A Drawn Out Pandemic

 Today 01 June 2021 is an auspicious day for Malaysia as it began the second "Total Lockdown" since the Covid 19 virus began its attack all the world over which originated in Wuhan Province, China in late 2019. The first total lockdown took place in March 2020 and it was successfully carried out in flattening the curve. However it was at a great price where the economy went into a spin and hundreds of thousands lost their livelihoods.

           Learning from the first lockdown, the essential sectors of the economy and other services such as frontline personnel manning the health and medical infrastructure as well as the internal security situation plus the allied uniformed personnel are fully deployed to enforce the Standard Operating Procedures on the authority of the Movement Control Order issued under the force of law in order to deal with the pandemic.

           The second total lockdown is imposed as the daily positive cases reached unprecendeted levels never before seen in Malaysia, exceeding 9000 cases, accompanied by daily deaths of above 60. Although with the declaration of Emergency early in the year was announced to allow the authorities to focus every effort towards containing the pandemic, but it is an exercise in futility. The lax attitude of the people in adhering to the SOP strictly contributed to the present predicament facing the country. With the tightening of the SOP and increased penalties for offenders it is hoped that the second total lockdown for this critical two-weeks period will be able to flatten the curve of daily positive cases of Covid 19.

Let us supplicate for divine intervention to lift this catastrophe from the world at large and bring back at least a semblance of normality even though we have to live with this crisis amongst us for the years to come.

Our Session with Dr.A. Wahab Ali on Sunday 27 March 2016

Today, which is a Sunday 27 March 2016 is quite an ordinary day, except that I have decided to continue writing in my blog which I had more or less kept in the cold storage for a long time. 
          It started with the comment from one Dr.Hafiz Ali in one of my previous posting about the Tambusai line which he believed could also been with his forefathers who originated from Ampangan, Seremban, then migrated to Kampong Bangi, in Selangor. So I decided to meet up with his brother, A.Wahab Ali, a well known writer amongst the Malay literary circle as my memory could tell me. So today, I managed to keep up the appointment to visit him at his house in Kampung Tunku together with my cousin Mohd. Basri Hamzah @ Ridzuan. Dr. Hafiz Ali was also present. His brother Abdul Latiff Ali who served the Education Ministry together with me in the 70's-80's could not make it as he was in Lombok.
             We spent about two hours, trying to figure out how the Tambusai community found its way to Bangi, the original Kampung, not the newly created University town, Bandar Baru Bangi. I found out that some names which he mentioned are also our relatives who had passed away. What a surprise, and it seemed A.Wahab Ali's grandfather came from the same place as our grandfather. With this discovery, I hope to open up more avenues for research into the larger scope of the Tambusai community and their relationship with our past history in Peninsular Malaysia. Over to you cousin Mohd. Basri Hamzah, who is now the President of our family association, known as BERKAT, to open up the vista. May ALLAH Bless.

An Impostor stealing my email

I was about going to bed, when a good friend of mine who served together with me as a Member of the Public Service Commission sent me an alert that my email is sending out spam. I replied that I received an earlier SMS informing me that he received an email purportedly from me asking for help since I fell victim to an attack at a car park near a hotel in Manchester. So he asked me to get to my email account and reset my settings to which I did.
                  Unfortunately a good number of my contacts had been flooded by the scam email, which was the work of an impostor who stole my email account. The person must have managed to circumvent the security settings and breached my email and fortunately for me, no one had been poorer by responding to my "distress" call on the net. I was puzzled as how someone could steal my email and the contacts, despite my using Yahoo Mail Plus service and I have to pay for using it. Since I could not rely on its security, I cancelled my annual subscription forthwith. The good thing that comes out from this nasty episode is that I had learned not to link my email to other applications, and thus I had "cleaned" all the linkages, which I hope will avoid such an incident in the future. A lot of friends called me up to find out the real situation and they were relieved that I am safe and sound in Kelana Jaya.
         Selamat mengerjakan Ibadat Ramadhan Kareem to all my Muslim friends.

Changkat Jering Revisited

 

I have been hibernating from posting anything on my blog for about half a year, and it it was a good break. Sometimes when you lay off for that long, it would lead to enthropy, that is the end of the story.

                  However, from my last visit to Taiping on 02 November 2013, I did not expect to come again to Taiping or to be more precise, Changkat Jering. But what man proposes, God disposes, and as such this time I was driving all the way to the North, which I said in my posting on "Taiping Revisited" I had not done so for years. I began about 0940 hours to leave Kelana Jaya towards the Plus highway en-route to Kuala Kangsar, my first stop for the night before continuing to Taiping. It was a friday morning of 30 May 2014, and the weather was fine. I only did one stop, that was at Ladang Bikam lay-bye, as the traffic was fairly building up as it was the beginning of school holidays. I purposely avoided stopping at R & R Tapah due to the huge crowd, and I planned to stop at the Agro Mall just before Ipoh. Alas, I missed the exit due to my miscalculation and furthermore the long heavy vehicle blocked my view as I was looking for the signboard showing the exit lane. I continued and after passing Ipoh, I wanted to stop at the Dataran Sungei Perak R&R, but was disappointed because I could not find a suitable parking bay near to the food-court, again due to the large holiday crowd. So I proceeded to Kuala Kangsar. I stopped for lunch at Restaurant Kak Bitah, a 24-hour eating shop just opposite the Prep School of MCKK.

                      Then I went straight to Perak Riverside Resort as it began to rain, which is not far from the famous small roundabout with the clock-tower in the town centre. While Nasimah and Haniff remained in the car as it was raining, I went to the check-in counter to register and get the key. Then Haniff helped in getting the luggage to the room and I was surprised that I was given a room upstairs, whereas I have asked Hazim to inform the front desk that I wanted a ground-floor room when he was staying here about two weeks before my arrival. I was further shocked to find that the room was in a mess when I entered. Furious, I went back to the front-desk and told off the girl, and the supervisor who incidentally was there apologised to me. I asked to be given a room on the ground-floor, to which the supervisor consented. However upon moving into the so-called suite, my heart sank when I saw the mouldy wall next to the bathroom and the condition was far from satisfactory. Nevertheless the bathroom was quite clean, but again the hot-water was disconnected when I wanted to use it the next morning, much to my chagrin.

                        It was a Saturday when I checked out and as I was leaving, a gentleman who was at the car-porch near the check-in counter bade me good-bye. I learnt that he was the new Manager who took over from the previous operator of the resort, barely a month ago, and I took the opportunity of unloading my discontentment. He was profusely ashamed at the condition of the room and said that he would put things straight as soon as possible. I replied that hopefully the place would be much better the next time I drop in. So after bdiiding farewell to the resort I headed towards Taiping, using route One, the old road passing Padang Rengas and Bukit Gantang before arriving at Kamalodge, Taiping at about noon.

                   Although check-in time was at 1500 hrs, I asked for earlier check-in as I wanted to do my Zohor prayers to which the counter clerk tried her best to accommodate my request. To my dismay, I was given a room which was not the single-storey chalet near to the walkway, but was given one of the double-storey chalet though on the ground-floor but it was at the highest point of the resort where it takes about twenty flights of stairs to the entrance of the room. I tried my best to persuade the clerk, a young lady to allow me to change to a better place where Nasimah could easily avail herself rather than had to labour twenty flights of stairs. Alas, she politely informed me that all the single-storey rooms are fully booked,despite me explaining to her that my nephew had booked me the single-storey chalet. So that afternoon, when Hazim and family checked in by 1600 hrs, I made it known to him of my displeasure of making us the senior citizens to labour getting to our room. Luckily I managed to book another hotel  and checked out of Kamalodge, Taiping, on the day when we had to attend the wedding function at Kampong Belakang Masjid Changkat Jering.

                   As if all these discomforts were not sufficient to test our patience, the rear window of my car was not able to be wound up after it slid down and the window lifter would not work. Then by nightfall, as we wanted to go for dinner on Sunday 31 May, the whole window slid down and could not be lifted, thus posing a danger of a break-in to the car, should it be left unattended. I phoned my brother-in-law in Kota Damansara that Sunday night and told him of my predicament. He said he would ask his nephew in Ipoh to come and fix the problem the following morning. However he asked me to confirm after I had my breakfast on Monday, 01 June, 2014.

                 By Monday morning, I decided to leave for home and told Khalil, my brother-in-law and he had to call his nephew to turn back as he was already driving to Taiping. Nevertheless, I stopped by Kuala Kangsar for lunch before proceeding back to Kelana Jaya. Hasnul and family also left together with us to KK, and after we had lunch, again at Kak Bitah's shop, I told him he could go straight home and do not have to convoy with us, as the weather was fine and at long last we reached home safely by almost maghrib time. Alhamdulillah, alls well that went well, despite the hiccups, which to my mind a test on my patience,since I had not planned to revisit Taiping on the wedding date of my nephew Muhammad Hadzrin Shah, the night of 31 May and the Kenduri on 01June 2014.

                        

2014, The Year of Rising Prices

The recent announcement of price increases due to the withdrawal of subsidies have taken a lot of flak from many quarters. This is what follows when people have been used to subsidies and expect it to be as a matter of right. I am not saying that subsidies are wrong, but they were mostly a quick-fix solutions to emergent problems that have outlived their terms and had taken root as part of life.
                      When our rating took a turn for the worse, the powers that be responded with a knee-jerk action that took many by surprise. Now the resultant effect is being felt by all and sundry. Thus we shall welcome 2014 as the year of rising prices. No matter how much explanation are given to rationalise the increases in electric tariff, tolls, petrol, sugar and other necessities, the majority of our people have to bear the brunt as prices rise much faster than incomes which is the right recipe for inflation.
                     The announcement of the establishment of a laboratory to deal with the larger issue of the rise in cost of living is rather too little and too late an action to solve the pain. As a responsible government, it has to anticipate this critical issue, as the signs had been rearing its ugly head for a long time when the country had been living on a deficit for far too long and our overdependence on oil for generating revenue. We have seen how even developed countries have gone almost bankrupt due to their complacency in tackling their economic problems and we seemed to be oblivious to them. Now we are faced with the stark reality of joining their ranks. The rhetoric has to stop and the pain have to be dealt with in the most urgent manner.

Remembering Mandela

On Friday 06 December 2013,  the news of the passing away of Nelson Mandela, the first democratically elected  President of South Africa was announced, after a prolonged illness. His famous words of the long walk to freedom as he was freed from prison after being interned for 27 years rang loudly for the whole world to remember until posterity. He was a leader who bore no malice against the regime who locked him up for more than a quarter century and became the President who exhibited great magnanimity and embarked on a peaceful reconciliation of the black majority and the white minority whose government upheld Apartheid policy of segregation between the coloured people and the whites. 
            Nelson Mandela was born on July 18, 1918 and he died at the age of 95. In 1961 he was the leading figure in forming the armed wing of the African National Congress and in 1963 he stood for trial with 10 others and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964. He was freed on February 11, 1990 by the last white President of South Africa, F.W. de  Klerk who ended the apartheid policy and lifted the ban on the ANC. In the following year Mandela became the leader of the ANC and in 1994 he became the first democratically elected President after a landslide victory in the first free elections. He handed over power to Mbeki after his tenure in 1999. Mandela shall be remembered as one of the most revered Statesman for his long struggle for freedom and against a rascist white minority government. It was our first Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman who agitated for the expulsion of South Africa from the Commonwealth in 1960 for apartheid and this resulted in its withdrawal from the body in 1961. The legacy of Mandela in the fight for truth, justice and equality against an oppressive regime shall be not only be remembered by his nation but by the whole world. Rest in peace Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.
                   My first and last contact with someone who was a member of the ANC was during my short course in Hyderabad, India in 1989. He with another lady represented the ANC as participants for the short administrative course organised by the Commonwealth Secretariat in London. They were selected in preparation for the impending independence of South Africa and when the participants came to Malaysia as part of the programme, he confided in me that Malaysia would become the model for his country's future development. And truly enough, Malaysia was one of the first nation Mandela visited in November 1990 and  he requested Malaysia's help in preparing South Africa's first free elections. Since then our close relations had evolved over the decades which led to an increase in trade and investment between the two countries.

Security Guards who should be factory workers

Last thursday on the 21 November 2013, our neighbourhood security watch had the misfortune of being raided by the enforcement team from the Home Ministry and three of the guards on duty were detained because their papers were not in order. Their permits were meant for work in the factory but they were utilised to become security guards and thus they faced deportation and the security service provider would be slapped with a compound for the offence.
             Although the other guards had their permits in order but they refused to continue the watch in protest to the security provider for not looking after their welfare. Thus our residents association security arrangement went into disarray due to their absence. By friday evening the committee had an emergency meeting to map out the course of action to plug the security lapse and a quick decision was taken to ask the committee members and volunteers to take turns to be on the security watch. It was indeed a test on the association how to deal with a crisis. Our President and the other members of the committee managed to come around and handle the crisis effectively. The present security provider is simply unable to provide the replacements because most of the guards are from Nepal and they were afraid that they would be detained as they were unsure whether their papers are genuine.
                   By now we have suspended the service of the provider for being unable to find replacements and temporary guards have been put in place to take over manning the security watch round the clock. On monday night of 25 November the committee met with the management of the company which is supplying us the temporary guards and negotiated for their continuation on a monthly basis until the association finalise its decision on the security provider.

Taiping revisited

On Deepavali day, 02 November 2013 was the beginning of an eventful month where my calendar is full of engagement ceremonies and wedding invitations. I have not been travelling by road northbound for many years and this time I am just a passenger seated next to the driver, where my brother was at the steering wheel. Since the day was the start of a long weekend which began on a saturday and another public holiday falling on the following tuesday, thus the highway was rather congested even though  we left at about ten o'clock in the morning from Kelana Jaya.
                      We stopped for a short break at Tapah rest area at about one o'clock and then had another stop at Kuala Kangsar for lunch. Fortunately it was not raining all the way and we checked in at hotel Seri Malaysia Taiping by 4.30 pm. Since we were quite tired after the long journey, we were contented to have dinner at the hotel's restaurant and furthermore the town was crowded with holiday makers and there was also a gathering of big motor bikers going on for the weekend.
                  The purpose of my trip to Taiping was to be the spokesperson on behalf of my brother for the bethrotal of my nephew to a girl from Changkat Jering, Taiping. So on that sunday 03 November began the hectic calendar of events for me in attending to family and friend's invitations either for engagements ceremony or weddings.The morning sun was quite bright as I looked out of the room window on the ground-floor and I had breakfast by the time the restaurant opened at 7.30 am. My brother and sister-in-law was already at their table enjoying their breakfast. Later on my sisters, brother-in-law and nephew came from their hotel in the middle of the town to join us for breakfast. We had a good tete-a-tete at the breakfast table amidst the growing number of guests streaming into the restaurant. I must say, Seri Malaysia hotel do have a reasonable spread to choose for breakfast. We checked out from the hotel at about 11.45 am, and other relatives of my sister-in-law who came from Kuala Lumpur and other places also assembled at the hotel for the group to depart to Kg. Changkat Jering, about 7 kilometres from Taiping town. We stopped at Masjid Jamek Kg. Changkat Jering to gather all the family members from my nephew's side for the engagement ceremony.
                 The negotiation for the engagement ceremony  went smoothly and without fuss because the spokesperson from the other side coincidentally is the imam of the mosque of Changkat Jering and presumably he wanted to get over it quickly in time for zohor prayer which is just slightly after 1.00 o'clock. After the function was over followed by a kenduri, there was a heavy downpour and we stopped at the Changkat Jering mosque for zohor prayer, as it is not far from the girl's house. By the time the rain began to slow down, we left for home, but as my brother needed a cup of coffee as he was feeling drowsy, we stopped at Kuala Kangsar for a break. The town seemed to be teeming with visitor's judging from the number of tour buses coming to the food-court near the riverside where the jetty for the Perak river cruise is situated. It was quite a feat to find a parking bay near the river front.
                By 5.30 pm we began to leave Kuala Kangsar and entered the North-South highway again. All throughout the drive, there was an endless stream of vehicles going back to the Federal capital and  we stopped at Ladang Bikam lay-by for a short rest. As all the other rest areas were very congested with vehicles, we decided to drive straight home and arrived in Kelana Jaya at about 9.30 pm.

Undang Luak in Adat Perpatih

I am continuing my write-up about Adat Perpatih in my home state of Negeri Sembilan this time by focussing on the Undang Luak of which there are four, viz; Sungei Ujong (now Seremban), Jelebu, Rembau, and Johol.
As the saying goes;
              Alam beraja ( The state has a ruler)
              Luak berpenghulu (Undang) (the district has a territorial chief)
              Suku berlembaga ( the clan has a clan chief )
              Anak buah berbuapak ( the sub-clan has a leader )
              Orang semenda bertempat semenda (the affine has affinal relatives)
  Before the advent of the British rule, it was the Undang (lawgiver) who held power in the 'luak' or the territory, and not even the Yamtuan can intefere in the domain of the Undang. It could be surmised in the saying below:-
             Boleh menghitam dan memutihkan
             Boleh memanjang dan memendekkan
             Boleh mengesah dan membatalkan

Translated as:
            With authority to pronounce black and white
            With authority to lengthen and shorten
            With authority to confirm and annul
Likewise;
            Sah batal pada Undang
            Keris penyalang pada Undang
Translated as:
           Confirmation and annulment are with the Undang
           The execution Kris is with the Undang

      In fact the Undang held more authority than the Yamtuan where matters fall under the jurisdiction of the Luak. The Yamtuan was only confined to his seat of the palace in Seri Menanti. This was the scenario then, because the Yamtuan served as the titular Head of State and he was invited from Pagar Ruyung in Sumatera upon the request of the four Undangs. Thus whenever the Ruler passed away, the Undangs will choose amongst the eligible princes, not necessarily the son of the deceased to become the new ruler. Thus the present Yang diPertuan Besar (Yamtuan for short) was chosen from amongst the three princes (the other two were the sons of the previous Yamtuan, Almarhum Tuanku Jaafar ibni Almarhum Tuanku Abdul Rahman). His Highness Tuanku Mukhriz, the present ruler is the son of the former Yamtuan, Almarhum Tuanku Munawir, the brother of Almarhum Tuanku Jaafar. If I could recall correctly, when the Federation Agreement of 1947 was signed between the British and theMalay Rulers, all the four Undangs were invited and seated together with the Yamtuan during the signing ceremony. Such was the importance of the Undangs protocol wise accorded by the British and till today all royal functions at the State level must be graced by their presence.

Recycling Man

Familiar jingle
Pass my house many a time
Paper lama man

Recycling business
An honest work for the day
Earning his living