The Reality of Being a Malaysian

A friend had just sent me an article and in the article contained hard facts, facts that I cannot deny. I am not too sure if you feel the same as me, I realized that friends & relatives around seem to get lesser & lesser.

Those years when Chinese New Year drew near, all sorts of gatherings & appointments filling up the diary but somehow this year 2010, I felt emptiness inside. Even the phone calls & face to face meet up had become much lesser.

Perhaps they are busy with their own things to do or perhaps people nowadays prefer to stay in. However, this is not entirely true, thinking further, actually all my old friends & relatives are very much alive and well, the hard fact is indeed they left the country, Malaysia.

Take my sister for example, she has plan to buy a property in Singapore and eventually settle down there with her husband.

My friends, Myke, Damian, Steve and a few more had already settled down in Singapore. All of them are already PR and some were offered citizenship too. Most of them are enjoying an income much higher than most of us here who still stuck in Malaysia.

Another friend, Lawrence had migrated to US, Kenji & Loh to Japan. My cousins in Canada & Australia. These are just few names that I mentioned here, the list can go on & on...

At first, I thought these are individual cases but after further thought, these are more than individual cases, in fact these are general symptoms of our society. These are big numbers and the statistics as follow.

Department of Foreign Affairs released the figures and confirmed that the situation is real. From March 2008 through September 2009, a total of 300,000 Malaysians migrated to other countries, among them 200,000 left between Jan - Aug 2009 (in the span of 8 months).

Cumulatively, a total of 2 millions Malaysians migrated, this number is close to the number of Indonesians workers in Malaysia today. The difference is, those who migrated are mostly professionals & middle class people. Hard fact indeed!

Those who migrated have many reasons to do so (even myself); to pursue career development, for the future of their children, in search of better life & environment. In short, they actually lost hope on Malaysia. With the recent racist remarks thrown to us Chinese as prostitutes & fellow Indian as beggars, not forgetting too attacks on churches & temples. What is happening in this country?!?!?

50 years ago, people said Malaysia is very good, far better than Hong Kong and even Japan. 30 years ago, people said Malaysia is not bad comparable to South Korea & Taiwan (no more mentioning bout Hong Kong & Japan). 20 years ago, people said Malaysia can do-lah, at least better than China & Thailand. 10 years ago, people said no matter how bad Malaysia is, cannot be worse than Vietnam & Indonesia (China had since booming into first world country).

Today, the economic growth rate in the above mentioned Asian countries had far exceeded Malaysia. Social & intellectual development had also developed tremendously. And we had politicians in the ruling party comparing us to Philippines, Myanmar & Zimbabwe. Sigh...

However, an economist who recently surveyed Philippines foreseen that in 20 years to come, Malaysia will replace Philippines as the world exporter of Malaysian maids.

Over half the century, Malaysians live in the big old imperial housing complex, closed up and survive on properties left behind by the ancestor; continue to consume up social resources, wasteful, and drive away talents; they never talk about competitiveness, totally neglect productivity, and hate meritocracy.

When Asia economic storm hit in 1997, Malaysia closed their doors, thinking we beautifully avoided a disaster, there even think of themselves as genius, being able to handle the situation so well. However, just look at other countries in our neighborhood, they stand up, face the storm, and walk out of the storm. They overhaul the system, improve the processes and march forward, they moved up to a new level. And Malaysia, still walking on the spot.

These are all hard facts. It is not my choice to be born a Malaysian, even if other fellow Malaysian from other races would hurl racist remarks on us Chinese, it is indeed not my choice. Why don't we work together to build the nation so that we can once put Malaysia on the map of the world? Why all the negative publicity about us Malaysians?

Time to wake up, we are very very late now...