a fleeting stay ...

Guest blogger and journalist Jehan Mohd mourns the loss of sense and sensibility in the days leading up to what is turning out to be Malaysia's biggest general elections yet . The circus is back in town, nope, sorry, it's just the latest general elections around the corner. Where have all my cat videos and baby pictures gone, or rather, what has happened to all my friends whose cat video and baby picture posts used to fill my Facebook (or, simply FB) wall?   Instead of the varied interests and quirks that make them individual people, they seem to have been overwhelmingly swept up in election fever. Granted the build-up to this general election has been incredible — people have been anticipating an announcement of the dissolution of parliament leading to the event since last year. When parliament was dissolved last month, suddenly everyone (or at least the ones who load status updates regularly) was talking about the elections. Election fever is her...

Guest blogger and journalist Jehan Mohd contemplates a misunderstood genre of literary delights   My love affair with comics began at a tender age — so young that I cannot recall exactly when I picked up my first comic book.  I do, however, remember what it started with — Archie Comics .   Archie Comics played a strong role in my growing up years and continue to be a dear friend.   My two elder sisters were also fans of the series and a trip to the bookshop or a book fair would usually include the purchase of a comic book (or two, or three). I also read other comic titles such as Bananaman , Garfield , Asterix , Tintin , Beano — later Calvin and Hobbes , which also became a firm favourite — and whatever comic strips were in the newspapers but I still ended up going back to Archie at the end of the day. As an adult, however, the affair with the comic book world became more of a guilty pleasure because, after all, “it’s kiddie stuff”. ...

Having just sunk a third of her monthly salary into a new mobile phone, guest blogger Jehan Mohd ponders its prominence in today's world. People have a strange attachment to their mobile phones - it's a relationship of epic proportions. Look around and you will notice more than a handful of people with their eyes stuck on a small screen as their fingers are busy tapping away on the flat surface or a mini keyboard.   It is not unusual to see individuals interacting with their phones more than with the people they are actually out with, or for audience members to be more engrossed in whatever is on the small screen than on the big one in the cinema or in the live action happening on stage in a concert or play.   But I digress. The whole point of the preceding paragraph was to show how close people can be to their handheld devices.      I have to admit that I am too (but not to the point where I forget to enjoy real life as it happens ...