Human heart is not complicated. its tenderest when its in is pristine form. its roughest when its been, well roughened. its like this simple chemical formula, when the outcome is all about the inputs. you treat people good, you get kindness in return. you spill rat's poison into your neighbor's milk, all you get is probably, your life being taken away from you.
it is not the same with a Malay though. i am no politician, and i don't give two hoots about what any politicians in this country has to say (except for those wise words from the good old Tun Dr Mahathir and his apprentice) but drive your little self to the beautiful island of Penang and check for yourself the kind of injustice that was brought upon to the Malay population on that island. What's this, squatter dwellings on the verge of expensive edifices, a flashback of to Singapore and its marginalized Malay 'citizens'? Is this the next Singapore? (Despite these, Malay Singaporeans claim to be much better-off than Malay Malaysians, which I like to take of as a grain of salt (of insult). Come on, if i were a Malay Singaporean, my chance of securing a much-deserved scholarship for an expensive, top class American education would be slim to none. Malay Singaporeans at top American and British institutions are almost unheard of when we have plenty of top Malay Malaysian students at all these places. Malay Singaporeans prize mediocrity more than Malay Malaysians do, it seems).
Is there any Malay with good conscience out there who is aware of 'this', and has done or willing to do something about it? I'm gonna be really Third World on this one (as a Western loyalist would presume), but will the government decide that it is now time that 'George Town' goes back to its 'Tanjung' name? We have Bombay changed to Mumbai and Madras changed to Chennai and even Ceylon has long been gone, all that's left is Sri Lanka. I beg the government to expedite the transformation, as my plans to send one of my kids to the prestigious Georgetown University in Washington D.C, United States (where Tun once gave his lecture and where many of world's statesmen graduate from) cannot be deferred. Wouldn't want such an exclusive institution to be confused with the colonial name of a city in all its pretensions , wanting to be European. Or are we still colonies?
I pity the Malays in Penang, much. But just pity wouldn't change a thing. And we don't need the Agong to interfere so that all these squatter dwellings would be turned into mansions with Malay masters in them. What a rhetoric.All we need is solidarity. Well-off Malays looking out for the left-behinds.Right. Look into a Malay dictionary and see the meaning of the word 'tolong-menolong'. The definition is - seperti enau dalam belukar, all looking out only for themselves.
If you ask if me I'm angry, yes I am. Where have all the cowboys gone? as Paula Cole would put it. The cowboys (these forgetful well-off Malays) are busy making their negligible small fortunes unworthy of the larger sense of the world; when they should be sharing. They claim of being pro-expropriation when in reality they are only concerned about buying more expensive furniture than their next-door Malay neighbors, or getting their kids to Akademi Fantasia ore mediocre institutions such as those filled with competitors their kind.Simple minds of the simple folks. Isabelle Bird and Tun are yet to be proven wrong.
Is there any Malay with good conscience out there who is aware of 'this', and has done or willing to do something about it? I'm gonna be really Third World on this one (as a Western loyalist would presume), but will the government decide that it is now time that 'George Town' goes back to its 'Tanjung' name? We have Bombay changed to Mumbai and Madras changed to Chennai and even Ceylon has long been gone, all that's left is Sri Lanka. I beg the government to expedite the transformation, as my plans to send one of my kids to the prestigious Georgetown University in Washington D.C, United States (where Tun once gave his lecture and where many of world's statesmen graduate from) cannot be deferred. Wouldn't want such an exclusive institution to be confused with the colonial name of a city in all its pretensions , wanting to be European. Or are we still colonies?
I pity the Malays in Penang, much. But just pity wouldn't change a thing. And we don't need the Agong to interfere so that all these squatter dwellings would be turned into mansions with Malay masters in them. What a rhetoric.All we need is solidarity. Well-off Malays looking out for the left-behinds.Right. Look into a Malay dictionary and see the meaning of the word 'tolong-menolong'. The definition is - seperti enau dalam belukar, all looking out only for themselves.
If you ask if me I'm angry, yes I am. Where have all the cowboys gone? as Paula Cole would put it. The cowboys (these forgetful well-off Malays) are busy making their negligible small fortunes unworthy of the larger sense of the world; when they should be sharing. They claim of being pro-expropriation when in reality they are only concerned about buying more expensive furniture than their next-door Malay neighbors, or getting their kids to Akademi Fantasia ore mediocre institutions such as those filled with competitors their kind.Simple minds of the simple folks. Isabelle Bird and Tun are yet to be proven wrong.
If this were to happen in Detroit,wouldn't you wonder the kind of respond the Blacks are gonna give? Or expensive, SoHo-like penthouses near the trailer parks in the south cities? If you ask me, would my vote go to Obama in the NEXT US electorate? I'd say no. It's no longer time to live in good old day of puppet government. Symbolism is good though. But I don't need to become Prime Minister to make a change in this country.
So little has been done. So much we still have to do. But who's gonna do it? Nobody. I am no purist, but I hold on to where I come from as much as I can. Miss Bird might have made such a sweeping statement but if she were alive today, she'd begging for forgiveness from me over and over. And should I forgive her? Malays always forgive the superior races, though they always find it impossible to forgive among themselves.
Damn I need to cool off. Luckily I have David Wroblewski's 'The Story of Edgar Sawtelle' and Tun's 'The Malay Dilemma' that I have read over and over because they are such revelations. When I need to learn how the whites evolve and how much their religion of Christianity has turned them into such a progressive race I always have Ken Follet's 'The Pillars of the Earth' to let myself lost into. Are the Muslim Turks and Uzbegs not good examples that Islam too is a progressive religion? Most Malays don't think so.
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