COMMENT | How soon is soon?

COMMENT | “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” - Parkinson’s law.

“Time has transfigured them into/ Untruth...” Philip Larkin: The Whitsun Weddings.

“Time wounds all heels.” - the Marx Brothers.

As soon as possible – that was the opinion conveyed by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong on the resumption of parliamentary sittings so that MPs could debate emergency laws and the National Recovery Plan.

Such a prosaic term, yet it generated so much heat, thanks to the inherent slippery meaning of words. Dictionaries will give you a range of meanings and usage of a word, but off the page, the word mutates to mean different things to different people in the multiple discourses of our lives. “I say this; no, I didn’t say that. I meant this; that is not what I heard.”

De facto law minister Takiyuddin Hassan took heat for his “timely” understanding of the royal term. He said the Yang di-Pertuan Agong did not specify an exact date for when the House should be called to session.

"Now we are near the end of June. There's July, then August and September is soon, we will have Parliament then," he said during an interview.

I can see where he is coming from. C’mon, every one of us, at ...