airspace? garden?!

13 Apr 2006
Time: 19:08


Normally I refrain from commenting on politics or news or current issues, not because I don't damn care or I'm worried about ISA or whatever, but by the time I make it to blogging it'll be cold news. And I'm just lazy.

But this...today's headlines got a lot of people all worked up. No to Malaysia-Singapore bridge? I agree. Sometimes, we gotta start making our stands. In order to approve this damned bridge, Singapore demand sand and opening up our airspace? Sand, I can understand. They need it to reclaim land and they can't very well dig it up from nowhere.

Airspace? Hello, the idle uncles in the coffeeshops put it aptly, might as well open our house front gate and let you come in and shit in our gardens and scratch our cars and sit on our benches. Come in, steal our pots of flowers and then start moving your stuff in and claim our garden as yours. Oh since you're on it, come in and claim the house as your own, too, and kick us to one corner, whimpering and supposedly grateful because it could've been worst.

The rakyat, the people can't all be wrong by saying this is shitting on top of our heads.

No, no, no no no.

The next thing that has waxed me since the fucked up Rebecca Loos-Beckham case was how Malaysia hunger for all the credit ex-Malaysians got overseas. Guy Sebastian? For God's sake the guy migrated when he was like, a little kid. The media embarass themselves when they asked him if he remember anything Malaysian. Give me a break, I don't remember much about anything when I was 5 years old except I was a class terror and cried in kindy non-stop. Vijay Singh trained his golf in Banting for only a few years before he moved on thanks to Malaysia's rejection to his permanent residency here. And, and....that Miss USA or American runner up or whatever? Her FATHER might have once been a Malaysian, but how is she connected? By the color of her skin? By the language she do not speak?

I mean, what is this?

Its exactly the same thing when I won that essay-writing competition and my school took every cedit for it. I did not even inform them nothing about this competition I wrote the bloody essay and sent it in myself, only that I had to state which school I was in. It happened again with the British council essay competition. I wasn't even in school anymore, yet, they tried to milk as much benefit from it as possible. Til this day I still resent it. I will not go and be so ungrateful and arrogant as to say school did not help me, my English and writing at all, but please, they certainly did not nurture it in anyway. Malaysian students are ALWAYS left to their own devices. Lookit that lil boy from Terengganu, if he can do maths like that, he must have got something in him and if he is bored in class, for God's sake, do something about it, study his genius and give him education which he can make use of. Instead, he got expelled from school. Our system is such a laughingstock sometimes. Why can't we do it like in countries who knew how to fully utilise talent? Have AP classes, allow class-jumpings and creativity and help every person with their potential?

I hated the rigidity school had on me, but yet I know, another 5 years down the road, I will find myself pitying my cousins the same way. Why did we have to dictate standards by age, and not potential and ability? That there's no way 15-year olds can enter universities and no way a 5-year old can do university level trigonometry? Why not?! Never say never.

And fuck, I don't want to like, marry an American, have a daughter who became the world's, say, most famous ice cream maker and then have her prided by Malaysia just because her mom was a Malaysian and she used daun pandan or something as an ingredient purely accidentally.

Look at our own backyards. We have people, we have potential, we have such untapped abilities. We have money to help them, the support of the people of this nation, and we can have the faculty, the facilities to train geniuses and athletes and leaders who are true Malaysians, and who will do us proud, and unabashed to say she or he is Anak Malaysia, and who will be among the best in the world stage.

Forget politics, agendas and racism. Forget all stereotypes and prejudice. Be sincere in wanting to have the pride of knowing we have the best, no matter who, so long they're fellow Malaysians. Then, I think, then we will have hope.

Hope.

Comments:
Jun Hoe made this comment,
Hey, hope you're doing fine ok over there. I guess sometimes being cynical is a way to indirectly shield ourself from potential hurt. Me still trying to find a way around it.
Anyway, yeah I just heard bout the Miss Georgia thing. Sigh, the idiocy of our leaders never ceases..(to amuse me as well)

Aidid Razak made this comment,
good entry. and good points raised too. malaysians are big on glory and we'll take it in whatever form it may come. not something to be proud of but a fact.