Independent No More

In the old days Colonists would go to a country looking for its natural resources. They scrambled for the minerals, native plants or pre-historic artifacts from far corners of the Earth. Some made peace with the local people and came in as advisors to the local chiefs while some used force and carted away anything they could get from the conquered land. Under the pretext of bringing the word of God and civilizing the barbarians, they justified their exploitations. Over centuries, they extracted the minerals and use them to industrialise their country, develop sophisticated weapons and gadgets and sell them back to us. This is easy to see and sadly it is still happening in some parts of the world.

While this kind of crude physical colonization is on the way out, a new form of control is on the rise. We are all willing participants of this new colonization and we don’t even know it. The threat now is less obvious although the impact on less developed world and the majority of the people is still the same. What is being promoted as democracy and free access to information can also be seen from the dark side.

A wise man once said that “knowledge is power”. It is more relevant now than ever. All the data that we create and upload about ourselves is information. This information can be converted into knowledge and knowledge thus brings power. So it’s not hard to imagine that all the data – text, photos, videos - we’re giving away for free to Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Google, WhatsApp or what not is like giving away our power to those who receive, collect, analyse and use it for their own good.

We are living in the age of Big Data where companies offer free services so that they could collect our data, analyse and use it to sell things to us. On a more ominous side, they collect our data so they could spy on us. They know our location every day, they know what we buy, what we say and they even know what we think. The unfortunate thing is these companies with terabytes of data collected from us are based in foreign countries. Their servers are physically located in their own country and they are subjected to their own law which empowers their intelligence agency to have access to these data and monitor anybody they wish. The current drama revealed by the Snowden leak case about the existence of government funded online spying program Prism shows that the countries with heaviest surveillance on their own people and foreigners are not the ex-Soviet so-called Iron Curtain countries but the self-proclaimed champions of democracy like the US and the UK.

We need to realize that the power of the future is not measured in barrels but in bits and bytes. And we’re giving our data to large corporations based in foreign countries without realizing that every byte of data they store is like drops of oil running their engine. These data may be used against us if they think that we’re not following their wishes. Remember, these corporations are based in the same countries which used to exploit our natural resources and our people to enrich and empower their own citizens in previous centuries. This is just colonization in a new cloak. It is an excuse to spy and control people under the pretext of freedom and democratization of information.

When Big Brother is watching it is not necessarily a good thing, especially when you know that the Brother has a stated objective of making everybody eat, sleep, talk, buy and think like them. So think about it when you press “Agree” button the next time you sign up for a free service online. It may look free now, but you are paying it with your own freedom. We are all sometimes too willing a participant in this wholly connected world. You may think you are free now, but with every byte of data about yourself that you give away you slowly inch forward into an online prison. This is the world we’re living now, a world where independence has no real meaning but surrendering yourself to watchful eyes from the opposite side of the world.



Selamat Hari Merdeka!

Retire in the Kampung?

During the recent trip back to my hometown for Hari Raya Haji, I met an old friend from the kampung who is a petty trader in the town. Almost without exception, whenever I go to town to get cheap fruits and vegetables for the family before returning to Kajang, I would stop by his stall to buy something or just to say hello. This time I noticed he was no longer accompanied by his second wife. He told me she had died of diabetes and that he was now back with his first wife. As usually we talked about our family and life at our respective places. He asked me whether I had any plan to come back and live in the kampung once I retire. This is one of the frequently asked questions I get whenever I meet old friends from the kampung. I think I’d ask the same question if I were in their position. It shows how much attachment we are expected to have to our kampung although we’ve been away for more than half of our life. The expectation is I’d agree with the idea and thus prove that I still remember my roots. It is a simple question but answering it is never easy.

I am grateful that I was brought up in the kampung environment and able to appreciate the difficult life there. But to be honest, no matter how much nostalgia I have of the old days, I prefer the life I have now. I would not be able to feed myself if I was put back in the kampung again. I never learnt how to tap rubber trees although my parents made a living out of that. I used to help them collect latex from plastic cups, mix acid cocktail to solidify it and use the rollers to compress it into corrugated thin rubber sheets before drying. But my fingers were not delicate enough to cut grooves into the trees for the latex to flow. I would not know how to work the paddy fields on my own although as a boy I spent a lot of my time helping my folks to plant it. I used to cut grass for the family herd of cows but my fingers are now more comfortable punching alphabets on the computer. I have lost the limited skills I had of doing kampung work. It will be a struggle for me to have to relearn these skills again at 55 when I reach my retirement age.

I think kampung life is no longer the kind of quiet and peaceful life it was 20 years ago. Crime, which was almost unheard of back then, is now common because of the spread of drugs. It was OK to leave the door unlocked back then, but it would be foolish to do the same now. It is now not uncommon to hear of horrific news from a remote village of a drug addict son killing his parents because they could not give him the 5 ringgit to buy his next fix. And almost every village now has young men dying of HIV and AIDS. The drugs business, just like any other business facing little prospect of growth in the cities, has made great ‘progress’ in the last 20 years in penetrating the rural market where there are so many jobless young men able and willing to be potential recruits. With this menace, I wonder how much promise kampung life can bring to my young kids who will grow up to be teenagers and young adults when I retire.

Whenever I am back in the kampung I try to attend the congressional prayer at the village surau. It is so close to the house that I really cannot miss the azan. So there is really no excuse not to go whenever I hear the azan! Alas, there is no azan for every prayer time. From my brief observation, the only regulars are the imam and the bilal. It is the only surau in the village of hundreds of people but the rest of the villagers are nowhere in sight. The local surau is an excellent place to gauge where future generations will take Islam. I do not see any improvement in people on the ground living Islamic life although the leaders of the state have been preaching Islam for two decades. By contrast, based on the occasional visit to my local surau in Kajang, it is more lively with religious learning programmes and very well attended. Again I wonder what future would kampung life bring to my kids if I were to move back to the kampung after retirement. I guess the answer here is quite obvious.

This coming year, three of my four kids will be going to school here in Kajang. Except for the first one, all three were born here. All their life they have been here. Their schools, playground, favourite shopping complexes, fast food outlets, library and circle of friends are all here. Except for the occasional school holiday trips to spend a few days in the kampung, they lead a city life. I cannot think that one day they’d want to ‘go back’ to the kampung and spend their life there. For them, their home is here about 30 km from KL City Centre. And it would be odd if you leave your children in the city to go live in your kampung when you’re old and need their support the most. So the way I see it the option of retiring into quiet life in the kampung is probably not for me.

I think life in the city is more competitive and it pushes our children to be their best. During weekdays, most of their time is fully occupied with school, religious school and tuition. This leaves them with less time to indulge in negative activities. Although I am not really fond of rote learning, it is much better than loitering around, doing drugs or watching endless programmes on satellite TV.

It is said Kelantanese have strong feelings and attachment with their home state. They refer to non-Kelantanese as ‘orang luar’ and as far as I know no other state burn the stadium when they lose a football match! We speak unique budu dialect which other people make fun of. But I know many young men from other states would try hard to master Kelantan-speak because they would not want to miss the chance of wooing pretty Kelantanese girls! So as a Kelantanese, I would not want to be accused as a traitor. I love my home village but some of the people that I knew, the friends that I played with or my own family have either died, migrated to the city or moved and built their own family in other parts of the country. I will not forget my roots in the kampung whenever I go back and visit my parents’ graves. But I am not sure if I would want to live there after retirement, or be buried there myself when my time in this world is over.

6-dec-2009

Letter to 69ers

The writer turned 40 recently. This letter is specially dedicated to those born in 1969.


Reflections on what it means to turn 40…

Dear Sixty-niners,

Good morning! I hope this letter reaches you while you’re in good health. Sometime this year each of us should hopefully be able to celebrate the fortieth year of our birth. I reached that milestone sometime last week! It’s a significant milestone indeed. We have spent more than half of our life’s expectancy. It is time we took stock of our life so far and started charting how we would like to steer it into the future. For the optimist among us, life begins at 40. For the less so, life begins to go downhill.

Nineteen sixty-nine was a memorable year. Man was finally able to escape the Earth’s gravity and set foot on the Moon. I was still in my mother’s womb when Neil Armstrong made that giant leap for mankind. In the Malaysian context, it was the year which would be remembered as a single date, the 13th of May. The year in which racial differences exploded into bloody riot culminating in the New Economic Policy, the policy that gave so much for the average Malay like me, but also caused so much resentment among our fellow non-Bumi Malaysians.

From now on we will be expected to lead. Prophet Muhammad began to lead his people to Islam at this age. This is the age when you stop being called a youth and finally embraced into the mainstream. By now we should be prepared to be called “Pak Cik” by more and more people. If you still keep your hair, don’t fret too much if more of it turns grey. It’s the colour of wisdom, experience and durability.

They say most major discoveries in science and mathematics are made by men in their 20s and 30s. So for those of us who aspire to crack Einstein’s unfulfilled dream of Theory of Everything, well…perhaps we can just let the youngsters carry the torch. But on the other hand, being 40 doesn’t mean we should be pushed aside and labeled as those who have passed their sell-by dates. Perhaps we lack the speed and risk-taking spirit of youth but we can make it up with patience, wisdom and lessons from our own experiences.

Most of us have attained stability in our income and family life. For those men who feel bored with this stability and would like to handle more challenges, go ahead, rock the boat and get another wife! But before you take that big decision bear this in mind. Scientific study shows that man’s testosterone level drops by 1 to 2 per cent per year from the age of 40. So to those who say “Life begins at 40” and start thinking about taking another wife, I’d say they’re in a state of denial. They’re denying the fact that they’re having a severe MLC – mid-life crisis. They think that because their financial status is now more stable, therefore their sexual status must also be at the top of the world. But in actuality they’re just trying to hide their waning sexual prowess.

No doubt many would like to turn back the clock and be a twenty-something again. So much is placed on youthfulness these days. The media is entirely to blame for this. Look around you. Except for pension scheme for senior citizens and new diapers design for people with bladder control problems, all advertisements picture young, smiling faces full of energy and testosterones. Makes you wish you could be 25 forever. But time keeps its forward march and our body ages along with it.

Dear Friends,

Let’s thank God for taking us this far. And let me again remind you that we have used up more than half of our life! So friends, let’s say good bye to youth and welcome the age of wisdom. We have been taught well by our elders and now is the time to pass on the knowledge and experience to the youngsters. So, on this auspicious morning, let’s step out of the house on the right foot, take a deep breath, look straight ahead and enjoy the journey into the next 40 years of our life! May God bless all of us.

Ameen.

Outbreak of a new virus B1N1

There is widespread concern among health professionals that the dreaded Influenza A(H1N1) virus has evolved into a more virulent strain which has yet to be given official name. Health experts are still arguing what to call the virus but many believe it should be identified as B1N1, the B signalling a more widespread and vicious form of the swine flu virus A(H1N1) while the absence of brackets in the name indicating a more free and easily transmittable form of the virus. The virus is not particularly deadly as it rarely causes physical pain to both carriers and those infected. Instead, it can bring tremendous psychological suffering as it can drain out sufferer’s financial resources. According to Dr John Swine, a virologist who leads a team of researchers at Imperial College London, the virus has been in existence since the first human walked the Earth. Strangely though it has only infected the male of the human species.

A study published in the journal Nature by epidemiologists at the John Hopkins Medical School concludes that the virus starts to infect men in their 20s and more prevalent among men in the developing world. Muslim men are particularly vulnerable with possibility of infection reaching up to four different strains – B1N1-1, B1N1-2, B1N1-3 and B1N1-4. It is estimated that only a small percentage of Muslim men were infected with B1N1-2, B1N1-3 and B1N1-4 although as much as 95% of them will get B1N1-1 at some point in their lifetime. Studies are still on-going to find out why men of Islamic faith have not become immune to the infection. In a recent case in the state of Selangor in Malaysia, a popular Islamic religious preacher and TV presenter who had B1N1-1 for more than a decade is reported to have managed to free himself from the virus and just last weekend confirmed widely circulated rumours that he had now contracted B1N1-2. The 40 year old ex-rock singer is said to have contracted the virus from a 30-year old female singer who’s famous with her Arabic songs. He seems to show all the symptoms of the B1N1-2 infection – unexplained burst of energy and great psychological boost in the first six months but gradually become fatigue and longing for infection with the next strain B1N1-3 after a few years. So far, he seem to be at the top of the world and visibly happy carrying the 30-year old virus B1N1-2.

Various investigations conducted in US and Europe point to the conclusion that Western men have acquired resistance to B1N1 with less than 50% of them infected by the virus and even when they do, they become free of it after one to two years of suffering various psychological stress brought by B1N1. As is normally the case for virus of this nature, experts are looking at certain groups which have shown strong resistance to the bug. The Imperial College team is still investigating why a small group of highly religious men –priests, monks and the like – have zero infection rate to the virus. It is believed that their strong religious conviction and discipline is key to understanding this strange medical phenomenon.

Authorities at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, USA have been struggling to get reliable data to develop a vaccine for the virus as those infected are susceptible to lying and unstable mental conditions. Men in their 50s and 60s have been known to resort to the sex-enhancing drug Viagra to boost their performance to fight the virus B1N1-1. They have been known to need more dose of Viagra once infected with more complex strains of the virus -B1N1-2, B1N1-3 and B1N1-4. Pfizer, the drug company which holds the patent to produce Viagra, has been reaping up huge profits with the spread of the highly infectious bug. When asked to comment on the sudden increase in the sale of Viagra, Pfizer spokewoman declines to comment citing possible interference with on-going lawsuit against the company.

Thoughts about Work: Freedom and Innovation

By this time next week, I will be left on my own in the office. My senior colleague who has been acting as Team Lead for the past 8 months will be moving on to a new assignment. I will be reporting to my American boss, who is based in India and he in turn reports to his boss in the Netherlands. When I joined this company two and a half years ago, I worked under a British boss. He left late last year and his post was filled by my current boss, an Indian expatriate whose 4-year assignment here in Malaysia is up and is now moving on to Europe. Such is the dynamics of working in a multinational company. If you wish, you can travel the world, go to different places for an assignment, see different cultures, meet various people and have a healthy bank account along the way too.

Before I joined this company, I worked for a GLC and a consultancy. In my previous jobs, I have always worked with a Malaysian boss. What I find interesting about working with expatriate bosses is that not only do they allow you to express your ideas, but they also expect you to challenge their ideas or decisions. During discussions, when he comes up with an idea he’d urge me to challenge him. Being Malaysian, we tend to respect and not argue too much with our boss. Bosses are expected to be right and subordinates are to take their words as gospel truth. These expatriates must have been quite surprised to find how little we Malaysians argue with our boss even when we’re encouraged to do so. In fact, having been brought up in a culture which puts so much respect to our elders and people with authority, it’s very difficult to disagree with your own boss. There is hesitation to say directly to them that they could be wrong even when it is perfectly all right to say it without fear of retribution. This is one cultural clash that I find interesting and perhaps something that we can learn from.

I remember in my previous company, when the VP spoke nobody dared to interrupt even though he’d been babbling for 3 hours non-stop. In fact nobody seemed to be able to lift their full bladder from the chair and visit the toilet in those 3 hours! And nobody touched the food or drinks before the old man did it. How can you expect the subordinates to argue with the boss when they would not even dare to touch the curry puffs which are yearning to be eaten in front of them! In contrast, in this European-based multinational, I was shocked to find that an expatriate, who was just a mere senior engineer could raise his voice and express his disagreement on the policy taken by the company’s president in a meeting seating just beside the VP. I know I sound a bit exaggerating but I just picked two extreme examples from my own work experience.

I think the freedom to express their opinion is one of the reasons why Western companies are successful in innovation. It encourages cross-fertilisation of innovative ideas and creative solutions. This is what our education system should inculcate in our young generation’s mind. We should start from the time when our children are still at pre-school. They should be encouraged to express themselves and build up confidence in presenting their ideas and arguing their case. Based on my own experience and casual observation, I find this confidence lacking in our students, employees and people in general. We are victims of our own authoritarian culture. The emphasis on respect for authority might have worked well for agrarian society in which common people relied heavily on their rich and powerful landlords to provide for basic needs. But we have gone past that stage. In today’s modern world, the success of a country depends very much on how innovative and resilient it can be in the competition for foreign investment and the best talents. Our country’s leaders always espouse “Asian Values” where respect for people with authority is held as the glue that keeps our country’s stability. Critics say that this is just an excuse for authoritarian leaders to keep their restless people under control. Perhaps there is truth in both arguments. But as far as innovation in a company is concerned, I’m of the opinion that freedom is a necessary ingredient for innovation to prosper.

Remembering my mother

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day. I never knew there was such a day when my mother was still alive. And even if I knew, I would not have cared much anyway. It’s just another modern day invention to allocate one day to remember the person who gave birth to us while for the other 364 days of the year she is treated like she never existed. Then again once in a while, thoughts of mother do come to our mind as we deal with trials and tribulations of bringing up our own children.

My mother’s time in this world ended on the same day as for the last Agong who died on the throne. While the whole Malaysia was mourning the loss of a people’s King, I was grieving the passing of my own mother. While all radio and television stations stopped entertainment programmes and played Quranic recital instead, our family also had tahlil to pray for her soul to be placed with those who are blessed. That sad day 8 years ago, is long gone. And my own family has grown so much since then.

With all the comfort and convenience that we live in today, it’s difficult to imagine how hard it was for a single mother to bring up 4 young children but that’s what my mother did. I was too young to remember, but I was told she separated from my father when I was only five and my younger sister was two. We were brought up by her own mother (my maternal grandmother) as she had to go away from the village to tap rubber trees on the hills of interior Kelantan, and later work in sawmills in the interior of Pahang. I can’t remember exactly how often she came back to visit us and grandmother, but I remember we were more attached to grandmother because of the separation.

While living in Pahang around the late 70s, she married a man who later became the father of my younger brothers. By the time I was sent to sekolah asrama in 1982 she gave birth to my youngest brother. Her husband, my stepfather, ran off months after my brother was born and never came to visit us again. Life had always been difficult for her, and it took a turn for the worse. That was the time my mother, a divorced 33 year old woman, penniless and jobless with four young kids, without a man in her life had to go through a difficult journey into the future on her own. From then on she never left home to work in foreign places. I guess she felt she had left me and my sister for too long and that from then on she wanted to bring up her children by herself. She never remarried again until her death 19 years later.

When I was learning to be an adult at the sekolah asrama, I understood early on why mother could not visit me that often. The journey from home to the asrama must have been difficult for her, perhaps even more so when she thought about not being able to leave as much money as she wanted to if she visited. Instead, I was the one making my trip home once in a while to see mother and my younger siblings.

I remember to this day, one weekend I went back to the kampung. Moments before I left home to take my bus trip back to the asrama, my mother went into the bedroom and closed the door. Later, not knowing what she was doing in there, I opened the bedroom door and found her counting coins on the house wooden floor careful not to let the coins slip through the gap between the planks. I saw the bamboo piggy-bank which she had been saving the coins in was broken in halves. She said to me she had to break it to get her only savings as she did not have any money left. All she had was the coins. She asked if I would not mind carrying the heavy coins around and told me to be careful not to drop them. I looked at her and held back my tears. I did not want to show her my sadness and I suspect she was concealing hers too. I can’t remember what I spent the money on but that small incident is still etched on my memory to this day. It was one of the defining moments in my growing up teenage life. One among many which helped to teach me early on the importance of being prudent with money. To be honest even now while writing this, I have to take a breather, hold back my tears and pretend to be strong just in case my kids come barging into my study room without knocking.

I did not have the courage to tell my mother all this when she was still alive. I wish I had told her how thankful I was about all the sacrifices that she had made to bring up the four of us. If your mother is still alive please do tell her how much she has done in your life. If you didn’t have time to do it in the last 364 days, tomorrow is a good day to say it.

Happy Mother’s Day!

9 May 2009

As a law-abiding Malaysian citizen, I, together with 2 million others filed my tax return within days before the deadline. The e-filing was overall convenient although I had to wake up at 4.30am in the morning to avoid slow server problem as many other taxpayers were also rushing to file in their tax returns. This is a tremendous improvement from the pre-e-filing days when I either had to submit it a few days before the deadline or go to the LHDN office myself to meet the deadline.

As the amount of tax that I pay grows by the year, I become more incensed by the gross wastage of money by some of our decision makers. They treat our hard earned money as their entitlement spending millions on expensive overseas “lawatan sambil belajar” trips. Some even brought his family and maid to Disneyland under the pretext of learning how to run a theme park, while some others charged half a billion “consultancy” fee for procuring some expensive foreign made weaponry. And yet, we the rakyat, are asked to tighten our belt to weather the current economic downturn.

One way to avoid our money from being squandered by these scoundrels is to pay all of our tax in the form of zakat. Although I’m not sure how transparent the zakat institution operate, and how much of the money actually goes to the right people, at least we can be sure our money will not go into financing somebody’s shopping trip to Harrods or to some middlemen trying to sell expensive toys to the government. And you can give it to any zakat institution that you feel comfortable with. I myself have been contributing my zakat to the Kelantan Islamic Religious Council since 6 or 7 years ago. No narrow Kelantan-centric chauvinism here. I believe people from rural Kelantan need more help than people from urban Selangor or KL. Since I’m not contributing directly to the economic development of the state in which I spent the first 20 years of my life, this is my way of “repaying” it.

Surviving in a Flat World

The other day I had a problem with my laptop. It was after office hours. I dialed the company’s IT helpdesk number and a man with a foreign accent answered the call at the other end. He asked me a few basic computer questions, requested me to do a few simple steps and within seconds he took control of my computer screen. He copied files onto my laptop, deleted old ones and replaced them with new ones. About 15 minutes later, the problem was fixed and I was back at work again. Well, nothing so unusual about that except that I was sitting comfortably in my office in Kuala Lumpur and he was controlling my cursor from Bangalore, India!

It turns out that, as a global company constantly looking for the cheapest way of doing things, the company I work for has outsourced some of the operations which used to be done here in Kuala Lumpur to India. For IT support, during normal office hours calls are directed to Cyberjaya but after hours calls are transferred to other call centres around the globe. When I want to invoice customers for completed work I just need to send an e-mail to instruct the accounts team in Chennai, India to prepare an invoice. They will process the invoice, print out a hardcopy in Chennai, courier it out via DHL to the customer, even though the customer office happens to be only 3 floors below my office here in Kuala Lumpur. Now you may think it does not make sense to have the invoice issued out from another continent when the recipient sits in the same building as you. And perhaps you are wondering why I’m telling you this story and what lessons can we learn from all this? The answer is in the word “globalisation”.

In an interconnected world where business is conducted at the speed of light there is no guarantee that we will keep our job. Millions of qualified people in India, China and other emerging economies are eager and willing to take our job if we do not equip ourselves with specialized skills that differentiate us from them. Already they can do the same job much cheaper. Any job that can be digitized and discretised into packets of data can be sent over a broadband cable to find the cheapest place where it can be done. Transfer of data is virtually free. As an economy which has been growing steadily since the early 80s, we are no longer a country with cheap labour. We must realize this and we have to prepare our people to move up quickly on the technological ladder. Otherwise, we’ll lose out to them just like we lost to China, Vietnam or Laos in manufacturing.

Thomas Friedman in his book “The World is Flat” wrote about the emergence of countries like India and China and the forces that enabled them to compete with industrialised countries like the US and Europe. These forces, which he calls flatteners, feed the next stage of globalisation or Globalisation 3.0. He observes that while Globalisation 1.0 turns big into medium, and Globalisation 2.0 turns the medium into small, the third stage of globalization is turning the small into tiny. And unlike the first and second stages where the forces rested with countries and companies, it is now driven by individuals. What this means is that, with the IT and Internet revolution, millions of people are now able to work and collaborate with other people sitting half a world away and produce results which are far better than the sum of each of them working alone. Work is no longer confined by distance or geographical boundaries. A Malaysian company cheque for a customer here in Malaysia, may be prepared in the Philippines. An American secondary school kid’s homework may be checked by his tutor in India; or perhaps in future your house sales and purchase agreement will be prepared by a lawyer in Eastern Europe whom you never meet. The bottom line is if you have the necessary skills and can offer the cheapest service, you can be in any corner of the world, yet will still be able to perform jobs for customers from half a world away.

Friedman’s book is aimed at his fellow Americans whom he thinks have been sleeping while the rest of the world is stealing their jobs. He was referring to the waves of outsourcing and offshoring jobs that went to India and China because of much cheaper labour costs in the two countries. What he says in his book sometimes can be a bit of an exaggeration but he has made a loud wake-up call for Americans to realise that the rest of the world is catching up while they are losing their competitiveness. There are lessons for us too. Malaysians, especially the Bumiputras and Umnoputras, should wake up as well and realise that the big wave called globalisation is affecting us all. We cannot live in a protected environment forever. The rest of the world is preparing themselves with boats and ships to ride out the storm. We have not even started learning how to swim because we are scared of water. In a flat world, the faster we hit the water, the better are our chances of survival.

Balik Kampung

It was the time for the exodus again! Not because the Sun would not rise from the East, nor because of an impending hurricane. But because the new Syawal moon was coming out in a day or two.

I made my northward journey together with my family on Sunday before Raya starting from Kajang around midday. I had not visited the kampung for almost 8 months. The last time I was back in Pasir Mas was in February for my aunt’s funeral. That visit was unplanned and was a very brief one.

The journey from KL to Pahang was surprisingly smooth despite the fact that thousands of vehicles were using the trunk road going through Bentong, Raub, Kuala Lipis and Gua Musang. The new road from Raub to Kuala Lipis cuts the distance by more than 30 km and straightens what used to be winding tracks and dangerous curves along the way. More needs to be done to improve its notorious safety record but for now we just need to take more care.

Along the way, perhaps because of fasting, everyone else fell asleep. I kept to the speed limit rolling up and down the hills of interior Pahang while listening to the radio and some podcasts I had downloaded from the Internet. This year Raya falls in the middle of the week giving people more time to make their journey home. There were no accidents or long queues along the road unlike in previous years when everyone had to rush home only one or two days before Raya. I saw Raya greetings from politicians from both sides at strategic junctions in towns along the way. This is the time to show to the people that they care. In Pasir Mas, our own independent MP, the maverick Datuk Ibrahim Ali, back in the lime light after winning the March 8 elections on a Pas ticket, had put up banners at the entrances of mosques in the town affirming his rise and fall with his people (“Jatuh Bangun Bersama Rakyat”). I am quite sure I can get one or two pieces of 50 ringgit notes if I go to his open house. I was told he is a very rich man.

The early break I took gave me some time to spend the last days of Ramadhan in the kampung. I have always enjoyed Kelantanese kuih for its sweet taste but this time I was shocked to find that the price of my favourite Kuih Akok had gone up to KL level just because of the influx of cash-rich city folks coming back for the big day. I did communicate with her in Kelantan-speak but it did not help. May be she knew that I was not one of her regular customers and that it would be fine if I did not buy her kuih next time. Makes me think that when it comes to money, folks in this Ulamak-ruled state are anything but generous! Pak Lah’s gesture in reducing fuel price just before Raya and his plea for traders to bring down goods prices did not seem to work. The often repeated phrase - what goes up must come down – simply does not apply here.

I spent the first day of Raya visiting relatives in the kampung. I only get a chance like this every other year as my nurse wife has to work on alternate Raya. Hospitals always seem to be busier during festive seasons! I took the opportunity to see cousins, uncles and aunties. The eve of Raya was the time to pay my dues in the form of zakat. Four of my young cousins have just lost their mother, four years after losing their father. They are now orphans and in need of monetary support from the extended family. I thought growing up with divorced parents was tough for me. Difficult to imagine that the four of them have lost both parents at such a young age. I remember how happy I was as a child wearing new clothes during Raya, going round from house to house playing firecrackers. I wanted to make sure that they too enjoy the same experience in their childhood.

On the second day of Raya I paid a visit to the graves of my mother, grandmother and father, the three most important people in my life. Their graves lay silent waiting for visits from their children and grandchildren. It was late afternoon and nobody else was around. The quietness seemed to understand the sadness of their loss many years ago. I cleared some weeds that had grown wild since I visited the place last Raya Haji. I read some verses from the Quran and spread out my hands while utterring some doa. After so many years, the sadness of their loss is now bearable. It was almost maghrib time and I had to leave. I looked back at the graves as I took my steps out of the graveyard area. I could not help but feel very sad again as I was leaving them behind. It will probably be another year when I come and visit them again. But this I’ll always remember. I may be working in the tallest buildings in the world, but I'll never forget my roots are here. You people were the ones that made it all possible.

Ulasan Buku: Tuhan Manusia – Faisal Tehrani (2007)

Novel ini adalah novel yang bukan novel. Kenapa saya berkata begitu? Sebenarnya novel ini adalah sebuah perbincangan tentang agama dan kelahiran golongan liberal di kalangan penganut Islam. Ia hanya diolah menjadi novel dengan menyelitkan sedikit kisah dan watak-watak supaya menjadi sebuah cerita. Namun lebih 90 peratus isinya adalah fakta-fakta agama, sejarah, falsafah dan ayat-ayat suci al-Quran dan Hadis. Jika tiada diselang-selikan dengan cerita, watak dan dialog, ia akan menjadi hambar dan mungkin tidak ramai yang akan membacanya.

Novel ini menyelam dalam ke lubuk masalah yang menimpa sebahagian umat Islam terpelajar di Malaysia di mana mereka lebih cenderung kepada ajaran yang dilabelkan sebagai Islam liberal. Golongan ini adalah golongan yang terdidik dengan asuhan dan pandangan yang mengatakan bahawa semua agama adalah benar dan Islam hanyalah salah satu daripadanya. Watak utama novel ini dijelmakan dalam diri Ali Taqi, seorang remaja Islam yang pintar dan amat sedar dengan masalah Islam liberal kerana abangnya sendiri, Talha menjadi murtad selepas dipengaruhi Encik Aris, seorang intelek yang memperjuangkan Islam liberal. Bapa Ali, Mohamad menjadi seorang pendiam akibat teramat sedih setelah anaknya sendiri murtad. Watak Talha tidak banyak diceritakan, malah disentuh sedikit sahaja. Talha hanya wujud dalam dialog Ali Taqi dan watak-watak lain di dalam novel ini.

Kisah berkisar sekitar perbincangan intelektual Ali Taqi dan kawan-kawan sekolahnya tentang Islam, sejarahnya, falsafah dan hubungannya dengan agama lain. Keseluruhan dialog mereka adalah selang-seli antara ayat al-Quran dan kupasannya serta fakta-fakta sejarah Islam yang diolah lancar dalam perbualan dan perdebatan yang dipaparkan di dalam cerita ini. Cerita ini juga mengemukakan watak Andrew Tse, kawan karib sekampung Ali Taqi yang akhirnya memeluk Islam kerana terpesona dengan keindahannya.

Walaupun watak utama ialah seorang remaja namun soal cinta remaja disentuh sedikit sahaja. Zehra, anak intelektual Islam liberal Encik Aris, jatuh hati dengan Ali Taqi. Mereka selalu berbahas dan berbincang tentang Islam liberal di dalam pertemuan mereka. Zehra banyak mengajukan soalan seakan menguji pengetahuan dan hujah-hujah Ali Taqi yang mengganggap Islam liberal adalah suatu barah yang merosakkan umat Islam. Hubungan mereka tidak mekar kerana Ali Taqi tidak boleh menerima orang yang menganut Islam liberal. Kesudahannya berakhir dengan mereka menuju laluan hidup yang berbeza; Ali Taqi kemudiannya menjadi professor ilmu Islam dan falsafah dan watak Zehra tidak diceritakan dengan jelas laluan hidupnya.

Buku ini sarat dengan kupasan ayat al-Quran, hadis, sejarah Islam dan pertentangan dengan dunia Barat. Ia ditulis pada tahun 2007 di mana isu murtad dan penghakiman Lina Joy diperkatakan dengan hebat di laman-laman perbincangan Internet. Saya berpendapat, watak Encik Aris dan Talha mewakili golongan cendikiawan Muslim yang membela Lina Joy, IFC dan isu-isu sepertinya manakala watak Ali Taqi adalah mewakili sebahagian besar Muslim yang berada di pihak yang menentang. Novel ini mengambil persamaan dari apa yang berlaku di dalam hubungan Muslim dan non-Muslim di Malaysia. Ia berhujah membela pihak yang menganggap Islam liberal adalah ancaman kepada keharmonian umat Islam di Malaysia. Sebagai seorang yang berpendidikan bidang syariah Islam, Faisal Tehrani sememangnya dididik dengan pandangan sedemikian.

1 Jun 2008.

Ulasan Buku: Kekasih Sam Po Bo – Faisal Tehrani (2007)

Buku ini adalah salah satu kumpulan cerpen yang dihasilkan oleh Penerima Anugerah Seni Negara, Faisal Tehrani. Di dalamnya termuat 30 cerpen yang membawa berbagai tema dan latar. Memang boleh dikatakan semua 30 ceritera yang dihidangkan oleh Faisal adalah unik dan berisi. Semuanya membawa mesej yang tersendiri, mengupas isu penting Masyarakat Islam-Melayu di Malaysia dan cuba menawarkan suatu penawar kepada masalah muslim sejagat. Antara yang paling saya minati ialah Bulan Mengambang Di Langit KL, Setelah Diciptakan Adam…, Sultan Alauddin Belajar Tasawuf dan Nenek Negro di Kota Mekah.

Suatu tema yang amat kerap dibawa oleh Faisal ialah Islam dan sejarah. Saya amat mengkagumi pengetahuan beliau terhadap Islam dan sejarah. Penulisannya menggambarkan lautan pengetahuan beliau yang dalam mencakupi bidang ilmu Islam, falsafah, sejarah dan politik semasa. Beliau merupakan seorang penulis sepenuh masa yang saya anggap berjaya dan telah menghasilkan lebih 10 buah novel dalam usia baru 34 tahun. Anak muda lulusan bidang pengajian syariah dan sastera ini juga menjadi penceramah sastera dan penyelidik dan sekarang sedang berjuang di bidang akademik untuk menghabiskan PhD. Beliau pernah mendapat bimbingan SN A Samad Said dan SN Shahnon Ahmad. Pandangan politiknya mungkin tidak sehaluan dengan sesetengah orang tetapi beliau berjaya mengemukakan bukti terhadap setiap apa yang dipegangnya. Mungkin kita tidak bersetuju dengan hujahnya tetapi kaedah dan rujukannya kukuh dan jitu.

Novel-novelnya bukan novel picisan cinta remaja yang berlambakan di kedai buku, tetapi sarat mengandungi persoalan yang dianggap berat. Kisah kembaranya padat dengan pencerahan diri serta penghayatan nilai-nilai sejarah dan pengajaran daripadanya. Daya imaginasinya yang cukup luas dan pelbagai itu lincah menerobos dunia di sekelilingnya.

Buku koleksi cerpen dan novelnya agak susah didapati di kedai buku tetapi senang dipesan di kedai maya Internet. Tinjauan saya di beberapa kedai buku hanya membawa saya kepada buku-buku cinta remaja yang saya rasa sudah melepasi waktu untuk orang seperti saya. Di perpustakaan juga saya tidak menemui buku-bukunya. Namun di dunia siber beliau cukup popular dengan laman sesawangnya iaitu tehranifaisal.blogspot.com.

26-5-2008

Meeting Pipeline Guru

Recently I met with a very prominent pipeline engineer when he was here in Malaysia for discussions with an oil company. I was also invited to the meeting. I had always wanted to meet him having read one of his three books and some of his more than 180 papers. Professor Andrew Palmer is well known world wide as one of the most famous pipeline engineers in the world. To my knowledge he is the only pipeliner with the title FRS – Fellow of the Royal Society, the oldest and foremost learned society in the UK. It’s equivalent to National Academy of Sciences in other parts of the world but because of history it held to its current name. It was first established in 1660 and among its most famous fellows were Sir Isaac Newton, Lord Kelvin, Michael Faraday, Charles Darwin and more recently Stephen Hawking. Its current president is Sir Martin Rees, Britain’s Astronomer Royal. The fellowship is a recognition given every year to about 40 of the best scientists and engineers from the UK and a number of foreigners who are regarded as world authority in their own field. If they ever gave a Nobel Prize to a pipeline engineer, Professor Palmer would be one of the favourites to win.

Professor Palmer was a professor of petroleum engineering at Cambridge University from 1996 to 2005. He was also a visiting professor at Harvard in 2002-2003 and a number of other universities in the UK and US. Almost fifty years ago, he was an engineering student at Cambridge graduating in 1961. After compulsory retirement at Cambridge, he decided to move to the Far East and has taken a chair of visiting professorship at National University of Singapore. One might ask why would NUS take a retired old foreign professor to occupy the chair of one of its professorships. Here I think is where Singapore is again going far ahead of Malaysia in lifting the standard and reputation of its universities to become a world class academic institution. They invest a substantial amount of money attracting eminent academics and researchers to their country, providing the right infrastructure and world class facilities. Singapore’s investment is starting to bear fruit. So far their biotechnology enclave, Biopolis has attracted some big names in biotechnology research and push Singapore into biotech world map. NUS is one of the top 50 universities in the world in the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) list (no. 33 in 2007). So if our Higher Education Minister is looking for a model to follow, he does not have to go on lawatan sambil belajar (or is it belanja?) to Europe or America for ideas and inspirations. Just look down south across the causeway. Come to think about it again, NUS used to be University of Malaya in Singapore. The big gap in ranking between our Universiti Malaya and NUS now tells us something about how Singapore and Malaysia manage their most valuable asset (i.e. brain, bright people) and develop it to achieve its best potential.

After the meeting in the morning, I took the opportunity to have further discussions with Professor Palmer over lunch in a halal Chinese restaurant. I told him how I wished I had met him when I was in Cambridge from 1993 to 1995. But during those years, he took his time off from academic world and spent his time in the oil and gas industry. He set up his own consultancy company, built it up and eventually sold it off before joining the academia again. It’s one good thing all our academics should do – spend some time on the field and learn to appreciate how equations and computer simulations actually work in the real world. It’s easy to pressurize a pipeline or smash it to pieces in the lab or on a computer simulation. But it does not necessary mean that it can be done when you are out at sea hundreds of kilometers from shore.

Despite being optimistic and enjoying his life in this part of the world, I noticed he had some reservation about academic institution in Singapore, and in this region generally. Because of its rigid, rule-based society and limited academic freedom, it does not encourage new ideas and creativity, two important elements in innovation and advancement of knowledge. And despite its energetic push to be at the forefront of research and technology in the world, Singapore is still lagging behind in freedom and democracy. The effects have already been felt in certain areas where some academics and scientists who accepted good monetary rewards and had been working in Singapore for some time decided to leave because of lack of freedom. Singapore probably thinks that it is necessary at the current stage of its development to impose controls on everything. But sooner or later, people are going to demand more individual freedom. Make no mistake. No amount of grain can persuade a bird to live in a cage.

In the middle of our discussion, I noticed that it was Friday prayer time. I excused myself and left the learned professor to continue his lunch with my Chinese friend. It was an honour for me to meet such a great man in my own field of work. He is not just a prolific researcher and successful entrepreneur, but also a dedicated educator who loves his work. Now when I read his book again, I feel as if I could hear his voice talking to me over lunch.

Life Certainties

They say two things in life are certain: death and taxes. I’m not sure if I am prepared for the first one but with a definite deadline on April 30th, I had to spend almost whole of last weekend going through my purchase receipts and financial papers before submitting my tax return form (Borang BE) on-line. It’s good that it’s now possible to fill our tax return form via the Internet, have our taxes calculated using on-line applications and even get confirmation receipt from the Inland Revenue Board (LHDN). This year LHDN expects more people to use the on-line applications and reduce congestion at its offices close to the deadline.

After 15 years of working life and slowly crawling up the salary ladder I finally find myself paying quite a substantial amount of tax. Like all sensible people, as much as legally possible, I tried to reduce my taxable income. I tried to claim reduction on every item in which I was entitled to. Yet after all the deductions, I still think that my tax amount was too much. With the kind of service I get, I feel I should pay much less.

To be quite honest, I will not have any qualms about paying taxes to the government if I know exactly where my money goes. If I know that my tax money is going to help the poor rakyat, I’m quite happy to contribute. But that is not the case for now. As long as there is no transparency in our government, we never know whether our money is being sucked into a black hole and enrich a few cronies. We see a lot of mega projects which don’t really benefit the people but put a lot of money into someone’s pocket. We see them build roads and highways but they collect tolls. They build five star airports and facilities but goods and service there are also 5-star. They distribute free goodies to kampong folks but only to people with certain political inclination. They use people’s money to pay for TV and radio but throw slanders on their political enemies. When will they ever learn that fairness and goodwill bring more support for them than hurling dirt on their enemies?

I’m not sure whether in the present circumstances taxpayers are getting their fair share. One way to make sure our hard-earned money go to the poor is by paying zakat. Zakat paid to a state religious authority is entitled to full rebate i.e. deduction from tax amount and not just from taxable income. We know zakat will be distributed to certain categories of Muslims who are entitled to part of our wealth and it does not include rich cronies. So it’s a way of fulfilling our religious obligation and at the same time also a really good way of preventing our money from going into the pocket of the rich. And with zakat you can pay it to any state government of your choice, not to the federal government, if that’s your wish. My zakat always go to the state which I think is poor and least corrupt. I would advise my friends to do the same. It does not matter which state you pay your zakat to, but make sure it will not go into enriching rent-seeking cronies.

There are ways not to pay tax. You can either migrate to a tax-free country like the Middle East or Brunei, or earn below the threshold, or put your money in a bag and carry it with you to Australia. Don’t worry too much about being caught. Even if you were, in Malaysia, you could still become a cabinet minister! Looks like for many of us there is not much choice not to pay income tax. So, despite all this anger, I still have my salary deducted every month by the LHDN and come April still have to file my tax return. It’s one of two certainties in life. No escape. Period.

Sedetik Bersama Sasterawan Negara

Pesta Buku Antarabangsa Kuala Lumpur pada tahun ini berakhir petang tadi di PWTC Kuala Lumpur. Sungguh ramai manusia yang rata-ratanya umat Melayu bersesak-sesak mengunjungi pondok demi pondok di dewan pameran. Mungkin anggapan aku sebelum ini yang orang kita tidak suka membaca buku meleset. Mereka datang bersama anak-anak dan isteri dengan semangat ingin menambah ilmu. Semacam ada pesta hiburan di sana. Dan memangpun ada seorang dua selebriti yang dijemput khas samada untuk mempromosi buku mereka sendiri ataupun sekadar tayang muka di depan kaunter untuk melariskan jualan. Diskaun ditawarkan untuk banyak judul buku. Hampir setiap kaunter menawarkan pelbagai hadiah dan pakej istimewa untuk menarik pelanggan.

Aku datang sendirian dengan komuter. Lokasi stesen Putra amat mudah sekali untuk aku menapak ke PWTC di Bangunan UMNO. Dan aku rasa tindakanku tepat kerana dengan kesesakan yang sebegitu teruk, kalau anak-anak aku bersama, aku mungkin terpaksa menghabiskan masa melayan kerenah mereka sahaja daripada menumpukan perhatian kepada buku dan jurujualnya.

Di kaunter Bernama aku nampak orang ramai berkerumun. Lalu perasaan ingin tahu aku membawa aku ke sana. Rupanya dengan membeli sebuah buku yang berharga RM5 sahaja pembeli diberi peluang mendapat autograf dari angkasawan kedua negara Dr Faiz. Ramai juga yang mengambil peluang bergambar dengannya. Di situ juga bahan cenderamata Radio 24 “Radio Berita Pertama Negara” dan siaran Berita Bernama di Astro dijual. Nasib baik angkasawan pertama negara Dr Sheikh Muszaphar tiada bersama. Kalau tidak lagi sensasi dan sesak jadinya.

Setelah hampir 3 jam membelek-belek buku, aku melewati depan kaunter Wira Bukit Sdn Bhd. Di kerusi sofa di tengah-tengah pondok pameran, aku nampak pemiliknya sedang menyain buku-buku yang baru dibeli orang. Wajahnya memang dikenali ramai. Masakan tidak dialah Sasterawan Negara Datuk A. Samad Said yang mengekalkan penampilannya sejak dari dulu. Rambut putihnya panjang ke paras bahu, janggut dan misainya dibiarkan berjuntaian. Beliau selesa berbaju-T, berseluar slack dan berselipar jepun. Kali pertama aku melihatnya ialah lebih kurang 15 tahun yang lalu sewaktu beliau menunggu bas mini wilayah di stesen Bangkok Bank di tengah-tengah bandar Kuala Lumpur. Lima belas tahun lepas juga beliau berpakaian begitu. Statusnya sebagai seorang sasterawan negara dan gelaran Datuk tidak langsung mengubah zahirnya. Beliau tetap dengan penampilannya yang santai. Bagiku itulah uniknya A. Samad Said selain kata-kata puitis yang lunak menghiasi karya-karya sasteranya. Sebelum aku meminta beliau mengautograf buku yang baru aku beli, sempat aku berbisik dengan jurujualnya apa panggilan yang sesuai sebelum aku mula bercakap dengan orang besar sastera negara itu. Panggil saja Pak Samad jawab jurujual tersebut. Lalu aku terus mengambil tempat di hujung sofa di sebelah Pak Samad dan memintanya menyain buku nipis berjudul “Ilham Di Tepi Tasik”, sebuah koleksi esei sastera Pak Samad yang diterbitkan pada tahun 2006 dan kini dalam cetakan kedua.

Mungkin generasi muda kini lebih menggilai novel cinta remaja. Pak Samad sendiri pernah melahirkan rasa kesalnya dengan tindakan Kementerian Pendidikan yang memilih novel ringan untuk dijadikan bahan rujukan sastera di sekolah dan menyisihkan karya-karya agung sasterawan negara. Kekecewaannya itu diluahkan dengan tidak mahu lagi menggunakan gelaran Sasterawan Negara yang diterimanya itu. Walaupun beliau tidak mahu lagi dipanggil Sasterawan Negara, namun di hati peminat sastera beliau adalah sasterawan negara yang tulen.

Pada usia 73 tahun pena sasteranya tidak pernah tumpul dan karyanya yang merentasi beberapa dekad masih segar untuk dinikmati generasi muda. Beliau telah menghambakan seluruh hidupnya untuk menyuburkan sastera Melayu di rantau ini. Aku merasakan di kaunter jualan petang tadi aku bukan sahaja membeli sebuah buku, malah memetik salah satu dari bunga sastera Pak Samad. Semuga ilham Pak Samad akan terus menjelmakan karya-karya tinggi untuk dinikmati pencinta sastera.

13-4-2008

The Day when I was a Polling Agent - Final Part

The aftermath of typhoon “Anwar”

At 5 PM, the school gate was closed and our party security worker stood guard just in case the 2004 two-hour illegal extension of voting time happened again. The counting process started right after 5.00 PM and only EC staff and counting agents were allowed in the room. The rest of us waited outside in our pondok just outside the school. There was nothing else we could do apart from praying to Allah to take care of the rest. We were ready to accept any outcome.

Supporters gathered at our pondok while the counting was going on inside the school. At 6.22 PM an SMS came that said we led Channel 2 for state seat by 168 votes. I read aloud the results to supporters and instantaneously a loud “Allahu Akbar” broke the silence. The blue pondok stood still. Seventeen minutes later another SMS came in for parliamentary seat, with BN left behind by 84 votes. Another cry of the takbir pierced through the evening air. The other pondok stood its ground. Exactly half an hour later both state and parliamentary results for Channel 1 came and by that time BN was trailing even further behind. Some youngsters on motorbikes started leaving the blue pondok and we knew we were winning the count for the polling centre. Around 7.30 PM our counting agents walked out of the school gate smiling, bringing the good news to the waiting crowd. It was going to be a long night for BN.

That night supporters gathered again at the local stadium which was used for the nomination two weeks ago. The final results for both state and parliamentary seats would be announced there. After dinner I joined thousands of eager supporters from both sides at the stadium. Again, they were split into two groups each one taking up one side of the stadium with rows of policemen standing guard in the middle. The atmosphere was volatile. The stadium lights were off but everyone’s heart was on fire.

Around 10 PM, all sorts of news and rumours were spread across the field about the fall of big names including some ministers. The crowd on our side of the stadium was getting very excited while the other side fell silent. Out of the darkness, somebody brought in a laptop, connected to wireless Internet and started an impromptu breaking news desk getting feeds from Malaysiakini and PAS websites. Soon people gathered around him like moths around a light and we could not believe our eyes when the preliminary results started rolling in from cyberspace. Early unconfirmed results delivered the son-in-law that everyone loved to hate, KJ, a defeat. It was too difficult to believe but it blew everyone’s mind. Final results were however in his favour. Later, we heard about Khir Toyo losing his seat but it turned out that he didn’t. Things were getting really wild. Then Samy Vellu fell, Zainuddin Maidin was also out and Shahrizat followed suit. A Malaysian friend who was working in the UK called on my mobile phone to confirm the incredible news he was reading on his computer half way across the world. Apparently, the call only cost him 1p or 7 cents a minute. His voice was frequently drowned by the instant burst of takbir amidst the euphoria. I ended up giving him live commentary of the political drama that was unfolding here in Malaysia.

Soon it was clear that the strong wind that blew at my local school polling centre that evening was developing into a full-blown typhoon. And this typhoon is what I’d call Typhoon “Anwar” for this man has galvanized all the various forces of wind, heat, moisture and pressure into a political storm that brought destructions to arrogant power across five states. Many would liken it to a tsunami, but a tsunami has no name. On the other hand, meteorologists would give a name to hurricanes and typhoons. Like Hurricane “Katrina” that humbled the mighty US against forces of nature, Typhoon “Anwar” also knocked the powerful BN off their ego. The people had spoken and their voices could no longer be ignored.

Locally, preliminary results showed we won both state and parliament seats by huge majority. The EC did not announce official results even until I drove home from the stadium late that night. And back at home I had my eyes focused on my TV monitor and laptop as official results streamed into the bedroom. My head did not hit the pillow till 3 o’clock that night. The full-scale destruction of Typhoon “Anwar” would only be known the next morning.

Two weeks after, much of the dust has begun to settle. Most state governments have been sworn in and the losing parties have had to do some serious soul searching. It turns out that the all-powerful BN which has been ruling this country since Independence almost lost its seat of federal power. Their share of popular votes dipped from more than 64% in 2004 to just over 50% this time. Were it not for postal votes and the cancellation of the use of indelible ink, they could well have lost the simple majority as well. No wonder the EC chairman looked even more depressed than Pak Lah when announcing the results that night. The massive vote swing had taken him by surprise too.

Looking back at the night of the 8th of March, I realised it was the beginning of a new era. Anwar himself called it the dawn of a new Malaysia. The old Malaysian politics that we used to think was unchangeable disappeared overnight. The threat of repeat of May 13 violence vaporized into the air. It was an empty threat to put fear into people not to change the status quo. Now that the seat of power in some states has changed hands, all eyes will be focused on the five states led by what is now referred to as Barisan Rakyat. Many hope that the newfound power will not turn them into arrogant, corrupt leaders like the ones that they had just pushed out. Demonstration of good governance for the next five years will strengthen their appeal and the once invincible BN also will be pushed to change for its own survival. It has been a blessing to us that we remain peaceful despite the initial implicit threat of chaos and instability if BN was not returned to power with overwhelming majority. People did not fall into the trap and have instead moved on to a system with more check and balance. Perhaps in the next two or three general elections a more stable two-party system will emerge following the model of Washington or Wesminster. This is going to be good for the people.

Across the field that night, many of us screamed so hard that we almost lost our voice. But nobody seemed to mind. We knew that from that day, people’s voice would be heard loud and clear by those in power. I know our democracy in Malaysia is still fragile and like a toddler it is bound to stumble before it can walk properly. But I am optimistic. I believe we are heading in the right direction. Years from now, when I look back on this momentous event, or if my grandchildren ask me about what I have done to this country, may be I can tell them that I contributed in my own small way in bringing this change. That change happened on the day when I was a polling agent.

The End.

The Day I was a Polling Agent - Part 3

…Part 3 – Witness to democracy

On the night before the polling day, two friends and I spent the night at the pondok keeping watch. There was a lot of valuable stuff – audio visual equipment, VCD etc. – that would surely go missing if they were left unattended. There was no time to pack up as we were going to open early the next morning. In my ten years of married life, this was the first time I had had to spend the night fighting off mosquito attacks under a tent by a roadside. The mosquitoes were 100% on the BN’s side that night. I didn’t remember whether there was a full moon in the sky but we were certainly surrounded by full moons all around our tent...and the shampoo girl posters with a rocket on it.

The morning of the 8th was a beautiful day. The weather was going to be bright all day. After a short trip home to wash and change, I was back at the pondok again by 7.30 AM. By 8.00 AM the school gate was opened and we received our first customer who came to check his name on the electoral roll. The first batch of polling agents went in to start their duty for the next 3 hours. More people arrived at our pondok and some unknown supporters brought nasi lemak and kueh for party workers. Later mineral water came and by lunch nasi tomato was delivered. I never knew who paid for the food and drinks but I am sure they did it with sincerity and not hoping for any monetary reward from us. After all we are poor man’s party. No big company would support us for fear of reprisal from the powers-that-be. Our support came from grassroots who would give but not expecting anything in return. I believe all they want is to see change and contribute to it in their own way. If anybody stopped at our pondok and asked for money, we would just show them the blue pondok where their chances of getting it were a lot brighter.

By 10.30 AM the first batch of polling agents finished their duty and the next batch took over. I helped friends canvassing for votes as voters were walking to the polling station. We took one side of the road and the guys in blue took another. There were occasional chorus of shouts and jeers from both sides but the police were standing close by keeping the situation under control. I could see people were feeling a bit uneasy with the constant touting from both parties. Some quickened their pace into the school as they already made their mind who they would vote for. Many would just give a brief smile, nodded their head and walked past us into the gate. I doubt how effective this strategy would work as I don’t think voters would change their mind just because we stopped them by a roadside and sweet talked them into putting a cross against a certain candidate. But it was fun and the other side was also doing it.

Just after mid-day I cast my own vote. I had waited until the queue became short so I didn’t have to wait too long. Soon after zohor, I went in again to take over as a polling agent from my friend who had been in there for 3 hours. I would be sitting in Channel 1 for the next 3 hours verifying voters’ IC numbers and names and striking them off the electoral list once they’d been given ballot papers. As the electoral list was arranged according to birth date, Channel 1 was made up of elder voters, Channel 3 the youngest voters and Channel 2 those in between. We were told to be extra alert because there had been allegations of phantom voters using other people’s IC to vote, or multiple voters who voted more than once. We were determined not to let them deny us fair results.

There were three polling clerks, each with their own specific task. The first clerk checked the voter’s IC, read the number and name aloud so that the polling agents from all contesting parties could verify and strike out the name off the list. The second clerk would tear off two ballot papers – one for parliament and one for state seat – and give it to the third clerk for punching. The voter would then proceed to polling booth, mark their choice and then slot the papers into two transparent ballot boxes right in the middle of the room. The presiding officer kept everything under control and his decision in case of dispute was final. As polling agent, we watched every step of the voter and made sure that he did not take the ballot papers out of the room. Election rules say that it is illegal to take out ballot papers from polling station or bring in any ballot papers from outside. The serial number on the ballot papers and the pattern of punched holes on them are used as a check against cheating. We were told to raise objection with the presiding officer if we saw that the conduct of voting did not follow proper EC procedures. I didn’t raise any major objection, nor did the other side apart from our demand to take a closer look at temporary IC used by a voter who had reported loss of IC with JPN. The other case was when somebody whose age was 70 plus came in looking like she was 40 plus. However, one of the clerks said she knew the woman and that she was a registered voter there, so I accepted her explanation. I suspect Botox did the magic on her.

There was a concern about the serial number on the ballot papers which could be traced to individual voters. But it was unfounded, as for the first time in this election, the clerk would not be allowed to write the serial number against the name of the voter in the electoral roll. Hence it was not possible to trace which serial number belonged to who. This ensured total confidentiality of voting and people should thank Bersih for demanding this although the use of indelible ink was cancelled at the eleventh hour.

The three hours in the polling room felt very much like sitting for final year exam. In the beginning people were coming in around one every 30 seconds, but after 4 o’clock there was hardly one every ten minutes! There were a total of 350 voters in Channel 1 and by the time I finished my duty 300 had turned up for voting. The turn-out rate was more than 85% and I think that was very good. The other channel registered much less turn-out. It seems like old folks are more responsible citizens as more of them exercised their right. By 4.30 PM, I passed the baton to a fellow party worker and went out the room to sip some badly needed fresh air. The polling centre would close at 5.00 PM sharp and the gate would be locked. I came out of the centre with an experience which was going to be memorable for the rest of my life. Those three hours were the moment when I was a witness to democracy in action.

…to be continued in Part 4

The Day I was a Polling Agent - Part 2

…Part 2 – Election fever bug in the air

Official campaigning started right after nomination and no time was to be wasted in the next 13 days. We called for first ceramah a few days after nomination. Given that it was on working-day night, the turn-out was fair. Our second ceramah clashed with BN and since our Bilik Gerakan was quite close to theirs, in the interest of security, the police decided to cancel our permit and gave it to the BN guys. Nothing new there since the police had to be fair to them. Determined to hold the ceramah anyway, we moved to a new location and, due to last minute change of venue, the turn-out was less than expected. Not that I mind because there was plenty of extra nasi ayam left.

Two days before the D-day we set up our pondok panas under a big tent by the roadside close to the polling centre. The ruling party had already set up their pondok taking the best spot right next to the junction going to the school which would be used for polling. Their pondok was an airconditioned portacabin sitting firmly on concrete foundation under big blue aluminium roof. We were told that it cost 10 thousand while our pondok was a makeshift tent rented at a cost of around 500 ringgit for 3 days. Clearly we are a poor man’s party!

According to EC rules, the location of pondok panas has to be no less than 50 meters from the polling centre. A draw was done by an EC representative to allocate which party got which spot to build their pondok. We made best use of whatever spot was given to us. Again we set up big screen by the roadside and treated motorists and passers by to our nightly recorded ceramah. While people were watching the ceramah, our volunteers distributed pamphlets and leaflets to housing areas. We got plenty of materials, which came from various sources, to be distributed to houses around our taman. Most were about condemning the present government including pictures of Pak Lah cosying up with some beautiful women – pictures which were widely distributed over the Internet just before the elections. Some were in Chinese and Tamil with pictures of pigs and clippings of articles from Chinese newspapers which we could not understand. We had to practise some form of censorship, lest our aggrasive approach would backfire. Personally I’d rather dissiminate information about our manifesto and what changes we would bring if we manage to govern. But then again, may be it’s fair afterall because they even used taxpayers-funded TV and radio to paint bad image of Opposition leaders.

While distributing the campaign materials, some got rare hostile response but mostly we were given an encouraging smile. At times, dogs barked at us when we approached the postbox in front of the house to slot in the leaflets when their masters were fast asleep. We could tell from meeting people around the housing area that the Indians were very angry with the Government’s treatment of the Hindraf affairs and their own leader, Samy Vellu’s response to it. Many vowed to support the opposition parties as a sign of protest. Their leaders even came to our pondok and promised that he would urge his people to support opposition candidates. The Chinese were less political prefering not to take sides. As business people, they are very pragmatic and would support any party that wins.

The state seat (DUN) in my area was contested by ex-UKM lecturer representing PAS and a contractor Datuk from UMNO. PAS choice was very appropriate as this constituency included two major public universities, a number of IPTs and government research centres. This area probably has the most educated voters and PhDs in the whole of Malaysia. For parliamentary seat, the fight was between BN’s MCA candidate and DAP. The BN candidate was a middle age man while the DAP candidate was a 27 year-old, beautiful single woman lawyer. Her campaign poster was mistaken for a shampoo advertisement! The choice was sooo obvious! They did not even need to campaign hard. But in the spirit of cooperation, we helped look after the rocket posters as well.

There were no untoward incidents in our area. No reports of tearing down opponents posters or bringing down of banners. This I think was a sign of maturity in our politics. In the days leading to the 8th, slowly the roadside turned into green and blue walls of posters and banners especially around junctions and roundabouts. The election fever bug was in the air everywhere.

...to be continued in Part 3

The Day I was a Polling Agent - Part 1

….Part 1 – “Be prepared for the battle”

I was at the office on the day Parliament was dissolved. Shortly after the announcement, an SMS from a fellow party worker arrived on my phone.”Parliament has been dissolved. Be prepared for the battle”, it said. Before that members of our party in the residential area where I live had been mobilised to prepare ourselves for the imminent announcement of the 12th General Election. Pak Lah had been hinting at it for some time and everybody was expecting he would announce it before April. We knew he wanted to deny Anwar the right to contest and we also knew he could not wait to raise fuel price after getting new mandate.

The next day the much awaited date was announced by the Election Commission. Nomination day was 24th February and Polling day was 8th March. There was to be 13 days of campaigning. Thirteen days of juggling between working in the office during the day and climbing trees to hang posters and banners at night. I tried to contribute in whatever capacity I could. I did not think we would win big but it was fun to be at the Bilik Gerakan every night, putting up posters, distributing campaign materials, watching VCD of ceramah projected onto the big screen over the roadside, and simply talking politics into the early morning when our work for the night was done. The big white screen used for the VCD screening reminded me of the 1970’s when Ministry of Information van would go to villages, put up an impromptu cinema in the village field, play the Hindi blockbuster “An Evening in Paris” and stop the show to talk about how to prevent cholera epidemic when the hero was about to give the villain a good bashing. Campaigning on TV had started way before the official campaign period and nobody gave a damn anymore what came on, as the overdose of government propaganda began to cause numbness on the people.

I forced myself up early on the nomination day even though I had slept around 3 o’clock the night before. It was Sunday and the stadium in our area was used as the nomination centre. I joined thousands of people from both sides marching towards the stadium around 7.30 AM. Calls of ‘Allahu Akbar’ and ‘Hidup BN’ were heard from across the stadium with each side trying to outscream the other. One side with green flags chanting the takbir and the other side waving blue flags singing ‘Inilah Barisan Kita’. The only barriers separating them were about a hundred meters of green grass and rows of policemen in blue uniforms standing guard. Each side was ready for the battle and the battle cry filled the otherwise peaceful morning air.

At 9 AM, nomination was opened and only candidates and their seconders were allowed to see the EC officers. It closed an hour later and from 10 AM to 11 AM the session was opened for objection. We waited on the field with hope and nervousness. We knew we were up against the other side who would try to find any mistake in the form to disqualify our candidate by any means. Our worries were not at all unfounded. There was last minute ruling handed down by the EC that looked like sabotage and the candidates on our side were not taking any chances. They complied with every single ruling made by the EC for they fear being disqualified. The EC head had been under fire for making a U-turn on mandatory Inland Revenue stamping of nomination forms. Initially, it was announced that there was to be strict enforcement of the mandatory stamping. The announcement itself was given at 3 PM on Thursday. This caused a lot of inconvenience to the candidates in Kelantan and Terengganu as they only had a few hours to do the stamping before close of business for weekends on Friday and Saturday. There would be no time on Sunday because nomination would start at 9 AM and close at 10 AM. Some of them had to fly to KL on Friday to get their forms stamped just so that they were not disqualified on technicality. But at the last minute, the ruling was cancelled for no reason. We learnt later that many BN candidates in Johor did not manage to get the Inland Revenue stamps and if the ruling was strictly imposed the Opposition would have won the state of Johor uncontested. That perfectly explained the last minute about-turn by the EC.

By noon on Sunday the 24th, the names of qualified candidates were announced. There was a sigh of relief from both sides as none of the candidates was disqualified. They were to fight as gentlemen.

Book Review: Freakonomics - Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner

This is yet another exceedingly popular book by economists for the layman that has sold 3 million copies worldwide (up to 2007). This book actually came out before The Undercover Economist. It is co-authored by Steven Levitt, a University of Chicago economics professor, and Stephen Debnur, a writer for The New York Times. The book does not have one single theme and its chapters are independent of one another, so for people like me who like to flip books or magazines from the back, it’s a blessing. I can read the chapters in any order I like and each one offer its own story. Levitt’s research into obscure subjects proves in most cases that conventional wisdom is not always correct and the so-called experts are as guilty as politicians to say things that serve their own self-interest.

His research into everyday issues includes topics such as the effects of legalising abortion on crime rate in America, how teachers in some schools in Chicago cheat in their students’ exam to boost up their own rating and match fixing among Sumo wrestlers in Japan. He also asks why most drug dealers live with their mothers and probes how much your name is connected with your success in life. Although political correctness does not allow people to admit the positive effects of abortion on reducing crime rate, the authors have shown that by terminating unwanted pregnancies, future crime will be reduced. Babies born from these unwanted pregnancies are poorly raised and are likely to become criminals when they reach their teenage years. By cutting off a major supply of potential criminals (killing them before birth), crime rates can be brought down within two decades. Controversial it surely is, but that is what the data shows. And he can say it because he is a researcher, not a politician.

Crime rates and drug dealers go hand in hand. Drawing from a student’s research into the world of crack, the book discusses elaborate corporate-like structure within the hierarchy of drug dealers’ organisation. While those at the top enjoy great rewards, those at the lower rungs can barely pay for their own apartments, hence forcing most of them to live with their mothers. The book also shows trends in babies’ names and their correlation with level of mother’s education. Less successful communities (African-American in US) tend to imitate and adopt names from more successful ethnic groups (White American). Here in Malaysia, for reasons still a mystery to me, many in the Chinese community adopt Christian names even though they are not Christians. Could it be that the names sound more modern, Western and more cultured? It does not quite catch on in the Malay community though because it’s our belief that a good name should have good Arabic meaning. Hence the trend from our forefathers’ time with names like Bulat, Hitam, Kenit, Minah and Timah gave way to Aiman, Danial or Fathihah as the level of education of the Malays improves.

The findings of the studies are mainly from the US and may not apply here. I wish these were replicated here by our own geniuses to suit our own local problems. Alas, we simply do not have enough money to sponsor such things, nor do we have enough supply of freaks like Levitt to crack their head on solving such seemingly useless problems. We are more likely to spend our money on how high tech stuff like brewing teh tarik at zero gravity or flipping roti canai at 350 km above the Earth than looking into such mundane matters.

Book Review: "The Undercover Economist" - Tim Harford

I rented this book from Quereazant, a book rental store in Bandar Baru Bangi. It was on non-fiction best seller’s list for quite some time. The author, Tim Harford is a young thirty-something British economist who works for Financial Times and as a presenter for the BBC. He has since come up with another economics-for-layman book called The Logic of Life which is currently on best seller’s list in major book stores. You can listen to his radio show More or Less which is downloadable free as podcast from the BBC Radio 4 website.

In Undercover Economist, he looks into everyday phenomena and tries to explain them in terms of economics. According to many, economics is a dismal science but he puts it in such a language that even laymen can understand and relate it with everyday choices that we make.

The one subject that always crops up in his discussions is coffee. I would say this is a clear influence of American culture infiltrating into British life as the British are usually identified with tea! Take coffee and capitalism on the left hand side of the equation and you get inflated prices plus enormous profits on the right hand side. In economics parlance, you may call the equation the Starbucks equation. There are numerous auxiliary equations which Starbucks itself would not like you to know. These include exploitation and price manipulation on one side and Third World countries plus poverty on the other. You can name this equation Capitalism if you like. I am digressing a bit here because as an economist working for FT, a Scripture of Capitalism itself, Tim Harford would not be allowed to venture into this sort of socialist rubbish. But as an economist and heavy coffee drinker (which I imply because he’s so obsessed talking about coffee) he does explain why in a busy London train station, with hundred of thousands of commuters rushing to step into the office before their boss does, there is only one coffee shop with long queues, charging premium price for a caffeine shot. It seems to run counter to conventional economics theory that there should be many more coffee outlets trying to sell coffee when there is obviously a pressing need for more coffee shops (supply) in the face of so much demand (caffeine addicted commuters). He calls it the power of scarcity – the ability of that one coffee outlet to charge high premium due to unavailability of competition.

Of course he does not just talk about coffee. Economics is not just about that black stuff that people put into their mouth while they start reading e-mails in the morning. He also talks about big things like the mind-boggling pace of development in China and why Third World countries like Cameroon remains stagnant. While economics gives choices to millions of people in China to lead the life they want to lead, corruption is identified as the single biggest problem that is plaguing poor countries like Cameroon to lift themselves out of poverty.

His book has been very popular. He has surprised even himself in selling more than 600,000 copies so far. His initial estimate was that he would be satisfied if the sales figure reached 7,000 copies. With his talents of looking at why people make certain choices and not the other, perhaps in his next book, he can give an analysis of why people choose to spend their money on his book and not others. Or perhaps, why people like me, just choose to rent rather than buy.