Necessity is the mother of invention, they say. How true! I really didn't feel like buying gerai food for dinner last night, rather felt like cooking myself a meal. The problem was that i was just too lazy to cook something elaborate, yang enak dimakan, so to speak. Quite a far cry from the days when mom, during the fasting month, would cook up a virtual storm of goodies for the family. So, looks like it was a "make-do-with-what-i-can-do-night".
Cooked some rice, sliced up a large juicy tomato, used a very cool microwave gizmo to cook up some eggs (banjo-style), poured some beef serunding onto the rice, and voila -- dinner! Took less than 3 minutes to set it all up (though the rice took about 20 minutes to cook, prior).
As i munched away, with Sani my loyal housemate as company, we started talking about all sorts of stuff, including how did smokers go through the whole day without smoking.
"It shouldn't be too hard; just willpower. If they can abstain from food and drink, why not smoking too?"
"Makes you wonder; if they can stop smoking for ramadhan, why can't they just stop smoking altogether?"
"Religion is a powerful motivator."
That got me thinking: i wonder -- Muslims don't drink alcohol because its haram. Alcoholism, just like chain smoking, is a disease of habit, so they really aren't that different in principle. If Islam banned smoking too, i wonder whether Muslim smokers would quit. We seem to be happy to comply during ramadhan (well, at least during the daylight hours), so that suggests that the ultimate anti-smoking campaign could be one founded on religion.
Perhaps the good 'ol Uncle Najib might want to take this tack if he's really serious about the Tak Nak Campaign. I'm sure the grand muftis of Malaysia would be happy to help (except for those who chained smoked themselves, of course). A religious fatwa might actually work a hell of a lot better, and be far cheaper too on the taxpayers dollars. Then again, perhaps it might be too successful, and the Government coffers would be trimmer from the loss of the pleasure-tax currently imposed on tobacco. And we can't have that, now can we?