Just because it's home?

Migration or in a lesser context, move to work overseas seem to be the flavoured discussion at the moment.  MalaysianInsider even started columns where people wrote in to say why they leave and why they stay.

Anyway… one of the main reasons why people decide to stay, besides the usual good nasi-lemak, char-kuet-teow and bak-kut-teh (which was specifically mentioned by someone in that MalaysianInsider column mind you…) is that Malaysia, regardless of how bad it is, it is still our home.

I wouldn’t dispute that – the point on Malaysian being home, not on staying.  It is our home, no doubt about it.  We were born in Malaysia and spent most of our formative years here.  There will always be a “Malaysia” element within us. 

But… does that mean that you must stay?

Following this, I have a thought… though it only applies to Chinese and Indians.

If you are a Chinese or an Indian, and decide to stay simply because Malaysia is home… can you just pause for a while and imagine…

Imagine…

Imagine…

Imagine…

That your grandparent or your great grandparent decided to stay in China / India simply because China / India is home.  That no matter how poor or chaotic China was during those days, it was still home and your grandparent decided to stay.  That no matter how difficult it is to make a living in India during those days, it was still home. 

If your grandparent adopted this perceived noble mentality…

What would become of you…

… a Chinese who spits everywhere who you look down on?

… a cheap IT call-centre person in Bangalore?

… a masseur giving traditional Chinese foot massages in Jalan Bukit Bintang?

… living in the slum of Mumbai?

… a cheap factor worker in ShenZhen?

… appearing in those “Only in India” pictures that you forward to each other?

If your grandparent decided to remain in China or India simply because it’s home… really… what would become of you… today?

Updated:  While some have commented that we could also be the son of a property tycoon in Hong Kong, or the son of the coal tycoon in China or the son of the telecommunication tycoon in India... let us all be honest and admit that we are all glad that our grandparent did not choose to stay in China/India just because it was home.

1 year ago... The injury conversation

2 years ago... Non-civic smokers like these are morons

3 years ago... V for virginity, P for purity

4 years ago… A professional mistake

Conversation at the MRT

It's election fever in Singapoe and the other day, I was in the MRT standing next to 2 (presumably) Singaporeans, amongst other people of course.  But the conversation of these two caught my attention. 

1 guy flipped the newspaper he was holding and said… “See… this is very healthy, opposition is actually getting very good media coverage”. Well, I have no idea who is opposition and who is collation candidate here but it’s definitely encouraging to see mainstream media giving good coverage to opposition, unlike “you know where”.

The sentiments here in Singapore are pretty much the same with Malaysia – that election should happen some time this year.   Naturally, the mainstream media here is also playing its part in doing coverage of potential candidates, etc.

What transpired thereafter was quite an eye-opener…

The same guy continued to flip his newspaper and reached this page where he said to his friend…

“Eh… this candidate… I know her.  She is in the same faculty as me.  We used to be in NUS together.  And I know she is also etc, etc, etc…”

The conversation went on for a while between them till the other guy asked…

“So are you going to vote for her since you know her so well?”

The reply given was…

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“No lah… she is only from NUS, we need people from Cambridge or Harvard…”

Such is the benchmark…

Do you know what qualification (if any), our MPs / Malaysian leaders have?

1 year ago... The price that really kills

2 years ago... A first language dilemma

4 years ago… Sign of times

I did something for tomorrow, did you?

During the last peoples' power tsunami, I was out of the country... for a substantial period of time.  I missed it...

As the country heads into another historical moment tomorrow... I will again be out of the country, and also be out of Singapore... for the entire week. 

I hope it is a good omen.

And... to those of you who once commented anonymously that you choose to "stay back and fight" and those who left the country shouldn't be complaining about the country.  There were also some very harsh words.

I want to ask all those of you today... what have you done that amounts to "I choose to stay and fight?"

I don't know about you but I sponsored someone to fly back to vote tomorrow.

Not telling this to show off but I really want to ask those who said "I choose to stay back and fight"... What have you done?

1 year ago... The story of Helen, who's only the mother

4 years ago… A very misleading document

Speaking the language

Wow...it has really been a while since I blogged.  I am not going to say... "So sorry for not updating my blog, etc. etc. etc"... as I know the readership for this blog has reduced tremendously...

Anyway... read about this piece of news and I have something to say about it...

It’s quite a diverse composition of nationalities here where I work.  Since arrived, I have met or spoken to (and I am not making this up)… Brits, Australians, Spaniards, Mexicans, French, Indians, Americans, Koreans, Japanese, Indonesians, Mainland Chinese, New Zealanders, Russians, Israelis, Africans, Sri Lankan, Arabs, Lebanese, Pakistanis, and of course people from Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia.  Have yet to meet an Italian.

But of course, being a multinational enterprise, official business language of communication is English.  Inevitably, you will hear English spoken in various accents.

It is interesting though, to note one point…

I am sure many of us have heard or even ourselves have at times, made fun of certain English accent.  The most common accent that Malaysians like to laugh at is the Indian accent, followed closely by “singing” Hong Kong accent. 

I have observed though, that no matter how heavy the accent is – those who are considered as good speakers will never add nor alter the words, grammar or structure of the English language.

I have seen many senior management personnel giving speeches, presentations or chairing meeting and though they may speak with an extremely heavy accent, English is still spoken the way English should be spoken.

I have never ah, hearing any senior people speaking English hor, like this wan you know.

What I am saying is – while Malaysians find humour in accents of certain nationalities, speaking in a modified English language (i.e. Manglish) is actually worse.  More importantly, if one strives to move ahead in the corporate world and longs to be a good speaker (which I believe is an important criterion if one longs to move up) – it is much better to speak English with a funny accent instead of speaking your own version of “English”.

1 year ago... Elimination of poverty is a myth

2 year ago... No, it's not corruption

3 years ago… The toilet encounter... Of alone and lonely... Chronicles of vol-ass-no eruptions

4 years ago… A 2nd chance with Mom

The memory lives on...

4 years have passed...

But memory lives on...

A new jurisdiction

In my current role, I am given the opportunity to participate in formulating the strategy for our function globally.  Our strategy is to be in line the overall strategy of the company; and we call it “the collective agenda”.  Essentially, it aligns the focus of the whole department.

One item within our collective agenda for 2011 is geography focus.  Apart from the usual suspects, 1 particular country caught my attention.  This jurisdiction is certainly not in the same league as Hong Kong, Singapore, China, India, Dubai but is now considered as a “geography in focus”.

It is the first time this country made it on the list.  As far as I know, Malaysia has never made it on the list before.

Since the beginning of the year, I have travelled there once and foresee more business travels to this said jurisdiction.  I have had numerous meetings with business personnel about big plans for this jurisdiction and will be having another one next week to talk about more exciting plans there.

Last week, I dialled into the HR call centre of my company to clarify some queries and I can choose to continue in English, Cantonese, Mandarin and was very surprised to actually hear that I can continue in the language of this jurisdiction in focus.

The global head of the function I am in was here in Singapore yesterday for a business visit.  Today, he is in this new jurisdiction in focus.  No, he didn’t visit Malaysia.

The country that I am talking about is…

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Indonesia.

The reason why I decided to break out from my blog hiatus to talk about this is because I just came out from a hot debate with someone saying that current Malaysian govt is doing a good job as Malaysia’s economy is only behind Singapore in this region. 

One can choose to ignore the fact that Indonesia has already surpassed Malaysia in foreign direct investment and continue to derive a false sense of superiority based on the notion that your maids and construction workers are from Indonesia. 

But the reality is this… Indonesia’s economy is moving at a speed much quicker than Malaysia and while huge capital is flowing out of Malaysia, it’s flowing the opposite direction in Indonesia. 

Of course, many Malaysians are not impacted by this phenomenon.  Will they be ever impacted? Is this a really bad thing to Malaysia?  As some quarters have mentioned, will Malaysians end up being maids and construction workers in Indonesia? The honest answer is that I don’t know.  My attempt to answer those questions may be rather bias.

One thing for sure… the statement of Malaysia’s economy being only behind Singapore in this region is incorrect.  Besides Indonesia, Philippines is also gaining substantial ground on the economic platform.  The Malaysian media may say otherwise but from where I work… right here on this seat... reality paints a very different picture.  

1 year go... When Kilkenny became 'kill Kenny' (recommended)

2 years ago… High what?... It felt like shite... A new trend with the couples

3 years ago… Some general modern slavery comparison

Between Egypt and us

When I attended a conference last November, I was seated next to a gentleman whom I have been exchanging emails in the last couple of weeks.  You would have guessed the content of those e-mails when I tell you.... he is from Egypt.

We are of the same profession and he heads a similar function of mine in a French electric company based in Cairo.  We kept in contact after the conference mainly because I would like to know more about the industry happenings in that region but the conversation soon deviated into what is now a global headline, albeit a brief period of mail silence due to a halt in internet service there.

If you do not know what headline I am referring to, you ought to put your head in a used toilet bowl and flush... might just clear up some blockages.

It was very interesting to know the perspective from a local, of which I believe offers a more un-bias view compared to deriving information from the media.

As I mentioned, my friend (I consider him one) is an educated professional who has a good stable career, possibly considered the upper class in Egypt... did he participate in the protest? The answer is a big "No". 

Just like someone in similar shoes in Malaysia, he has too much to lose. 

Those who have taken to the streets, burned down buildings, destroyed the police stations, etc.  are those who are unemployed, those with nothing to lose.

Many people started flooding facebook statuses with statements such as "the govt should take note of what is happening in Egypt and beware..."... "PM, if you don't reform, what happened in Egypt or Jordan may just happen here"... etc. etc.

Will what happened in Egypt can ever happen in Malaysia? Definitely not... at least not in that magnitude.

Do Malaysia have a population of "nothing-to-lose"? Yes... however, a big portion of this population thinks that is it not that govt's fault that they are in such situation.  Worse... some of them think (or being propagated to think) that they are in such situation because the minority population has 'stolen their wealth'.

What about those in middle or upper class, those who drive nice cars, live in fairly comfortable house... those who have "too much to lose".... those like my friend... those the likes of you and me?

Throughout the ordeal, I asked my friend about the socio-economy impact but my friend never complained about the protest, he never thought about the impact to the economy, he never whined about the inconvenience caused by the event.

Malaysian in similar position of my Egyptian friend.... the very first thing that will come out of the facebook statuses of these people would be... "fuck the protest, I am in a fucking jam!". And that is actually a good sign because at least such people is aware of the protest... because I would think many will have statuses such as "OMG... why is there a massive jam, what is happening?!!??"

The racial and social demography of Malaysia makes it a little complicated to initiate such united effort.  The BERSIH rally was impressive, but it was only one off.  And it probably had more non-participating critics that support.

According to my Egyptian friend, the protest in Egypt gathers both participating and non-participating support. I just can't see that happening in Malaysia.

And just to close... my friend also specifically mentioned that the level of corruption and poor public service in Egypt has resulted in the collapsed of the healthcare and education system.  Sounds familiar isn't it?

But then... we all found through the highly publicised 1Malaysia evacuation that there were 11,000 Malaysian students in Egypt (possibly on govt scholarships). Such high participation in what Egyptian deemed as "collapsed" education system is... mind boggling.

2 years ago… An origination pick-up line

4 years ago… Respect for Malaysian drivers