coincidence which I'm not happy at all because a lot of people who know Osu, know him to be a "really nice guy"! He is an "exemplary" Muslim: Soft spoken, demure, never quick to anger, patient, and, yes, attentive, and always willing to listen. He mixes well with people of all races and from all walks of life. He is able to accept other people's differences. Yet for all these good qualities, he is certainly a lousy politician because he's not given to bigotry. And he spent 11 years as a federal minister, as a "yes-Minister", under former Premier Tun Mahathir Mohamad. Of course, his detractors pointed out, only a "yes-man" could survive under Mahathir. Osu was said to be Mahathir's blue-eyed boy, and as the story goes, he was supposedly his first choice to become the Sabah Chief Minister in December 1994 shorty after Umno took control of Sabah. But while Osu was on the flight home to Kota Kinabalu, expecting to take up the chief ministership, the Sabah governor, the late Tun Mohd Said Keruak, expediently swore-in his son Salleh as the new chief minister on a two-year rotation. Meanwhile, Osu waited patiently for almost five years while the Malay, the Chinese and the Kadazan party leaders played musical chairs with the most important post in the Sabah government, before he became Sabah's 11th chief minister on 14 March 1999. To the Chinese, the number 14 is a bad omen. Ever wonder why there isn't a 14th floor in most hotels in Malaysia and Hong Kong? Fourteen is a homophone of another Chinese word in the Cantonese dialect that means "tetap mati" in Malay or "condemned to death" in English or "sure die one" in Malaysian weblog English (Manglish). (Please give me time, and I'm sure I'll sound like suanie or minishorts in time to come. I'm a green-horn at blogging. I realise that it isn't easy to speak or write Manglish which I now accept as a legitimate language!)