The Malaysian Insider

MARCH 21 — “The world doesn’t owe you a living.”

I was gobsmacked when I heard that from my mother. Time has erased what brought that about, but it must have been during my sullen teenage years.

Funny thing is, I never thought of it that way. Now that she’s come out and said it, however, it suddenly sounded like such a good idea.

MARCH 14 — I remember when, a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away where making your house safe included little more than locking your front door.

It’s been so long since that’s been enough that there are times when I wonder if it ever was. Today, ending the night means locking the gates, the cars, then locking the safety grille (with three separate locks, mind), checking the doors, then the deadbolts, the kitchen, the safety door, the motion-sensors, and another look at the grille (because by the time I get to the back, I’ve forgotten if I’ve locked the front).

Then I go upstairs and peer out the windows to make sure there aren’t any criminal bastards lurking around outside. I’ve always thought I had it bad but then I visited some friends who lived in one of those “gated communities”, which, as it seems, have become all the fad nowadays.

FEB 28 — We got one of those newfangled GPS thingies that are supposed to help us go where we want to, on the odd occasion (and unlikely premise) that there is actually some place that my wife and I want to go that doesn’t include Tesco or the in-laws.

On the surface, it sounds like a marvellous thing. I imagine all the times I’ve been given vague, useless directions from friends — the ones who can’t find the simple decency to live right next door to us. Or, at least, near a nice big landmark, say, like the KLCC. Some people are just so inconsiderate...

“What’s that again? Turn left after the traffic lights, then I go straight. For how far? Oh, right, yes, one kilometre. Third left past the tree that’s slightly bigger than the one in your ... what? Now, how the hell am I supposed to know how big the tree in front of your house is?”

FEB 21 — Up until yesterday, the penultimate day of the ongoing Ops Sikap, 183 people have met their demise on Malaysian roads. That’s a whole lot of fathers, husbands, wives, mothers, kids and whatnot who aren’t going to have a very happy Chinese New Year.

But you know what? Maybe it’s time for people to go beyond blaming the authorities for all these deaths. Maybe, just maybe, it’s time for everybody to step up and take responsibility for their own lives and the lives of the people they share the roads with.

OK, I’ll give you that Malaysian roads are, by and large, poorly engineered and shoddily built. That’s a given and a constant; you know the roads will invariably be bad at some point.

FEB 14 — Call me a Doubting Thomas, but I found a report on Friday of a 13 per cent reduction in street crime in January to be more than a little dubious, especially when the NKRA for crime reduction aims for a five per cent annual reduction in the category from 2010 to 2012.

Either someone has grossly underestimated the efficacy of the new measures in slashing crime rate or, more likely, the numbers have been massaged to deliver the intended result.

I know it’s unfair to dismiss it off-hand, but I’ve learned that when something sounds too good to be true, it invariably is.