Starting 2011 with wisdom

Aww, this came so late it ended up being the first post for year 2011. Nevertheless, it had good points, so that sounds like a good starter, right?

Dr Mahathir. Opinions are so wide about him, ranging from being the best Malaysian PM ever or a self-serving corrupt racist. Well, I only want to judge him through my personal encounter with him at the World Congress Of Accountants (WCOA).

He’s one of the speakers in that event. He talked about being a doctor by training, so he know nuts about finance when he became the PM. But he had advisors so that helped. So that’s the intro.

Next, he talked about the evil of printing money. Which is what is happening in the West. It’s short-term, and the repercussion will be worse. Yea yea, actually he talked in greater details, but I just want to type the summary that’s simple enough for anyone to understand.

He talked about Look East policy. He got to that when he wanted a country with an economic model to model on. Unfortunately, the Westerners were so developed they forgot how they got there. Japan was fairly rising quickly, despite them being heavily affected during WW2.

Today, the Japanese talks about looking West, including us. When Uniqlo opened in KL recently, I remember reading an interview on Uniqlo’s founder in StarBiz. It’s flattering to read the founder of biggest Japanese clothing store admires DrM, and tweaked this policy into Look West policy.

He also advised Pakistanis that good leader is important to steer a country to progress, so when they found one… don’t kill her. Yep.

Most of those present at that time had only greatest praise for him. We even gave him TWO standing ovations. He is indeed a sophisticated person, it’s head-scratching to believe the same guy made racist statements.

Honestly, only weak fags get provoked by him and go emo all over the net. Whenever he makes such racist statements, I’ve always wondered if he’s either trolling for teh lulz or he’s been smoking something only God knows. None of them ever sounded serious, it made me laugh sometimes thinking how ridiculous he sounds.

But a speech that’s econ heavy, all without reading from scripts? Frak yeah!!

So, going back to the title, what wisdom? Believe in oneself. DrM’s role is done. It’s our turn.

Most recently, the Malayan Tigers/Harimau Malaya aka football team managed to win the Suzuki ASEAN cup. Never have I seen such overwhelming support for local boys. Frankly, I feel good about it. This and the global economic crisis have a common lesson for us Malaysians: unity. Them Westerners are only human, they make mistakes too. They’re only strong when they get their act together. We should too, football’s a good start.

But I don’t agree granting public holiday just to celebrate it. CHAOS as people’s transactions get backlogged by banks taking this date as holiday. And had we gotten enough public holiday already? Why not instead get the national football team to be VIP on new year’s eve celebration with PM and all at dataran merdeka? Sigh