Ponder (2006)

 

I sit here in my studio in Malaysia’s Kinta Valley, mug of hot black Chinese tea in my pink Chinese mug, having just read Patrick Teoh’s thought provoking article – ‘Sorry ah boss’ in Off the Edge magazine.

Firstly it strikes me what a comfortable writer Patrick Teoh is, then how observant and articulate this writer is, but most of all – damn I wish I had written that.

One of the issues Mr Teoh addresses is the laissez faire attitude of the general populace when it comes to putting into action complaints against government and its servants. Mr Teoh writes about People Power, the lack of and its collective misuse by people such as taxi drivers to put up cab fares.

 

This subject will not be new to many readers, and certainly isn’t new to this reader.

Any evening I can pull up a plastic stall, order Tea Tarik (sweet tea) in my father-in-law’s corner shop and listen to the men-folk put the world to rights, then listen to them again the next evening doing the self same thing again.

This need to articulate grievances is a phenomenon I have witnessed throughout the world I have travelled, from the ale houses of England’s East Anglia to the tea rooms of Turkey’s Istanbul and bars of Bangkok.

It appears to be human nature to want to let off stream, to air grievances, to have your say. One only has to look at the massive expansion of Blog (or web log) sites on the internet, including this one, to understand that people in general want to have their say.

Taking action, however, is a wholly different basket of ikan bilis.

Patrick Teoh’s article brought to mind one particular scene in the film Monty Python’s Life of Brian. A dissident group gathers to disparage the Roman occupation of their lands; the now infamous scene asks ‘what have the Romans ever done for us’. The answer - medicine, education, and wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, public health, and, says Xerxes “Brought peace”.

Ponder on that……….