So, what to blog about?

Well, yesterday I went to Westfield, the new shopping centre at Shepherd’s Bush.  (I should add that I’m not all that kemaruk* about new shopping centres as such, but when it’s a stone’s throw away from where I work, why not visit it on the day it opens?)

So off I went with a couple of work colleagues to gawk.  And yes, it’s massive! Very, very big.  Lots of shops.  We got slightly confused as to where we were whilst walking around, but it has got lots of entrances and exits, so it wasn’t too difficult to find the exit that we wanted.  Oh, and there were loads of people there as well.  Not many people in shops though - most people seemed to do what we did, ie walk around and just see things.

It reminded me of KL though (well, apart from all the orang putihs** around!).  You know, huge building, lots of shops … I do wish they’d put a bigger food court though.  I mean, it looked nice, but I would say it could definitely do with more space!

What else …  oh yeah, the excitement round here when it opened! I think practically everyone in the office went off to take a look.  The thing is, until Westfield, all this place had were two decent pubs and restaurants within 12 minutes’ walk.  Anything else, and you were looking at at least a 15-minute walk.  Even then the choices weren’t that great.  So great excitement all round when this place opened!

Still, I’ll probably steer clear of it for a while.  Wait for all the excitement to die down, then I’ll go round for a proper look!

* Hmm.  I don’t actually know how to translate this word!

** White people

I’m feeling extremely nostalgic at the moment, plus a little (a lot?) wistful as well.  I’ve been youtube-ing (I know, I know, desecration of the English language, but if we can google I don’t see why I can’t youtube!) raya songs, and have managed to make myself even more homesick by listening to the takbir raya (yes I know, a little early, but so what!).

Ah well.  Never mind.  In just over one week’s time I’ll be back, and whilst it won’t be the same as being back home on the first day of raya, nonetheless it’s better than nothing.

Yesterday I had three huge meetings, one of which involved doing a presentation in front of … ohh, about 50 people. Plus parts of the presentation was to do with projects that I’d not worked on, and therefore knew next to nothing. Never mind, my goreng* skills came to the fore and I think I managed to sound convincing enough.

The other two meetings weren’t a laugh either. One involved various technical people and whilst ordinarily I’d have been able to dream my way through such meetings, on this occasion I had to stay alert and awake because yours truly was chairing the meeting, which meant I had to pay attention and stop or start the discussion as necessary.

The last meeting in fact was the most interesting one, involving subjects close to my heart. However, it was also the meeting with many very, very senior people so again, I had to keep my wits about me and make sure that these people understood where we came from, and that they weren’t going to ask the earth and the moon.

So much for meetings.

Earlier this week, I was embroiled in a drama (or mini-crisis, take your pick) because of an advert I’d put in the in-house newspaper. A word beginning with “t” (oh alright, trial) set off all sorts of crap, culminating in the department’s Big Cheese (my boss’s boss) getting kittens about what we were doing. Honestly, for a moment on Monday I thought I was going to be in deep shit. Of course, in the event it was nothing more than Mr Big Cheese panicking because some people in Policy asked him what was going on, and true to form, he’d conveniently forgotten that he knew exactly what we were doing, because he’d had a meeting with my boss two days earlier about this very subject.

Hmm. In fact, it’s a good thing I’m fasting, because it means I have to be patient about Mr Big Cheese and not write about what I really, really think about him.

Never mind. That will have to come another day.

* How to translate this? Embellishment? In this context I think of it as being able to bullshit my way through things I don’t know!

Somebody told me the other day they wished Dr M was back, because he at least would keep a lid on all these sentiments.  Well, hell.  The failure of this current government is not that it’s not been able to keep a lid on the sentiments of the people, but they have failed to deal adequately with the grievances of the rakyat.

Imagine that - you turn up at your office on a Monday morning, only to be told that this is it.  Kaput.  It’s all over, and your job along with it.  No redundancy payment, and possibly not even your salary for the previous month.  That’s your fate, along with some 4,000 others, which means finding another job is not going to be a piece of cake (especially in the current climate).

I had a conversation with a friend who works in a City law firm yesterday, and she told me she knew six people who’ve lost their jobs.  How awful.  The thing is, we both agreed that Lehmans probably won’t be the last so we’re all in for a rough ride in the next months (years?), I would say.  What’s more, we’re not even officially in recession, and businesses are already collapsing.  Hmm.  Makes you wonder.

I thank god many, many, many times that Hubby is not at Lehmans.  I can only hope that his bank is safe.

I checked the news just now and fount out that Raja Petra has been arrested for the age-old uniquely Malaysian “problem” of “disrupt(ing) and threaten(ing) security and public order“. Apparently he wrote an article that could gravely offend Muslims.

Well, I wasn’t about to wholeheartedly trust the words of the police (or the NST for that matter) so I did a little digging around and found the original article written by Raja Petra.

You know what? Far from being offended, I totally agree with what he said. The people who are in power in our country are so blinkered in their views that they cannot (or will not) understand nor empathise with people who are not like them. And that doesn’t just mean non-Muslims, but also Muslims who have the temerity to not behave they way they think Muslims ought to.

Why oh why do we not engage with the things that people say instead of throwing them into jail? Raja Petra is, I’m sure, saying what many people believe. Does this mean that everyone who agrees with him are wrong too? If people disagree with what he said then fine, let’s have it out. In a discussion.

These are real issues that he’s talking about, issues that affect so many of us. We deserve to have an open debate about these things.

Why are we being denied this?

I’m ashamed to read that when he was taken away his wife was not told where he would be taken. Is this what we’ve become? A third-rate dictatorship where people can be taken away in the middle of the night with their nearest and dearest not told because they hold views that are at odds with that of those in power?

Free the man.

Then you wonder, how ambitious are you really? How far do you want to scale up that ladder? In fact, do you really want to scale up that ladder knowing that the higher up you go the more dirty games you have to play? But then what happens if (or when) you realise that career is not all thereis in life, and you want more? What do you do then?
So many questions to ponder on.

Well, serve him right, is what I say.

Truth be tell, I’m in two minds about this affair.

On the one hand I’m heartily glad that Pak Lah has finally seen sense and started disciplining UMNO members who disparage other races in our country. I don’t know about you, but I’ve come across so many Malays who think nothing of making crass remarks about non-Malay Malaysians, and think there’s nothing wrong with making such remarks. To me, Malaysian Chinese and Indians are Malaysians, full stop. They are not pendatang and they are not penumpang. They are Malaysians and have the right to be treated as Malaysians by all other Malaysians. When Lee Chong Wei won the silver medal in the Olympics we didn’t call him a penumpang, did we? No, we showered him with a Datukship and a generous pension for the rest of his life. OK, he won an Olympic medal, but he got there through talent and hard work. But then a lot of non-Malays work hard and are successful, so why should they be classed as penumpang?

Come on! We’re 51 years old. Yes, I know how the Chinese and the Indians came to be Malaysians. So what? A lot of my peers are second- and third-generation Malaysians. Does this make them any less Malaysian than me just because their great-great-great-grandparents weren’t born in this country? If we’re being pedantic here, neither were my ancestors. Most of them came from Sumatra and I believe one came from Mecca. Yet nobody would call me a penumpang because I’m Malay. Yes yes and yes I know one could argue that at least mine came from the Malay Archipelago but really, that’s splitting hairs.

The fact of the matter is, we have non-Malay citizens in our country. Our country is now 51 years old. If we don’t start accepting these people as our fellow citizens we never will. If we never do this then we’re in trouble. Therefore it’s in our own interests to do so, but we’ll never really do this if we keep on having leaders who constantly harp on that the non-Malays are penumpang. For that reason, Pak Lah was right to suspend Datuk Ahmad.

However, there’s also something about this affair that is not sitting right with me. The NST reports that, on the back of this affair, the police have issues a stern warning to all parties “not to make or post any statements on racial issues“. I know we Malaysians aren’t allowed to discuss racial issues for fear of stoking racial hatred, but I wonder whether we still need to have these laws.

Yes, I didn’t go through May 13 and yes I know the rationale behind these laws.

But again, I can’t help wondering whether it’s time for us to start growing up. Instead of bringing down the heavy hand of the law to stifle any dissent (and debate) over racial issues, shouldn’t we be discussing these in a rational manner? In this particular affair, yes suspend Datuk Ahmad, but why not tackle the issue on the head? Yes, there are Malays who agree with Dauk Ahmad, so why not challenge these beliefs? Point out why non-Malays are not mere penumpangs in our country. Point out why this is a wrong view to hold. If you are challenged on this, then by all means debate the issue. But do it honestly and rationally, rather than threatening blows (or a lawsuit, as someone threatened me once).

If non-Malays mock Malays or UMNO, then do the same. Challenge that view. All Malays are lazy or just depend on the NEP? If someone said that to me, I would ask them why they thought that, and I would definitely have a lively debate with them about this. What I woudn’t do is come up with a knee-jerk reaction, which appears to be about the only thing so many of our leaders are capable of.

Now, this comes up every so often in the papers, and when I read or hear of this issue, my gut feeling is always a firm No. Why should we relax rules that have served us well over hundreds of years just because some people can’t be bothered to learn how to spell properly?

Some who are in favour of this move claim that English spelling rules are difficult and “unfair” to non-native English speakers as they would have to cope with so many irregular spellings. Well, as a non-native English speaker, can I categorically say this is RUBBISH. I, like so many of my contemporaries, had to do a gazillion spelling tests (in Malay too, I’d like to add) and I would have to say that these have not harmed me and in fact have helped me to learn how to spell properly in English.

Ohh, so much effort, you may say, when pupils in other languages don’t have to do spelling tests. Hmm. I’m no expert in other languages, but if you were learning Japanese or Mandarin, you’d have to learn katakana. If you were learning French/Italian/Spanish you’d have to think about the gender of everyday items, because your words could change depending on this, and you’d have to learn all the different forms of addressing people because there are formal and informal ways of doing so. You’d also have to know - in French, at least - how to conjugate verbs because these can take different forms too depending on the tenses being used.

My point is this: learning a language is always challenging, and it’s not always because of spelling. Sure, maybe English spelling is more difficult than languages that do phonetic-based spelling like Italian or Spanish, but these languages have other challenges too and you don’t hear people saying let’s drop gender from Italian or Spanish to make it easier for non-native speakers to cope, do you?

Professer Wells seems to think that email and text messages are showing us the future of English spelling. Good god. I hope not. Although I too, of course, use txtspik when texting, I would never do this when writing in my professional or other official capacity. In fact, I would be horrified if I received a document that contained text-messaging style syntax and diction. It just looks ugly and would probably be difficult to read so it would be a waste of my time deciphering it, when, if it was written in normal English, it would be much easier for me to read.

Anyway, as the article points out, if we were to use phonetic-spelling, whose pronunciation would we use? We’d just end up with a melange of spellings, and sooner or later nobody would understand anyone else.  I mean, imagine if a group of people had to review a document, and each person spelt words according to how they would pronounce it.  What a mess that document would be!

In any case, the idea that we should simplify things just because there is a perception that students of the English language can’t cope with spelling is ridiculous.  Should we simplify physics too, to get more people to study it? What about medicine – that’s difficult.  It takes years to train as a doctor.  Why not make it easier and take a shorter time?

If there was a really good reason for simplifying English spelling, let’s hear it.  At the moment I just hear spurious reasons, and what feels like change for the sake of change and “modernity”.  (I’m always very suspicious when people say we should modernise things.  Why? What’s wrong with the current way of doing things?)

Besides, I don’t need some academic telling me he wants to make things easier for me to use his language.  English is his as well as mine and ours, and I don’t see any reason why we should change it.  We’ve coped with English spelling as it is now, so why should we change it?