• pigduck
• Aug 21,2006
• In: Rants

Thieves and such…

Yes was quite an ok day. I woke up pretty early and had two slices of toast. I put creamy butter on one of them and ate the other (the skin/crust - whatever you call it) plain.

I had Maggi Instant Porridge for lunch which tasted nice but you could tell they put extra seasoning… I could feel the thirst while eating my porridge. Dropped my little sister off at dance class and then proceeded to look at show houses with my mom. It wasn’t very fun.

She was explaining to me this and that… the interior designer for these show houses have excellent taste but I can’t imagine anyone wanting to live in such ID-ed houses… I mean, how can you?? You wouldn’t want to mess it up because it’s just so beautiful… like an artwork.

We then had our 2nd lunch at a kopitiam … the food was bad… I was famished though so I gobbled my prawn mee…

Came home and watched some TV I think… Pleasantville was on and I was trying to make sense of it. I still don’t get the show since I have never watched it from the beginning… it’s something to do with black and white people turning coloured…something about expressing emotions… I don’t know.

My little sister and I then had our Gilmore Girls session. We hadn’t watched any episodes since Thursday. I could have continued after 3 episodes but my little sister was getting antsy.

We then made our way to a jazz festival with a buffet spread. The buffet spread wasn’t all that wonderful - there was char koay teow, rojak (I didn’t get to eat any!!), salad (cucumber, capsicum, carrots and lettuce), satay (beef and chicken), lamb, garlic bread, braised mushroom and broccoli, grilled kurau fish, water and beer. There was three layer kuih, ice kacang and ice cream for dessert.. oh and how could I forget??? There was assam laksa… yum… I didn’t get to eat any char koay teow… it’s not my favourite dish usually but now that I’m thinking of the food, I wish I had eaten some…

Came home and started watching The Wedding Date with Debra Messing … it was pretty nice and then suddenly… all the drama started.

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My dad was contently playing spider when all of a sudden, he sprinted for the door… I asked my little sister what was going on and she, being the ever clueless one said she didn’t know and said someone had been robbed.

After peering out our 3rd floor balcony and attempting to listen to all the conversation (since sound travel upwards), I made out that something had happened to my cousin and my other cousin had driven someone off … It all sounded dramatic and then my dad asked about the bloodstains on the driveway and even from where I was standing, I could see bloodstains on the ground. I was trying to gather what had happened and I gathered there were phonecalls being made to try and ascertain the whereabouts of my injured cousin and my other cousin who had driven off… I told my mom who went down to find out the details. I decided to stay upstairs because what could I do downstairs? If I did, I would only be feeding my curiosity.

It turned out my cousin had been robbed a few metres from our house… I don\’t really know the details but there were threats made and things taken and still, they slashed.

What is Malaysia turning to?? Are the petrol prices too high? Are people not earning enough that they have to resort to robbing people on the street? Where are the policemen who claim they patrol the area? Why has Malaysia become so unsafe? We read of snatch thieves on motorcycles who drive by and take women\’s handbags as they are holding it… these women fall and die… so many incidents and each time, the snatch thieves drive away scott free… Our society is turning so unsafe that we can\’t walk out without feeling scared … our crime rates are definitely going up… and the worst is that I heard the government had asked the media to not report so much on these crimes…WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEM?! If they made it safer, then there wouldn\’t be so many reports.

We hear of people being robbed in broad daylight, at shopping centres… we hear of robbers getting braver… Malaysians have become so apathetic that we have forgotten that people who walk around have families and an identity… to these robbers they are nothing more than prey and targets.

Oh, I can hear so many of us blaming the ”foreigners who invade our land”… I don’t think you should so easily stereotype the foreigners. After all, you opened up the gates to these people, allowing them to work the jobs that we don’t want to do… construction, security guards, etc etc… even worse, people are getting so wiley and outsmarting our not very bright policemen that they can haul away ATM machines and I don\’t think foreigners should be blamed. It’s MALAYSIANS in general… and yet, we are proud of it. 

Here we have trivia testing to see how “Malaysian” we are and it’s pathetic that we think it’s cool that we are the way we are… this is how we gauge our Malaysian-ness… by how we have degenerated and become less civic minded and how we get away with our traffic offenses… this is our standard that we measure ourselves by… this is how we determine how Malaysian we are. Sure it is in jest but after tonight’s fiasco, it’s not that funny.

Our apathy has reached an all time high. We have always been a rather masochistic lot… we slow down when there are road accidents to see who’s died and injured, to take down the number of the car to buy the lottery… we cause massive traffic congestion just to feed our selfish curiosity… we are our own worst enemy…

We don’t trust the government, we don’t trust ourselves, all we do is rape the land to develop more… build build build! We don’t even have that many people to live in all these houses but we just want to build and allow investors to purchase, etc etc but at the end of the day, all we have are buildings, shells… and people with no substance… people who are rude and barbaric, who only care about themselves… “to hell with other people… I am going to take care of myself first” mentality…

We have a society where snatch thieves roam free, where robbers rob without worrying, where corruption is rampant but the government and media think we are gullible to think otherwise. I’m not saying anything derogatory towards the government because God forbid we should do that and be locked up.

I’m crying out for help because our society is going down the dumps… being a Malaysian is not as glorious anymore… not with all that’s happening around us … you would think our government would want to fix these problems first… hell, I play Sim City and I know that crime rate needs to be managed… what are the policemen doing? What are our town officials doing?

Due to their negligence, residential areas have resorted to fixing their own problems, hiring their own security guards to protect their residential areas but even THAT is not a solution because robberies and break-ins still happen. If our policemen and town officials really cared about us, do you think this would happen?!

It’s all about how much you care for your people… we don’t care! We reek of apathy! Pathetic.

I’m disappointed…  I can’t drive out because my car could be carjacked and I could be robbed and raped. I can’t walk out because who walks in Malaysia and with snatch thieves on the loose, who wants to?! I can’t park my car because I could fall prey to kidnappers or scary people who want to go on joyrides with you, it is so unsafe…. and we speak of safety first all the time… we have campaigns that encourage us to do the right thing but we aren’t… even major catastrophes don’t seem to affect us instead, we want to know all about Siti Nurhaliza’s wedding plans.

The parents fear their children’s safety and is this the kind of society we want to be in? Where we don’t want to go out ‘cos we fear each other? We question each other’s motives, we are cautious… it doesn’t make us very FRIENDLY does it??

Is there hope for us? You tell me…

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I edited the post above to make it sound “current” even though I wrote it yesterday. So my cousin was robbed on Saturday. Today, is Sunday.

We went to church and then came home. We went for McDonald’s today. I had their beef foldover which wasn’t very nice. In fact, I found it rather disgusting.

After lunch, we (i.e. my cousin, my sister and myself) decided to do some Crime Scene Investigation… we followed the blood trail from our drive way up the road to find out where my cousin had been robbed exactly. We could actually follow the blood spots till about half way up the slope which meant that my cousin was more or less robbed in the middle of our street… we have to thank God that all she got was slashed on her hand and not dragged into the bushes or empty land or even smashed unconscious…

We took a glimpse of my cousin’s car, the one who had driven her to the hospital and the whole front seat was bloody. They had tried to clean it but you could see the blood. According to my aunt, my cousin’s clothes were soaked in blood. My cousin had lost a lot of blood.

The slash, we were told last night was not that serious but today, she was taken to the operating theatre to have her finger “reconstructed”. I may be exaggerating a bit but the operation did take more than 4 hours and if this was a minor surgery, it definitely didn’t seem like it.

We still don’t know the details but we know there were two men on a motorcycle. We know they were holding a large knife, they took all her belongings (her phone that she was talking on when she was attacked, her handbag)… It’s all very innocent but some of us think she was baiting herself to the robbers but talking on the phone is usually quite a safe act… we tell each other we’ll talk to one another on the phone till we’re safely in the house. Robbers don’t care if you’re on the phone or not.. They have no heart.

So if you can, say a short prayer for my cousin…”God, heal her mentally and physically. Amen.”

After my rant last night about how our society is going down the dumps, it is refreshing to attend church and to hear the pastors say that the church can make a difference. Not the building but the people… we can change communities slowly and a pastor from Australia came to speak to us today… Pastor Danny Guglielmucci told us what we know already know but from a different slant. We know that work alone won’t do achieve much but work with faith can do a lot. He was talking about the Great Commission but not in such stoic terms. By doing things for other people, people will come to see Jesus in us… he didn’t make it sound scary or unachievable… instead, he made it sound exciting.

I have to say that he is right. If you think about it, the Catholics got it right, sending their missionaries to be part of the education system, sending their nuns and priests out to take care of people at hospitals… that is service. God wants us to serve others and not ourselves… We don\’t need recognition… he gave examples of the 4 men who carried the crippled man on the stretcher to Jesus so that He could heal him… they remain nameless but they were used by God to orchestrate a miracle…

In many ways, I have a lot to learn then about my faith… I am still an infant only just learning to walk. We do need to learn and grow in God but we also need to show others the love of Jesus… that means changing lives and communities slowly… one by one… recognition will come from people who don’t know God because they see that we aren’t just Christians who just talk but we actually walk the talk. They will see Christians who care about one another and it’s not about who does it better… excellence is not to out-do each other but it’s because God deserves it. Somehow, Pastor Guglielmucci made it sound so easy and he is passionate about it. I have so much to learn…

It made me think, maybe it’s our time to shine … it’s our time to change this land and maybe that’s the season that God is calling the church into… not just my church but all the churches… I mean society is unsafe, the government can’t seem to get a grip on things so maybe… just maybe… it’s time for us to act… wouldn’t it be nice to be part of the wave…? To be used by God to change lives? I think it would be…  we can’t change everybody at once but we can do it one life at a time…

You know, I learned this week how tough it is to judge someone … I had to provide the praise and worship songs on Thursday and after being such a *beep* and offering harsh comments, I had a lot of difficulty picking songs… I didn’t want to be a hypocrite and it was a difficult task… maybe it’s a lesson from the Holy Spirit… I learned today that praise and worship songs are from God so no matter how hypocritical it is to sing songs that you don’t really mean, some times God can use that to move us, to touch us and to show us what He wants for us… do we want Him to be part of our lives? I do… but I’ve got so much to learn and I have my flaws, my imperfections… and maybe one day, God’ll buff me and I’ll shine for Him…