“Oh shit!” bellows the orthopedic surgeon as he emerges from the jungle, his face flushed and sweat dripping off his nose from running.
“Fucking life-saving!” he shouts as he approaches one of the drinking stations that dot the staked-out running course. An army officer shows no mercy and shouts at the doctor to move his “arse.”
The two Malaysians are in fact best friends, enjoy each other’s companionship and especially the rough language that is part of it. They are “hashers,” members of the international family of Hash House Harrier running clubs, which follow only one strict rule: there are no rules.
While clubs — or kennels, as they are called — usually meet once a week for runs ranging from 8km to 10km, the doctor and the army officer also participate in a Full Moon Hash.
As the name suggests, they get together once a month only. On a recent Sunday they organized their annual “ball-breaker” run — 28km in the stifling heat and humidity of Malaysia’s jungle.
As after every run, copious amounts of beer await the runners at the finish line.
“Hash House Harriers are a drinking club with a running problem — or vice versa,” said Jega, who helped organize the ball-breaker run, on the clubs’ philosophy.
Hashers insist the running and sweating side by side welds the members together as a group. They rave about the camaraderie.
Hash kennels exist all over the world, but Malaysia is where it all began. The first club was founded in 1938 in Kuala Lumpur in what was then still called British Malaya. Some colonial officers became bored of tea parties and rounds of golf and Albert Gispert initiated a long-distance run with his friends every Monday evening.
The club derives its name from the annex of the club where the officers were housed. It was known as the Hash House, hash being an old military term for boring food.
The club’s statutes were designed “one, to promote physical fitness; two, to get rid of weekend hangovers; three, to acquire a good thirst and satisfy it in beer; four, to persuade older members that they are not as old as they feel,” Jega said.
There are more than 1,700 kennels around the world, even one in Antarctica, which aptly calls itself the Deep Freeze Hash House Harriers.
At the recent ball-breaker run outside Kuala Lumpur there were 186 participants from all walks of life — a mechanic, doctor, petroleum engineer and diplomat.
Some Brits are among them, a few Australians, many Malaysians, and, yes, even a few women.
“The first time I heard the language here I thought I saw stars,” says Dr Malar, who is a hasher herself but helps out with medical attention for tired limbs. “You either become deaf or leave.”
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS