The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion
The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion |
| Posted: 20 Nov 2012 03:55 PM PST NOV 21 ― Dear parents: Please stop making it easier for your kids. I mean it. Not that I'm advocating spanking and depriving them of dinner, but your spoiled children are aggravating. Ask any local university lecturer about the "pampered generation" and expect a lot of sighs and eye-rolling. It is common for students now to ask their lecturers for the following on the first day of class: 1. Notes. (Why take notes when you can make your lecturers prepare them for you in advance?) 2. Copies of presentation slides. (You can now ignore your lecturers in class and look at the slides in your hand instead.) 3. Mock exam questions or help with "spotting" questions that will come out. Ideally, students should come prepared to lectures. Read the assigned material and have questions ready to ask the lecturer either during or after class. Instead, most of them come to class expecting lectures to be like secondary school all over again. One of my favourite lecturers translated the course textbook into Bahasa Malaysia and passed off his translation as "notes." He knew too well that most of his charges could not read English well enough and most did not even bother reading the textbook. I'd actually read the book and, so, laughed when I saw the so-called "notes" being passed around. Clever, but unfortunately necessary. My own experience teaching tertiary level students was depressing. Not only did they not read the assigned module, they could not even answer the questions without handholding. Why are our kids so crippled when they enter university? Part of it is because of the 12 years of swallowing and regurgitating facts in school. Part of it is coddling by parents who go out of their way to lavish praise and gifts on their children. From what I hear, there are local Malaysian parents who buy luxury cars for their children as graduation gifts. Son or daughter returns from studying overseas and waiting for them at the airport is a six-figure-retailing Volvo or the like. Basically, we're raising kids to believe they "deserve" good things and don't need to work for them. I think that's called entitlement? In a way, we're living in an entitlement culture. We've grown up to believe we deserve certain "rights" for being a certain race. That we deserve to be proud of things that we did not work hard to achieve. You didn't "achieve" your race or religion or birthplace so the misplaced pride is, to me, a little amusing. It's like being proud of a dice roll, a card draw, or a lottery win. And when your spoiled, entitled children abandon you in your old age, do you have anyone else to blame? When in their two-storey, six-bedroom house they have no space for you, it is really because they don't see that they owe you anything. Whatever they got in life was because they "deserved it." You taught them self-worth and pride, and yet you "forgot" things like gratitude and humility. Ask yourself now: Why are you still feeding your children when it is high time they learn to feed themselves? * The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist. |
| Posted: 20 Nov 2012 03:51 PM PST NOV 21 ― Months of out-of-court settlement negotiations had fallen through. The offer that came from the other party just wasn't sweet enough and my clients knew they stood a better chance having the matter resolved through litigation. After so many false starts punctuated with almost two years' worth of interlocutory application after interlocutory application, there was nothing much left to be salvaged on amicable terms. They just wanted their day in court. And so the instruction finally arrived on my desk ― issue a letter to the other side; let them know that their client's offer is rejected. Get the court to fix dates for the trial. The gloves are coming off. That evening after work, I sat through a screening of Skyfall, half watching the movie and half drafting that letter in my head. Two hours later, I walked out into a heavy downpour and ran across the dark parking lot, jumping over water puddles to my car while trying to recall the points I wanted included in the letter. As I drove out of the mall, my thoughts moved from the substance of the letter to more trivial things like clichéd expressions I wanted to avoid using. Naturally, I drifted first to the opening line: "We regret to inform you..." I stopped there, mid-sentence, and thought to myself just how insincere and utterly dishonest the whole phrase was. My clients were not the least regretful of their decision to reject the offer. They saw through their opponent's strategy and did themselves a favour by rejecting it. If anything, I sensed only glee and relish in their letter. Between lawyers, letter writing is a form of sport. Words form friendships and alliances. They also identify enemies. The words we choose ― sensitive and diplomatic ― allow for warring parties to display their fearlessness and ferocity; forcing the capitulation of the other or even facilitate forgiveness and reconciliation. But these rules pertaining to nuance and subtlety don't apply to the business of informing; not when the message is simply for example, that road conditions are bad due to incompetent planning and co-ordination. There's no need to massage in any fake regret because everyone sees it for what it is. Because if there truly was genuine regret for informing us of the inconvenience caused, the Public Works Department would have learned by now (after so many decades in the business of digging) to co-ordinate better with Telekom, Indah Water and Syabas so that each didn't take turns to dig up the same spot the other just repaved a week ago. Restaurateurs seldom ever mean it when they tell you they regret they're too packed to accommodate you. They'd love to be turning customers away at the door every single day for that reason. You'll never see Chatime put up a sign regretting its long queues. It's good business. The customer service operator for TNB surely doesn't really mean it either when he apologises to you for not knowing when the power disruption will end. Once you hang up, he'll be clock-watching waiting for his shift to end while you're the one fumbling in the darkness trying to get outside to congregate with your neighbours. Truth is none of them regrets informing you of the bad news. "I think neither", I once answered an architect friend of mine when asked if I thought the Board of Architects meant it when his professional examination results were preceded by the words "Dukacitanya tuan/puan dimaklumkan…" "You think they mean they're sorry about my results, or they regret the act of informing me?" "It's a computer-generated letter," I pointed out. "Get over it." So, back to my case. If anyone was feeling a tinge of regret, it'd be the lawyers involved, hidden behind our desks by piles of files and books, silently howling and dreading the many hours of trial preparations that lay ahead, and the changes to our year-end holiday plans! Hedging and indirectness in language make for good manners. It's polite and diplomatic. It's how we appear more regretful and sympathetic when we're actually not. Because stripped of diplomacy, what you have is the Chinese waitress who rudely snaps "Don't have!", "No more!", "Finished already!", "You still cannot decide now? I come back later!" at you during your Sunday yumcha outing that's just turned disastrous. Blatant honesty, I'm sure you'll agree, is not necessarily the next worst thing to blatant dishonesty. Sometimes it's exactly what you'd appreciate. It looks you in the face and tells you like it is without the prose narrative; without your wasting time reading the condescending feigned regret. Example: "Services currently not available". And it leaves you there, alone, on your couch with a useless remote control and a blank television screen in the middle of a thunderstorm. No apology is given by the pay-TV company; it feels no regret and doesn't make any promises to avoid future disruptions. No one is lied to and no one gets any false expectations about better future performances. There is in this communication at least, some kind of mutual respect. The rain continued to wash against my windscreen, making everything outside a blurry vision of moving red and white lights and the occasional white divider lines on the road. The small wiper blades of my Land Rover Defender pivoted at a quick pace, like the short arms of a midget orchestra conductor madly trying to catch up with a runaway symphony. I'd been told there were road works ahead but only remembered when it was too late to turn around. I switched the radio off and listened to the sounds of the rattling engine, almost harmonious with the pitter-patter of the heavy fat droplets falling on my thin roof. I looked down amusingly at my left hand gripping the gear shift, vibrating along with the rest of the car. Then I looked up and saw the outlines of orange traffic cones suddenly coming into view in front of me, abruptly inducing traffic to merge into my lane. On my right, a lorry came hurtling down towards me. Remembering the stunts MI6 Field Agent Eve Moneypenny managed to accomplish using her silver Defender, I applied some quick thinking and resolved that it was too late to brake. It was time instead to crash, hopefully in style ― though without the flying fruit stall. I bent the Defender's direction toward the other side with my left tyres smashing first into the curb, then up onto the pavement before the sound of a metallic crack clanged out from under my truck. From that point on, I'd lost my steering control rod and, ipso facto, control of my truck. As I continued rolling on the pavement towards the fence of a house nearby, I resolved in my mind that if I were to survive this ordeal, then I'd write a letter to Land Rover to ask about the discrepancies in performance of my vehicle and that of Moneypenny's. Survive I did. An expensive repair bill; a written enquiry to Land Rover; a finished letter to the other solicitors in which I wrote honestly and succinctly: "Your client's offer is rejected", and three weeks later, a white envelope arrived on my office desk. I unfolded the letter. It was a reply from Land Rover, finally. They addressed me politely as "Sir", and followed by these five words: "We regret to inform you …" * The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist. |
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