Month: November 2019

Between the Picky and the Prick

I was reading the news recently and came across this article from The Star. It’s our Human Resource Minister Kulasegaran saying, “As I am speaking, currently there are more than 640,000 job openings available. Not just the 3D (Dirty, Dangerous, Difficult) jobs, for example at the management level there more than 6,000; for professionals more than 21,000; as well as technical and associate professionals for more than 22,000.” He added “The biggest challenge for us is there are a lot of employment opportunities, but the youth are not willing to take these jobs.” Bold font emphasis is mine.

He was answering a question by DS Ismail Yaakob (BN-Bera) on the ministry to state whether the Pakatan Harapan government will be able to implement its election manifesto of creating one million job opportunities by the end of its five-year term.

First of all, if we add the management level, technical and professional jobs, it’s not even 10% of the 640k jobs available. Does it means the rest are all 3D jobs? Why do you like give half-assed answers that opens up your backside Minister?

This is why I hate our half-assed politician and minister. They think they are so good and performed well enough when in actual fact it’s far from what it should be. Let’s take a closer look at your ministry.

Here’s the Human Resource Ministry mission statements I took from https://www.mohr.gov.my.

Clearly, in the mission statements you wanted to “Increase employability and employment rate of the local workforce to meet the national labour market needs”. So it’s not just jobs creation, but also getting these unemployed youth to get jobs. Now, if what this prick said is true, that we have more than 640K jobs available and that 150K of those jobs were created within the year. We would’ve significantly reduced unemployment rate already by now because back in March, I remember our unemployed people in the country are in the range of 500k. So let’s take a look at the latest unemployment rate by the Department of Statistics Malaysia.

Unemployment rate has remained flat since the beginning of the year. – DOSM

So there you go you Minister Prick. You have done nothing so far. You can add even a million jobs and if the unemployment rate doesn’t change you can forget it. It’s just like increasing minimum wage, you can increase minimum wage to a hundred thousand a month. If the purchasing power doesn’t increase, you can forget it.

Now look, I’m a reasonable person, if he doesn’t stop at saying our youth are picky and continued to acknowledge that the ministry hasn’t done enough to either educate these picky youth or create more jobs that suit the youth and these are the things we are doing to fix that, then I’m okay. It means he understands that there are still more things that he needs to do. Then again, only a minister with a big cojones will acknowledge that he/she still have a lot to do. This particular minister, this particular prick? Not so much.

I have said before that youth nowadays have mismatched expectations when it comes to jobs. This is not something new, we all know this. You know this, Minister Prick knows this, I know this. So instead of saying the same thing over and over again, Minister Prick, you need to work on getting it resolved.

Another thing, you don’t get to say it out loud that youth are picky. You haven’t even done anything significant yet, so you haven’t earned the right to say it. Don’t for a second think you can be like Dr. Mahathir, he has earned the right. He can say Malays are lazy or whatever the heck he wants. He has earned it. You Minister Prick, haven’t. We the rakyat, get to say whatever we want because we put you in office. Remember why we put you in office? To solve the damn problem.

So start working on getting it resolved, stop telling us youth are picky because you are such a prick for saying it.

So, don’t be one.

Peace be unto you.

Of Mother Tongue and Foreign Tongue

Our third child Ayra (pictured with her elder sister above), will be turning three later this month. This means next year would be her first year of school. So it’s that time of the year where the wife and I starts discussing which school to send her to.

The first thing that came up to my mind was, we need the school to get her her to talk more in English. I find that Ayra at three years old can’t speak English as well as I’d like her to. Probably because the current nursery she’s in now primarily are Malay language centric. Wife on the other hand thinks that Ayra can communicate well enough in Malay and that she wants Ayra to continue to converse in Malay.

She added that both Alia and Danial, Ayra’s elder siblings, often have to ask us what this Malay word or that Malay word means and often, we have to translate these words from Malay to English for them to understand. I find that this is good as they are leaning to have English as the first Language and Malay being second. They usually speak in English between the two of them and with me. While with their mother, they would speak in Malay since that how the wife wants it.

Just like many of us who wants PPSMI, I believe English to be the current language of business, the language of the world, and the language of knowledge. Most of the big businesses today communicate in English, travelling around the world is made easier when one can speak English and there are millions of book in English that we can read and learn from.

Now, let’s not get into this conversation where people in Japan with millions in business dollars doesn’t speak much English. Or English doesn’t do shit when travelling to Korea and lastly, there are also millions of books in other language and the mother of all books that is the Quran is not in English.

It’s obvious that other languages have their place place as well and I’m not challenging that. So let’s not go there. The point on my part is, would I rather have my kids be better and more comfortable in English than in Malay or do I want them to be better and comfortable in Malay more instead. Why not both?

Why am I having this thought now? Why didn’t I have this thought back then when Alia or Danial was turning three years old? Thinking about it, it’s probably due to the recent trend in social media I saw. Folks were questioning the “Malay-ness” of those who express their thoughts on social media in English. It basically revolves around how these people didn’t uphold the standard of Malay Language as the official language, how much they didn’t appreciate the nuances or the beauty of the Malay Language, There are also those folks who shame these English speaking Malays. Example, these folks are Mat Saleh wannabe or Mat Saleh celup, acah-acah foreigner. The list goes on and on.

Lot’s of people out there shaming folks who speak or write or even listen to songs in English. An adult can handle these, but for small kids, it’s probably a little harder. By a little I mean a lot. And it’s getting ridiculous. Really really ridiculous. Heck, I saw someone cursing on social media, and in the replies, I saw folks shaming the lady for cursing in English. Just how screwed up is that. And here I thought I’ll see people replying to her to denounce the cursing but instead cursing is okay, just curse in Malay lah, not English please. “Kena hormati bahasa ibunda”. It’s not our “Budaya” to curse in English. “Mana kemelayuan kau mat salleh celup?” It’s getting really ridiculous.

Staring in the the future, I can’t wait till China become the superpower in both economy, culture and probably military. By that time, the language of the world will be Mandarin. and I can’t wait to see the face of the same folks when they see lots of Malay folks starts tweeting, talking and cursing in Mandarin. If you think these folks are allergic to English, think again, they are far more allergic to the Chinese, not just the language but everything Chinese.

Be it mother tongue or foreign tongue, “pi mai, pi mai, tongue tu jugak”.