SAVE SABAH
I read Flanegan's post on kids born in the 80's and I found it to be quite true. Things will never be the same again especially now that Sabah's rushing to 'civilise' themselves. Also thanks to Musa Aman who wants to get paid as quickly and as much as possible before his term ends. Politically and socially Sabah's losing its heart.
It's ridiculous why though because there are so many Sabahans that love their state (I do like it was my own family) yet nothing is being done. KK is one alphabet away from KL and the evolution is taking itself on too quickly and definitely not in a scrupulous manner. Just hantam everything. Ugly buildings, bad town planning that caters more to an economy rather than it's people. KL is an ugly piece of concrete. Why would we, Borneo, Maliau Basin, Mount Kinabalu, Sipadan Islands want to be a part of that?
To improve an economy, you must first improve its people. Sabahans still have little facilities considering how much money we're worth and we produce to Malaysia. No, I don't think we'd be better off liberated because we don't have the security or know how enough to defend or support ourselves. What also really gets me is that it's a 'city' (which it should never have been in the first place) yet we have no educated entertainment. No theatres (other than in UMS), opera houses, art galleries, concert halls (what.. DBKK hall yeah right), performance art institutions, proper skate parks or anything. We don't even have a proper BOOK STORE and you want to worry about a fly-over? A stupid fly-over for your TWO NOT FOUR WAY LANE ROADS? It looks good, really.
Now you just have to plant a tree on it. These people can't even be bothered to maintain playgrounds in neighbourhoods. To hell with the children, let's put up more concrete. Tun Fuad Stephens made a fortune raping our forests and a decade ago a politician got off with 3 billion. Another gambled away 6 million at a London casino and walks the streets of KK like nothing happened in fact I saw him last time I was back. Yet still... Sabah is the poorest state in the whole of Malaysia.
There are no excuses or reasons for our poverty and lack of resources for our people. The Sabah government is taking after Tun Mahathir's example in depending on infrastructure to improve our living quality but it doesn't help. It doesn't give our rural people schools and facilities that match ones in KK at all.
There are NO places for young people to develop any skills whatsoever and thanks to the poor excuse of an educational system Malaysia has on top of a significant amount of uneducated, ignorant teachers, young people are losing so much hope. The children of today take it like it's nothing because they'll study, do their extra tuiton then come home and watch Astro, play with their handphones and talk about Hilary Duff. My generation is currently at university but I know a lot of them who have started working and contrary to what they think, they haven't failed their education, their education has failed them.
Now with the increasing influence of the media, West Malaysian culture is seeping into our soil. We are losing our culture to West Malaysia because of Akademi Fantasia, tv, sms etc. SMS, god forbid. People are starting to believe that handphone companies do make your lives better. It doesn't and it doesn't help that these stupid Digi people yang ketara SPM fail, bida berabis ni start blasting Black Eyed Peas in GAYA STREET at 8 in the morning like it's nothing. The only art on our streets has Siti Nurhaliza on it. Sabahans even speak with a hint of a Semenanjung accent now. We may be Malaysia but we have our own very unique identity. Don't shed that.
So no, we'll never have our good old days back. We won't have our kids enjoying good, down to earth fun. We'll NEVER have Sipadan Island back to its former glory, Kundasang will never be cold again, Keningau will never see hale again and Sutera Harbour will continue to pollute the seas with pesticide from its golf course. Garbage from the wet markets will continue to be dumped in the sea and excess boating will eventually kill all our islands. Illegal immigrants will continue to make us fearful in our own hometowns and as we eat, two hours away a family is selling their baby for food. Our kids will never again play games without computer chips or enter a world of imagination without the remote control. NOT because they're uneducated but also because our parents are too and they don't realise that they don't have anywhere else to take their children. They have options but they don't realise that they can demand them without having to coax a politician who'll do a half-arsed job just to get elected into his constituency.
It's horrible and it's not going to get better. We cry about it, complain, we're dying for someone to care. I think we just need to get enough people who care enough to come together and tell the politicians that we care. Tell them our concerns and show them who has the authority. WE DO. It's a democracy not a monarchy, republic or communist ruling. WE DON'T LIKE THE WAY SABAH'S BEING CHANGED THEREFORE WE MUST SAY SOMETHING BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE. It has been going on for too long. We're not stupid, in fact we're far from it. We just have to stop being scared, apolitical or ignorant because it affects us all. It affects our Sabah and there will never be another one like it. Ever.
Now here I am talking big again. I acknolwedge here first that this is hypothetical because who knows I'm going to talk and not do again (I try to tackle fish too big for me sometimes). Reigniting Sabah's faith and getting the government moving is not that difficult. The key is -humiliation and getting them to realise that we are in fact, educated on what goes on.
Imagine the humiliation of a rally of Sabahan youths; not the adults, the youth showing their love for their homeland and making a stand. How embarassing that the adults won't take a stand first! It doesn't have to be aggressive, it doesn't have to be complicated and formal, just simple and organised. We just have to band together and show that we care and with the help of the media, our numbers will be heard and the government will realise that we're not going to take it sitting down. We deserve simple facilities such as decent bookstores, playgrounds for our children in all neighbourhoods and not just good ones. We should have community centres where skilled people can teach whoever wants to learn, skilled courses like beading, cultural dance, adult reading etc. It also helps people develop skills that they need for work! We can't always rely on tourism as a main source of income. TOURISM, which I might add, is contributing greatly to the destruction and deforestestation of Sabah (see Sabah's so stressed it's literally going botak already).
We may be bankrupt but we want to know that the government knows how to make good decisions when they do decide to use the money on us and not their UK family holidays. There was an inter-school 'general knowledge quiz' held by DBKK a few years ago which turned out to just be city propaganda trying to get kids to come up with ideas to improve KK but the really dumb thing was that the kid who won the essay (how to make KK a better place) was writing stupid shit like KK should have LRT's and MRT's. Again, trying to force KK into becoming the next KL. KL is a very bad role model especially for a green state like ours. We don't want 12 shopping malls in the city because that's a one way street to bankruptcy. All the more, without educational/healthy entertainment facilities people have no option but to work and spend money in their free time. Where are our families going to bond? KEDAI KOPI.
The government tends to think too small. During a press conference with the Youth and Sport Minister, it was obvious that the Sports Minister knew nothing about the youth because he insisted that the only solution was -sports stadiums. His assistant, Datuk Noni. OMG DON'T GET ME STARTED ON THAT WOMAN!! Ngeah.. I had an argument with her before because she's so stupiak (how unprofessional of me) that during a Children's Rights Campaign she insisted that she was going to have a 'youth centre' in Wisma Budaya where there would be counsellors, meeting rooms and board games and random people can meet up and help each other with their homework.
Wisma Budaya is in the 100 foot radius of Centre Point and in total, three cinemas. And the youth (teenagers included) would want to go to a dodgy place like that? 1. Random people helping each other = paedophilia. 2. Counsellors - how many troubled youths know that they're troubled? I kept asking her the second and she kept answering "then it's their fault for not taking the initiative." Although it was a good question the whole room asked me to shut up because I was being 'kurang ajar' for talking back to Datuk Noni. Clearly oblivious to the fact that any of this affected them at all. The youth centre was never built and when the room of young people was asked what they thought of Children's rights they regurgitated everything they heard with no thoughts of their own. The people who promised to listen never gave us their details and never came back. I'm ashamed of ever saying that they should conduct such a campaign ever again.
So our Minister and assistant minister of youth obviously failed the test. Then there was this guy (can't remember his name) but he's really old but fit, works for the tourism board and wears incredibly short shorts. During a Young Ambassadors' Seminar (my mum makes me do so much crap) they practically wanted us to advertise our tourist sites for if we ever go overseas. I asked about Sutera Harbour dumping pesticide into our oceans which carry the pesticide 10 miles out from land and he said I was being too political. Sutera Harbour supplies jobs. So said our trusted tourism industry - we will sell the health of our environment to get money. Yes, you're feeding people but you'll be feeding more if you get these people to instigate more environmentally friendly practises. The problem is, Sutera Harbour mau untung so they don't. And no one's educated or has the balls enough to say "hey, you're doing the wrong thing!"
Justeru, ladies and gentlemen we have a million and one problems on our hands. All we have to do is shake the tree to get fruits (as the first step at least). We outnumber the government and all we have to do is tell them that we know and tell them that we're angry. We can't let bad decision makers choose for us.
This, is my ideal, developed Kota Kinabalu.. Green. It doesn't not need skyscrapers, more shops or necessairily more roads, it needs good planning and community centres. Stop cramming everything into the middle of KK and improve on public transport to be used not just by illegal immigrants or the poor but for everybody. Once there are more 'middle classed' people taking public transportation it will become a little safer. Don't try to expand KK because we're a small space squeezed behind the mountains and the sea. In the end all you'll get is another Singapore. You can have a successful, developed city using simplicity. Don't try to glamour-glamour, so long as the people know how to look for income on their own, how and where to develop skills on their own the city will prosper.
Okay, I know we were just getting to the good part but this entry's getting way too panjang lebar for now. Will continue this later.
It's ridiculous why though because there are so many Sabahans that love their state (I do like it was my own family) yet nothing is being done. KK is one alphabet away from KL and the evolution is taking itself on too quickly and definitely not in a scrupulous manner. Just hantam everything. Ugly buildings, bad town planning that caters more to an economy rather than it's people. KL is an ugly piece of concrete. Why would we, Borneo, Maliau Basin, Mount Kinabalu, Sipadan Islands want to be a part of that?
To improve an economy, you must first improve its people. Sabahans still have little facilities considering how much money we're worth and we produce to Malaysia. No, I don't think we'd be better off liberated because we don't have the security or know how enough to defend or support ourselves. What also really gets me is that it's a 'city' (which it should never have been in the first place) yet we have no educated entertainment. No theatres (other than in UMS), opera houses, art galleries, concert halls (what.. DBKK hall yeah right), performance art institutions, proper skate parks or anything. We don't even have a proper BOOK STORE and you want to worry about a fly-over? A stupid fly-over for your TWO NOT FOUR WAY LANE ROADS? It looks good, really.
Now you just have to plant a tree on it. These people can't even be bothered to maintain playgrounds in neighbourhoods. To hell with the children, let's put up more concrete. Tun Fuad Stephens made a fortune raping our forests and a decade ago a politician got off with 3 billion. Another gambled away 6 million at a London casino and walks the streets of KK like nothing happened in fact I saw him last time I was back. Yet still... Sabah is the poorest state in the whole of Malaysia.
There are no excuses or reasons for our poverty and lack of resources for our people. The Sabah government is taking after Tun Mahathir's example in depending on infrastructure to improve our living quality but it doesn't help. It doesn't give our rural people schools and facilities that match ones in KK at all.
There are NO places for young people to develop any skills whatsoever and thanks to the poor excuse of an educational system Malaysia has on top of a significant amount of uneducated, ignorant teachers, young people are losing so much hope. The children of today take it like it's nothing because they'll study, do their extra tuiton then come home and watch Astro, play with their handphones and talk about Hilary Duff. My generation is currently at university but I know a lot of them who have started working and contrary to what they think, they haven't failed their education, their education has failed them.
Now with the increasing influence of the media, West Malaysian culture is seeping into our soil. We are losing our culture to West Malaysia because of Akademi Fantasia, tv, sms etc. SMS, god forbid. People are starting to believe that handphone companies do make your lives better. It doesn't and it doesn't help that these stupid Digi people yang ketara SPM fail, bida berabis ni start blasting Black Eyed Peas in GAYA STREET at 8 in the morning like it's nothing. The only art on our streets has Siti Nurhaliza on it. Sabahans even speak with a hint of a Semenanjung accent now. We may be Malaysia but we have our own very unique identity. Don't shed that.
So no, we'll never have our good old days back. We won't have our kids enjoying good, down to earth fun. We'll NEVER have Sipadan Island back to its former glory, Kundasang will never be cold again, Keningau will never see hale again and Sutera Harbour will continue to pollute the seas with pesticide from its golf course. Garbage from the wet markets will continue to be dumped in the sea and excess boating will eventually kill all our islands. Illegal immigrants will continue to make us fearful in our own hometowns and as we eat, two hours away a family is selling their baby for food. Our kids will never again play games without computer chips or enter a world of imagination without the remote control. NOT because they're uneducated but also because our parents are too and they don't realise that they don't have anywhere else to take their children. They have options but they don't realise that they can demand them without having to coax a politician who'll do a half-arsed job just to get elected into his constituency.
It's horrible and it's not going to get better. We cry about it, complain, we're dying for someone to care. I think we just need to get enough people who care enough to come together and tell the politicians that we care. Tell them our concerns and show them who has the authority. WE DO. It's a democracy not a monarchy, republic or communist ruling. WE DON'T LIKE THE WAY SABAH'S BEING CHANGED THEREFORE WE MUST SAY SOMETHING BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE. It has been going on for too long. We're not stupid, in fact we're far from it. We just have to stop being scared, apolitical or ignorant because it affects us all. It affects our Sabah and there will never be another one like it. Ever.
Now here I am talking big again. I acknolwedge here first that this is hypothetical because who knows I'm going to talk and not do again (I try to tackle fish too big for me sometimes). Reigniting Sabah's faith and getting the government moving is not that difficult. The key is -humiliation and getting them to realise that we are in fact, educated on what goes on.
Imagine the humiliation of a rally of Sabahan youths; not the adults, the youth showing their love for their homeland and making a stand. How embarassing that the adults won't take a stand first! It doesn't have to be aggressive, it doesn't have to be complicated and formal, just simple and organised. We just have to band together and show that we care and with the help of the media, our numbers will be heard and the government will realise that we're not going to take it sitting down. We deserve simple facilities such as decent bookstores, playgrounds for our children in all neighbourhoods and not just good ones. We should have community centres where skilled people can teach whoever wants to learn, skilled courses like beading, cultural dance, adult reading etc. It also helps people develop skills that they need for work! We can't always rely on tourism as a main source of income. TOURISM, which I might add, is contributing greatly to the destruction and deforestestation of Sabah (see Sabah's so stressed it's literally going botak already).
We may be bankrupt but we want to know that the government knows how to make good decisions when they do decide to use the money on us and not their UK family holidays. There was an inter-school 'general knowledge quiz' held by DBKK a few years ago which turned out to just be city propaganda trying to get kids to come up with ideas to improve KK but the really dumb thing was that the kid who won the essay (how to make KK a better place) was writing stupid shit like KK should have LRT's and MRT's. Again, trying to force KK into becoming the next KL. KL is a very bad role model especially for a green state like ours. We don't want 12 shopping malls in the city because that's a one way street to bankruptcy. All the more, without educational/healthy entertainment facilities people have no option but to work and spend money in their free time. Where are our families going to bond? KEDAI KOPI.
The government tends to think too small. During a press conference with the Youth and Sport Minister, it was obvious that the Sports Minister knew nothing about the youth because he insisted that the only solution was -sports stadiums. His assistant, Datuk Noni. OMG DON'T GET ME STARTED ON THAT WOMAN!! Ngeah.. I had an argument with her before because she's so stupiak (how unprofessional of me) that during a Children's Rights Campaign she insisted that she was going to have a 'youth centre' in Wisma Budaya where there would be counsellors, meeting rooms and board games and random people can meet up and help each other with their homework.
Wisma Budaya is in the 100 foot radius of Centre Point and in total, three cinemas. And the youth (teenagers included) would want to go to a dodgy place like that? 1. Random people helping each other = paedophilia. 2. Counsellors - how many troubled youths know that they're troubled? I kept asking her the second and she kept answering "then it's their fault for not taking the initiative." Although it was a good question the whole room asked me to shut up because I was being 'kurang ajar' for talking back to Datuk Noni. Clearly oblivious to the fact that any of this affected them at all. The youth centre was never built and when the room of young people was asked what they thought of Children's rights they regurgitated everything they heard with no thoughts of their own. The people who promised to listen never gave us their details and never came back. I'm ashamed of ever saying that they should conduct such a campaign ever again.
So our Minister and assistant minister of youth obviously failed the test. Then there was this guy (can't remember his name) but he's really old but fit, works for the tourism board and wears incredibly short shorts. During a Young Ambassadors' Seminar (my mum makes me do so much crap) they practically wanted us to advertise our tourist sites for if we ever go overseas. I asked about Sutera Harbour dumping pesticide into our oceans which carry the pesticide 10 miles out from land and he said I was being too political. Sutera Harbour supplies jobs. So said our trusted tourism industry - we will sell the health of our environment to get money. Yes, you're feeding people but you'll be feeding more if you get these people to instigate more environmentally friendly practises. The problem is, Sutera Harbour mau untung so they don't. And no one's educated or has the balls enough to say "hey, you're doing the wrong thing!"
Justeru, ladies and gentlemen we have a million and one problems on our hands. All we have to do is shake the tree to get fruits (as the first step at least). We outnumber the government and all we have to do is tell them that we know and tell them that we're angry. We can't let bad decision makers choose for us.
This, is my ideal, developed Kota Kinabalu.. Green. It doesn't not need skyscrapers, more shops or necessairily more roads, it needs good planning and community centres. Stop cramming everything into the middle of KK and improve on public transport to be used not just by illegal immigrants or the poor but for everybody. Once there are more 'middle classed' people taking public transportation it will become a little safer. Don't try to expand KK because we're a small space squeezed behind the mountains and the sea. In the end all you'll get is another Singapore. You can have a successful, developed city using simplicity. Don't try to glamour-glamour, so long as the people know how to look for income on their own, how and where to develop skills on their own the city will prosper.
Okay, I know we were just getting to the good part but this entry's getting way too panjang lebar for now. Will continue this later.
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