SOUL SCRIBBLES

“COMPLETE  fasting the entire month and you’ll get RM30 on the first day of Syawal.” This, I remember, was my first  duit  raya , given to me by my late father when I was 6 years old. It was actually RM1 a day for each day of fasting. He would tell us this on every eve of Ramadan as an inducement to fast the entire month. If he had included  sahur,  we would have failed miserably as my brothers and I preferred sleeping over eating in the wee hours of the morning. My brothers and I received the same amount until we each reached the age of 18. I still got the full amount even if I didn’t complete the month as I had a valid reason as to why I could not fast. And our other  duit raya  came from aunts and uncles when we visited them at their houses with our parents or when they came to ours. We also got money packets from my father’s non-Muslim friends who visited us on the first day of Raya. We never got the opportunity to venture on our own o...

WE are nearing the end of the first week of Ramadan. Some of my friends have settled into a new routine, having made changes to their working arrangements and lifestyle. Among them, there are those who have turned down offers of overseas travel during the month and those that stretched into the Raya period. Some even frowned upon others who do travel during Ramadan as if it is an unthinkable thing to do. There are those who have rescheduled meetings, even important ones, until after Raya. The government and some companies have shortened the working hours (lunch-break hours are reduced) to accommodate those having to go home early to prepare break-of-fast meals for the family and then rush to the mosque to perform the terawih prayers. So, with this and more, Ramadan is perceived to be a month of reduced working hours and productivity. In fact, a 2013 Harvard Kennedy School of Government research by Filipe Campante and David Yanagizawa-Drott had established causal evidence for a n...

TEN years ago when the country celebrated its 50th independence, I took to the streets with my office mates to participate in the Merdeka Day parade at Dataran Merdeka. It was my second. The first time I took part in the Merdeka Day parade was a few years after I joined the company. It was for the fun of it. I remembered wearing a white T-shirt with newspaper cuttings printed on it. I remembered being asked why I signed up for the parade. Family members and friends said they would rather stay at home and watch the parade on television. The second time around, I was looking for a more meaningful way to remember the country’s 50 years of independence. My mother, for example, was at Padang Pahlawan in Malacca on Feb 20, 1956 when Tunku Abdul Rahman made the first announcement on the country’s independence. She will reminisce about this moment every Aug 31 while we watch the live television broadcast of the Merdeka parade. I wanted to do something so that I would, later in the yea...

Here we go again with the blame game after eight teenagers lost their lives in a horrific accident in Johor Baru early Saturday morning. Why do we do that? A New York-based psychology website offered this as one of the reasons: that we are not good at figuring out the cause. It also said that the blame game is an excellent defence mechanism, a tool that is used when we are in attack mode and that it is easier to blame someone else than to accept responsibility. Who is actually responsible for what had happened — the parents who said that they were not aware of their children’s whereabouts at night or what they did; the children for courting death, knowing fully well the danger of making the road their playground; the car driver for not being careful while on the road; or the authorities for not hauling up these children when they are aware of the children’s nocturnal activities on that particular road? Netizens did not mince their words when sharing and commenting on the acciden...

It was nine years ago, while on a working visit to Japan, that then prime minister Datuk Seri (now Tun) Abdullah Ahmad Badawi received news that Malaysia had lost Pulau Batu Puteh to Singapore. He was at a private dinner function in Tokyo when acting president of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the case, Judge Awn Shawkat Al-Khasawneh, delivered the judgment in The Hague, the Netherlands. Reporters covering Abdullah’s working visit received instructions from their editors in Kuala Lumpur to get the prime minister’s comment for the final edition of their respective newspapers. It was 15 minutes to midnight that we got to see him. As soon as he arrived at the hotel, we were ushered into his suite. He had been briefed on the judgment. I remember him sitting at the head of the dining table, face downcast. He expressed sadness over the decision, but nevertheless, accepted it, saying that it was based on hard facts and evidence. He thanked the Malaysian legal team an...

In 2011, the Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism Ministry introduced the “No Plastic Bag Day” campaign, where on every Saturday, plastic bags were no longer provided for free in hypermarkets, supermarkets, departmental stores, convenience shops and selected business premises all over the nation. Those who still need the plastic bags have to pay 20 sen for each piece. The campaign, if it is still running, is now in the seventh year. While I do not see any progression in sight at the Federal Government level, some state governments, however, have, on their own initiative, drawn up a timeline to have a total ban on the use of plastic bags. The ministry can learn a thing or two from Ikea Malaysia — reported to be the first retailer in the country to stop using plastic bags — on how it did it. The Swedish retailer took only three years to “convert” its customers in Malaysia to either use reusable shopping bags or other means to carry their purchases. It first introduced th...

MY father was a civil servant. He served as a Federal Government auditor and later the Johor state government in the same capacity until he retired. He then joined the Johor State Economic Development Corporation (now known as Johor Corporation). He didn’t play golf. He didn’t have a girlfriend, a mistress or a second wife. He wasn’t into branded stuff. His only weakness would probably be smoking cheap cigars after dinner at home with visiting family members. Growing up, my brothers and I would envy our friends and cousins on the many hampers that their family received, especially during the festive season. We never got any. It was not because we weren’t offered any, but because my father refused to receive any. We didn’t know he had put in place a no-gift policy until my mother, in his absence, accepted a hamper that was delivered to the house. He then warned us against receiving any gift under his name. On another occasion, he turned away a delivery boy who came to del...