What I love

I love waking up to the sounds of birds chirping near my window, hearing the tinkling bells of my two cats as they run upstairs to greet me the moment they hear my door opening; I love watching my koi swimming in the pond and gobbling up the food pellets I throw; I love looking at my garden - the white purity of my jasmine, the rustling of the bamboo as it moves in the breeze, the soft gurgling of the waterfall as it falls gently over the manmade pond and the bright beautiful faces of my hibiscus - white, pink, orange and yellow. I wish I could see the bright happy smile of my grand daughter every day - surely her grin alone would banish all clouds of gloom!

Like Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, there are times when I feel like bursting into song - "All I want is a room somewhere... far away from the cold night air... in some enormous chair oh wouldn't it be loverly...lots of chocolates for me to eat... lots of coal making lots of heat.." And talking of Eliza Doolittle, My Fair lady is one of my favorite films. I love the play - Pygmalion and also the movie that it was turned to.

I think here in Malaysia we have so much that we take everything for granted. We forget sometimes that the peace we enjoy can be taken back by words meant to hurt and disrupt. We all say that we are against racism and yet when we are the favoured race we tend to close an eye and that is something that I hate. In the 60s and 70s when I was growing up in Malacca, race is something that is just there on paper. We never thought of ourselves as Malay, Chinese or Indian. I grew up in a small village in Malacca. My Chinese neighbours had two children - Ah san and Ai lee - both teenagers to my 8 year old self. And yet when my mum had to leave me alone in the house, she'd tell Ah San, a 15 year old Chinese boy to look after me. Sometimes when it rained and my mum could not take me home from my primary school, she'd ask Eddy or Chong - both 17 year olds - to go to my school in her place. Its the innocence of those far off days that I love. Days when I could go to Ranjeet's house and stay over for lunch, with no... or walk with Visalachi to the library to borrow books and then stay at the foot of St Paul's Hill to talk and play without worrying that someone would come to kidnap us - a couple of 8 year olds.
I wish the world can stay safe so that my grand daughter may enjoy her childhood as much as I did mine.

Thinking aloud

Generally Malaysia is a great country. We don't have floods, earthquakes, volcanic erruptions or even cyclones. The tsunami that hit us in 2004 was so mild compared to the one that hit the coast of Sumatra. Yet, its as if we Malaysians want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. We brag of our multi -ethnicity and talk of our ability to live in harmony all the time. Its right there in many of our advertisements showing all the races living together happily. But is all this just what it is - a brag? Something that is as real as the plastic plates we love so much. Just yesterday I saw in the papers (Utusan) the criticism of so many supposedly educated people about Penang's proposal to use all main languages on the road signs. What is so wrong that we cannot use English, Malay, Chinese and Tamil on our signages? How long are we to cling to the old and much used phrase - negeri Melayu? Will we actually lose our Malayness if we have the 4 languages on our road signs? Think of how easy it would be for our foreign guests if we have signs in English. In Singapore, not only are the signs in the four languages, all announcements at the MRT stations are in the 4 main languages. We teach our children to respect the other races in our country but in action we are not really showing them a good example. Just tune in to the parliament sittings either on the radio or on tv and you'll know what I mean. If we want Malaysia to survive, we have to start thinking as Malaysians and not as Malay or Chinese or Indian. Saying that we are a multi -ethnic nation and yet not giving a chance to the other races to be heard or seen is as good as being a hypocrite. Sometimes I wonder what we are afraid of. Is it losing our language? I doubt we'd lose it since the schools are teaching it anyway and it is the national language. Is it our cultural superiority? That is again not the answer because by learning and having more languages at our disposal we add value to our culture rather than detract. So what is the problem?

OUM Raya Day

As usual OUM hosted its raya on a working day. This time around, probably to save costs, no singers were invited, which is probably a good thing too because the last time they invited outside singers, one of them wore a shamelessly tight outfit you could see everything, including her map of India. Ha ha. The flowers arranged by Prof Shaari were again fantastic, though Puan Sri commented on the fans which were held up by white, cloth covered poles. She said they looked like batu nesan or grave stones and that it affected her mood. However where food is concerned there's nothing fantastic about it- everything was run of the mill. The weather was good - no rain, though it had rained heavily for the past few afternoons - but as can be expected it was humid. Sweat trickled down my back. I bet no trace of makeup or lipstick can be seen anymore on my face. There was a fairly large crowd, though from what I heard they were mainly from the admin and other staff. Few lecturers turned up. I wonder why. Don't they feel they belong? When I was working I enjoyed mixing with the other staff and here I see that the academic staff hardly mix at all. Except the Heads of course. I sat with prof Zoraini, Prof Rahmah and Dr Widad as well as Hanin who is now the Director of CIDT. We were entertained by the staff some of whom sang very well. There was also a Bhangra group. They sang a few Hindi songs and also performed a Bhangra dance for us which was really energetic and fun.