Driving to work yesterday morning, I was flipping radio stations frustratingly. The hosts of Chinese programmes were parroting news about the upcoming election without in-depth comments, one of them actually delving into why Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi had chosen Feb 13 to be the day of announcement. Was it his lucky number? She was giggling. How trivial, and pathetically so.

A Malay channel was playing music, with on and off reminders of the dissolution of parliament to the listeners. Bored, I tuned to the English ones. It was worse as all of them were pretending that life was as usual. The two hosts of a breakfast show were making fun of each other as if we lived in a carefree world.