And another bites the dust, and another...

Finally my children managed to speak with their cousin in Canberra via Skype. Wow! Star Trek technology has materialized within our lifetime! Maybe asking for Scotty to beam us up (i.e. teleporting) is asking for too much!
So there he was, my nephew, proudly showing to his cousins, with the web cam a guided tour around his one room studio apartment. His parents do not mind paying a bomb for his education. They feel that it is their god-sent duty to ensure the best for their eldest son. They also know that they have 2 other kids to educate.

Beam us up, Scotty!

Now, coming back to our hero in the limelight, as any other affluent non-bumiputera Malaysian student, the last thing on the mind of these 18 year olds is to do STPM (A levels) at the public school. After reaping the benefits of an almost free Malaysian education with its highly competitive surroundings (depends what you want to achieve, really), the children, whose path is tailor-made by the equally combative parents and the fueled adequately by constant spoon-feeding and sometimes Ryle's tube feeding, get disillusioned by the discriminatory and sometimes nonsensical country's policies. With the opportunities available at their disposal (pre-university education albeit costing the price of C4), with their qualifications they fly the nest, get exposed to freedom of expression, human rights, ability to decide they want in life (maybe as they mature into adulthood) and return home to their motherland unlike what they teach you in Sunday School about the prodigal son - unless, of course, there is political unrest or fear of nuclear reactor meltdown.
As I wrote some posts ago, the true number of Government sponsored students frightened off by the radioactive scare seems to be increasing by the day and they want to come back. Hey, more than four thousand sponsored students are there at the latest count. Are we such an intelligent nation that even a non-English non-Malay speaking nation harbours so many of our students - and Government sponsored?Probably, in the latest turn of events they are just joining the bandwagon to get a free ride back home!