Nepal earthquake, Jaring and cross protest

5 May 2015

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 4 May 2015 issue)

Dear Kam,
When I see the news of the terrible earthquake in Nepal, I am thankful we don’t have earthquakes in Malaysia. I mean, could we cope?
Rattled

About 10 years ago, a friend of mine was walking around downtown KL when he came across a Burmese CD and VCD stall. My friend discovered among the CDs of Burmese music a VCD of a major Burmese literary festival that had just been held in KL. The event had been exclusively Burmese and had absolutely nothing to do with Malaysia. Burmese authors had flown into KL to talk about Burmese literature in front of a Burmese audience. It’s as if there is a parallel Burmese world in Malaysia that we know nothing about where they have literary festivals, vendettas and perhaps even a Kapitan Burma. Since that time, the Burmese workers (I should say Myanmarese, but I’m old-fashioned, and I don’t think I know how to spell Myanmarese) have been joined by Nepalese workers, who perhaps also have a Kapitan Nepal.

There are a great many Nepalese working in Malaysia these days and so the tragedy of the recent devastating earthquake in their homeland is being felt in this country in ways that most of us know nothing about. The heart of old downtown KL has become Nepalese in character with Nepalese restaurants and shops for transferring money or selling Nepalese music and movies, and all doing brisk trade on Sundays when the workers have their day off. In the week, they work as waiters or security guards when they must be worrying about their loved ones back home. This parallel Nepalese world must now be experiencing frustration and anguish.

Thankfully, we don’t have earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or cyclones in Malaysia, and Malaysia managed to escape the worst of the 2004 tsunami, but whenever these major disasters happen overseas, I can’t help wondering how we would cope if they were to happen here. Perhaps our emergency services would be ready for the task, I have no idea. Maybe I’m just being crazy, but I get the impression that whenever disaster does strike, the consistent reaction is to ignore the problem. Nothing out of the ordinary ever happens, it’s always business as usual and everything is under control. No need to ask questions.

Hopefully, Malaysia will never experience a major natural disaster like the one that has befallen Nepal, and which is being felt here in ways we don’t know.

Dear Kam,
Jaring has shut down? Did I read that right? I mean, was Jaring still around?
Ahmad@jaring.net.my

And so we say a fond farewell to Jaring because it has finally closed shop. Only older readers of Talking Edge will remember Jaring. It was Malaysia’s first internet provider and in the bold tradition of Malaysia, it was a monopoly. I hadn’t thought about Jaring for years before I read the recent news that it had shut down. I assumed that it had shut down long ago, but maybe somebody out there is trying to get a dial-up connection while fiddling with their Mega TV aerial. When I do think of Jaring, I can’t help hearing in my mind the sound of a dial-up modem. The noise always promised so much but only ever led to frustration and the discovery of a new word — buffering. In those dimly remembered days, cyberspace was a small place and I, for one, didn’t think it would ever be very important. I was very wrong, and yet I was right about the dotcom bubble. What was that all about? What on earth were they thinking? I am amazed whenever I consider how quickly the internet has changed our world. YouTube is barely 10 years old and yet last year, 300 hours of videos were being uploaded every minute. I can’t remember how I watched videos of cats bullying dogs before YouTube. And I really cannot remember how I found out anything before Google search. Now I can find out all the important Julia Roberts facts in mere seconds. What did I do before? I guess I somehow managed to cope without knowing who did the catering on Pretty Woman. I was recently in an outstation place that had no internet access and I felt a sense of panic. There was nothing I needed to know and nobody I needed to contact, and yet I was panicking because I felt cut off from the world. The internet creates a sense of contact and freedom and yet it controls me like an addiction.

Communications, politics and entertainment have been changed forever, even if many of us have been slow to react. The internet offers a free flow of information and the exchange of ideas and yet authorities around the world by their very nature want to interfere, govern and control. How can they use the internet? I guess one useful way would be to take to Twitter and introduce a whole new level of cyber-bullying. In the end, the only way to maintain control of the uncontrollable cyberspace is to hint (as America’s National Security Agency does) that they can see everything, even if they can’t really. Also by controlling the physical points of access. In the worst-case scenario, they can cut the whole thing off.

Dear Kam,
Is it my imagination or did some people demand that a church take down its cross?
Very Crossed

These are strange times in Malaysia. Recently, some people took to the streets to complain that a church was displaying a cross. These people managed to get the church to take down its cross. This was a very disappointing incident because surely we don’t do that sort of thing in Malaysia, and yet now, it seems we do. But despite the troubling nature of the, let’s call it, demonstration, I felt a sense of restored hope because the action was instantly condemned on the internet. It was denounced and I was really pleased to see that Malays/Muslims were among the strongest voices. The initial action was deeply disappointing and deeply troubling but the speed and vehemence of the rejection was very encouraging.

Reprinted with the kind permission of