Tomorrow would be a nervous day for our department, especially for my boss and I. The Board meetings of both companies would be on and the directors from Hong Kong would be attending via video link. One of the Hong Kong directors is one of my boss’s boss, which makes him my “grand boss” of sorts, I guess. He’s Aussie too, but has been in HK as a regional head legal honcho for a long time. A bit of the Grand Corleone (GC in every sense of the word – a GC who is beyond General Counsel. In fact GC in so many way…) of the legal departments of the Asia Pacific/Australia/NZ region of the company.

For some 3-4 weeks running up to this meeting, we have been scurrying around making sure all relevant departments submit the papers in time for us to collate and distribute to all board members and attendees. Strictly we are the Legal department but like so many legal departments of so many organisations, we take care of the company secretarial stuff as well. A business case has been submitted to our regional office, to employ a specialist company secretary but until that person is on board, we run with this as best we can. Thus far, there has been a couple of major stumbles on my part.

Even while in Malaysia, when I doubled up as both the Legal Counsel and Company Secretary of my employer, I did not particularly enjoy the company secretary bit of my job. There were just too many procedures and papers borne out of traditions and archaic structures which can for the most part, serve no tangible purpose except create a body of evidence as to a corporate entity’s thought and decision making processes. It’s a strange one to figure out as to why a lawyer would find such a task any different or less satisfying or more frustrating than pure legal work. I guess there’s good reason for many organisations to combine the 2 but for us practitioners, there’s a really thick line separating the 2 and you either like the other side or you don’t…

I came in to work this Tuesday morning, wondering what has happened in the past 3 days. Yesterday was the Queen’s birthday holiday, and it was the last long weekend before the Melbourne Cup holiday in November.

The fact that it was along weekend wasn’t the reason I did not log into my work email. It was a combination of various factors. One was that a mate was leaving yesterday, after spending about a week here with his 2 boys. I felt he needed to talk to his mates about his plans to relocate from Malaysia. He loves his drinks too, so on Friday night, I left work, went with Theresa and Kiddo to see him in Berwick where he was staying, which is about several “whoops” away out east. On the way there, we got stuck in a bad jam on the M1 – the worst traffic jam I’ve encountered since we moved here almost 3 years ago now.  We got there about an hour late, at about 8.30. A couple who are mutual friends were also late. The food was great, and in addition to the 2 bottles of Merlot I brought with me, this mate supplemented the evening with a few more bottles he picked up in Dan Murphy’s just a few shops away from the restaurant. After dinner we went to the house he was living in, chatted and drank some more and by the time we got home it was almost 1am.

Naturally, I found it a little harder to wake up the next day, and only crawled out of bed when it was almost 9am. That was very late, even for a cold Saturday morning. By the time I fixed breakfast for Theresa and Kiddo and vacuumed downstairs, it was time to send Kiddo to her tuition. I came back, finished the vacuuming and the toilets, had my shower (which I needed to do as soon as I got up but couldn’t till then) and rushed out again, to drop off my dry cleaning and picked kiddo up from her tuition. Theresa had to go to her hair dresser so I took Kiddo for lunch, dropped her off at her next program and by the time I got home later that afternoon it was past 3pm.

We then decided to go over to Chadstone, as Myer was having a suit sale and I decided to check it out. My heart wasn’t in it but thought I’d go so that the family could have a bit of a time out. We went around, and by the time we got home it was almost 6pm. Theresa had wanted some porridge so we had dropped in Coles at Chadstone, to pick up some fish. Theresa and I both liked fish porridge, whereas Kiddo likes the pork variety. I had cooked Kiddo’s preference for a long time so we decided to give fish a go. We got home, I cooked and Theresa did her ironing. By the time we settled down to eat it was almost 7pm. After dinner, Kiddo continued her computer keyboard pounding, which she had been at since we got home around 6pm. I had wanted to check out the copyright statement of the movie the church wanted to play later this month (One Night with the King – story of Esther). Just before 8.30, Theresa drifted off to never-never land while Kiddo and I watched television. By 9.30 I was so tired I was ready to sleep but Kiddo wanted to watch Ocean’s 11 which was then just starting so I stayed up with her. I never liked Kiddo staying up alone to watch television. The movie only finished close to midnight.

The point was – I was tired and it didn’t abate because I kept doing what others wanted, from the time I left work on Friday night till midnight Saturday. It wasn’t to end there because the usual Sunday morning breakfast preparation and rush for church went on. That mate of mine with whom I had spent Friday night, was there and after church we went to a quick lunch. Church was great as usual. Joe Hu spoke on giving and it resonated with my mate so that was even better. Invariably, with his 2 young boys, lunch was at the golden arches and after lunch, we went to a mutual friend’s place for more wine. Sam and Joy are a young couple and Sam is climbing up the wine appreciation ladder, dishing out his Coonawarra collection. This mate of mine shared a more earthy taste with me and had brought along a Rawson’s Retreat and some stout, to go with the pork crackling we picked up after lunch. So it was a bit of an interesting afternoon. It went on from 3-6pm, after which we adjourned to our home and chatted and drank some more till 11pm. All I knew was come Monday I was going to take a lot of recovery. Theresa was also not too impressed as I had left her to pick Kiddo up from church after her band practice, and my dry cleaning!

Waking up on Monday was worse than on Saturday morning. Anyway, I did, only to be reminded, as soon as I work up, that kiddo had a movie session with some of her friends. I had wanted to just do some ironing, do some work, and get ready for the week. Since I had to go out, I decided to pack away my blender, which we had bought a few weeks ago but which I did not like. I thought I’d return it and get another one with better features, such as a larger jug to hold the stuff I never blended. It also had to grind my coffee beans, crush ice, froth milk, and be microwave friendly. Anyway, I packed the stuff, dropped kiddo off at her rendezvous, hung around to make sure her friends are people I knew, and then went off to return the blender. Theresa and I then went somewhere else to pick a replacement unit and we got home, cooked lunch and before I could settle down to lunch, that mate turned up to drop off some of his luggage which he was going to leave with us till he returns later in the year. We had talked about this the day before and I had vaguely talked about doing lunch but with my ironing not done and my new blender unopened, I decided to leave him to his own lunch arrangements. After all, I had to go pick Kiddo from her movie session after 3pm and we were going to meet up for dinner at 6pm at a mutual friend’s place anyway. So we stayed home for lunch, I did my ironing, went out again to pick Kiddo up and by the time we got home it was past 4pm and I thought I may as well just leave work to when I got back to office the next day. We only came back from dinner around 9.30pm, I fixed our lunches, watched a little television and couldn’t even be bothered with even a small glass of red. I just crashed into bed, after packing my gym stuff. As it turned out, it was raining this morning (which meant getting from the train station to the gym and back was going to be tricky) and my mind was still on work so I just decided to get in to work early.

True enough, my boss had a few emails for me, a colleague talked about how she was on the work network all day yesterday and I was just playing catch up this morning. As much as I thought I had a great weekend in that I spent time with family and friends doing things we enjoyed and making the home a more comfy nest for us, I was also worked up, for the most part, about work. Yes, typical work-life balance struggle, I guess. This is great.

Winter has set in alright. Mornings get as cold as 6 degrees now and it is getting harder to wake up. I still struggle to get into the gym before work. Last week I only managed it once. This week looked better and I’m back to 3-4 times. There are 3 large cookie jars sitting atop a filing cabinet in my office, barely 10 feet away. This week I have consciously stayed away, as much as possible. In previous weeks however, I’d stick my hand in one of them and fish out a few, several times a day. They’ve all gone to waist, and though my belt is still on that last hole (or is it the first?) I can feel it struggling and I really hate to loosen it a notch. Also, for over 2 months now, I have had one large coffee almost every morning. Although I made mine a skinny, it is still one large cup more than I used to have, on a daily basis. My coffee consumption is back to 4-5 cups a day and the last time I made it a long black was a long way back. I remember someone saying black coffee cause reduction in calcium absorption and at my age and given my propensity for poor dental health, I was conscious of preventing calcium deficiency so along with my increased caffeine intake, I added increased lactose intake together with all the white creamy fatty goodness of milk, skinny version notwithstanding. The worst culprits however, are the dinners. I get home about 7.30pm these days so I don’t cook. That means I don’t decide how much I eat. When I get home, Theresa often gets the food ready while I put the gym clothes in a soaking bucket, change and put my stuff away. By the time I’m ready for dinner, the damage has been done as a huge plate would be sitting on the kitchen bench-top. It’s great stuff and I hate to hurt her feelings but while it tastes fantastic, it is almost always too much, especially for an 8pm dinner. At that hour, I’d want to eat only a tiny sliver of anything, if at all. So you see, gym is becoming a necessity and those mornings I struggle to crawl in, are what’s saving me now, from a total disaster requiring new clothes altogether.

The Friday night bible study sessions in church are becoming difficult to concentrate on. Joe Hu, the Taiwanese lay leader, teaches in Mandarin and his son, Abe translates into English. They did John last year and that was great. This year, he has been doing Leviticus and while it is still pretty good as a whole, I’m finding that his interpretation has been laced with embellished lessons. Maybe I’m not sophisticated enough, but a lot of the stuff he said just aren’t there on the pages. He’d say something like leprosy means sin. It’d be alright if he just came out and say they were all personal applications and he is just drawing parallels but when he made it sound like that is what those chapters actually say, it creates havoc by making us look for symbolic matches to every thing said. While a lot of the rules, rituals and practices set out in that book obviously mean something, I thought the important principle was that God was creating a unique people, and setting them apart from other races. These rule and rituals make the Israelites different. They are created by God for them so He was creating a Kingdom where He is King and those are His rules. Whether each element of each rule represent something depends on whether other parts of the Bible say it does, not whether any Bible scholar says it does. A Bible scholar may know different shades of meanings to words, nuances, customs, culture or tradition which may lend a certain angle to what a certain element may mean but it is only conjecture, no matter how likely that interpretation may be true. This qualification however, has not been made and often, in the following home group meeting, time would be spent guessing at the different meanings of certain elements. Sure, it is not an unhealthy exercise but it is frustrating to see folks trying to find a definite answer when there probably isn’t one.

A dear friend is in Melbourne now, taking a break from what must have been a pressure cooker of a situation for him in Malaysia. He’s taking the opportunity to also look up some schools and houses, for when he eventually moves here later in the year. He’s here with 2 of his 3 young sons, with the youngest one remaining in Malaysia with his wife. I was on the phone with him yesterday and he said he had taken a drive to Mount Buller the previous day. Wow – all the way there with 2 young boys (5 and 7, I think). While it must have been great fun, it must also have been challenging. He’s such a close brother to me and while I’m glad to be at work and am enjoying the busy schedule, I wish I had more time to spend with him. He obviously needs to just sit down and chat. We’re catching up with him for dinner tomorrow, out in Berwick somewhere. While he is a very successful businessman so money would be the least of his problems, I don’t envy him his days ahead, as he moves lock stock and barrel, and relocate to Melbourne. How many families have done what he would be doing, because Malaysia chooses to continue its racist policies? Uprooting is a painful and potentially traumatic experience. We’ve been here for over 2½ years now and in some ways, are still adjusting to life here, like struggling to wake up in winter mornings. Yet we are one of the more blessed ones. We’ve lived here before (albeit in Sydney, which in some ways is a different world altogether), God has blessed Elysia and Theresa by letting them fit well in their school/work and recently, I have begun to enjoy the work here in my present place as well. Not all families blend in this way. Many struggle, some return after a while, preferring familiar surroundings to promise of a better future especially for the younger generation. This is so despite the fact that Melbourne, especially the area we are in, is increasingly populated by Asians and seeing and hearing Malaysians and Singaporeans is a near everyday thing. In fact on my floor, there’s a guy who speak in a way to make you feel like you’re in some office in Jalan Seri Kota instead of St Kilda Road.

While doing some research at work today, I came across a decision of the Federal Court of Australia, which categorically stated that Melbourne is the sporting capital of
Australia (Adrenalin International Powersports Pty Ltd v John Caines Management Pty Ltd [2004] FCA 206 10 March 2004). So all you Sydney-siders, there’s your legal endorsement so save your efforts. Although the judge concerned (one Marshall J) actually started his judgment with this very categorical statement, he of course followed it up with some examples of events held in
Melbourne, to substantiate his very bold (but true) claim. A Melburnian would readily appreciate what Marshall J was talking about. Australians love sports and excel in the sports they play in and Melburnians immerse themselves in soaking up such excellence, going all out at such events to be part of them. Sure, there is the occasional event requiring bus loads of school kids to prevent the embarrassment of empty seats but that is down to poor planning which result in an event overdose.  Of course, if you are not living in
Australia, you would not, like an ex-(Australian) boss of mine was wont to say, give a flying continental. Indeed, as far as the rest of the world is concerned: so what? Well for one thing, it is a fantastic lesson for someone like the brilliant Malaysian government (yes, them again – they are and have always been, my favourite piñata) who are world champion perpetrators of self-grandeur. The pre-occupation with building massive facilities when neither the performance nor the spectator interests are there to justify them is always infuriatingly curious.Of course, the true intention of the government is almost (I’m being generous) always to line their own pockets, for why else would you build huge sports facilities when you are a nobody in world sports? It wins an All-England badminton trophy every 10 years or so. It flatters to deceive in field hockey. It struggles to keep up with its neighbour in sepak takraw, a sport it invented. It sucks in football, a sport it excelled in 30 years ago when it used to hold its own against the now mighty Koreans. JS Park is now a household name, known across the world as the nippy winger down the right or left channels of the Theatre of Dreams. I doubt if many Malaysians can even name the First XI of the Malaysian football team. It sounds like a no-brainer but I guess it is too much to ask the government to simply develop various sports at school level, and spend the money there, instead of building grandiose stadium and complexes. I know a journalist from a Malaysian daily has recently gone to
London to take a closer look at the Sports Minister’s building project there. Maybe he’ll write something soon, as well. The point must be: have excellence in the sports first, which can be achieved without all those construction project. Maybe the ministers’ retirement funds or their mistresses’ jewellery collection need those projects but not Malaysian sports don’t. You must then create spectator interest, which is loads easier once the athletes start to deliver performances. In other words, you want to be a sports capital, you gotta love sports. 

If the Malaysian government has demonstrated any characteristics other than corruption and stupidity, it must be cowardice. Badawi and his fellow nincompoops must try and pay attention to this, if they can, or if they dare: Is Malaysia an Islamic state or not? Of course, it isn’t. But one has to constantly remind oneself this is a nincompoop government. Maybe it isn’t fair to label them cowards. It takes a certain level of intelligence for cowardice to kick in. One has to understand the issues at stake. Taking a stand requires understanding of what that stand entails, or the basis of that position. Maybe it is asking too much of these imbeciles. Or maybe they are smarter than their actions or statements suggest. A lot smarter, as it may turn out. They may have seen the need to take a stand, really are cowards and therefore would not take that stand, so pretend to be stupid. If that is the case, they have also excelled in misleading the people into thinking their problem is stupidity, not cowardice. Personally, I think it is both but in this instance cowardice is a darker shade ahead. They are too stupid to realise the difference (between an Islamic state and a secular state with Islam as the official religion) but in this instance, they are even more afraid to look in case they have todo anything at all.
Malaysia is not an Islamic state. The suggestion that it is was due to some mala fide of its previous prime minister. Mahathir had played this card to shore up its Islamic credentials at a time when he was embattled by the chest thumping Anwaristas. It bodes well for my point that we have to shout out loud every time we see a wrong. That wrong can come back to bite us and in this instance, post Lina Joy, the bite has become truly obvious. Kit Siang has repeatedly said this but no one in government has either the intelligence or the guts to pick this up in any way.
Malaysia is not an Islamic state. The

is not a superior court.
Malaysia is a secular state and its supreme law is the Federal Constitution. Islam is only an official religion and the

takes care of certain aspects of practitioners of that religion. It is therefore, a kuci-rat court of no significance whatsoever to non-Muslims. The imbeciles and cowards however, have so messed up the country that this otherwise insignificant institution has been turned into a monster with a roar it does not understand it should not have. It does not have the country’s best legal minds sitting on it so it is ill-equipped to administer the country’s laws. It certainly is not meant to rule on constitutional matters. Actually as an aside – the civil courts too, has for a long time now, sacrificed the best legal minds in order to have Malays sitting on the Bench. This however is an entry for another day. The government may be cowardly but the problem may be that its people too, would prefer to smoke the peace pipe than to sound the truth bugle. Maybe that’s the problem. Just as nary a whimper rose to counter Mahathir’s naughty claim, a sickly silence is likely to follow an initial thump from people like the Bar Council president and the NECF. Maybe the people do deserve the government they wouldn’t should at.

I still cant wrap my mind around this one.
Malaysia is a rich country. Much of the resources have been deployed to better the lot of the so-called indigenous people. A big portion of this in turn, went to religion. Money is spent on mosques which show up everywhere. Money is spent on Quran reading events which are held frequently, in all parts of the country. Money is spent on developing Islamic university and other religious (sorry should have said Islamic) education institution, Islamic culture and anything Islamic you can think of. Political leaders climb over each other to parlay their religious (again, I meant Islamic) credentials. Every government department you go to makes you feel like you’re in a deeply religious country, albeit the religion, is again and exclusively, Islam. For when was the last time you went into a government agency and saw either a portrait of Christ or a cross, or the Ganesh (the Hindu elephant god) or Shiva or Buddha hanging on a wall or sitting on a desk? Islam pervades and permeates the country in all aspects of life. Yet, for the embarrassingly rich amount of resources poured into Islam, why haven’t the knowledge of the average Muslim grown sufficiently strong for them to stand on their own two feet? Why does the Islamic leadership still see the need to protect and cushion its congregation against apostasy? Have they failed so miserably in their religious program? You’d think with all those years of unbridled support and endless funding, Islamic scholarship would be so strong amongst its common flock that anyone of them could be robust enough to defend his or her own faith. Yet, the government still needs to protect them. The government must still ring-fence them against the under-funded, trodden and bullied churches (or any other non-Islamic faith). Chinese and Indian tax dollars far outweigh those of the Malay, especially given their minority status. Where spending on religion is concerned, these largely Chinese and Indian tax dollars have gone almost entirely into mosques and development of the Islamic faith. Yet the churches and temples these non-Muslim taxpayers go to, are under threat by the government. They are under threat because if any one of their members turn to Islam, it is a one-way ticket to you know where. On the other hand, if one of theirs decide on their own accord (and against the gigantic tides of massive government funding) to turn away from Islam to Christianity or Hinduism say,  God help the church, because they have to contend with the executive, the administrative and the judiciary branches of the state. Injustice? As Kiddo would say: like duh…

“By insisting that a person who no longer professes the religion of Islam but has embraced another religion to seek an order of the Syariah Court is equivalent to insisting that a muallaf … is obliged to seek the clearance of the religious leaders or authority of his former religion. Mutual respect and tolerance surely cannot be fostered without due regard to the principle of reciprocity.” 

I was very heartened to read a statement from the NECF, which was issued last Friday in response to this landmark case on religious freedom in
Malaysia. The paragraph above is an extract of that statement. I was heartened not because it was a statement I would have made myself (though I agree with it entirely) but because it was made at all. It is great to see a body like the NECF carefully articulate its position and publicly air it.It isn’t a statement I would have made myself because I haven’t yet thought through the issues of individual rights versus the collective good and of truth in religion and the exclusive nature of its result. The former always has a place for the notion of balance but the latter is a lot trickier. If a religion is true, how does it not also be exclusive (and therefore divisive) unless it is a religion which suggests an “all road leads to
Rome” approach, which in my mind, is always suspect?  

Jesus said He is the way, the truth and the life, and that no one was to go to the Father except by Him. He acknowledged the divisive nature of this claim, saying he came as a sword, dividing families and communities. If truth divides, should it be sacrificed for the sake of unity? Can truth be upheld without necessarily causing division? Of course it can.  

The answer lies with agreeing to disagree. I don’t become your enemy just because I disagree with you, and there shouldn’t be a barrier to 2 persons remaining friends and having a reasonably healthy and harmonious relationship, just because they have different opinions and beliefs. This is such a no-brainer I can’t believe I just wrote it. Yet, this simple and fundamental fact is one which seems to escape practitioners of a certain brand of Islam in
Malaysia, especially. To them, we cannot be their friends or part of a mutual community, unless we agree with them or we never express our opinions and beliefs. Christianity has always been an exclusive belief. With Jesus making those claims set out above, how can it not be? Christianity is basically saying unless you are one (a Christian), you’re going where the sun shines just a tad too hot. Yet, for all the divisive potential, Christianity has never killed for its own sakes. Those who have killed in its name did so for other reasons. Christianity was only a cover to make the killings less culpable, indeed, more noble. Is this the real cause for the division caused by or attributed to Islam today? Is it all for money and politics? In
Malaysia maybe but what of elsewhere? There is so much to know and so little time to.  

I wonder too, about the issue of the relationship between individualism and the collective good. The law has long trekked and developed the idea of where the balance should be. What about religion? What does Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, or any other religion say about where this spot of balance should be? The church I know would go a long way to sit down with someone who is having problems with his faith. He’d be advised, counselled and prayed for. He’d have visits to his home. All these however, seldom (if ever) carry any suggestions of threats of physical harm or ostracism. There is no law in any Christian country I know, which seeks to legislate against leaving the faith. The reason is simple – how do you legislate against personal beliefs? If someone chooses to stop believing in something, how does legislation make him believe it anyway? He’d just, at best, retain the form of that belief. If I were a pastor of a church, I’d rather a member of my congregation who no longer believes, stay out of the church, than for that person to be forced to keep showing up and perform the rituals because the law says he must. His relationship with God would have been non-existent. How could he sincerely worship God when he’s in my church? 

Should I keep him in my church despite his (hopefully temporarily) dead faith, for the sake of keeping a lid on matters? No, of course not. Again, compulsion in matters of faith is a no-no. There is so much to think about, and articulate. It would have been such a luxury to be able to sit down with a clear mind to have all this set out.