Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 28 July 2008 issue)

Inadequate infrastructure, frustrating websites and the rise of China

Dear Kam,
The Internet is a wonderful thing. I use the Interwebs all the time but I must admit that a lot of sites I visit don’t appear to work. By some strange coincidence, these sites are related to the government. Am I doing something wrong?
Blurred by the Web
Via email

I think I might have located a theme in our concept of development — it doesn’t matter that it doesn’t work, it’s enough that it’s there. A prime example is the LRT. This would be an excellent transport system if it had been built for Seremban, but for the bustling capital city of Kuala Lumpur, it is totally inadequate. It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t go near anywhere that you want to go, nor does it matter that it can only carry a few people, the point is that it’s there. A shining example of our development, it runs on electricity and it almost never breaks down.

Somebody wrote a letter to a newspaper complaining about the KLIA website. I had to use it recently and it is amazingly bad. Even before I started using the website, I knew it would be bad (because I have zero expectations), but it managed to be worse than I had imagined. I wanted to know what time a flight was arriving. That would seem like a simple task and I hoped that it wouldn’t overstretch the system. The website listed many, many flights. Unfortunately it didn’t give the date for any of them. You would have thought that putting the date would have been anelementary step, but apparently not. I had to assume that the first flights listed were for that day. The flight I wanted was listed as having already landed. This was surprising because it wasn’t due for another five hours. In fact, every single flight for the next four days were listed as having already landed. Maybe the guy who types in the information ran out of energy after the first few. It doesn’t matter that the website doesn’t work, it’s enough that it is there. It runs on electricity, etc.

I had the same experience when I used MAS’ website for something. I laboriously typed in some information (inexplicably for an international carrier; the form even asked me for my race) and after I clicked on the Submit button, I was informed that the next page could not be found. Of course, it couldn’t. What was I expecting? The problem was, that for a brief moment, I was expecting something. I must remember to expect nothing in future.

Dear Guru,
I’m looking forward to the Beijing Olympics but I wonder if the Chinese government will use the event for some triumphalism. Still, I’m glad that the Olympics will be in our time zone for once.
Sports Buff
Via email

I was in China recently. It was my first time there and it’s full of surprises. I was only in Shanghai but in some ways it reminded me of Malaysia in the 90s, except on a much bigger scale. The surge of development and new money is obvious to see. A perfect example is all the cars are brand new. When I came back to Malaysia I was struck by how many of our cars were old. I’m not an economist but if one were to judge economic growth by the cars on the street, then Malaysia looks like it has stagnated.

I saw two little things that really struck me. Whilst walking along one day, a car pulled up beside me. The driver was listening to a teach-yourself-English tape. A little further on, I saw a woman sitting beside the road, reading an English-Chinese dictionary. It was a big book, and she was going through it word by word. I was impressed, but also a little scared. It made me nervous for Malaysia. China has over one billion people and their fluency in English is still relatively weak, but millions are learning. What will happen to us if they learn the two most widely spoken languages on earth?

Even after a decades-long campaign to stamp out English in this country, there are still a lot of us who can remember the language. But what about the ones who can’t?

I’m trying to learn Mandarin with a teach-yourself-tape but it’s not going well because the language is impossibly hard. When the Europeans first started trade with China back in the 17th century, it was illegal for a Chinese subject to teach their language to a foreigner. The imperial government wanted to protect its country from outside influence by using the language as a barrier. Many European traders became convinced that they were being duped — that the Chinese were intentionally speaking gibberish and would only speak the actual language at home. There was mutual suspicion. Some suspicion still remains but much has changed. It is estimated that 900,000 Chinese students are currently studying overseas. We’re going to have to seriously think about what our unique selling proposition will be.

Reprinted with the kind permission of