Screenshots

As usual, in Screenshots style, verbatim...

Mailbag
From: Uncle Yap
To: jeffooi.screenshots@gmail.com
Date: Apr 6, 2006 7:53 AM
Subject: The Saga continues

Dear Jeff,

In the last few days, since my April Fool's story about the reconciliation between Jeff Ooi and Dato Kalimullah Hassan broke and was mentioned in your blog together with news, a day later, of the abrupt discontinuance of my crossword puzzles in the New Sunday Times, my mail box has been inundated with many messages, mostly unfavourable to the NST.

I would however request the courtesy of your blog to disabuse an uninformed suggestion that perhaps the canning of my crossword column was the swift punishment meted out by Dato Kalimullah for making him a victim of an April Fool's story.

From what I know of the working of the NST, the non-news sections such as the Sunday People in which my crossword column appeared, are laid out, type-set and even printed at least 24 hours before publication date. Thus it would be physically impossible for anyone to react to my April Fool's story in time for the New Sunday Times on 2 April 2006.

I, therefore, would like to place on record that I am firmly of the opinion that Dato Kalimullah did not react to the April Fool's story and should not be linked with any suggestion of untowards conduct with respect to the discontinuance of my crossword column.

As for the charge of lack of courtesy in not informing me of the intention to discontinue my crossword column, I am afraid the NST stands accused.

New Sunday Times, April 2, 2006, Pg R18

I have had this crossword column since August 2002 and with 187 continuous weeks plus many more columns on history written for Nuance, a defunct supplement of the New Sunday Times, surely Uncle Yap deserves some respect and basic courtesy by way of early warning if his column were to be discontinued. Instead, I had to read of the demise of my crossword column like everyone else on Sunday morning 2 April 2006.

It was certainly like being divorced via SMS with one additional feature: the SMS was also simultaneosuly broadcast to the world.

Yap Yok Foo
aka Uncle Yap