Bangsa Malaysia Part 1

In a long-winded corporate adverts to mark Merdeka, Hari Raya and assorted ethno-religious festivities are also littered with more fantasized scenarios of a multiracial, multicultural, multireligious and multi-whatever populace co-habitating tolerantly while celebrating their glorious diversity in a utopian land of opportunity for all.

Sejarah dan Warisan Melayu

Sejarah adalah satu ilmu yang tersangat lah penting dalam pembinaan jati diri generasi bangsa. Dengan pengetahuan sejarah bangsa yang lengkap dan tepat, semangat untuk maju kehadapan bagi setiap individu dalam bangsa-bangsa tertentu akan lebih tertampil. Bangsa yang tidak menonjolkan sejarah hebat bangsanya akan mendung masa depan anak bangsanya. Bangsa yang mendung masa depan nya akan mundur kebelakang dan akhirnya bangsa itu akan hanya tertinggal dalam lipatan sejarah akibat ketidakmampuan untuk bersaing.

Kesan Perjanjian Tanah KTM Di Singapura

PADA 20 September lalu, Malaysia dan Singapura menandatangani perjanjian pertukaran tanah membabitkan tanah Keretapi Tanah Melayu Bhd’s di republik itu.

Ia dimeterai oleh Perdana Menteri Malaysia, Mohd Najib Abdul Razak dan Perdana Menteri Singapura, Lee Hsien Loong, di kota singa.

Kedua-dua pemuka menguar-uarkan (bukan war-war) perjanjian itu sebagai kejayaan besar dan pembaikan ke atas “Point of Agreement (POA)” yang menjadi asas rundingan antara dua negara.

Saya tidak mahu berselisih faham, menyangkal atau menyangkal laporan dan ulasan media massa yang menghebahkan perjanjian itu sebagai “win-win” (menang-menang).

Saya sekadar ingin berkongsi maklumat dan interpretasi peribadi saya untuk kita dalami, fahami dan bahaskan. Berikut adalah antara inti pati, ciri dan implikasi perjanjian berkenaan:-

1. Dulu tanah KTM di Singapura adalah milik penuh dan mutlak Malaysia, walaupun kegunaannya terhad kepada operasi kereta api dan kekal hak Malaysia selagi operasi kereta api berjalan;

2. Sekarang tiga keping tanah KTM telah ditukarkan dengan sembilan keping tanah lain dan operasi kereta api akhirnya akan ditamatkan;

All the Wishes and Greetings

To all my dear friends who are celebrating Hari Raya, Selamat Hari raya Aidil Fitri, Maaf Zahir dan Batin.

Semoga your Raya is filled with lots of family and friends, lots of love and lots of ketupat dan rendang.
To those who are going to balik kampung, have a safe, smooth trip and may you not feel like terkencing on the trip because the highways and byways toilets will be terribly full.
Have patience because the jam will be horrendous and get some foods because the pit stops are packed.
 
And since I have sent my early wishes to you all, you can also send your wishes to me.

Things on my to-do list are :
1) go bungee jumping
2) go parachuting, not para gliding, that one not counted
3) go on the scariest roller coaster ride in the world, not genting, I did all that
4) touch more hearts
5) bring more smiles

Write, Delete, Write, Delete

I tend to practise self-censorship.

Then, there is the spur of the moment rant which I can do on Twitter and Facebook and do not need a blog to deal with that part. I am several years late to be excited over blogs, sorry to say that.

Blogs aint’ hot anymore. They are yesterday. No one looks up to a blogger anymore. Blogs don’t make you rich. But of course, some bloggers still earn some money because they are packed with keywords and Google have indexed their pages.

In the previous general election, blogs have helped a lot. In the coming general election, blogs are irrelevant. Twitter has taken over. Facebook will accommodate the more detailed stuffs while Twitter will give the up to the minute updates.

So, what has my title gotta do with all these paras I wrote above?

Nothing. It shows how fickle I am. This is my fifth title, because I had deleted off some earlier things that I had wanted to say.

Actually, only with Twitter can you ambush and hijack a person’s thoughts. You can’t do that with blog. It is not quite the same. Frankly, I don’t see why people still want to read blogs. They are just so boring nowadays. I don’t know if those few bloggers are still stuck in their same old routine of showing what they eat, what they just bought, etc etc etc.

Maybe I will just put a tombstone on this site and says my blog has gone to eternal rest. But then, not yet. I want to rant and Twitter or Facebook cannot accommodate that.

Najib Letak Jawatan Presiden UMNO



"Datuk Onn kemudian berasa kecewa dengan apa yang beliau menganggap sebagai dasar-dasar perkauman UMNO, dan mencadangkan bahawa keahlian parti dibuka kepada semua penduduk Tanah Melayu, tanpa mengira kaum, dan nama UMNO ditukarkan menjadi "Pertubuhan Kebangsaan Penduduk Tanah Melayu Bersatu". Oleh sebab cadangan itu ditentangkan, Dato Onn meletakkan jawatan sebagai presiden UMNO apabila persidangan Majlis Mesyuarat Agung Keenam diadakan pada 25 - 26 Ogos 1951."

Sekiranya matlamat perjuangan Pribumi Perkasa itu adalah bercanggah sama sekali dengan matlamat perjuangan parti UMNO dan sekiranya DS Najib memperjuangkan perjuangan pelbagai kaum menerusi konsep 1-Malaysia, maka wajarlah DS Najib meletak jawatannya sebagai Presiden Parti UMNO.

Sepatutnya DS Najib bersifat lebih berani dengan mengikuti jejak langkah Datuk Onn Jaafar yang keluar parti untuk menubuhkan Parti Negara supaya perjuangan 1-Malaysianya dapat diteruskan tanpa menjejaskan keutuhan parti UMNO yang memperjuangkan matlamat perjuangan orang Melayu dan Bumiputera sebagaimana MIC dengan orang indianya dan MCA dengan orang cinanya.

Apabila kembalinya UMNO kepada matlamat perjuangan asalnya, maka tidak perlu lagilah Pribumi Perkasa bersusah payah mengisi ruang yang dikosongkan oleh UMNO. Tidak perlu lagilah bagi orang-orang Melayu mengalih pandangan mereka dari UMNO. DS Najib bersama-sama orang-orang kuatnya mampu menubuhkan sebuah parti politik baru, dengan mencontohi Datuk Onn Jaafar, bagi memperjuangkan wadah 1-Malaysianya.

The Acquisitive Society

 

 

 

Every year, we hear the same story about the ugly Malaysian. At open houses, people scrambled and dashed for the food. Adults behave like undisciplined children. If the PKR people think, they are immune from the ugly Malaysians, think again.

At the recent Hari Raya Open House at the IT City, there was the same mad scramble for food. You would think these people are starving refugees. My friend's children were queuing up for duit raya. Only to be told, we have no more money to give out. No surprise as adults too were lining up to get raya money. 

But I will leave it to others who can tell better stories than I about the ugly Malaysian. As for me, I want to tell the story about people's acquisitive tendencies. Since it is commonly believed, that the basis of a prosperous society is an acquisitive society. A society that has a lower quotient of acquisitive tendencies will undergo a slower pace of economic advancement. It is further believed that the deficiency in acquisitive quotient can be corrected by cultural engineering.

Sometime ago, I read what a sociologist named Judith Djamour wrote about Malays. She did some research on Singapore Malays in the 1940s and 1950s. what she wrote was used by the Singapore government in devising policies to handle its Malay population. Of particular interest was Djamour's interpretation on the differences between a Malay and a Chinese. The Chinese, says Djamour considers the acquisition of wealth as almost an end by itself. So he becomes an indefatigable worker and a keen businessmen. So the Chinese is always in attack mode. Business, social interactions, competing for parking bays and eating. 

The Malay on the other hand attached importance to easy and graceful living. He doesn't see the acquisition of wealth as an end by itself and so avoids becoming an unrelenting worker and a less keen businessman.

So the Malay is usually in a passive mode, diffident, hesitant and withdrawn. 

It is only now that I can picture clearly the significance of these two different character types. I am not at all pleased with the implications of the picture above. I am asking myself, could the two differences cited by Djamour be reflected in the way we reach out for our food? Could it be, that a simple act of acquiring food in a competitive environment, where thousands and thousands of people are looking for the same thing, forces the basic acquisitive instincts to be put on display? 

The Malay with one outstretched hand is less acquisitive than the Chinese with two outstretched hands?

Shall we say then, the Malay does value graceful living more and the Chinese aren't shy to show his acquisitive tendencies? 

Further, how shall we Malays make the acquisitive tendencies our second nature?