Thursday 28 April 2011

1st Malaysia ASEAN Regional Bloggers Conference (1MARBC)

I had the opportunity to attend the above event held at InterContinental Hotel on 24 April 2011 courtesy of Malaysia Blog House... thanks to Tony Yew!


Being a sucker for punctuality, I had to sacrifice my Sunday morning sleep-in just to be there early so as to not miss any 'juicy' details that might crop up! Well, it goes without saying that the timing could not have been more appropriate, considering the goings-on in the cyber world... xxx videos and all!


So, there I was in the early Sunday morning and, finding my way up to the venue of the conference, i.e. the ballroom, I found myself facing an empty registration counter. Nevertheless, the registration girls arrived not long after and I promptly registered myself.


By and large, the Conference was a success in my opinion, considering the gargantuan task the committee had to shoulder... I was told they only had something like 2 months to prepare. Compound that with the announcement of the Sarawak state elections, it must have been excruciatingly tiring for the committee... as some of my friends would say, 'Gua tabik spring sama lu la bro!"


The presence of bloggers form around the region, with some having to dodge bureaucracy back home just to be here, was a pleasant surprise. And much were learnt from their very own experiences in their respective countries. 


Apart from the valuable workshops and the (ehem!) generous food, from breakfast to lunch and on to dinner, with breaks in between, a major achievement for the organizers would be the presence of two of the most influential personalities in the country, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak and former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamed. They attended the opening ceremony with their charming spouses and were very obliging to the participants, taking pictures and signing autographs.


I don't know about the rest of the participants, but I felt an air of camaraderie and a great deal of warmth, pleasantly present throughout the event. Needless to say, the media coverage was pretty extensive with all mainstream media reporting the event at first break. Print media had them on front page, while the electronic media reported it as the first news.


For those of you who missed the tv news reports, here are the recordings -




TV2


TV3




All in all it was a successful event, and though there were some hush-hush whispers and little voices amongst some of the local participants such as "How come so-and-so were not invited huh?", which is pretty much the norm in Malaysia, I'd say kudos to the organizing committee for a job well done!


The closing was pretty much an informal affair with most participants expressing hope that there will be a follow-up forum in the near future, and with standards being set at such a high level, it will be tough to match, but hey, there's always a first for everything! So don't fret guys, even if the next forum is held on a low-key basis, it's the quality that counts! Ehem! Phuket is a nice choice! ;-)


And now that the curtains are drawn, and the applause fading, the prevailing question in the minds of most of us is... now what next? Where do we go from here? How do we keep the momentum going?


Any clue guys?

Wednesday 27 April 2011

Of Anwarism and the Politics of Hate

The state of affairs in recent years are seeing a worrying trend in Malaysian politics. The 'politics of hate' and racial attacks are planting the seeds which will eventually grow into a very menacing tree.

The recent Sarawak state elections is a case in point. I will not go into the gory details of what transpired there, as I'm quite sure that most of you would have read/heard about it from whatever source of informaton you have. The choice of whether to believe or not any of these stories is entirely yours to make.

Whichever way you look at it, one factor seem to stand out like a sore thumb - Anwar Ibrahim. He seem to be at center of everything. And I'm not talking about PKR, mind u! As much as most Malaysians would want to believe, PKR is a 'spent bullet' if we could call it that.

But Anwar Ibrahim is in a different class alltogether. He appears to have this magnetic effect on people, particularly the disgruntled lot in our community. Now, lets take a step back and examine his progress over the years. Not to do a historical study, but rather to see where or what his actions were leading to.

Student days - led the student movement as a radical leader, anti-establishment - POWER
Deserted PAS and joined UMNO - knew that PAS would not be the right platform - POWER
UMNO days - Strove on popularism, sensationalism and controversy to get what he wanted - POWER
Mahathir dilemma - having built his support all-round, he began to challenge Mahathir - POWER
PKR days - insisted on leading the party with an iron fist without the possibility of being challenged - POWER
Pakatan Rakyat - opportunity to wield his POWER with a view to take over the country's premiership - ABSOLUTE POWER

See the common denominator there? And IF he does get to Putrajaya, and thats a HUGE 'IF', what would be his first (and possibly last) mission? Everyone knows that the country is not exactly in the doldrums, the economy is improving... people are, by and large, happy, albeit a small group of disgruntled so-called saviour-wannabes, who will continue to be disgruntled, regardless!

A simple psychoanalysis of his behaviour will show some glaring possibilities:-

He wanted to be Prime Minister ---> He was denied that opportunity by Mahathir ---> He hates Mahathir ---> He wants the whole world to hate Mahathir ---> He thought he could takeover the country after Mahathir left ---> He was wrong! ---> He hates Najib ---> He wants the whole world to hate Najib ---> He wants the country to be chaotic, not peaceful ---> He hates peace-loving people ---> He's getting older ---> He hates getting old ---> Now, you do the math!

So, back to the earlier question of what will he do IF he gets to Putrajaya? You guessed it... take REVENGE! So, his struggle all these years was with one, and only one, objective - to take revenge on those people who made his life miserable.

The fact that he brought it on himself does not matter, just as much as the future of this country does not matter to him. Think about it people!

Monday 25 April 2011

1Malaysia and Me

Someone asked me recently what I thought about the ’1 Malaysia’ concept. I pondered for a while, my eyes staring blankly into the horizon and blurted… You wanna know what ’1Malaysia’ is? Just take a trip down memory lane… my thoughts were instantly transported to my growing up years in the suburbs of KL.. to a place called ‘Peel Road’.
 
Now, here is a community which embraced the 1Malaysia concept in totality. The fact that we were made up of different racial backgrounds with different religious beliefs were of little significance, and it didn’t make any of us any less a muslim or christian or hindu or buddhist. My best friend then was a Chinese, Mah Seng Teck, and his whole family was like my second family. I had no qualms about staying over at his place and spending almost the whole day in his house…including having meals with them, and they were understanding enough about my religious beliefs and totally abstained from cooking pork.

My immediate right neighbour, was a Hindu family, while the one on our left was a Eurasian family and as far as I can remember we never had any quarrels and the kids would come over for a game of ‘konda-kondi’ in the evenings since our house had a larger lawn. On weekends, we would gather at the nearby football field and play our hearts out. After the game, we would all gather around the public water pipe and drink straight out of the tap head… and none of us had cholera or any other sickness as a result of it!

At times a game of ‘chopping’ at Mah’s place would leave all of us with tennis ball marks all over our clothes (for the benefit of the Gen-X’ers, ‘chopping’ is a game of eliminating the other players from the field by throwing a really wet tennis ball at them). Almost always, I’d get a good tongue-lashing once I got home!

But never in my wildest dreams then, would I have thought of labeling any of my friends, or even mere acquaintances for that matter, as ‘pendatang’ or question their loyalty to the country. And they in turn never really bothered about ‘ketuanan Melayu’ or fear the Keris in the display cabinet at the corner of our living room. Religious celebrations were celebrated by all and sundry… I remember joining my Eurasians friend when they went carolling from house to house on Christmas eve… and my other friends would accompany me to the Mosque on the morning of Hari Raya and wait until the prayers were over… then we would all go from house to house, collecting duit raya… in the evening we would all go and have a good time with the ‘collections’.

Aaah! those good ol’ days… if only we could re-live that spirit now, and watch our children do the same things we did then, ’1Malaysia’ would not be a slogan, but rather the very essence of Malaysians.