Interesting event of the day - an itinerant Indian worker with a box of wares came in today .. selling fireworks. Now, as some of you will know, these are highly illegal under today's repressive, totalitarian regimes extant in both Malaysia and Singapore. The Indian worker, however, fearlessly lugged a *huge* crate of sparklers, travellers, Catherine's wheels, pop-pops, sizzlers, firecrackers, volcanoes, spinners, moon-flyers, butterflies, hoppers, bouncing betties, etc etc... My colleagues all immediately placed orders - although the guy was selling ostensibly for Deepavali, quite a few of us stocked up for New Year's and Hari Raya as well. Forward planning and law-breaking; the multi-ethnic way.

Now, while I'm a great fan of law and order insofar as it keeps the terrorists and rapists (and idiots) away from my doorstep, most of the time I cheerfully operate under the aegis that the only laws to be respected are those that keep life happy for you. As far as intellectual property and the right of some idiot to blow his own hand off when he lit the fuse too close to the gunpowder is concerned, the issue for me isn't about law and order, it's about not getting caught.