JUNE 24 — For dinner, my housemate and I decided to order from a nearby eatery. We both had a fondness for the pandan cooler the place served, but were disappointed to find it had been dropped from the menu.

Apparently, it wasn’t halal enough.

I’m not sure if it was a miscommunication or an attempt to solicit a bribe from the supposed certification official, but apparently, despite the drink being considered halal in Sabah, it wasn’t halal enough for Selangor so no, no pandan cooler for us.

To be honest, it was likely the place was being taken for a ride by some unscrupulous lackey who wanted a bribe to get the certification. I mean, what is in a pandan cooler? Pandan leaves, sugar, water. What could possibly be problematic about that?

I don’t know, I do find it incredibly tiresome to compare West Malaysian (maybe just Selangor) attitudes towards what a Muslim can and can’t eat with my more chill brethren in East Malaysia.

There are Muslims here who cannot go to a vegetarian place without loudly whispering: “Is this halal?”

Let’s see. Place run by devout Buddhists or Hindus with aversion to meat. But “was-was” or “doubtfulness” is apparently a disease where local Muslims fear to eat or use anything without the halal stamp.

Thing is, that halal stamp is not going to follow you everywhere. One of my Twitter followers on going overseas merely declares: “I see no pork on my plate” and promptly digs in. It was either that or starve, I suppose.

An ex-colleague of mine was stationed in pork-loving Philippines and would not eat anything but the bread there. Later I found out that even bread in the Philippines is often made with lard. I haven’t had the heart to tell her yet, though, as I haven’t seen her in years. I hope she’s learned to read ingredient lists by now.

That’s the problem with this country, though. We abdicate our common sense and reason and instead expect the authorities to look after everything from sanitation to the policing of our faith.

Are we really all that lazy? If you believe in God, don’t you believe he gave us minds and limbs to use?

I am beginning to think the populace here believes everything has pork in it unless proven otherwise. Let us examine, then, if a hypothetical pig sneezes on some farmer who happens to touch a grain of wheat, whence that wheat becomes bread and thus has 0.00000008 per cent porcine DNA and it brushes up against other loaves, the air circulating thus contaminating an entire warehouse of it.

If you start to get paranoid about situations like that, then fine. More food for the rest of us. Life is too short to trust a paid body to tell you what to eat especially if there’s reason to believe it’s staffed by people who couldn’t find their own toes without a map.

Malaysia Boleh! Now give me my pandan cooler.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.