Thats the title of today's post. Why? ain't I (chinese) Malaysian too? Am I trying to emulate Bad-awi for making 'racially-diplomatic' statements like...."I have many
Our ADUN-YB Elizabeth Wong and Subang MP-YB Sivarasa were present. Also present were reps from the Damansara Police Station including the Chief Inspector himself, En.Sarif. Its a big deal cos I lived in DU for 16 years before shifting to BU, and till today I have never once met this dude, not even when we went to visit the police station back in secondary school as scouts!
It was a regular uncomfortably humid Saturday afternoon when mum said she's going for the Crime Prevention Talk. I said I'll tag along.
Our Reps, Policemen, St John volunteers and members of the public were gathered at the entrance of the BU3 CC in what seemed like a 'horse-shoe' shape. I'm always rather excited about things like this, being the big kid I am, I squeezed through the crowd to the front.
YB Sivarasa - Subang MPAlthough caught up in my own forray of excitement, I realised that my mother wasn't next to me. While YB Sivarasa was stating that it was 'not right' for residents of non-gated communities to resort to 'gating' their communities at their own costs, just because of the emancipated state of our country's police-civilian ratio (which btw was somewhere around 1:1800), I noticed my mum and her gang of 'aunty' friends convening at the back of the crowd.
After the speeches were over, we were instructed my our BURA reps to get ready for the walk... Honestly, I didn't know there was a 'literal' walk in this whole exercise. However, in lieu of being a responsible member of society, why not? I went looking for mummy to ask her to join me for the 'walk'. To my utter
Mum's auntie gang was staying back at the CC cos its "too hot la". Its blardy 5pm! I have another theory as to why everyone should be a scout/guide once in their life (more on that later)
As I was walking the 'walk', I was thinking about the possible outcomes of this 'walk'. These are a few conclusions I came up with :
1) If the 'walk' looked big enough a crowd on mass media, ppl will be talking about it, and somehow would seem like a credible enough 'threat' to the prospective robbers to deter them from robbing BU again. (Game-Theory proposition)
2) If enough publisity is gained from this 'walk' then maybe it would be 'big' enough of an issue (police-civilian ratio) that when raised in Parliament by our MPs, it would be addressed with more severity.
3) During the short 'walk', neighbours get a brief moment of actual contact with each other and some might even spark a friendship from there. (If you're thinking that this hypothesis is ridiculous considering its only a short walk, u could be most certainly wrong because, BU residents, no Ppl (chinese especially) residing in Damansara are like what THE STAR said of the Singaporeans yesterday, individualistic uncaring society....mb this could be a stepping stone?)
We wouldn't know for sure, until tomorrow comes.....Another thing I reminded myself to do when I get home, is to explain to my mother what the talk is all about because I know she for certain thought it was a waste of her 'precious' time...
I brought the afternoon up after dinner, I asked my mum "Mum, what did you learn at the talk? You know why its important for us to just walk even though it hurts your pride just like how you think taking the 'public' transport is a very 'pitiable' thing?"
Oh shit, here comes the defensive statements....
"What I was with Aunty Kelly they all, they were telling me about the robberies, actually ar, these ppl are so careless, they left their gate open, unlocked, so the robbers came in and rob la"
Point to Ponder : Strange how they think this is 'actually' such a 'simple' issue that anyone can solve which had no need for a publicity infused 'walk the talk'.
"Eh I know what, the policeman so 'sporting' give us his HP number....Aunty Kelly said to him, but of cos he can't hear la, eh Mr.Policeman, can you tell us if we call ar, how fast you can respond to us ar?"
"You know ar girl, aunty tell me last time she noticed at 3pm in the afternoon a strange old junk Proton Wira was parked outside her house ar, 2 man smoking inside...she so scared you know, she quickly go call our security guard, they take 30 mins to come!"
I tell you i "buey tahan anymore man"...
Eh mum, did you know while you and your 'si-lai' aunties were busy gossiping about the robbery dramas that 'happened' in the past 2 weeks, our MP and ADUN was enlightening us that it is 'not right' for residents of non-gated communities like you and me to pay RM30 a month for security guards when we're supposed to be safe-guarded by our police-force? And our ADUN gave us factual figures on how many ppl in Damansara were served by one police personnel? Its freaking 1 policeman to 5000 ppl ok? Do you know that the DU police station opposite our old house is serving from there to all the way to Damansara Perdana area? And that they have only 84 ppl? for 500 000 of us? And all you can do is complain that about the speed at which our chief inspector can respond to your phone call? And what has the speed of our security guards got to do with the police?
Mum, you think this ppl that organised this 'walk' nothing better to do ar? They spend their time and etc. to ensure the safety of our area...Mum interrupts again....
"They also another one, why organise things must ask ppl stand outside the hall, just for one hour clear the badminton hall also cannot meh? So hot you know ppl standing?"
Omg, the nerve to bring up the 'poor' organisation.
"Mum, they do not 'own' the community centre you know! they are just BU residents like you...MBPJ owns the place, and it costs thousands to rent that hall, and you have to go all the way to PJ state to do that...no you have to go all the way there even if you wanna rent a court to play badminton!"
"Btw, our ADUN, yes the not so 'ni chiang ren' lady you mentioned is Elizabeth Wong and she met up with our mayor whose on a 1 month 'leave' so that our BU-m gates and BU guardhouses that we've set up won't be torn down forcefully my MBPJ....You think these ppl come and waste their time to give those kind of primary school generic speech? MBPJ sent out a warning letter to tell BURA that its illegal to 'gate' 'non-gated' areas."
"And the 'ma-chan' policeman...you think he come and talk cock also right? But he was just trying to explain for the incompetencies of his team because tell he has 84 men for 500 000 ppl when u were supposed to be listening! He was also commenting on our poor 'rukun tetangga'-ship where he encountered cases of interviewing neighbours who mistook their being robbed neighbours as 'pindah rumah'....how absurd, that it can be only so if you don't recognize your neighbours!"
"And the 'ke-ling yan'....You know he is actually a masters grad from oxford and your ADUN is a well-educated intellectual in society?"
I said no more after that....
I reflected back on my statements, I knew they were true of what my mum really thinks... but she's not a bad person at all you see, how can she be? She was the one who volunteered to collect money to build the BU-m gate and even enlist a contractor to build it for our 20-house row. She even went out to make each one of the 20 households individual keys and bought cute plastic keychains and wrote neatly what the key is for on the labels.... so basically she's a sweet, responsible member of society.
So where does the problem lie? I think some of you have had read a funny circulating email about the Malaysian Chinese Society? Its main point was to wake the 20% of the so called 'elitist' chinese in Malaysia on the fact that 80% of us are in fact, ah bengs and ah lians (in western terms, the average Jane and Joe).
I was being judgemental and I'll cluster myself under the 20% elitist group - defined as chinese who sometimes think they aren't chinese, like to watch american sitcoms, sometimes make controversial statements like I wish I was in UK/Australia, like to call their counterparts 'cina'.
Instead of ridiculing, we have to find the area to empathize and then to target...In mum's case, to be direct, the MP or ADUN speaking has to be one who appeals to the majority of this kinda audience....and in BU, most of the uncles and aunties are really the chinese businessman type of persona....
Its not about whether this MP or that ADUN is better or etc... Its like a matter of strategizing, whom to place to what kinda crowd or the style of deliverance to match the crowd. Sometimes, nonsensical unimportant information could be something of importance for others. For example, when my mandarin speaking only grandma read about Perak's MB knowing how to speak hokkien and mandarin, she was taken in!! and immediately didn't think a PAS MB was a big deal.
During the elections season, when I watched clips of Fong Po Kuan speaking @SS2 with Tony Pua....I totally couldn't relate to her pro-cina statements or chantings (should see the clip on youtube) but she really appeals to another crowd, alot of appeal actually. If only we could work together use each others' influence to become a more 'MALAYSIAN' society (I'm meaning the chinese in Malaysia)
The big problem with chinese in malaysia is that unlike Thai chinese or Indon chinese who's almost totally assimilated into their Nationality (i.e they speak Thai and Indon as their 1st language and have Thai and Indon names), we can't even accept BM as our national language. We are not only not proud of the language, in fact we are trying to oust it. I was chatting with Pegs about the recent argument on BM in our education system, instead of writing it down again :
Pegs: i think we should be proud of BM it's so embarassing!!! to not have BM like my english colleagues ask me 'why do you speak english in malaysia?' i was SO EMBARASSED
Me: hhahahahaha lols
Pegs: cos they germans speak german the french speak french even i met a japanese girl she said i find it very very weird that you speak english at home we speak japanese OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG so malu i want to dig a hole and die
Me: its a NATION thing we should sometimes look to thailand and indon as our model
Pegs: I KNOWWWW
Me: in terms of NATIONALITY the chinese here are complaining that the malays wanna 'ketuanan' us and disown us back to china sure la...cos we still speak mandarin and cantonese 80% of chinese speak that as a 1st laanguage in malaysia so ure technically not malaysian at heart (note: I speak mandarin too, and I think its good to know, but aren't we too 'protective' of it?) We dun even wanna use the language. english is fine in the economic sense but it shouldn't be our 1st language
Pegs: i know!!! that's damn crap they need to wake up and realise THEY ARE NOT CHINESE omg i talked to my colleagues from CHINA they are damn different from us ok i mean what the hell i got nothing in common with them and these people still dying to fight for CHINESE SCHOOL damn stupid i say STOP HAVING CHINESE TAMIL CRAP SCHOOLS we need to have MALAYSIAN SCHOOL
We don't wanna emulate Singapore's societal framework, cos its too chinesy there cos they really are just another taiwan model. What we can learn from them is their efficiency and competitiveness. But in terms of identity.....and societal character? Na-ah...
In a way the above MALAYSIAN SCHOOL model is tested and I think its a success. My sis and I are fine examples it, aren't we? Ok, so fine our chinese is not all that great, but that can be fixed, its not that there isn't a POL (people's own language) model, just not a very well implemented POL model in NATIONAL SCHOOLS (Sekolah Kebangsaan). And also, the way english is taught, and who teaches the language, thats a big problem too. We really need to pay our educators better for better quality...
One synchronized school model, with options in between (ie POL classes)
It's undeniable the racial gap will never be resolved if not for this.....
Unrelatedly, I've just came across a ridiculous random comment on the Crime Prevention talk :
My reply :
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In response to LEISUREMAN…I dunno where you got the ‘idea’ that the security fee we’re paying is lucrative? because the only way I can conclude it to be more expensive that it ought to cost in the 1st place is because of FREE RIDERS like you.
There are 400 houses in my area, and only 1/2 of them pay….which is quite a nominal fee of RM30 a month = RM6 000 @ 50% subscription. Start doing your math brother. I am not part of the committee, so I dont really know how much it costs, but I’m sure those BU-m gates aren’t cheap, and the guards’ salaries too…And those stickers, flyers, banners, plastic cards on ur gate, organising meetings to get ignorant ppl to get ‘involved’…..all these is money spent not on the security itself, but ‘developing’ the security cooperation of the area too…..
Our BURA rep told us that by just increasing payability to 80% we can even have an electronic key cards system too…(that is another debate all by itself)….but seriously, the extra cash wont be lucrative in any sense to a committee of like at least 10 reps managing the funds?? Their house installments prolly cost way more…
i dun think u will want to live in a ‘non-gated community’ if your local police station is only 84men strong for 500 000 ppl?
I’m not to trying to erupt an argument….just think that its injustice done to the BU rep ‘uncles’ in our area who work so hard to keep us safe
Some time organized activities like these helped to cover a hidden agenda - make use of the VIPs and politicians then introduce lucrative “Security Fees” - charged to the residents of course ! Before you know it your non-gated home get converted into “gated-community” - illegally !