Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Mamak! Lagi Satu....!

Note: Although it seems that I've gone beyond the "one more topic before break thing" I felt that there is something amusing to comment over what is said by our hate figure here...!

While I feel that today being Christmas, every Malaysian should have time off from paying attention to serious matters and spend some time in relaxation.

But I do understand that there are some who had to do work today but given the chance for time off either the next day or Thursday. This particularly happen to our friends who work in essential items industry...sure you know who.

Well, throughout a well deserved 6-day break that I had since last Thursday, I just told my brother that I hope that I don't hear any idiots (the lieutenants of AAB making kind of fool comments), I refer the idiots to either the Zam Zam Alakazam or El Balachi making stupid statements that wanted someone to just say the line 'I am Optimus Prime' to shut it up.

Things went well today, but somehow, today was capped off in an anti-climatic fashion by two statements made by the Mamak of Merbok.

The first one is not as serious as the latter one, but after reading it, I was asking myself a question or two concerning the level of education and speech in Malaysia.

Refer to this Star article here:

I'm fine with things that promote multi-racial relationships here, but I thought shouldn't we give more attention to English being the number one worldwide language here? Where is Bahasa Malaysia in this era ranked at? Number 3? Number 4? Or somewhere below the bottom? Well, we do know that the two most important languages now is English and Mandarin, and to prepare Malaysia in facing globalization, there should be more priority of English over Bahasa Malaysia. Yes, I know that we should be proud of our own National language, but putting that over English is not the right way to move forward.

I have concern that because of this wrong emphasis on BM has resulted in producing many graduates who some could not speak English well, and they lose out in jobs especially those under multi-national companies. My dad once had a subordinate, a Chinese girl who only speaks Chinese and Malay. She could not write, read and speak English at all. Sure, most companies require English minimum because all correspondence and work documents are in English. She only quit after two days because of this problem above. Sometimes, I feel that the zeal of ultra-nationalists in pushing this over preparing for global challenges has resulted in efforts backfired.

I watched Tunku the Musical in August and at the end of the third act, it was shown that it was the act of ultra-nationalists with their fiery zeal ended in backfiring, and the May 13 1969 incident. The man (played by Tony Eusoff), an ultra-nationalist, who witnessed his son killed by a mob in that fateful incident, wept over his son's body in regret that his zeal and actions had triggered a backfire and led to the boy's death. This also happens in the civil war in Ireland. The fiery zeal of the Irish Catholics at that time had resulted in bloodshed of thousands, disregarding of humanity while pursuing their goals to win at all costs.

It will better if they promote more use of English. Let's take into account of foreigners who want to ply their trade here. How on earth are they going to proceed if certain forms or billboards or notices or advertisements are purely in Bahasa Malaysia? Sure, we can read, no problem, but what about them? They will...ah...ah...and frustrated to understand, they might go elsewhere like Singapore, because everything is handled in English that everyone, locals and foreigners understand very well.

Fine, there is just a remedy of putting dual languages to solve that. But if there is an Englishman talking to a person who doesn't speak English that well like ZAM did the other day, he might be giggling or annoyed over the fact that the 'handicap' guy couldn't face him!

I am more worried about the latter half statement made by the Mamak, saying that there is little importance made by Paramjothy.

We have learned in history that nations and leaders are ultimately punished for their ignorance over certain remarks that might be small in scale but carry important messages that requires acting on a moment's notice. Reading through, this shows that if the next general election results in the Opposition winning and people voting for them instead of BN, that could be an example of BN being punished for their ignorance over certain issues.

You see the thing is that this is not 1980 or so. This is 2007. People think differently than before. Many of our ministers seem to have the thinking patterns of the 80s or the 90s. I'm not doing any government bashing here, but telling them to wake up from their dreamland or something. When you read this Malaysiakini letter, this has clearly underline that people are no longer fools who know nothing. A man who knows nothing is as ignorant than the man who goes digging around to get the facts out of something, which is what Mamak of Merbok is put under.

Harv Eker once said that you can't run away from all the problems that you face. If you face it and succeed in that, the problem is off and forever. If you run away, the problem will still be there and will never go off until you face it yourself. So, by saying that, what the Mamak of Merbok implies is that he wants the public to run away from the problem.

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