It has been a holiday period of sadness. Of course a large part of it all has to do with the fact that I am all alone in these festive days. Theresa and Kiddo are in Malaysia and here I am, mostly alone. I feel terrible.

 

Compounding it all – the spate of sad, infuriatingly stupid stories about Malaysia have been occupying webspace of sites I frequent to catch up with Malaysian events. There is of course the Moorthy affair. The late mountaineering hero could not even die in dignity, as the religious department was hell bent on flexing its castrated and vacuous flab in order to feel important. It resorted to making statements no one can challenge. Cowardly and despicable. It stooped so low as to deprive a grieving widow of her opportunities to bid her late husband farewell, to mourn him properly. I am a Christian and I have my own beliefs as to his destination but even I draw a line and stop short of playing fast and loose with a grieving widow’s right to grief and to grieve. Then the High Court, long impotent, still could not rise to be counted on to save that widow. It hid under a table and said it had no power. These are all 3-star institutions at best – no ball room. None needed because these are all ball-less institutions. Cowing is what it is good at. Spineless slimeballs.

 

Then there’s the side splitting tale of draping the ancient pyramids with the majesty of the Malaysian flag. Is there no end to the stupidity of the present Malaysian government? No less a person than the Deputy Prime Minister, together with the Ministry of Youth & culture and the government of Selangor, the country’s most developed state, thought it a splendid idea and voiced their support. Aiyoh……………

 

Khairy Jamaluddin buying shares worth RM9.2 million also made the news. Sure, it is obscene for someone so young, with a history only of public service, and having no traceable family wealth, to amass that sort of money for such an investment. But this is Malaysia… enough said. Maybe Messrs Lim Kian Onn, David Chua and Kalimullah were generous with the payment terms so that young Khairy gets a fair crack at making it… I don’t know, but maybe this is less newsworthy – it is not an entirely impossible tsk tsk sort of transaction.

 

There’s also the news of yet another person falling victim to the public hazard of terribly regulated construction site safety. This guy, a young entrepreneur making it in corporate Malaysia, was crushed by a boulder while in his car. Died instantly.

 

Proton and MAS making ever bigger losses.

 

The mullahs giving themselves more bullying powers.

 

Just what is Malaysia coming to?

 

I just chatted with Theresa on the MSN. She said a couple, church friends, were sending their child to a private school in KL. They live in Klang. This couple would have to sacrifice a couple of hours each day just to send that poor child to school. Burning fuel, wasting time, stressing themselves out. Why? The system sucks – that’s why. Good schools are as scarce as good truffles these days. So one digs deep to get a whiff of it and then pay some to get it.

 

What’s happening to the country of my birth and childhood…

 

The recent fiasco over the late Moorthy affair in Malaysia is a dire warning to all non-Muslim Malaysians. Be extremely careful what you say or some idiotic Muslim can intepret what you said to mean you professed to be a Muslim and on your death this idiot could go and swear an affidavit saying you are one. Then the equally idiotic courts, especially the Syariah Court, can doom your family to abandoning their rights to give you a decent burial. As a non-Muslim Malaysian, you stand to be robbed right down to your grave.

 

Last night our office hosted a party for the building – this is a suburban commercial building, not a CBD building, so it’s of a thoroughly manageable scale – and in preparation for this party, work came to a halt by about 2.30pm. We started doing the various things we have been assigned. Andre and I went to a bottle shop to pick up some light beers (picked up J. Boag’s Premium Light) and some ice. When we returned, I did a little bit of work after packing the ice and beers into the eskies, before Lynette (boss’ wife) asked me to follow her to pick up a few platters from Safeway’s at The Glen. This was almost 4pm so work was well and truly halted. At 5pm, David Sharrock (the Boss) opened a bottle of red – a Coonawarra blend of Cab/Shiraz – so we took off. It was almost 8pm when we left office, but because it gets dark now only at close to 9pm, we didn’t feel the lateness. What we felt was that the Christmas/Holiday mood has truly kicked in.

Today is kiddo’s last day at school. It is supposed to be a day of fun and excitement. She brought a stack of Christmas cards with her, a gift for her class teacher (Mrs Jan Mattingly) and her winter jumper (a special Year 6 version with names of all Year 6 kids embossed) for her friends to sign. She brought a special texter for that.

Against these very high spirits a little dampener worked its way up: A few days earlier, a classmate’s mother died. She had been ill for a long time. Emil Dubovsky is the class soccer wizard and a popular kid. He has a younger brother in Year 3. On graduation night last Monday (19/12/05) there was quiet acknowledgement of the tragedy when Emil’s name was called out.

Last night, kiddo brought back a letter from what appears to be a Year 3 representative. It was a collection notice – someone wanted to buy a hamper for Emil’s family. Kiddo wanted to give her weekly allowance for that but as usual, took our silent response to be what it was – unenthusiastic and, generally a “no”.

It was strictly, a non-response so this morning in the car she asked me again. I tried to explain to her like so: We cannot respond to unplanned and spontaneous calls for charity as the constant streams of requests, if responded to, would bankrupt us. Furthermore, there is nothing to suggest the Dubovsky family is a needy one. The collection is very likely nothing more than an initiative borne out of someone’s spur of the moment act of kindness, probably someone from Year 3 and very likely a parent who was close to one or the both of Emil’s parents.

This is difficult for us only because kiddo is such a softie at heart and her kind generosity invariably stirs her into wanton acts of charity. That is not necessarily a bad thing but our (Theresa and my) oriental overseas-Chinese tradition treats such unguarded reaction as highly imprudent with very real hair-depleting results.

Of course all those thoughts were in my mind but as always morning is a difficult time (especially before the second cup of coffee kicks in) to articulate all that. What came out of my mouth was instead: “Do you really want to give? You don’t have to you know.” I sensed immediately kiddo’s disappointment with that and after a short haggling session I gave her a small change from my key-holder pouch. It was a little $2 coin. She took that, left the car and shoved it into her pocket. I know she feels she is not doing as much as she wants to. She walked, with a slightly noticeable lack of spring in her steps, towards the school gate.

Again, where oh where, is the sweet spot of balance between teaching my child to exercise a generous and giving spirit and acting prudently and wisely with her resources? Was I wrong to restrain her as I did?  It is after all, Christmas time and didn’t the party last night re-kindled any such giving spirits?

 

I have been assisting my boss with a trade insurance claim. This afternoon the client dropped in. Gave me a wad of invoices. I had requested them, to reply to the other solicitor’s request – all part of an informal discovery process.

I’ve just gone through the first of 3 piles and voila! Know what? There are Chinaman operators of trucking services in Melbourne as well. Not Chinaman as in Chinese operators but Chinaman as in style and documentation. Undated-and-unnumbered-invoices-which-are-not-labelled-as-invoices-so-one-isn’t-sure-whether-it-is-a-delivery-docket-or-an-invoice-or-a-statement-and-all-lumped-into-one-so-that-you-can-totally-bamboozled-trying-to-unravel-it-before-reducing-it-into-an-intelligible-form-to-avoid-looking-like-either-a-complete-idiot-or-a-complete-slob-when-the-documents-are-delivered-to-the-other-side.

I can use with less litigation work…