It was reported that Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's Hari Raya open house at the Putra World Trade Centre in Kuala Lumpur attracted 180,000 to 200,000 people - meaning he is very popular with the rakyat. This is what the mainstream media reported.

Well, let us work out the math.

It takes three seconds to quickly shake the hand of each guest if you do not talk to them, ask them how they are, etc. You just shake their hands as fast as possible and say, 'Next!' So, in one minute, you can shake the hands of 20 guests and, in an hour, the hands of 1,200 guests.

To shake the hands of 180,000 to 200,000 guests will take about seven days. And that is only if you shake their hands non-stop, 24 hours a day over seven days, without taking a break to eat, sleep, pray, go to the toilet, etc.

But I thought the open house was only half a day, or six hours at the most? This means the most number of guests you can shake hands with would have been about 7,000.

Or did more than 190,000 people just go home without shaking hands with their host or thank him for the food they ate? That's terrible.

What's your number? What a fuzz just to make up the numbers!