just minishorts.

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?