Happy Eid ul-Fitr

Happy Eid al Fitr to everyone! This year yours truly is still traveling the distant worlds and currently in Abu Dhabi for a short 3 weeks of vacation, erm i meant learning.. :P

So the 1st Syawal had come and gone, while many people may be gearing up for a few more weeks of celebration or just getting those office attires ready for work on monday, i guess we had some issues that needed discussion.

So HINDRAF had came out of their shell and went to visit the dear PM on the first day of raya. And after so, mainstream media had blasted this act as desecrating the holy day of celebration. As i ponder these comments, let us point our thought on a few matters..

When the PM and the cabinet so called make a Hari Raya open house, i wonder who actually pays for the food and everything else? Is it from the kindness and the charitable attributes of the government that we so desperately want to believe? or does it actually comes from the coffers of the government which is actually the taxpayers money that the malaysian people paid over the months?

When we look above the cultural perception that Aidilfitri is a time for forgiveness and visiting families and friends, we may find that the real concept of Aidilfitri or Eid ul-Fitr actually means the Festival of the Iftar, or to celebrate that after one month of fasting, where we have successfully conquered our demons. Have they been good the whole month, and not detaining people without reason? I leave it to all of you to think about it.

Personally, I think the ISA needs a recheck, or even more so demolished. The ISA has become a handy master key (or lock instead??) to all crime issues in Malaysia. Why take matters to court when it takes a few minutes to sign a paper and send a dude to jail for 2 years. When that 2 years end sign another paper or maybe an extension to the old paper and condemn the dude to another 2 years in jail. If he commits murder, and the law says he must go to jail for so-so years, then give him 20 minutes to pack his stuff and send him to his cell. End of story, right? We should be able to make Malaysia a better place then, when all criminals can be effectively shut behind bars within days. But then again, who do we judge as a bad person?

ISA has been the joker for the cowards, we use it when we feel threatened, and by keeping it we condemn ourselves to fear all our lives. It is like bringing a piece of notes into the exam hall. We tell ourselves we wont take it out unless it is necessary, but in the first sign of hardship, we fall to our knees and beg the devil to give us answers, and thus take out the notes and start copying. Why do we do that? It is because we lack the trust in our own abilities, we lack the courage to see it through, we lack the strength to accept that if we fail, it is because of our shortcomings that we overlook the matters when we ought not to. Zaid Ibrahim was right, the government does not need him anymore on the day they invoke the ISA, because when ISA comes out and haunt you, no law is ever going to protect you.

I am so intrigued by an article written by Johan Jaafar in NST. He tells us about his childhood story of being friends with a chinese boy and another malay boy. That reminds me most of my childhood. I am pretty much blessed to be born into a mixed parentage family because no matter how i want to, i cannot be a racist. My mother is half malay-indian, My dad is chinese so who else can I be racist to? I lived for 14 full years in Sabah, where you can never distinguish a person to a race by speech, skin color or biological traits. My first crush on a girl who was chinese, and i had enough reason to believe that the first person to have a crush on me was also a chinese girl (both not the same person ya,btw i was super cute). I didnt ever mind being the only dark skinned boy in a class of 50. Everyone accepted me as a friend, I was invited to parties and to do stuff. I studied hard and did well in school, and at one point in time, i was in the top 15 student out of hundreds who applied for entrance and scholarship into a largely private and prestige chinese high school.

In the end is up to us to believe we can or cannot, and to choose who do we ultimately become. Lets borrow a quote from one of my favourite persons: Nelson Mandela.

No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
-Nelson Mandela