Meeting Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the oldest elected head of government in the world, can be unsettling the first time. Mahathir does not have the distinct Malay accent that one expects when he speaks English. He has the nearest to an aquiline nose for a Malay and is tall at 176 cms, unlike most of his fellow countrymen. Thirty-six years ago, there was no 24-hour news on television and no Internet, so my idea of what to expect from the recently-elected Malaysian prime minister with a reputation for championing Malay ethnic sub-nationalism was based solely on what I had read about him and from grainy, black and white passport-size newspaper photographs of him.