Over the weekend I was bed-bound, stricken with a heavy dose of diarrhoea. I didn’t do a lot of things being aside from reading a heavy dose of blog posts. Some of the more interesting blog posts are from anak si hamid. She’s a ~70 years old lady from Singapore who was a teacher. I followed the blog when it first started several years ago after being introduced by Rocky Bru. What draws it to me is the heavy dose of ‘what does it means to be a Malay’. This particular para that I read (way back in 2008) struck a chord in me, it still resonates within me from time to time. I’ll reproduce it verbatim.
The Malays are always going on about ‘berbudi bahasa’. And yet Malay men AND ‘hijab-ed’ women as well, both young and old have left me standing with my bags on the LRT while they remained seated, sometimes pretending to sleep; they have cut the queue and pushed in front of me at cashier’s counters without blinking an eyelid, they have knocked into me without saying a word of apology and they sullenly take our food orders without any thank you even though we show our appreciation by thanking them! Islam Hadhari? They first have to learn to be Malays- polite Malays like their grandfathers and great-grandfathers who were untainted by the desire to be Orang Putih celop or Arab-celup
This piece was published way back in 2008. This may sound like an old lady scolding young people about manners but sadly, it’s that. We boast of our Islamic tendencies, we declared that we are an Islamic country, we had Islam Hadhari as the centre piece of our nation’s progress, we demand for Hudud, we even shout ‘Allahu Akhbar’ every time time our politician finishes a sentence in his speech. Unfortunately, we lack manners still. We need a 70-yr old makcik to blog, scold the young folks.
Anyway, I digress, back to the main reason why I decided to write something today. Her latest post again struck a chord in me. It’s titled “Perfidy” (Defined as the state of being deceitful and untrustworthy). I urge everyone to read it and see if it struck your chord.
Talking about chords, I’m not terribly fond of Facebook nowadays. There’s too much negativity emitting from my timeline and my chords are all in a bind reading them posts. Strangely, the negativity doesn’t seemed to appear when I’m talking to my friends face-to-face. The negativity is almost exclusively through Facebook posts only. I’m now starting to think that perhaps the real person is the one on FB instead of the one in real life.
Personally, I think Facebook is just the means to communicate, it can be a phone, it can be face-to-face and it can also be a piece of paper with words written on it. So, as a Malay Muslim, let’s think and think again if what we are posting on the Net reflects who we are. Are we the kind of person who only complain about work/family/friends/politicians day-in and day-out? In a nutshell, are we that big of a complainer?
Answer is yes! Malaysian are famous as a big complainer. We complain and complain and complain about things but in the end, we still swallow it whole. Take the classic case of McDonalds and KFC, we complained that the price of these fast foods are getting higher ever year or that chicken wing are getting smaller, but we still visit the stores religiously. The latest act that is spot on in depicting us to be a big complainer but lacking action is regarding ‘Objection Notice’ against the DBKL assessment rate hike. There was a huge ruh-roh on FB about this recently and it’s gaining thousands likes and shares. Just how may people have actually submitted the objection notice officially? Just slightly over 10% of the total 500K house owners have submitted the notice. Whelp, I guess that’s us. Tau komplen saja, kerja tak mau buat.
Bajunid's Blog of Sort 