Our country a disgrace?

ARCHIVES 2009

By admin-s On Sep 28, 2009

By As Zewt As It Gets

Have you ever asked yourself one question, i.e. do you really expect things in Malaysia to be done properly? I mean, you seriously expect the Malaysian-way-of-doing-things to be of good standard?

Upon my return from HK last week, something screwed up during baggage-claim. I will not go into details but it created a lot of frustration. Amidst the ruckus, an elderly man blurted — “This so silly, such a disgrace!”. With so many gwai-los (“Caucasians”) around, he was probably feeling a bit embarrassed.

Indeed, the usual ramblings by Malaysians…

“Our toilets are horrible. What a disgrace!”
“People send astronaut to do research in space, our astronaut went all the way up there to make roti canai. What a disgrace!”
“Actually right, NASA only considers him as a space-tourist. What a disgrace!”
“Look at our highway resting place – dirty and run-down. What a disgrace!”
“Malaysia has been blacklisted by OECD together with Costa Rica, Uruguay and Philippines. What a disgrace!”
“Oh, Malaysia has been removed. But only to the grey list, what a disgrace!”
“Our country, always in international news for the wrong reason(s). What a disgrace!”
“After 20 years, Proton still can’t get things right. What a disgrace!”
“Worse, Proton Waja heavily criticised in Top Gear. What a disgrace!”
“Simple thing like post-flight-baggage-claim can’t be done properly. What a disgrace!”

Care to contribute some?

But wait a minute. Before you think of any other real life examples, have you ever asked yourself one question, i.e. do you really expect things in Malaysia to be done properly? I mean, you seriously expect the Malaysian-way-of-doing-things to be of good standard?

Let’s say your answer is a big YES. Then, may I ask… On what basis are you having such expectations? Who and what are you benchmarking those standards against? Singapore? Australia? Europe? Hong Kong?

Let’s do some self reflection… we are a country who moved backward from RON97 to RON95… we are a nation who uses the lowest grade of diesel… we are a nation whose national pride is food, and our country tourism’s job is to lay claim on some food… we are a country whose income-per-capita is nowhere near a developed nation… and we are a population who majority does not know what income-per-capita is.

We are a country whose reason in appointing a foreign minister was because he-speaks-English. And, we once had a chief minister whose reason (given in court) for bringing huge amount of cash into Australia was I-no-spegging-enlish, thus unable to read the law… and we are a population where a majority does not know who or what I am referring to because we are a population who prefer to read where is the best place to eat rather than proper news.

Add all that to many other boleh-ness of this country, do you seriously think we should expect things to be better than they way they are now? Let’s not kid ourselves. We should not benchmark our country with a developed nation. In fact, judging by recent events, being considered as a developing nation is questionable.