The link to KS Ong’s observations should be this:

http://www.malaysiakini.com/letters/200307150034826.php

For every person who says what he sees or thinks like a certain KS Ong (see link below), I believe there must be scores, indeed hundreds, who just go away fearing for their own safety. What IS happening?!!!

Found a way to fix the time stamp; it looks okay now. You must forgive a novice blogger.

The heavens are opened in KL; rain is pouring down, heavy enough for another flashflood to be excusable, in the eyes of the city hall clowns. Chances are traffic will be hell again tonight.

KL folks are amazing; we put up with all sorts of nonsense. A half hour rain can wreak havoc with our traffic, turning a half-hour journey into a 2-hour one, and KL folks will only be worked up a little. Certainly not enough to march down the streets to city hall and demand the troupe there be sacked. Maybe we’re just inert people. We should have a bit of the New Yorker in us, perhaps. Kick some city hall arses. At least give them the hairdryer treatment.

Driving in to the office today, saw this MPV. Sparkling “pearl” white. Windows tinted black as Stevie Wonder’s shades. It wasnt a new vehicle, plates WHJ something. So, must have been extremely lucky or lots of know-who. Where are the cops? Where’s the follow up for all those Ops?

Saw another vehicle – a bus. One of those really old bus companies. Belching out black smoke so thick you’d need floodlights to see through. Imagine being on a motorcycle – talk about high chances of getting cancer. Again, what happened follow-up to Ops whatever (“Asap”, if I remember correctly).

Saw several kapchai’s bolting in and out of streets – running lights, going the wrong way of one-way streets, everything. The works.

Who cares about doing the right thing if you can almost always get away with it…

Read any Malaysian paper (including, or especially online ones like Malaysiakini) and you’d find complaints about law and order, about how one can no longer feel safe, even in one’s own home. What’s the problem? Me think it’s a case of people not bothering with doing the right thing anymore, and believing that doing the right thing doesnt matter, and one can quite easily get away with doing “what-suits-me” instead of what’s right. Even when “what-suits-me” is clearly wrong, or even illegal. I think that started from the top – government, pollies, business leaders, senior company management, all these people in leadership position.