Auditor-general's report be damned

Remember last year's auditor-general's report on government contracts and procurements for over-priced computers and furniture? a set of jacks for many times more than what you can buy off the shelf? Well, now how about a defence contract worth over RM8 billion tentatively to be awarded to a local company (DRB-Hicom BHd's wholly-owned unit Deftech) for 257 armored personnel carriers (APCs) priced at around RM31.12 million each APC, which is about 6 times more expensive than an American make or about 3 times more expensive than a German-Dutch make? Yaaaay! we can afford it! And we can build our very own too! It's ok that they cost several times more than tried-and-tested APCs available in the open market, cos what's important is we be self-sufficient, right? who cares about comparative advantages or our lack of it as such? We have our own national car already, now let's start on the big bucks department, military hardware and equipment! Hmmm, if we bought it for say a third of RM8 billion, we'd save about, say conservatively estimated, over RM5 billion? RM5 billion would buy a heck lot of schools, hospitals, public services, right? Naaaaaah! Let's just throw money around like it's going out of fashion. after all, there's lots lots lots more where that came from. Auditor-General's report be damned.

learning to fly

Work-related stress is probably the Number One cause of much unhappiness in many households today. Learning how to cope with stress, stress management is a skill i would like to learn. Just today i was feeling quite irritable and tired after work. My wife was having diarrhea after holidaying abroad last weekend and she hadn't recovered even 4 days after coming home. We went to see a doctor and i gave her token words of comfort but inside i was really hoping that she would get well again quickly, immediately, and not get us bogged down in sickness. i wanted her to be well again for my own selfish reasons. i should have been more sympathetic to her just as she would surely have shown great sympathy for me had i been the sick one. But it really wasn't about her or her being sick. It was rooted in my having had a long day at the office, things not working out as i'd like them to be, mistakes at work which, had i been more meticulous and careful, could have been avoided. All of which rolled together into a tangled ball of stress that i couldn't untangle out of on my own. And so i took it out on my wife who was feeling poorly. i blamed her for being weak and for falling sick so often eventhough this was something that one couldn't assign blame for. It's funny how easily we look for a convenient scapegoat whenever things don't run smoothly for us. it's always somebody else's fault, not ours. So this general moodiness and irritability carried on even after dinner, but thanks to recently having prayed more often than before, i maintained a slender but tenacious grasp on hope and inner peace. While visiting our daughter at the baby sitter's i played with our daughter and made her laugh out loud in delight. That took away the tightly-wound up ball of stress immediately. Hearing her little shrieks of joy had a deeply therapeutic effect on myself that i simply cannot describe sufficiently in words. You have to experience it personally to understand how that felt. And it felt good. Other self-help measures such as prayer helped too. The root of one's unhappiness can often be traced back to events that happened at the office/outside and work-related stress. All sorts of hardships and challenges do and they will come. It's important not to be too sucked in by the nitty-gritty details and to be able to take a calm and peaceful step back and put matters into perspective. It's work it isn't anything else really. And work will never finish. But one keeps at it all the same and commit to even more effort and sustained effort at that, come what may. Work-related stress shouldn't be brought home to spoil your day and your relationship with your loved ones. It should be left at the office. It's difficult to untangle oneself from the ball of stress, sometimes almost impossible to get out of the trap. I am rather thankful that the laughter of a baby could help me achieve that. And so effortlessly too, at that. :)

elected to serve, not to own

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak was quoted as saying that Hulu Selangor had traditionally been a Barisan stronghold but was "on loan to PKR for a while". He was quoted as saying: "The time has come for the loan to lapse and the seat to be returned to Barisan".

Pardon me, Mr. Prime Minister. Neither Barisan Nasional nor Pakatan Rakyat "own" Hulu Selangor or Malaysia for that matter. The voters elect a representative to Parliament to carry out their manifest will, not for someone to be a vehicle for his party to do as the party bosses please. You are elected as a servant to listen to the voices on the ground and to serve them. You do not "own" anything. A Parliamentary or a state seat or any elected position is not a property nor a commodity for you to own or to run as your own personal fiefdom and to barter, trade and buy or sell as you will. Get that straight.

Holiday in sleepy hollow

Writer and sasterawan Salleh Ben Joned who was born in rural Malacca pretty much sums it all up about Malacca when he wrote about his "poor beloved Melaka", "sad Old Melaka", "Sleepy Hollow" - all fitting epithets to describe old Malacca in much the same way that it is known today as it has been known since years of yore and lore. Property prices in Malacca uncommonly gain/appreciate in value and when they do it is usually at sleepy hollow pace, businesses here typically move at a very "as i please" pace and its people are kind but generally frown upon outside attempts to hurry and punctualise Malaccans. I'm writing this on a hot and bright afternoon in sleepy hollow, the air so thick and humid, the heat so radiant from outside that i bask in its baking glow even from within a construct of bricks concrete and mortar. Malacca Malacca what can i say about you that hasn't already been said and written? Today the 7th anniversary of our "historical city day" will no doubt pass with little fanfare outside of officialdom. People going about their business as they please, as they like. And i actually like it. This grows on you. I don't mean that if you stay in malacca you will be condemned to a culture of laziness and complacency (some undoubtedly believe that) but the pace of life here is slow enough to render a certain healthful contentment to me. I'm a rusher alright, don't get me wrong but sometimes i admire folks of the more relaxed type. They're unhurried, they do what they do as and when they like and they finish it when they jolly well feel like it. Before you roll over belly-up laughing and fat ass all over the floor, consider this - in a state with a total population of about three-quarters of a million, a mere town over 7 years ago and inducted into cityhood by grace of political patronage, people generally agree that Malacca is a nice place to bring up your kids, it is a safe place. So if i can take safety as a plus and not get totally sucked into the lazy-and-complacent mindset, life here can be good.
I don't expect to make megabucks in old sleepy hollow, i don't expect corporate types to make a big imprint on anything in poor old melaka. i expect life to go on here as it always has with me right smack in the middle of it. And happily too, i hope. i pray even ;-)

nigga4life

i went out for lunch yesterday and again someone brought up the issue of the 5% government tax at fastfood outlets such as McDonald's, Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants. Rumors have been circulating that Malays are exempted from paying the tax after a meal while non-Malays are charged. Anyway, one of my lunchtime associates asked a man-about-town to confirm whether the rumors were true. man-about-town confirmed that the rumors were true - he personally went out to pizza hut for a meal and asked a Malay buddy to get the bill. And Lo and behold, the bill was indeed cheaper when paid by a Malay. Immediately i asked but isn't this practice illegal? My lunchtime associates laughed. I also queried how they could ascertain whether the customer was malay or non-Malay since some Malays looked like non-Malays and vice-versa? No one could answer me on that point. I surmised that if indeed there was this practice, it can't be company policy or the law (as far as i know the sales and service tax applies uniformly acorss the board regardless of race) but rather some miscreant employees sympathising with poor malays and not charging them 5% govt tax. But wouldn't they be caught by the fastfood outlet Manager when they balance the cashier's till at the end of each day? Hmmmm

the importance of being earnest

Going out on a field project today with my office co-worker we got to talking as he drove me in his proton waja to the project site which is just a little out of town. We talked about everything and anything - politics, the government in Malaysia, the MCA, the government's affirmative action programmes, kids, you name it, we probably talked about it. He is a Straits-born baba-nyonya and he is very experienced when it comes to field work so he led me along and i mostly listened. Work apart, i found his views interesting and yet somewhat unsettling. He felt that all government projects, especially projects in Malacca, were a means to an end. the means was the project, the ends was kick-backs and bribes returned for securing the projects, into the pockets of our state politicians. While at the project itself that we visited we heard of a request from a JKK (Jawatan Kuasa Kemajuan dan Keselamatan Kampung - Village Development & Safety Committee) member that the non-bumi lots facing his house lying just outside the project boundary be moved so that his house would face the bumi lots. The allocation of bumi lots in any project in Melaka is usually about 60% of all lots and the blueprint is drawn up by the state government solely without the developer's influence or input. So this request from the JKK member came as a surprise. Coming back to my co-worker, he felt that projects such as the airport expansion plan in malacca was done to grease state politicians' pockets. "Why do they do it there and not somewhere else where there is empty land? You see, when they acquire land where there is housing already they get kick-backs too". On the journey home we spoke awhile about other things such as the government's allocations for vernacular schools. His take: "Well, they take nice photos with a big mock cheque but later when they cash the cheque it always bounces one". He even thought that fast food outlets such as KFC and McDonald's charged non-bumis service tax of 5% but exempted Malays from paying service tax. He was positive that his sources were true. When we were at the project i was approached by a man whose wife was a Sarawakian bumi. He wanted to know if his wife, being a bumi, was entitled to the bumi discount and could buy a bumi lot. We told him that under existing Malacca State land regulations they could not qualify for bumi lots as the bumi lots are reserved for Malays only. The man said:" Well, then they should say in the poster only for Malays instead of for Bumis which is misleading". Another non-bumi visitor openly voiced his dissatisfaction with the status quo and wondered if his children would rebel against this system. "We can take it, but how do we explain this to them?" was his take. On the road home later my co-worker told me that corrupt officials loved to resort to court action because all the judges were on their (the corrupt politicians') side.

I've heard about enough and this comes up all the time. Jaundiced views or close approximations to the truth, your guess is as good as mine. I am surprised that people believe half the things they believe, some of which are true and others a wildly exaggerated version of somebody's experience heard via hearsay. The bottom line is that the Malaysian government's credibility is very low and this makes it all the harder for the government to do its job. How do you perform when people are so willing to believe the worst things about you? As i write this i believe that the government has just come up with the broad brush strokes of the New Economic Model. I hope that they get it right at the implementation level especially and make sure that state governments conform to the liberalised regime and not merely carry on with business as usual. By golly, one gets tired of hearing the same old hash over and over and over again.