I miss you so, my friend

A daily diet of AM

now is denied me

I miss the invigoration

The quality words

the beautiful lines

I hope AM igo

I'll see your face again

Smiling to greet me at early morn

I drank of your wine, made of

Grapes of soothing rhyme

Songs of knowledge sublime

But you said it's time

To ring down the curtain

As the money has run dry

I wish I could write out

A cheque for a million

To make you AM stay

I pray it's just adieu

And not goodbye.

When the new year dawned, the malaysiakini team prepared to move from the little cosy suburban nest at The Right Angle in Petaling Jaya to Bangsar Utama, where the urbanised hustle and bustle is more keenly felt (to me a minus), redeemed by double the space (the plus) we now enjoy. This was one milestone coming slightly more than one year since this humble online news venture budded.

Another milestone marked a fellow traveler's journey which I wished did not happen, but reality can be cruel. I eagerly logged on to AgendaMalaysia (AM) the past week daily, hoping that it may yet earn some new lease of life despite its editor's posting mid-December it's calling it a day. Alas, it is not meant to be.

I penned the above poem in less than ten minutes on an impulse, sent it off to a [#1] website [/#] and then showed it to a couple of colleagues who feign to be potential Hooker prize winners like me. One urged me to make it (not the prize, the dedication) known to the AM folks, the other added philosophically: "Sometimes it's ours not to reason why ...

So while AM came onto the media scene about five months after malaysiakini , its presence of nine months has made other practitioners a wee bit more productive with some friendly rivalry. I have always subscribed to the maxim: the more on the media scene, the merrier the party.

It's good to see certain issues, political, economics, social, from another online perspective - I got used to a daily peek at AM 's quality write-ups, and some insider insights into Malaysian business developments provided by Bawahbumi . Although it must have paid top ringgit for this premium input, its emphasis on quality could also have turned out to be the albatross around its young neck, leading to the money running dry a quarter-year prematurely.

Silver linings, golden lines

Fellow journalists are like passengers on the same train - while our journey from Section 14, PJ to Bangsar proves to be a temporary stop along the way, on a continuing journey, the travelers on AM had to hop off at its first stop for a longer break ... I hope it's still temporary.

Having settled just three days into 2-4 Jalan Bangsar Utama 9, 59000 Kuala Lumpur, in the midst of a reformist's haunt I'm told, I feel quite energised to write this first Ruminations piece for the new millennium; I'm sorry it is flagged off on a less than gay note having to say "adios" to a fond friend.

To Rehman Rashid, Terence Netto and others who have moved on to hopefully other oases to hone their craft, I'm sure many other fans will join me in waving "It's just adieu" to this small band of writers of "quality words and beautiful lines" and promoters of "knowledge sublime".

Never mind, behind every dark cloud there's a silver lining ... and malaysiakini aims to continue to be the silvery mine churning out golden lines. We await the day when our AM igo friends pop onto the train again at the next stop.