Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 1 March 2010 issue)

Dear Guru,
Looks like I am presently stuck in a “middle-income trap” as I am unable to move up the value chain. My neighbours seem to be moving up with new BMWs/Porsches/Mercedes but I have been stuck with a Japanese car for the past three years. Any ideas how I may move up?

I understand that our PM will be announcing plans to move the country out of the “middle-income trap”. Will it make a difference to me?
Philosopher

I’m not exactly full of sympathy for you. I’ve had the same Japanese car for 20 years. But this is an interesting question and once again, it makes me wish I knew something about economics. The way I see it, you’re not alone because the whole country is stuck in a middle-income trap. We don’t want to work in factories but there aren’t enough of us for a big internal market (unlike Indonesia). Where can we go? Sideways, I guess.

But there are quite a lot of us who can do excellent work in any business anywhere in the world. Somehow, enough have managed to avoid the worst effects of our dreadful education system and have popped out the other end as intelligent and worldly individuals. We’re not a big population but we should be the preferred choice for regional HQs because we do have human capital, and that should be enough to take us out of a middle-income trap. Unfortunately the perception that we’re aggressively trying to sell to the world is that we are the dumbest kid on the block, and proud of it!

On a completely unrelated point, we caned three women the other day. The good news is that now we’re famous because it made frontpage news all over the world! The bad news is that it’s very bad news.

Dear Kam,
Like most people, I very rarely watch local TV but I saw some the other day and I noticed that there are very few TV adverts. Where did they all go?
Vanishing Act

A long, long time ago I used to work in advertising. It was an interesting experience and I learnt a lot about business and about Malaysia, but there were also some aspects of advertising in Malaysia that I found strange. One was that we were not allowed to show people wearing jeans. Lots of people, especially young people, wear jeans but we were not allowed to show this because of some government censorship edict. I think that their argument was that jeans were a sign of western cultural decadence and that was not in tune with our Asian values, and, er, etc. Of course it was nonsense, but what could we do? And then one Sunday Dr M (who was PM at the time) was seen wearing jeans and suddenly we were allowed to show people wearing jeans.

Another strange thing, and this still exists, is that if you have a picture of lots of cash then you have stick the word “Specimen” over it. Obviously advertisers like to show lots of pictures of money, but the pictures will always be obscured by the word “Specimen”. I can only think that the official reason for this is that somebody might think that it’s a photo of real money and then they’ll cut it out of the newspaper and try to buy glue so that they can stick themselves to a passing train, or whatever else really stupid people do. Of course it’s nonsense, but it must show that they think we are really, really dumb and a danger to ourselves, and that only they can save us, and, er, etc. The good news is that it gives work to somebody.

Personally, I found Malaysian advertising frustrating because there was rarely an attempt to base the images in any recognisable Malaysian reality. These ridiculous little rules didn’t help but they were only ever a minor inconvenience. There seemed to be a cultural gap between those who did the advertising and those who were being advertised at. Most people in advertising are Malaysian and yet there were rarely storylines that reflected realities that a Malaysian audience would recognise and respond to emotionally.

I didn’t do very well in advertising. Once we were shooting a TV advert for instant coffee and I thought the storyline was too obvious so I stupidly told the client that it looked like they were only selling coffee. She was not impressed by my impertinence and she said, “But that’s what we do”. Of course she was right and yet I still believe that advertising should sell an emotion, and then people will buy the product because they want to be part of that emotion. The success of the late great Yasmin Ahmad should tell us something.

Dear Kam,
This new petrol law sounds incredibly complicated. How does it work?
Greasy

It’s easy. All you have to do is queue up and register somewhere and then show your IC every time you buy petrol, in order to prove that you are Malaysian. If that doesn’t work then you also have to give a urine sample to prove that you eat durian and belacan. If that doesn’t work then you’ll need to recite old episodes of Pi Mai Pi Mai Tang Tu. The petrol station will take down this information with their new nationally integrated high-tech “computer” system. Oh, they don’t have one. It doesn’t matter, I’ve just read that the new petrol quota thing has been dropped anyway. That’s a surprise.

Personally, I don’t think we should have subsidised petrol. It’s just a conjuring trick to hide the true cost of living.

Dear Kam,
Have you been watching the Winter Olympics? I love it.
So Cool

I’ve been watching a bit of the Winter Olympics. This is because it has been so hot in Malaysia, and I don’t have air-cond, so the only way I can cool down is by watching snow on TV. I’ve always liked the Winter Olympics because it has weird sports like curling (which is a bit like bowling, but on ice) and speed skating where the athletes have thighs that are wider than my entire body. But the craziest sport is the Skeleton where people zip down an ice track, headfirst on a tin tray, reaching speeds of 150kph. It’s a truly insane sport (one man died on the Luge track).

What has been intriguing about this year’s Winter Olympics has been the emergence of China in sports that have been traditionally dominated by northern European or American countries. I was watching the women’s Snowboard Half-pipe where snowboarders leap about doing midair tricks, and there was a Chinese girl who is apparently the world champion. This sport is the most American sport one can imagine where it seems to be obligatory to shout “Woo Hoo!” a lot (I think it’s pronounced “Sze Szu!” in Mandarin). It was interesting watching the Chinese girl because although she was technically excellent, her run was really boring and she didn’t win a medal. But China is putting a huge effort into winning every sport in the world so they’ll probably win everything next time. Right now, somewhere in China, I’m sure there is a training camp for their sepak takraw team.

Reprinted with the kind permission of