Pull up your socks!

I remember a mate in school who thought that his teacher was commenting on the loss of elasticity of his school socks whenever the examination results were out and he was reprimanded for the outcome! Of course, over time, he came to realise the real meaning of his teacher's message, and he is now a grown individual and a respected member of society!

For so long, the civil servants of the country have been working with a chip on their shoulder, thanks to the legacy left by the colonial master as CSR to the natives, knowing very well that their positions would not be terminated. At worst, they would be transferred to another department. It did not matter anyway. They were not there to learn or perform their delegated duties. It is their part-time job, really. Their real work begins after office hours. With so much comfort in life, and the powers that be bending over backwards to cast a safety net to cushion any form of hardship, they had it good.

So, when a crisis of enormous international magnitude occurs, they are caught embarrassingly unprepared, with their pants down. Many standard common sense protocols are allowed to slide by. The 40 years of dormancy in a stuporous, zombie-like state have been laid bare for all to see. If the civil service is already poor, the armed forces are unprepared to respond to an unidentified flying object in their airspace. It is reminiscent of a book that had no publishing licence for years but was only banned after its contents offended certain sections of society.

Wake up, roll call. As a true Malaysian, do you realise how embarrassing it is to showcase the country's brightest minds floundering while stringing sentences that confuse listeners about whether he is speaking in the present or past tense?

But, you justify... That it is a unified, organised plan to belittle and ridicule you.

Lackadaisical attitude, that is all

I wrote sometime ago about errors in signboards, atrocious state of English Language in the country and the lackadaisical attitude of people on power to ensure perfection or near perfection in whatever they do. Well, it looks like the country is only filled pompous over fed individuals who just delegate their duties to their subordinates, sleep on their job and just live off the hard work of foreign hands. Lately, it was brought to my attention of two notices that brought quite an embarrassment to the people who were given the responsibility to carry it on. (see this too!)

In the first instance, a congratulatory greeting ended up emitting the wrong vibes. A simple misplacement of letters gave an embarrassment that stinked to high heavens. (from TAHNIAH to TAHINAH, as tahi denotes faeces, nah is a derogatory and half hearted way of offering something). As the message was supposed to be a congratulatory note to a very powerful man, many heads are set to roll.
Trickling down to ground level, even in the supermarkets, labelling of goods are left to the imagination of immigrant workers to coin out new words in the Malaysian language. Mosquito traps are hot selling items these days due to public panic of dengue fever. In one supermarket, dengue (or denggi in Malay language). The supervisors must have left it to the menial workers to design the labels and this is what they got... A label displaying a RM29.99 device to eradicate jealousy and ill thoughts. You see, DENGKI is just that!
Unlike our forefathers who were generally hardworking people who only believed in the mantra of hard work as the only to success, we are slowly evolving to become a nation of laggards but still want to live in pomp and splendour. Because things have been relatively easy thus far, everyone thinks that it is their birth right to expect some kind of special treatment. The new form of slavery is dependance on foreign labour. Little do we realise that what happened in the 'Planets of the Apes' may indeed may become a reality. The apes who were initially recruited to help around the home eventually became too smart. One spark started a mutiny and pretty soon the world was ruled by generations and generations of apes of worsening brutality!

Broken windows syndrome

William D. Eggers and John O'Leary
Policy Review
Fall 1995, Number 74

Excerpt:

'In a 1982 Atlantic Monthly article titled "Broken Windows," James Q. Wilson and George Kelling argued that disorder in a community, if left uncorrected, undercuts residents' own efforts to maintain their homes and neighborhoods and control unruly behavior. "If a window in a building is broken and left unrepaired," they wrote, "all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. . . . One unrepaired window is a signal that no one cares, so breaking more windows costs nothing. . . . Untended property becomes fair game for people out for fun or plunder."

'If disorder goes unchecked, a vicious cycle begins. First, it kindles a fear of crime among residents, who respond by staying behind locked doors. Their involvement in the neighborhood declines; people begin to ignore rowdy and threatening behavior in public. They cease to exercise social regulation over little things like litter on the street, loitering strangers, or truant schoolchildren. When law-abiding eyes stop watching the streets, the social order breaks down and criminals move in.

'"Stable neighborhoods can change in a few months to jungles," declare Wilson and Kelling. Disorder also can have dire economic consequences. Shoppers will shun an area they perceive as being "out of control." One study analyzing crime in 30 different areas found that the level of disorder of a neighborhood -- more than such factors as income level, resident turnover, or racial makeup -- was the best indicator of an area's lack of safety.'

---

 St. Joe Valley Greens, South Bend, IN