Many would have read Kit Siang’s entry on the alleged JAWI heroics in an eatery in Bangsar. While the reaction has been predictably hot under the collar, it is just another piece in the big picture of the government thinking minority Malaysians would always just cower and do what Harry Lee Kuan Yew said Malays in Malaysia expect of the minority – Ya Tuan. If the minority groups in Malaysia are fed up and want to put an end to this nonsense, they have to rise up and stand up to these idiots for who they are – idiotic bigots.

Someone emailed me today, saying Eric has been acquited of all those charges he was charged with, in relation to one of the biggest corporate scandals involving government funds. The typical Malaysian would shrugh his shoulders and ask what else is new. Billions of dollars down the proverbial tube. Billions of dollars lost to ordinary Malaysians. many of whom are struggling everyday to put food on the table.

I ask again – are ordinary Malaysians going to ever care enough to rise up and make themselves heard?

There was high drama in the Melbourne CBD this morning. We were having our weekly Monday morning team meeting, when my boss took a call about the incident. A bar scuffle near the courtyard of the Rialto building had turned ugly and a man in his 20s fired several shots, killing one and critically wounding another two. It happened around 8.30am and by noon, the perpetrator was still on the run. Over lunch, I looked at the Age’s site and it said the incident had started in the bar as early as 6am. This is ridiculous – why are these people in a bar at 6am on a Monday morning? It sounded like a recipe for trouble at the very least, and a disaster as it turned out. Maybe these were shift workers who had just finished work and were having a few drinks. I still don’t get it – at 6am it was 7 deg. I know because I felt stupid in my shorts waiting in my car a few minutes before 6, begging for the gym to open so that I could dash in. The radio had announced the temperature and it was 7 degrees. In that condition, had I been a shift worker, I would have hurried home for a hot shower and bed, or maybe a hot coffee. But a bar? Even someone with a propensity for self inebriation such as yours truly, thinks this a farce.

The Rialto is on the western end of the city. I didn’t know if there were any museums in that part of the CBD so when I remembered that kiddo was supposed to be on a train a little after 9 with a group from school, heading into the city for a museum excursion, I had a momentary panic. I emailed Theresa for the details of the excursion. She didn’t know. I called the school and was put through to the principal, who assured me she has been in contact with the police, who would remain in touch with her. They were heading to the Parliament station, which is on the Spring Street – the eastern end of the CBD. I felt a little safer but the thought of an enraged and possibly intoxicated gunman on the loose in the city made me nervous throughout the day. Theresa and I kept trying to call kiddo on her mobile every half an hour or so, to no avail. At around 4pm, I had an email from Theresa saying they had actually cancelled the trip. Barely half an hour after getting into the city, they took the next train out of the city and headed back to school. The education minister had jumped in to interfere by cancelling all school excursions into the city. Curiously enough, my first reaction was that kiddo was going to be disappointed. There was another occasion when they went into the city and someone took a fall, hurt her head and the whole group had to return to school. Again, a zero risk tolerance may have caused disappointment but safety first obviously prevailed.

Aussies talk a lot. Try this:

In Melbourne – two guys passing each other in a hallway:

• Dick: Hi Tom, how are you

  Tom: Hi Dick, I’m very well, thank you. What about you?

  Dick: That’s the way. I’m very well too Tom. Thank you.

KL version:

• Mat: Hey (nods the head and smiles)

  Seng: Hey (nods and smiles back)

For a typical greeting, Melburnians use a 28-syllables exchange, compared to 2 in KL. At work, an issue requiring a quick decision can take a 15-20 minute discussion before any action is taken, whereas the same result could be achieved without that discussion. Yet, this is what makes the average workplace ticks. I have found that to be true in each of the three of the four places I have worked in, since we moved here in late 2004 (one of them was a short and temporary stint in an Asian firm). Before one does anything, one talks to a colleague, a boss or subordinate and that talk starts by the above styled greeting with some niceties thrown in about taking up that other person’s time for a few minutes, followed by a five minute introduction on the matter. One then goes on to talk about his own thoughts on the matter and talks some more, about what he thought that other person might think about it. That other person would then thank the first person for talking to him about it, offer his own thoughts on the matter and asked if that first person agreed with him. 15 minutes later, the first person would thank that other person for his time and promised to see him later. Such discussions precede many things, not just the more important or serious issues. Yet, for all the additional time the whole process took, the country is not worse off economically or in productivity wise, than a country like Malaysia.

Malaysians who move here have this common observation about the above, notable difference in working here. People here talk so much more, about so many more things. A culture shock of sorts presents itself and it hurts both ways. If an Aussie who is not used to working with new Asian migrants finds that that migrant doesn’t talk too much, it could be interpreted as being unfriendly or being aloof or that nothing stirs him.

I wonder what the present customs are in the Malaysian office. I wonder if people talk more these days. I don’t mean the gossips and sports talk, the bravados about girlfriends, the note comparisons about food joints or about the latest football results. Those things get talked about a lot too, over coffee, in pubs, at a dinner party, on the train or tram and such places. I mean the talk at and about work. Does it happen more now?

As a quick way to have broad contact with the outside world, I subscribe to the BBC daily email which has several one liners on what’s happening in any given part of the world. You get to choose which regions you wish to have these one-liner updates and you have it pretty much first thing in the morning in your inbox, everyday. It’s a great way to know what’s going on and if you want the details, you just click on the link at the end of that one-liner. You get to choose which sports you want to stay in touch with as well, down to the club or team you want to stay on top of. So, I more or less know for example, on a very high level (ie without the details), that the Vatican has said aid to Amnesty International should be curtailed to cut down assisted abortion. I also know Saha and Smith have both said they wished to remain at United and fight for first team appearances, and that the US has again said something about its currency and China’s role in it. You got to hand it to the BBC/British – they’ve been at it for easily 10 years now and I have subscribed to it for almost as long.

Now that we’re here in Melbourne, I have found this daily email service particularly necessary, as the local newspapers, radio and television can be rather parochial. You’d get a 10-page spread on Aussie Rules football, down to the meaningless statistics (which the Americans are more known for) of something like the goal drought the St Kilda team is experiencing this season in comparison with the goals they have scored in the past 3 seasons. You wont however, have more than half a dozen paragraphs on the G8 in Germany and hardly anything on the recent street demonstrations in Turkey against the government for its Islamic bent. You also will have little on the heat wave in Pakistan or the landslides in Bangladesh. I’d bet you’d get plenty on last night’s State of Origin rugby league match between Queensland and NSW (the banana benders won that game, my interest in rugby league to be blamed on my uni days in Sydney).

One region I constantly subscribe to is the middle-east. I have heard, a long time ago, that that region is the clock for world history. I imagine it being a sun-dial which has a screaming device which would absolutely go off when the shadow hits say, twelve. So I try to keep an eye on it, though events in my country of birth and my adopted country keep distracting me.

The escalation of fighting, this time by Hamas in a civil war type of struggle against the Fatahs, somehow caught my eye. These battles go on all the time so although dozens are reportedly killed, they don’t ordinarily get more than 30 seconds of my attention. Maybe it is the next story, which was the killing of an anti-Syrian Lebanese MP, which had a combined effect on me. It suggests a swelter is building up, even escalating and although similar developments have taken place before, I somehow feel something is going to boil over. I hope I’m wrong. Maybe I should not, because if developments there suggest history is indeed heading for a showdown it may mean better things to come, thereafter.

Apocalyptical events – in so far as they are seen through the eyes of the church (as opposed to the eyes of Hollywood, which often features a nuclear holocaust in Los Angeles or New York City, followed by big-brother style policing by sub-human personnel – are usually tied to the middle east in general and Israel/Palestine in particular. Daniel refers to the “abomination that will cause desolation” which would be set up in the temple, presumably in Jerusalem. The Armageddon is often thought to be in the middle-east, in the region of the ancient city of Megog (again, it neither happens in Los Angeles nor New York City – or outer space). Since the 70s oil shock, focus has grown a lot sharper in that region, where it is thought the end of the world would play out. Can you blame this simple, excitable person therefore, when battles escalate there? I often get this picture that conditions are so volatile there that it won’t take much to set things off. Rock throwing can escalate beyond mere skirmishes, growing into bloody battles and exploding into full-on wars. With rampant threats of nuclear proliferation in places like Iran, wars can be catastrophic, threatening to spark off annihilation of the human race. Yes, the apocalypse. Maybe it’s the very cold weather blanketing Melbourne for now – it was 1 degree this morning in Moorabin, a suburb not too far from us, and was only 3 degrees when Theresa and I left home for work – which is numbing my brains…