a burp to the future

Sky is clear. I repeat. Sky is clear. Sky is clear. But for how long?

Haze had moved to Penang, my beloved hometown. Now, I am worried about my family. Maybe my worries is just too much. Penangites, especially the Chinese should not have any problem with the haze. They probably saved money on the josssticks and all. Well, you see, almost every month, the so-called ardent God-believer would enjoy going into the hazy… no, very hazy environment of a place we called as Chinese Temple (the famous haze factory is Kuan Yin Teng Temple) to pray and ask for lots of stuff, ranging from getting an A in the next exam to asking a good wife/husband for themselves or their sons/daughters. Of course, needless to say, the commonest prayer is

1. Won the lottery
2. Good health
3. Great business

It would be ironic, of course, to hold the jossticks high in the air with all the smokes burning fiercely with dark ugly grey smokes, and pray for the haze to settle, right?

Not just in the chinese temple, annual festival at St.Anne, a church at Bukit Mertajam also had plenty of candles to burn. Of course, there were lots of josssticks lighted up around the place, but not photographed. If you’d been there, you’re know how hazy the place were during the Feast of St.Anne.

Come to think of it. The Penang Island would hazy again few days from now, where there will be lots of burning of candles, jossticks, paper ferrarri, paper Kancil, paper handphone, paper shoe, paper lipstick, paper computer, paper wife, paper husband, paper horse and lots lots lots of hell bank notes for the departed ones in conjunction with the 15th of the 7th lunar month, when the reputed big door to the hell is open wide, and all the burning is for the hell occupants to chow, instead of harming the people of the households.

It is nice to hold this tradition. But then again, with all the haze, you don’t need the door to hell to be open, it is already major HELL.

One thing is for sure. All our government would do for the haze is planning, planning, talking, talking. But they just do not walk the talk. If the haze repeated again, they might just pacify people with "Last year, so damn thick, It will go away in few damn days. Don’t worry" and when it doesn’t - it will be back to the spin doctor’s boring story telling time. Let us just have a good burp to our future.

Still in ENT(ear, nose,throat) posting. Seen lots of people with big cerumen (ear wax) and awesome rhinolith (look up the dicts yourself, don’t be a lazy bum). Turn off, definitely. But all the lecturers and profs there were really cekap and absolutely amazing. They were more like a friend to us.

I still remember the times when I was little, and burping would be something childish and there were challenges in burping - loudest, longest, crankiest and all. This kind of childplay was never a civilized thing to do.

However, today, after learning from the speech therapist of UMMC, I discovered something new. On patient who had their larynx aka voice box removed could not speak, unless they have

1. a larynx prosthesis
2. a voice enhancer (put it to the jaw, move mouth exaggeratedly to produce sound)
3. natural way: BURP your words out loud! (No kidding)

After that class, I would never underestimate a burp. I was wondering whether a belch or flatus would be something useful to mankind. Anyone would care to enlighten me?