Change can prove to be positive or negative, create waves, give birth to a revolution ( on a macro scale), alter the way people think, encourage innovation, and a whole load of other things. But sometimes change is unnecessary, and that’s what my rant is about.

I have a particular dislike for people who want to change something merely for the sake of change itself. If something is good, why change it? But don’t tell a change monger that, they will not see your point of view, or pretend not to.

One thing about change mongers though, they don’t give much thought about how workable their idea is, all they want to do is implement it and have their name on the plaque! Once the winds of change have a sour air about it, they will be out of the door in no time.

I believe change should only be implemented when it will prove of benefit, and not irritate and confuse everyone involved. New bosses are prime candidates for implementing unnecessary change. I once worked at a publication where my colleagues and I had the misfortune of having to contend with a new editor who was a change monger.

This person wanted to change our editorial process, the way we worked, the way we thought, in short she wanted to change EVERYTHING. The fact that we worked well as a team despite being severely short-staffed and still managed to meet our editorial deadlines was not taken into consideration.

Interestingly she could not provide a good reason for changing systems and processes that had worked so well for the team up to that point. All she wanted to do was to change it. Yet for all her prating, she failed to inspire confidence in her agenda. Why? because all she had was a couple of abstract ideas that did not seem workable. In the end the only thing she ended up changing, was that all of us started actively job hunting!

Leaving a legacy?

Some people want to change things in the interest of progress, they are visionaries, these are people who will be lauded long after they are gone. Then there are those who want to initiate change to carve out a legacy for themselves. These are egomaniacs, we will be wagging our finger at them long after the weeds have made a permanent home around their tombstone.

Hmm for some reason Anwar Ibrahim comes to mind. I don’t care who he sodomised or did not sodomise. My ire against him is solely reserved for what he did during his tenure as Education Minister. We have him to thank for KBSR and KBSM ( lame ass education system that does not encourage students to think), and for screwing up our term holidays. One moment our end of the term holidays were in December, then he changed it to November and then back again to December. Boy were we guinea pigs in his hands!

One wonders what massive changes he would have brought upon us, if he had become the 5th Prime Minister. Well there’s room yet for that I imagine……Erm for now Anwar can be rest assured that thanks to him Malaysians will never see sodomy or a black eye in the same light again.

Another person who tried to create a legacy and failed is the man we dearly call Pak Lah. He started of as “Mr Clean” and ended up as “Bapa Batik” as he was seen officiating at one too many batik functions.

All in all Pak Lah will definitely be remembered for doing things no other Prime Minister has done in office to date. Dozing off at official functions, losing a wife to cancer and marrying another in record time and handing over five states to the opposition on a platter. Who says you need to be a genius to be remembered?

For some reason this post has turned political considering I am an apolitical person.Well I suppose that’s because change mongers always have some sort of political agenda or another up their sleeves.

The Sultanah Aminah Hospital

Does any real healing take place in a Malaysian government hospital? does it? really? if you are one of the lucky few who has had the good fortune of being well taken care of in one of these hospitals – you rank in the minority and should consider yourself darn lucky.

The following cases of negligence at public hospitals which was splashed across the press, generated tonnes of negative publicity for the hospitals concerned and resulted in civil suits.

• The case of baby Lai Yok Shan who lost her left forearm because of negligence by doctors at the Tengku Ampuan Rahimah Hospital in Klang. Her parents have since filed an RM2 million suit against the government.

• Fourty nine days after undergoing a hysterectomy surgery, private hospital nurse Kalaiyarasi Perumal discovered that a pair of forceps had been left in her stomach by the surgical team at the Sultanah Aminah Hospital in Johor Baru.

• Former Quran teacher Bashah Mustaffa sued the government over the HIV-contaminated blood she received during a transfusion at the Jitra Hospital.

• Rozita Haron@ Choo Kim Koon claimed RM250,000 against the Sultanah Aminah Hospital in Johor Baru for negligence after its staff left a needle in her vagina during delivery in 1995.

• The parents of V.Monishaa, 15, alleged that the negligent attitude of two medical officers at the Sultan Abdul Halim Hospital resulted in the death of their daughter from meningitis sepsis.

That which I have listed above is a mere five, but there are more, lots more. If I had taken the trouble to Google it all up, this post would have to be written as part one and two!

Various excuses have been given on the part of hospital authorities and the government – doctors make mistakes too, the hospitals are overcrowded and the staff overworked and so on and so forth. We have also been constantly reassured via stories in the media that the government is building more hospitals, getting more equipment, recruiting more staff, hiring foreign doctors etc.

But has anyone read stories in the press that the Health Minister or the government has vowed to kick someone’s ass or let heads roll the next time they hear of a negligence of gargantuan proportions at  public hospitals? instead of forming lame ass committees to investigate what happened each time something goes terribly wrong? obviously NO. If they did, perhaps the staff at these hospitals, at whatever level they function, would take their jobs more seriously.

Being overworked is not a good excuse. People in other professions are overworked too, can they use that as a reason to deliver substandard work? well if you work in the private sector, you would be slapped with a memo, demoted, suspended or worse still  fired for not performing up to par.

Yup I know it’s the norm that not much can be expected from government departments and agencies. But when it comes to the health care sector its high time the powers that be, brandished the whip.

When you’re dealing with people’s lives there is no room for being lax. In my opinion the cases of negligence mentioned above, plus the ones that have gone unreported is all a result of the ATTITUDE of the staff at these hospitals. If they were good at what they did, and if they CARED, the poor patients under their care, would have fared better.

Our government can build top-notch hospitals with impressive new facilities, but if the medical personnel at these hospitals work like robots, don’t think outside the box and don’t give two hoots about doing a good job, more people will stand to lose their limbs, be wrongly diagnosed, find foreign objects in their internal organs and die – as has happened a fair bit.

Sultan Ismail Hospital

A case in point is the Sultan Ismail Hospital in Johor Baru. Spanking new premises, supposedly has top-notch equipment etc. However based on general feedback and a rather sour experience of my brother’s, it’s worse than the Sultanah Aminah Hospital which itself has garnered quite a reputation in the sphere of medical negligence.

In the case of my brother and his friend who were involved in a car accident, they were made to wait for over an hour, despite groaning in pain ( my brother fractured two fingers while his friend had a shoulder injury). People who had come in with tummy aches and such were ushered in to see the doctor first. Considering it was the Accident & Emergency Department, should accident patients not be given priority?

When my mum asked if the boys could see the doctor soon considering their state of pain, she was told that as they could still walk they were obviously not badly hurt and could afford to wait. Do they not know that there have been people out there who have gotten up and walked after being involved in an accident, only to die a few days later because of internal bleeding?

Another thing that riled my mum was the red tape involved. My brother had a ring on one of his fractured fingers which had swelled up. He wanted the ring removed as it was painful. But guess what the medical officer said? She said they did not have the equipment to remove the ring, and thus on Monday ( my brother was at the hospital on Saturday night) they would write to the operating theater to borrow the equipment, and if permission was granted, then the ring could be removed. So brand new government specialist hospital does not have a set of pliers to remove a ring??

After an hour of extreme irritation, and after being told that his friend was fine enough to go home despite the sharp pain in his shoulder, my brother decided that seeing the doctor there would serve no purpose and decided to go to the Johor Specialist Centre. Upon arrival there, his ring was immediately removed, and after prompt treatment, they were warded.

The following day, they underwent surgery (my brother for his finger fractures, and his friend for his dislocated shoulder). The bill was certainly not cheap, but they are on the mend. They are the lucky ones who don’t have to put up with poor treatment at public hospitals. But not everyone has options, it’s those who are not financially able who usually become the victims of negligence at government hospitals.

Free service does not = poor service. All because it’s cheap and free does not mean the rakyat has to put up with whatever government hospital staff choose to dish out. Call me cynical, but I doubt the current malaise that plagues our public health care system will be solved in the near future. The government can announce and announce of this measure and that measure. But in the end it will still not improve.

So what do we do? invest in insurance, get a medical card at the very least. Invest in your health and safety, because our government is not going to do that for you.

We have all met them at one time or another, they could be a relative, a friend, a co-worker and god forbid a parent or a spouse! Yup the title says it all, I’m talking about misers. Those human beings who are a perennial pain in the ass. You can mock them, yell at them, put em in a freezer, but misers don’t change their stripes.

Their goal is to live frugally and die rich, so other people will benefit from their hoarded wealth. Hmm maybe in that case they are martyrs then….? living below their means for the benefit of future generations…..? Well they might prove to be posthumous saints for the beneficiaries of their wealth, but for the people who actually have to put up with them, live with them, stomach them, it’s a different story all together.

Considering that I have had the privilege of encountering a few of these gem like beings, I was inspired to write the following. It’s the almost complete list of traits that most misers possess. Mind you this is not something that I came up with overnight, it’s the result of years of study and careful observation. The psychologists of the future are going to thank me for this someday……..I’m certain.

Well here’s my list, move over Scrooge McDuck!!

[ Note: Men are not the only ones who are misers, but for the purpose of this post, I shall use the term 'he'.]

1. Lives in a small house, spartan like living, but probably has five double-storey bungalows rented out.

2. Almost never eats out unless it costs less than ten bucks.

3. He drives the same beaten up car for years. In some cases he will entirely depend on public transport to get around ( the costs of fuel is ever rising).

4. Hates it when he gets ill. Medical costs these days is so…..expensive, even if all it takes is a visit to the neighbourhood GP.

5. He wants a discount on everything and he’s not kidding!

6. Will always worm his way out of chipping in for anything. At his most generous, he makes a small contribution. Which in normal terms means a measly amount.

7. The way he sees it, people are always out to cheat him of his money. Once he has gotten this notion into his head, no amount of logic will convince him otherwise.

8.  He sees only one truth, if he has to fork out money for something he does not want to, he is being swindled. The miser will come up with the most ridiculous of explanations to justify this, for example he might even blame the malfunctioning toilet flush for conspiring against him. Ignoring the fact that there is little the toilet flush can do with a wad of cash!

9. He will invest his precious cash, but even when his investments are yielding profit, he will constantly whine about imaginary losses.

10. Never takes holidays, but with the advent of AirAsia, he will book his tickets a year in advance and harbour secrets hopes of seeing the world on a shoestring budget.

I am not done yet, this is a growing list……!!

1. Structural damage is your responsibility, even if it happens during the occupancy of the tenant.

2.  On a random visit, if you walk in and see a well maintained home ( note that I say home and not house), be grateful. Because this shows that your tenants’ are treating your property as if it were their own. Take into consideration that there are a fair number of tenants out there who get a kick out of thrashing up a place during their stay and literally leave the property in shambles when they leave.

3. You’re lucky if you have tenants who pay their rent within the stipulated time period (by the 7th in tenancy agreements). You are even more LUCKY if you have a tenant like me who pays you by the 3rd of the month. I say this because I have heard my fair share of horror stories of landlords who have to chase their tenants for rent.

4. When it comes to fixing something that needs to be fixed in the said property, do it! don’t go on a long rant about how you have financial problems and are not making money out of the rented property blah..blah… That’s not your tenant’s fault and they won’t be interested in hearing your lame excuses. A tenant pays you rent monthly for a property that should be in good working order, so if there’s a leaking pipe, tap etc, it’s your duty to get it fixed!

5. Oh and lastly, if you want to come over to check something or get plumbing or construction work done, it has to be at the convenience and leisure of your tenant. You have absolutely no right to turn up at their doorstep at any time and expect to be entertained. There’s no law on this, but it’s pure common sense and oh yes, basic courtesy.

Why am I ranting away about things that  are so um….taken for granted with regards to property rental? It’s because I have the misfortune of having a landlord who struggles cerebrally to grasp these basic facts. I am half tempted to email him this rant, but I fear and have long suspected that he struggles with language too.

Tiramisu - that which I can't live without....

I am tired of being asked if I am on a diet! I am not on a diet nor have I ever been on one.

Why would someone who is as skinny as me go on a diet? If I was on one, I must be either anorexic or bulimic which I am not.

I am thin because I have a high metabolic rate. I have always been a skinny girl, even as a child. I am neither ill nor on a diet, I just happen to be rather thin.

And newsflash, I am not the only one of my kind out there. Believe it or not, some of those ultra skinny people walking around probably have a very good appetite and eat all their meals. I know a few myself.

Just as there are people who eat and remain scrawny, there are those who eat sparingly and are still overweight. So not all large people are gorging themselves out, and not all the skinny ones are eating like birds. Sometimes people just can’t help the way they look.

I was brought up to eat healthy and at the same time not to deny myself the good stuff.  As much as I love my oats and green tea, I am a sucker for desserts and calorie rich north indian cuisine.

As my body shows no sign of piling on the kilos despite my current sedentary lifestyle, I am bracing myself for more of: “Why so thin? are you on a diet?”  Sigh….

Pretty girls should behave pretty. If a good looking woman displays a flash of temper, or did something nasty, people would say she has a dark side. Point being good looking and bad behaviour don’t go together. However, if a cosmetically challenged woman did the same, her attitude would not be deemed all that surprising. In fact a lot of people would say – she looked like a bitch to start with!

Fairy Tale Syndrome

I think whether we realise it or not,  a lot of us judge people, especially women, in a superficial manner. A beautiful woman must have a beautiful personality just like the heroines in most fairy tales, and the not so hot looking woman who acts difficult is probably like the Wicked Witch of the West, cos she kinda looks it with that big fat wart on the tip of her nose.

As most of us have been brought up on a diet of myths and legends of long suffering beautiful heroines who triumph in the end or die a martyr, all the way refusing to show their claws if any, we kinda expect that of beauties, if a woman looks graceful and feminine, she must ooze that from her very pores as well.

What most people fail to realise is that, the age when women walked about in flowing graceful gowns, their feet shod in impractical satin slippers, were dependent on men for their well-being and had the leisure of dabbling in embroidery, music and poetry has passed. In fact in those days physical beauty aside, a woman was also judged attractive by how well versed she was in the finer arts, especially among the upper classes.

Beauty or not, women these days….let me correct myself. Not these days, but for a very long time now, the role of women in society is no longer about being show pieces, we do a hell of a lot more than that, we have to do a hell of a lot more than that to survive.  The world has changed tremendously since then and so have we.

Yet despite all this change which on a superficial level has been accepted. People generally (especially in the society which I live in) still expect women, especially the pretty ones, to display all the tender feminine qualities of fairy tale heroines. We can climb mountains, perform a bypass surgery, direct a movie, pilot a plane. However while doing all these, we must still possess all those genteel feminine qualities that the poets of old waxed lyrical about.

Even animals evolve to suit changing climates, but women are supposed to stay the same….? In today’s world, or even the world of a few decades ago, the virtues of folk and fairy tale heroines would not cut it. Cinderella would be labeled a wuss for not standing up for herself, and the Little Mermaid’s sacrifice for the sake of true love would be labeled an absolute waste of such good singing talent for a man who did not care about her. In fact there is already some amount of debate on what kind of examples fairy tale heroines are setting for little girls these days.

Bad Witch or Smart Witch

Well those fairy tales are definitely fanciful yarn by today’s standards. But whether the writers of such tales were aware of it or not, they did perhaps unconsciously, give us a glimpse of what modern women ( the ones who have a backbone) would be like.

In those ancient tales, they are almost always garbed in black, pointed hat, nose and shoes, lived alone, with a cat or minions for companions, were disliked for their um social behaviour, had tonnes of books and scientific looking apparatus which they used to good advantage until they were defeated by the hero of the tale.

As good must always triumph over evil, prince charming always defeats the witch to gain or rescue his true love – the soft, simpering beauty who might have perished at the hands of the witch if not for the brawn and might of the man who fancies her for her good looks and feminine ways.

Well so the witch always dies, but in such tales, she is the only one who fights with the man/prince/king as an equal. The witch takes on institutions, the village, community or kingdom in which she lives. People fear her, they are at once in awe and afraid of her powers of sorcery. Not many want to mess with her, until the hero in the shining armour comes along and sets about doing what all heroes must do to be worth their salt – kill the witch.

Barring the Salem witch trials and the infamous witch hunts of 16th century England, witches that turn princes into frogs and imprison lovely maidens in towers don’t exist. Well there must have certainly been some women in towns and villages who lived alone, kept away from people, had cats for pets and perhaps made their own herbal remedies for ailments. I figure they must have been inspiration for the writers of such tales.

Beauty Mutates

The modern-day beauty has a bit of the princess and bad witch in her. She has none of the warts, or none that she cares to show, but a fair bit of the lone witch’s independent nature, intelligence and the courage to take on the establishment if she must.

She has plenty of charm too, and is usually always beautifully dressed, though like the witch she might have a penchant for the colour black and pointy shoes.

Madonna was an 80s fashion icon.

I love 80s music and movies, but not its fashion. Each time I hear that the fashion houses are reviving the 80s look, I cringe.

In fact the one thing that I am glad for is not being a young adult in that era. It would be painful having to look back at old pics of myself with big hair, shoulders pads, ultra bright colours and generally bloated clothes that the 80s are famed for.

The loudest era in fashion history since powdered wigs, crinolines and puffed sleeves.

It was the era that gave birth to neon colours.

Malaysian Mak Datins' still heart this look.

High-waisted acid washed jeans was a fashion must-have in the 80s.

All the cool people back then sported denim jackets.

sequined dresses and shoulder pads - another 80s trademark.

Rosie from Phua Chu Kang would love this jacket!

Some people still wear suits like this - why?

The belle of an 80s ball would have worn this.

Considering all that the 80s was and stood for, the 90s was like an apology in contrast. The fans of minimalism must have sighed in relief.

To achieve a pale skin, women in the Elizabethan era used a paste of white lead and vinegar called ceruse which eventually causes the skin to become grey and shriveled.

Somethings don’t change, and that’s the perennial quest for fairer skin. Yup the history of cosmetic whiteners goes a long way back. The  ancient Greeks  and Romans applied lead paint to whiten their skin in the face of dangerous health hazards, and many women and even men today continue to lust after this beauty ideal, especially in Asia.

Here in Malaysia the quest for fairness is well and alive. Walk into any pharmacy or Watsons outlet, and it would be difficult not to find some amount of whitening substance in most of the beauty care products. From facial foams to moisturizers, the promise of fairer skin screams out from the product labels.

Whether it's Neutrogena, Nivea, Olay or L'oreal, the promise of fairer skin hounds the average Malaysian woman.

Like honestly, do these products really result in naturally fairer skin? call me a cynic, but I think white is just an overrated fad which for some reason is not dying out the way it should. As far as I am concerned, moisturizer and sunblock will save the day for me. Plain and simple.

Whitening a Devil of a Culture

Not surprisingly whitening products were born in India. The first of such products was Unilever’s Fair and Lovely which continues to dominate the country’s fairness market to this day. The idea for the product came about after consumer research by the company revealed that most Indians want fairer skin.

Is fair really lovely?

In fact Fair and Lovely is quite sought after among Malaysians too.  It has pride of place on the vanity table of many an Indian girl here who sees it as her answer to fairer skin? did all these girls turn fairer and more beauti……fullll? well why not buy a bottle and try it out for yourself?

Beauty Ideal?

A male colleague once raved about the beauty of Pakistani and middle eastern women. “They have pale marble smooth skin,” he said. And that seems to be the ideal among many women – pale  translucent skin. The fact however is that our skin type is very much determined by how much melanin we have in our skin and which part of the world our ancestors hailed from.

Considering the part of the world we live in, it’s the beauty of tan skin that we should be raving about. We are located near the equator line, it’s hot all year round, most of us are brown in varying shades, yet a lot of darker toned women find it difficult to get the right shade of foundation or powder.

Silkygirl's loose powder range comes in only two light shades

It’s about time we embraced our skin tone for what it is and started using/buying products that will enhance and maintain the health of our skin. Not turn it into something that it is not. Better to have glowing healthy brown skin than chalky pale skin.

Does being beautiful mean having a long glossy mane? I don’t know about you, but I am sick and tired of seeing shampoo advertisements where the models sashay about with sleek long hair.

It’s already the 2000′s, get with it Shampoo manufacturers, such hair is no longer the Asian beauty ideal.  And realistically, not all of us can have hair like that, no matter how many bottles of said shampoo we pour on our heads!

Well I digress, this post is not a rant against shampoo manufacturers, but about hair straightening or better known as rebonding in this part of the world. Rebonding is an interesting breakthrough in the hair care industry that enables those with wavy, curly or frizzy hair to have straight hair.

I say interesting because it gives us options. With rebonding, those with frizzy manes can actually experiment with the straight look. However too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. And that seems to be the case with rebonding.

The advent of this method of hair straightening has given rise to rebonding junkies – People who religiously run to the saloon to iron out their hair when it starts to grow out. What baffles is when even people with naturally straight hair keep running to the saloon to er……iron out their straight hair?

The thing with rebonding is that it only looks good with hair that is fairly thick. Those with limp/thin hair should as far as possible try not to subject their hair to this intense hair make-over because the end result is that their hair screams: “I have been rebonded!” They end up with limp, stick like looking hair. Now how sexy is that?

Hair Damage

The harsh chemicals used in the rebonding process will serve to damage hair in the long run. For someone who jumped on the rebonding bandwagon many years ago, I should know.

Constant rebonding makes your hair strands very rough, especially the ends. Hair starts to fall out constantly too. Loosing hair for those who have thick manes is not so bad. But what about those who don’t?

Yet despite knowing all this, people still persist in constantly straightening their hair out. Many women out there cannot imagine life without sleek straight hair, So they brave trip after trip to the saloon just to have umm…..pretty hair?

1. “You have to”
2. “You must”

If anybody is going to tell me either of the above, it must be accompanied by a valid reason. Plus the said reason must make sense. And in my opinion, anyone who complies with (1) and (2) without asking questions is a pushover who does not know their rights. Especially if it’s not their normal practice to do whatever it is that is required of them.

“If you don’t there will be repercussions”

If said “repercussions consist of displeasing some people because I did not conform to what they expected of me, too bad. If someone is unhappy that I did not do something or behave in a certain way, they better have a good reason for their said displeasure. Saying: “I expect you to just because I do” does not cut it.

Herd Mentality

I absolutely detest it when I am expected to do something or behave in a certain way just because everyone else is dancing to the general tune. As far as I am concerned, there were many instances when I refused to conform and news flash: I have yet to be struck down by lightning! I have encountered a few sour faces yes, but I am not inclined to bother myself with what these sour faces think.

In my opinion, nobody should be forced or pressured to:

• Do what they don’t want to.
• Go where they don’t want to.
• Be nice to people they don’t like.
• Not to say what they think or express an opinion because people might not like it.

Even if the people doing the pressuring are say family…..relatives, the powers that be at work, or simply people who think they are important enough to tell other people what to do or how to act.

Family should respect you for who you are, employers hire you to perform a task for which you are paid for. It’s a fair exchange and not a master-slave relationship. Hence they have no business trying to mould your personality to suit their tastes or dictate what you do after office hours. As for people who think they are so……. superior that they can push others around, sooner or later they will meet their match. It always happens somewhere down the road.

Setbacks??

Of course there is no discounting the fact that when a person refuses to conform, they won’t be popular and will attract resentment. At work there might be no pay rise or promotion, within the family circle they might not be the favourite daughter, son, niece, nephew etc. Well it takes guts, a certain amount of steel and courage to take the path untrodden.

Being original has always been a lonely business. A path usually taken only by loners and the unconventional. Every society is gifted with a sprinkling of such individuals and the masses that make up the numbers and live their lives by rules God ONLY knows who wrote and set down as the Bible!