YeinJee's Asian Journal

When I was in primary school… we were taught that Ahmad, Ah Kau and Raju are all good friends, and we helped each other regardless of races. My father was a great role model of racial bonding, he had a wide group of friends that he mixed with, and he used to bring me to his friends’ open house during festive seasons… back then I believed in racial harmony without a single doubt.

Things only started to change when I moved to high school. Suddenly I realized that most of the Chinese had to study in Remove Class, while Malays weren’t require to do so. The intention itself was not bad, but I started realizing that Malays and non Malays were somehow different.

A few years later, I finished my SPM… lots of friends with good results had applied for UTM (to skip Form 6). I have a friend who scored full As in SPM but got rejected by UTM… that was quite a surprise. Then I started to learn about quota system in higher education, where the best results couldn’t guarantee a place in our public universities if your skin colour wasn’t right.

After STPM, I got into UM in a popular course. On the first day at class, our professor asked us why we chose the course… and people started telling stories. Then came a few Bumis that mentioned that they didn’t want to enter the faculty, but their results were not good enough to get into other courses.

That really set the fire… the Chinese studied like mad cows to get a good score in STPM in order to get into courses like medic, law, accounting, engineering etc. and yet many of us couldn’t enter our desired courses because of quota system… but some OTHERS that didn’t even want to study in the course was ‘forced’ to enter the course instead.

Note that how often I have to used the words Malay, Bumis, non-Malay, Chinese etc. to describe my education experience… why can’t we just use a simple Malaysian instead? It’s simply because we Malaysians are educated a different way, and treated differently in our education system. Racial gap is not created within the text books, but by our education system.

It’s not the end of my story though… university is the best place to witness the racial indifference. It was not the students that were creating the troubles, as undergraduates of different races did live harmoniously together… it was the bureaucracy and university policies that often created tension among students.

It is going to be another long story… I guess I’ll end it here at the moment.

What would you do if you are the last person on earth?

An asteroid has collided with the earth and you are probably the only person that has miraculously survived… what would you do?

Would you do your best to find if there is someone else on earth that has survived the Armageddon?

Would you find a quiet place and start planting and hunting and surviving on your own until your own day comes?

Or… would you just follow the footstep of the rest and just kill yourself?

What would I do if I am the last person on earth?

I don’t think the scenario is possible… the earth is probably not going to doom in my lifetime. Besides, the odd of only one person surviving any disaster is close to impossible; it is much easier to have everyone dead or at least thousands if not millions of survivors.

But then… to answer my own question… I would probably do my best to find if someone else is still alive. I might give up after a few years of finding, and try to find a scenic place with plenty of fish and stayed there alone for the rest of my life. Hopefully there are still fish to catch after the Armageddon.

What would you do if you are the last person on earth?

I can’t stand people who bring magazines to toilet.
I can’t stand people who make the newspaper messy after reading it.
I can’t stand people who fold their book pages or write things on their books.

Ok, I am probably the odd one here. I don’t read in toilet; my magazines, newspaper and books are like brand new after reading it. People must have thought that I was a lazy fella if they saw my old text books, because it looks like it has never been touched.

It is sort of an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), but I am not really that obsessed yet… it’s more like a habit instead. The weird thing is I am not really the kind of person that tidy up things, as my room can be quite messy sometimes (in fact most of the time).

I guess it’s more fitting to say that I treat reading materials with care. Does that make me a book lover? I am not sure… book lover is meant as people who love reading instead of keeping good care of books ain’t so? I do love reading though, so it makes me a book lover regardless.

Had lunch with a few ex-faculty mates - hadn’t seen 2 of them for quite some time.

Thinking back how close we were in university days… it’s a pity that we haven’t been keeping close contact these days. We (and a few others) used to promise that we would have an annual gathering after our graduation… but it ended as empty talks.

All of us have different circle of life now… different career path, different social network, and different lifestyle. The only thing that we probably share is the memories we have… life changes, memories never changed… it could be forgotten though.

An asteroid is on a collision course with the earth and you have one hour left to live. What would you do in your last 60 minutes?

According to a recent British survey…

54% said they would like to spend it either with or on the phone to their loved ones;
13% would sit back, accept the inevitable and reach for a glass of champagne;
9% going for sex;
3% would turn to prayer;
2% would reach for some fatty food;
another 2% will start looting.

What would you do?

What would I do? I am not really sure… I think I will try to access the situation and see if there is any chance of survival and do my best to survive. An asteroid collision doesn’t mean that it would be the end of the world…

However, the question has stated that I would have only 60 minutes left to live… so I probably shouldn’t think too much. I would probably want to spend the time with my family, but then… if it’s Armageddon… the traffic would be horrible, and the phone line could be jammed. I probably won’t reach them on time.

Perhaps I would just sit in front of the PC, watching some live telecast up to the last minute the asteroid hit the earth… it would be nice if KFC are still selling their fried chicken, I could at least enjoy my last meal.

What would you do in your last 60 minutes?

Came back from Hong Kong on Wednesday night (Oct 10, 2007)… still remains tired after 24 hours. Tired might not be the right word… lazy sounds like a better word.

Works are pilling up despite just a short trip. Hundreds of emails and messages to flip through, thousands of feeds to read, and dozens of updates needed to be done on various projects and websites… it feels like I am not able to catch up with things.

The trip was fun though.