Every generation feels that the generation after them is not doing it right and moral decay is setting into its youngsters. And the world is one step nearer to annihilation or Armageddon, they say! And it started when Elvis the Pelvis began gyrating his pelvis in his blue suede shoes, and when Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13-year-old first cousin!That was more than half a century ago, but we are still standing!
I guess, we, need time to accept the inevitable change which will happen with or without our approval. When more and more agrees with this practice, then it is no more a taboo but an accepted norm and socially acceptable and expected code of conduct.
The vicinity where I worked, has, over the years, blossomed from a predominantly housing estate to as an oasis of a congregation of a multitude of cultures of the world over with dual carriage highway cutting through, a hypermarket and a giant m (McDonald's!) logo right smack in the hype of activities. All this happened when a university college was established here some three to four years previously. It is a common sight to overhear students in various hue and stature loitering, walking chatting amongst themselves or on their mobile phones in different foreign tongues (African, Arabic, Persian and Chinese sounding). One can easily differentiate the difference between Mandarin spoken by a mainland Chinese and a Malaysian - way too many words with 'sh' in their sentences!
Together with this free flow of money into the country and the appreciation of property value around here, trickled in some alien and disturbing cultures... Or am I plain old fussy old despot forever whining and romanticising about the good old times again and again?
Ever since the leaders of the country saw that there was money to be made, in terms of foreign exchange, in promoting Malaysia as an educational hub, every Tom, Dick and Harry of an entrepreneur remotely or at all linked to the education sector decided to join the bandwagon in building colleges and university colleges. That saw mushrooming of many 'fly-by-night' colleges which were built with the sole purpose of generating 'moolah' for their business masters. Period. Making Malaysia in the same map as Harvard, Oxbridge and Singapore are least or at all on their agenda.
We can see that the influx of people to this part of the town has changed its landscape altogether. Seeing strewn empty or broken beer bottles seem to have been accepted as part of the fauna and flora of the district. We used to have an outdoor badminton court with adjacent garden and benches where residents used to spend the evenings. It was primarily for daytime use only. Now, due to rampant nocturnal clandestine activities alien to our cultures, by many foreign students, this place is now brightly lit all through the night with fluorescent lights, making it as least romantic as possible for lovebirds to actively pursue their nocturnal bedroom antics out in the open but instead study, for a change!
Living up to Beverly Hill students seen in the TV hit series '90210', we can see many students jaywalking to their lecture halls casually dressed like they were beach-combers on vacation in Bali's Kuta Beach; complete with loose spaghetti strap blouses, hot pants and beach slippers with little left to imagination of the simple-minded. I do not think we are talking about MIT and Stanford stuff here!
And almost every day, one can notice broken beer bottles lacing the roads around the college. Is studying so stressful that the student have to vent their frustrations by squashing bottles? Back in my varsity, it was illegal to bring in alcoholic beverages. Times are a-changing!
You better shape up or be shipped out! Accept it! The end is near...21st December 2012 ain't far away, you know...
I came across a student from China who was a 2nd-year student in one of these colleges who went to a clinic for an ailment but could not relate her symptoms to the attending doctor as she was not well versed in English and had to get the nursing aid to be her translator. Her justification for not knowing English even though she was an international student was that she was only learning diploma in Music! So, that is the type of student we seem to be attracting; not the earth-shattering revolutionary thinkers of the future like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates who will one day change the world we live in.
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