just minishorts.

I think I know why we're such a problematic people already.

Everyone wants to look smart, everyone wants to sound good. Everyone wants to say something smart, and everyone wants to be listed down as saying something smart enough to make it to the records (on the papers or in a book or in an interview). That's why blogs are such a fantabulous hit, everyone gets the opportunity to be smart (albeit in our own space) and the best thing is, when people pop up and say you're stupid, the blog you own gives you the right to say, 'I'm smart and you're stupid because this is my blog and everything I say is right so there.'

From ASBO Jesus #48

Anyway, I spent too many stupid years trying to be smart and to defend the right to stay smart. Today I wanna make a difference to myself. You know what, this is a stupid blog, and everything about me is awesomely stupid. And everyone else who reads my blog is way way smarter than me so all your comments are way way more intelligent than whatever nonsense I say. So yeah, I'm stupid. Thanks for giving me the space to learn how to be smart like ya.

Could not resist doing the translated bit for the title. And I wrote this in some comment a few days ago, and today I'm feeling this pain again!

I'm almost resigned to the fact that we have the problem of a very weak country. And to add to the problem of our ailments, we have entire generations of citizens who are bent on protecting the subsidy-based system that is synonymous with what is known as Malaysianism.

Our education system, in the first place, as the economists seem to love to say, distorts reality. When you segregate young people according to race, they grow up unable to survive in a real-world context. Hence when people finally get thrown into the working world they’re shocked (some people have never used a pair of chopsticks in their life, and others actually go around discussing how disgusting it is that some people actually use their hands to eat their food).

Secondly, the ‘meritrocracy’ system and a scholarship system to allow the ‘poor’ education opportunities, or to create a ‘fairer’ demography in the various professional field has distorted the reality. So you have groups of people thinking that because they get straight As they’re able to fly through life (that’s why crazy PSD students INSIST on going overseas no matter what), and others who just because they had to slogged through Form 6 and didn’t get to enter bumi-exclusive colleges, they actually believe that they’re better than the UiTM malay kid who scored straight As… we go into the office space suspicious of everybody else, and we live in little bubbly worlds of make-believe. THe irony is none of us are THAT good anyway.

Plus we have survived and even thrived the past 50 years on a low-wage system, causing a severe brain drain… we have genius, sponsored Malaysians opting to migrate and start new lives overseas where the pay is better and the transportation system is better,so what’s left and what remains in this country is literally the ’saki-baki’ that’s not that great in the first place. So even if we wanted to ’start over’, we don’t have the ingredients to start over. And if we throw out the low-wage system, we’re going to lose our foreign investors who came here in the first place because we offered low-wage workers (which also meant they could overlook some of our misgivings, i.e. engineers, accountants, doctors, lawyers, professionals who aren’t that good anyway).

And finally the worst thing is this, because of a pathetic and misleading education system that has ‘worked’ for the past 50 years, we have at least 2 generations of youthful Malaysians who believe that just because they have a degree they have the right to be paid high salaries and they have the right to demand better working environments, and they have the right to demand for better employers- and you already see the problem, people would rather pay a premium to import foreign workers, and we have our own children, graduates yes and NOT working but lepaking around expensive malls. And then when they can’t do anything, they get absorbed into some retraining thing, get paid allowances (subsidies, anyone), and we’re left with just that. A HUGE SORE in the body called Malaysia that just isn’t going to go anywhere, anytime soon.

Can't resist this one also: And then to top it up with the 'I'm so great mentality' that Malaysians just love to have (a huge part thanks to our hugely egoistic ex PM the dear Tun with his Malaysia Boleh mantra), we have judges who keep a grudge and choose to allow a wound of humiliated and fractured egoes to fester over 10 years, and turn up in court to tell a juicily memalukan tale of how his previously fantastic ego was shattered so shoddily at 'boot camp'. And then of course our crazy border-side petrol station owners who bitch about how the axing of subsidized petrol to foreigners will cause them to loose business (selfishness, anyone?), and people going around screaming 'blatant lies' without producing any physical proof to dispute the lies…

So, sekarang nasi dah jadi bubur, mana nak cari nasi baru ni?

Disclaimer - I am in no way a die-hard fan of Tun Dr M.

HOWEVER, when I read Justice Ian Chin's telling of the 'bootcamp humiliation', it sort of left me with a, 'so what?'

…

The camp training methods as dictated in the post above really sounds a lot like the Kem Jati Negara styled, nation-building shit that most national service participants, the public servants, and people who're crazy enough to take up large awareness training sessions would have to do lor. If you've been to one of those experiential type, outdoor, ropes obstacle course training, the so-called 'humiliation' is PART of the training, and … I mean, I'm no Justice with a double or triple law degree, but I would know I'd come out from these camps in one piece, learning how to be a better person and NOT necessarily loving the company or the person who sanctioned the training in the first place.

Team building rigour is HARDLY a boot camp. The word 'boot camp' alone gives me the images of chilling torture chambers, where you are required to strip naked and shower together with people you hate, and then put through rigourous hot-cold 'therapies', and a series of other inhumane tortorous processes all with the objectives of brainwashing you into fear-based obedience. Those kind of things are humiliating and deserve 'justice served'.

But teenage - corporate level team building training structures are meant to be positive-attitude, team-player spirit fostering programs, and seriously, I've never met anyone who came out of the standard 'keep an egg for five days of the camp duration and make sure it comes out in a piece' game, thinking it was a 'mind-softening method designed to force someone into obedience', humiliating process, until of course, Justice Ian Chin went to testify and told his alleged experiences of being tortured at his version of the terrifying boot camp (May 26-30 in some year, 4 days mind you, BOOT CAMP! Hah!)

I've been to those training camps when I was in school, when I went to university, and at those standard orientation courses for new company employees. Upon arrival, you get the course facilitator or camp coach telling us in some ganas fierce trainer voice to drop our phones into a bag and for the 3 days to two weeks we were there we were not allowed to contact our family members. And then, you know, the egg drop game, the scolding in front of the participants, the appointment of the usual youngest, most inexperienced person in the group as team leader, the one who demonstrates the least leadership qualities in the entire team as captain… been there done that…

And all I know is that these camps have been there forever and I've attended one or two of them either by compulsion (company employment requirements or personal participation). I don't look back and think it was humiliating.

…

Some people say that judges should not be sent to boot camp like this. Apparently They don't need the training. Or some people who're just keen to say that Tun M was evil anyway can get a little more extreme and say that 'judges aren't meant to be team players'. That judges are high level officials and they like MPs and ministers don't need these boot camps. That's just blatantly opposing for the heck of opposing - I'd rather say that the whole system should be fair and that everyone in the government service, whether you're the PM, a minister, an MP or the lowest toilet cleaner in a gahmen office building, should all attend these camps, if they're so called compulsory.

Also I live by the if you choose to be a citizen of Rome, then you might as well do as the Romans say and don't bitch so much about it. I mean if I worked at to a crazy company (who paid me thousands of ringgit a month and gave me a datukship along the way) where it was a requirement for me as an employee I have to attend some stupid 2-day etiquette training on how to talk to the public and how to put on makeup, I WOULD attend it. It doesn't mean I'd take everything that the trainer tells me in the training as the bible. I, being master of my ownself, would be the final judge of what I will take home from the training.

Personally I thought that Justice Chin, being a man of great intellectual superiority, would have been smart enough to be able to discern and judge for himself what stuff to take home from the meetings he had to suffer through (including witnessing a superior judge apologizing to a junior office employee).

But then again lah, I'm not a judge lah. Maybe if I were a judge, its super important for me to look good, be great, be some high and mighty JUDGE all the time kua. Even in a training session, camp, ropes obstacles course. Whatever.

…

You know I blogged this because I'm pissed that someone as 'dignified', intelligent, experienced and admired as Datuk Ian Chin can be so stupid as to release a press statement with that sort of things and calling it 'humiliation'. He should have just shut up and I would have been happy to live with the belief that Tun really had did all the terrible things, cos it was BELIEVABLE just by looking at Ian Chin's grim and proper face. After reading the court proceeding, Chin just sounds like some stupid whiney kid who can't get over the fact that he had to apologize to a puny clerk at some weekend camp that happened over a decade ago.

…

Ok lah just had to add this. ABout that indoctrination shit for judges telling them to be aligned and keep their allegiance to the government. You're working for the Government lah, what'd you expect? Some training where you'll be attending some lovey-dovey 'i'm so great' basking in spa-comfortness, and them some lovely woman pitching into your ear into how wonderful the opposition party is kah? SOrry ok I'm sounding a little crude, but I think if I'm working for Google, I'd damn well be expecting that attending a function closed to Google staff will be all talking about how Google is great, and how Google beats the shit out of Yahoo. I don't think we'll be doing anything about getting close to Yahoo and loving the enemies at Altavista. We already have church and religion to tell us to love our enemies and neighbours, governments like any other corporations are selfish… and I can't say this enough lah, YOUR BRAIN IS YOUR OWN LAH, who ask you so stupid to get brainwashed for 10 years? Don't like something, don't ikut lah, who ask you to go and follow so blindly for so long?

(OK I'm hoping he comes up with more stories like being forced to sign no-guilty verdicts on killers and murderers… but if he comes back with more, I was forced to bring tea to the tea lady who was at the same camp at me and I WAS HUMILIATED boo hoo story… man…)

I'm pissed lah ok. Cos I so believed Justice Ian Chin and now he's sounding like a kiddo whiner and I'm just sick of all of this. We have stupid politicians, lousy ex leaders, corrupted town councillers and ex prime ministers, and now…. childish judges. Lovely country we have. Boleh benar lah Malaysia. Hebat.

Can't freaking stand wishy-washyness, especially in freaking relationships. Maybe that's why I can't stand Meredith Grey. I know someone who knows someone like that. Oh woman got married to abuser, took ten years before deciding enough is enough, woman comes back with tonnes of baggage, and then meets some guy who's 8 years her junior, now woman gets torn in between the two guys (yah and I thought the first marriage was over and done with kan?), halfway through relationship confusion, woman meets up with guy, 'falls in love' then finds out guy is married with kids. Then later woman decides after about several months of 'confusion' (for whatever lousy reason), that its not right to be with a married man. So woman ends relationship finally and is now nursing a depression.

Boo hoo hoo… so sad I pity her. Yada yada… no honestly I've got no patience for idiots like that (by nature I'm not a very caring, I'm not a very forgiving person, and obviously I have no place to include trusting into my treatment of people like this (God forbid they can even make a decision to watch a movie or not.)

So no. I'm not comfortable with people like this, and I don't like to hang around with people like this. There's only so much of a listening ear i can lend to people like this, but if several months on with crazy trainings and counselling session and psychology sessions and what nots can't actually tell someone that, 'Yes its wrong to be with a married man,' bloody hell just go rot in the world and die and go to hell, for all I care, you deserve your crazy sufferings.

Now if you choose to be a bitch and admit you're a bitch and go all out for that married man with kids with what not (cos maybe you have some kind of strong belief and opinion that its ok and that you're going to fight for the person you love), I can sort of respect that. But at least admit lah you're wrong and you can't freaking help it. Being wishy-washy is just a lousy excuse to be lazy and irresponsible. It's a pathetic way of sex-hungry woman who keep fishing for love when you don't even bloody deserve it in the first place.

But men do love women like this, don't they?