To Max Wherever/Whoever You Are

You sat across the aisle from me on the flght from Kuching to KL on Monday evening. I saw you reading the newspaper with the headline about the police roadblocking downtown KL to prevent the Anwar rally. I'm always interested in Anwar-related articles, but your close cropped salt and pepper beard and hair set off against your black T-shirt, jeans, and sockless loafers were way more compelling.

"Are you an artist or something?" I asked lamely. Hoping to start up a conversation and establish my credentials, I described my June trip to KL to research an article on the alternative arts scene. "You seem like a creative type," I said trying to flatter. You laughed and said you had a day job in the hotel industry and also wrote criticism, which I thought was pretty cool since few Malaysians dare criticize much of anything in print. (They're even shyer about it than Thais.)

You write a weekly online column in Malaysia Today under the pseudonym "Max" you told me, adding that the Anwar rally was a complete fabrication by government designed to stir up anti-Anwar sentiment.

"Were you in Kuching for the Rainforest Music Festival?" I probed to keep the conversation alive. "It's a good cover for meeting certain people without drawing attention to yourself," you answered, seriously ratcheting up your enigmatic/exotic standing in my books.

I smiled at you as we waited for our bags. Sexy, smart, articulate and probably massively full of yourself, you disappeared into the crowd at the domestic LCCT terminal as soon as you hoisted your slim black leather bag on your shoulder. Yesterday I looked for you on Malaysia Today but have no idea which of the many columnists you might be.

Today they've rearrested Anwar in a move so reminiscent of 10 years ago that most people I've talked to in KL say they're too burned out to get very worked up about it."He's as hungry for for power as Mahathir and Badawi," said one former activist a few minutes after we heard the news. "He just represents another side of the same coin."

Since the arrest Malaysia Today is reachable only by proxy server. Max, if indeed that's your pseudonym, I wonder what you'd have to say about all this.