The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion
The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion |
| Posted: 30 Dec 2012 06:22 PM PST 31 DIS — Sepanjang tahun pelbagai perkara berlaku menyerikan lagi Malaysia sebagai sebuah negara yang terdiri daripada penduduk berbilang kaum dan agama. Ada perkara yang pertama kali berlaku dalam sejarah Malaysia seperti pendedahan bekas Ketua Polis Negara Tan Sri Musa Hassan tentang campurtangan politik dalam pasukan polis serta perkaitan diantara kongsi gelap dengan pemimpin tertinggi negara sehingga menyebabkan berlakunya peningkatan jenayah. Belum pernah lagi dalam sejarah Malaysia seorang bekas pemimpin tertinggi polis mendedahkan salahlaku dan kepincangan pasukan tersebut kepada umum tetapi ianya berlaku pada tahun 2012. Begitu juga dengan penyertaan bekas pemimpin nombor tiga pasukan polis, Datuk Fauzi Shaari kedalam parti Pakatan Rakyat (PR), PAS yang turut berlaku pada 2012. Ramai penganalisis politik gagal dalam tekaan mereka mengenai tarikh pilihan raya umum ke 13. Daripada awal tahun sehinggalah akhir tahun pelbagai teori digunapakai untuk menyakinkan orang ramai tentang ramalan tarikh pilihan raya mereka. Namun 2012 bukanlah waktu berlakunya pilihan raya umum yang dikatakan bakal paling sengit dalam sejarah Malaysia. Selain itu, bekas Menteri Penerangan Tan Sri Zainuddin Maidin dikritik hebat kerana menulis sebuah rencana yang dikatakan menghina bekas presiden Indonesia, BJ Habibie yang melawat tanah air baru-baru ini. Habibie dikritik kerana datang ke Malaysia diatas undangan Ketua Pembangkang Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim. Walaupun tidak bersetuju dengan pandangan Zainuddin dalam tulisannya, penulis menjadi hairan mengapa ramai pihak yang selama ini memperjuangkan demokrasi dan kebebasan bersuara marah dengan tulis bekas Ketua Pengarang Utusan Malaysia itu? Prinsip demokrasi dan kebebasan bersuara menghalalkan sesiapa sahaja untuk memberikan pandangan serta pihak lain juga boleh memberikan pandangan balas. Belajar dari cara Habibie berhadapan dengan kritikan Zainuddin, tenang dan bersahaja memperlihatkan dirinya sebagai tokoh demokrat sejati. Masalah pembantu rumah asing dari Indonesia menganggu ramai rakyat Malaysia yang bergantung dengannya terutamanya bagi yang tinggal di kota. Hakikat harus diterima pembantu rumah dari Indonesia tidak lagi menjadikan Malaysia sebagai destinasi utama kerana negara-negara seperti Hong Kong, Taiwan dan Timur Tengah menjanjikan gaji dan upah lebih besar berbanding Malaysia. Sudah sampai masanya rakyat Malaysia memikirkan cara-cara lain untuk mengurus rumah tangga daripada terus bergantung dengan orang asing. Pujian harus diberikan kepada kerajaan Malaysia kerana kejayaannya menjadi orang tengah dalam rundingan damai diantara pemerintah Filipina dan Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). Walaupun terdapat pertikaian panjang diantara Malaysia dan Filipina mengenai Sabah, ianya dapat diketepikan bagi membantu keamanan di negara jiran dapat diwujudkan selepas tiga tahun Kuala Lumpur menjadi tuan rumah kepada rundingan damai tersebut. 2012 juga menyaksikan heboh mengenai tarikh tamatnya dunia sepertimana diramalkan oleh kalender bangsa Maya pada 21 Disember. Namun, selepas tarikh tersebut ternyata dunia masih lagi ada dan hidup kita masih seperti sedia kala dan kita tetap perlu bekerja demi untuk membayar hutang, realiti yang tidak dapat dielakkan. Diharapkan 2013 menjadi lebih baik buat kita semua. Sudah pasti ianya bermula dengan rancak memandangkan pilihan raya akan diadakan pada tahun ini selepas mandat kerajaan hari ini tamat pada akhir bulan April. Selepas mandat berakhir, masih ada dua bulan sebelum pilihan raya perlu diadakan. Diharapkan selepas keputusan pilihan raya umum ke 13 diumumkan, parti yang memerintah dan pembangkang dapat bekerjasama membangunkan negara. Anggaplah penggal ini sebagai satu pembelajaran yang baik untuk negara dalam berhadapan dengan demokrasi lebih luas. Semoga 2013 menjadi tahun bermulanya politik lebih matang bagi Malaysia serta hubungan atara kaum yang lebih harmoni. Mari raikan perbezaan ini, jangan jadikan ianya satu alasan untuk kita hidup secara terpisah-pisah semata-mata hanya kerana perbezaan warna kulit dan kepercayaan. * Ini adalah pandangan peribadi penulis. |
| Are you afraid of something silly? Posted: 30 Dec 2012 04:48 PM PST DEC 31 — We all have our fears. We have things we are uncomfortable with, so much so that we go out of our way to avoid them in our daily lives. Most of the time these fears are legitimate and understandable — while I'm not afraid of flying (aviophobia), I can understand why some are. But sometimes the fears that haunt us don't make sense to anyone else, indeed maybe not even to ourselves. Initially we may have thought them silly too but over time they fester and we begin to rationalise. We over-think. And eventually they grip us through twisted logic warped by introspective rationalisation by our subconscious minds, which is why some people are afraid of words (logophobia) or writing (graphophobia), or beards (pogonophobia) or even of sitting down (kathisophobia). As for myself, I don't have any phobias that I'm aware of but I did have one silly fear that caused me not to read much. For someone who writes for a living, my reading rate was pathetic. For the past three to four years, I have not read as much as I should or want to. Ever since I started writing for a living, every time someone asks me to list my hobbies I've always put down "reading" first, but the truth is that it's been many years since I averaged more than one novel every few months. It's not that I don't like reading; I do. I even have vague memories of asking my mother to read aloud to me before I could read. When I was eight, my father registered the whole family as members of a local library, which still used the old school card system with two pockets per member then. For many years I'd take the bus on my own to borrow books using my own pockets as well as my parents', amounting to six books every time, and when they upgraded the system to allow more books per member (as well as using a computerised system to replace the card-and-pocket method) I could borrow up to a dozen at once. It's not that I have very insanely specific reading tastes that exclude 99 per cent of the books available on the market either. I progressed from kiddie fairy tales to Sweet Valley High books to R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike novels and later to the bigger and thicker books by the likes of Terry Brooks and Tom Clancy and James Clavell ("real" novels as I thought of them then). Despite religiously reading a number of Japanese manga series as a teenager, I still enjoyed reading "real" books during that period of my life — I even picked up William Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" once (admittedly driven to it by procrastinating on SPM preparations) and finished it (also driven to the last page by SPM procrastination). I've been an avid reader since childhood so how did I fall out of the habit in recent years? It's a silly thing, really. If you enjoy reading, you would know the exhilaration when the plot picks up speed and grips you tight, when you find yourself turning the pages with a deepened interest coated with burning curiosity. You want — need, rather — to know what's next, if the hero lives or dies and how that happens, and why and when and where. The author worked his magic and now you're in the book. You can't put it down. But you have to, because some books are that big. Some books just can't be finished in one sitting, because you have other things that also demand your attention. Work calls, house chores need doing, and you need to get food into your body... So you stop reading, usually when it gets exciting, and now you have to wait before you can get back to it. That waiting kept me off reading. Burning curiosity can be painful to bear, and sometimes I cannot function when I stop reading. I stopped reading because I didn't want to deal with the waiting between reading sessions, waiting before I could get back to the book and the story and the revelation of what's on the next page. I avoided that torturous aspect of the whole reading process by not going into the process at all. Because I feared the painful waiting before I can satisfy my curiosity, I convinced myself not to let my curiosity be piqued at all. As silly as it sounds, the fact is it stopped me from picking up many books for many years. My fear of that in-between period became real to me, real and logical. We are the best salesperson to sell anything to ourselves, because we know ourselves better than anyone else, and with enough thinking we can sell even bovine waste to ourselves. We rationalise. And by rationalisation we bring ourselves to believe silly things and give in to our silly fears. Then a few months ago I picked up a 700-page thriller on the cheap while passing by KL Sentral. I finally started reading it on my flight back home for Raya, and in my relaxed, holiday mood I finished reading it. The sense of relief that comes with turning the last page is indescribable, especially sweet and fulfilling after a long time forgoing it — like rain after drought. And I thought, silly me, it was like I gave up chocolate cake forever because I didn't want to pay the taxi fare to take me to the bakery. That was my wake-up call from a silly dream where I was actually afraid of picking up a good book that I might enjoy reading, and I'm thankful for it. Since then I have started reading again. My latest book took me a week to get to the last, 1,074th page, but I got there last weekend. I'm cured of my silly fear, hopefully. So what's your silly fear, and are you getting over it soon? * This is the personal opinion of the columnist. |
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