SEPT 16 — There was a time when social media wouldn’t stop showing me videos of foreigners coming to Malaysia and praising it to the skies.
I do think it’s important that we broaden our views and appreciate the perspectives these visitors give us.
Then we have videos from a creator who said she had never encountered as much racism as she had in Malaysia.
Her views matter too.
I think the time for romanticising living overseas is over; for many the doors have closed shut, and even if they did open they would find not lands of milk and honey but ones of suspicion and doubt.
It is strange that Malaysians complain when they are turned back from South Korea and Australia because of supposed racism but at the same time are so horrid to foreign workers and migrants here.
But perhaps it shows how in some ways we are just human, easily susceptible to xenophobia and colourism.
Yet one of the few things I clung to during the pandemic was how Malaysians came together to try and keep each other alive.
Malaysians helped feed and shelter foreign workers abandoned by their employers, shared tips on how to get vaccine slots, used the internet to signal for help and to find those signals.
All we had was each other and in the end, that is still all we really have, if we choose to remember.
Sixty-three years Malaysia has existed, and I have spent maybe more than a decade doing my best to remind people that Malaysia is more than one state or one people.
Facebook has also reminded me that I have stayed in this rental for over 17 years, longer than any house I have lived in all my life.
I moved to Selangor when I was 18, but before that I had brief stints in London and Manila, so yes, I have lived in West Malaysia longer than I ever have in Sabah.
So in many ways I have become a Petaling Jaya person now; I don’t ever want to leave.
Yet as the doors and gates of this crumbling house rot around me I have to think about some day finding a new nest and hope I do not have to sell a kidney to afford it.
Some days I scan iProperty and laugh at the sheer audacity of the listing prices.
”This would be perfect for those looking to remodel into your dream house,” and it’s a picture of an abandoned-looking house with mold all over the walls, and “spacious garden” being full of debris and overgrown weeds.
How much for this wondrous gem in the heart of PJ? RM2 million, apparently.
I have lived in an old, decaying house long enough to be able to recognise one by sight and I often pass many old houses with “For Sale/Rent” signs and immediately wonder if the roof had been waterproofed lately.
Speaking of old, decaying houses, Kuala Lumpur as it is now is dazzling and clean in ways that it wasn’t when I first moved here.
One night I stared at KL Tower in the distance, looking almost small and frail next to the towering buildings that surrounded it, with even the EQ hotel seeming to dwarf it.
Sometimes the things that happen in this country make me deeply unhappy.
Yet I know I would be just as miserable to be too far away from it, its comforts and the casual knowing that people I cared about were a phone call or train ride away.
We deserve better, I feel.
We deserve transparency. Politics that does not involve a new bogeyman of the week.
We deserve equality and prosperity for all, instead of being told our lives and our skills are worth less than a lying chatbot.
Yet I think too many of us think too much about this country being one that we deserve, but too little about being Malaysians who would embody the people of this ideal country.
We must reflect that good, that peace, that generosity in resources that we seek in this land we call ours.
I hope as more Malaysia Days come, our hearts do not harden, our courage does not falter, our dreams not be allowed to die.
Let us always dare to dream of a better Malaysia.
Happy Malaysia Day.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
