SOUL SCRIBBLES

Those who attended Form 5 in 1979 were the last batch using English as a medium of teaching and learning in schools. Some were introduced to the language at home as their parents spoke English to them while others began learning it at kindergarten back then.  We started spelling in Standard One, while reading and writing comprehension, and dictations were from Standard Three. By Standard Four, we were speaking and writing English quite well. I remember we had comprehension, dictations and spelling until we were in Standard 6. We graduated from saying, “Teacher, teacher, can I go out to pass water?” to “Teacher, may I be excused?”  I was in that 1979 batch. We didn’t have a choice really. We had to learn the language because all subjects, with the exception of Bahasa Malaysia and Agama, were taught in English. We were also fined by our teachers if we spoke Malay outside our Bahasa Malaysia classes. Parents, too, pushed their children to learn the language.  A friend of ...

Earlier this month, a 36-year-old mother was sentenced to a day’s jail and fined RM200 for stealing a 2kg pack of Milo at a supermarket in Kuala Lumpur. The Milo was for her two-year-old child.  Last week, we read about a father of three who was caught shoplifting RM27 worth of food at a hypermarket in Bukit Mertajam. The food was for his hungry children. Instead of turning him to the police, the hypermarket manager offered him a job there and money to help him out.  Facebook, too, has shared a few stories of compassion for those in similar situations overseas.  One story is of an Alabama cop giving a woman two truckloads of food after she was caught stealing five eggs to feed her starving family. Another is from Miami, where a Miami-Dade county police officer gave a penniless mother, Jessica Robles, a misdemeanour citation instead of hauling her to jail for carting away with US$300 (RM1,200) worth of groceries. The police officer, Vicki Thomas, also bought Robles US$1...

The summer palace in Beijing, China; Sydney Opera House in Australia; Cathedral of Notre Dame in France; Vatican City in Rome, Italy; Blenheim Palace in England; Borobudur and Prambanan Temples in Indonesia; Jeju Island and Lava Tubes in South Korea; and the walled town of Carcassonne near Toulouse, France, have something in common. They are all listed as world heritage sites by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco).  Four sites in Malaysia are also on Unesco’s list; two are natural — the Gunung Mulu National Park and Kinabalu Park; and two cultural — the Historic Cities of the Straits of Malacca, namely Malacca and George Town, and the Archaeological Heritage of the Lenggong Valley.  It was on these visits that I realised that a site need not be ancient to be on Unesco’s list (Sydney Opera House vis-a-vis the Cathedral of Notre Dame, for example) but each site tells a story. And, of these ancient sites, I noticed how good the construc...