Let us usher in the Year of the Dragon without the popular delicacy.

IT has taken me a long time to come to this decision but it needed to be made. I will no longer consume shark fin soup.

Enough is enough when it involves the senseless killing of sharks just for their fins, which are quite tasteless by the way.

I feel the timing is appropriate because, over the next few weeks, there will be the endless round of Chinese New Year celebration dinners to attend. Shark fin soup is compulsory at these eight-course dinners and no Malaysian host would go without it..

IT doesn’t look like the general election will be called by March as many have predicted, and now the guessing game has continued. But the feeling now seems to be that it will be much later.

On Friday, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said the elections would not be held anytime soon as the Government’s reform initiatives were not yet in full swing.

He said the polls would be held as soon as the economic reforms produced real results.

 He even made the point clear by saying: “We still have not delivered on our promises and it’s important for people to have the feeling that the reforms we have promised will actually benefit them.”

Does it come as a surprise that the English translation on the Defence Ministry website is so atrocious that it has become the butt of every joke in town? It’s not even Manglish, but simply sub-standard English.

Malaysians used to be amused at the bad Bahasa Malaysia subtitles in movies but the “clothes that poke eye” translation for “pakai­an yang menjolok mata” simply takes the cake. “Ambil kuih”, if literally translated.