Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 26 September 2016 issue)

Dear Kam,
I thought the Rio Olympics finished weeks ago. How come Malaysian athletes are winning more medals?
Sportsfan

Malaysian athletes performed spectacularly well at the recent Rio Paralympics, winning three gold medals and a bronze as well as breaking several world and Asian records along the way. The names of the athletes were largely unknown to Malaysians before the games but it was great to see the outpouring of support for their achievements, which must have come as the culmination of years of hard work. Malaysia has come a long way in appreciating the needs of the disabled and I hope that the example of the Paralympics can spur us on to do more because there is so much more that needs to be done. Negotiating the streets of Kuala Lumpur can be incredibly hard for the able-bodied with pavements being random, if they exist at all. It’s as if pedestrians are being punished for something they’ve done wrong. (Not being VIPs?) If the built environment offers little respect for able-bodied pedestrians, then it is impossible for those in wheelchairs, for whom a single step means no access. Through no fault of their own, many Malaysians are denied the right to be able to journey through and access their own city. My aunt was wheelchair-bound after a car accident when she was a teenager. It didn’t stop her from travelling the world and coming back to tell great stories of her adventures. She said Kuala Lumpur was the hardest place for her to get around.

The Malaysian government has been sponsoring our Paralympians for a long time but Corporate Malaysia has not (if you are a corporate sponsor, then my apologies). Many years ago, I was working in advertising and I tried to get a corporation to become a big sponsor for the Malaysian Paralympics squad. Because of my aunt, I was taken by an advertising campaign for South African Paralympians that cleverly extended its visibility beyond just the athletes and their competitions (which, apart from the Paralympics, are neither televised nor well-attended) and into disabled parking bays and wheelchair access points in shopping malls. The car park advertising was particularly eye-catching because all they did was paint “go faster” stripes behind the wheelchair symbol. For a while, the South African Oscar Pistorius was one of the most famous athletes in the world as the “Blade Runner” and corporate sponsors must have been delighted. And then, he became the world’s most infamous athlete, but that’s another story.

Let’s face it — there has always been a stigma attached to disability but Malaysians are a sympathetic and charitable people who love a heartwarming story of achievement against the odds. Unfortunately, I failed to get the corporation to sponsor the Paralympians because they couldn’t see the potential for non-business human stories beyond the stigma. But that was a long time ago and I think Malaysia has made huge strides towards viewing Paralympians as being equal to anyone.

I recently interviewed a young man who makes a five-hour commute to work every day in his wheelchair. He has to take a long and circuitous route that I wouldn’t dream of taking because he needs lifts and ramps. The office where he works is beautifully designed for wheelchair access but taking the journey deserves a gold medal every day.

Dear Kam,
At my son’s school, they give prizes for everything these days. They even give prizes for playing computer games. What about awards for real achievements?
Proud parent

My family doesn’t have a great history of winning prizes. My father went to Malay College Kuala Kangsar and I found a book that listed all the prize winners when he was there in the late 1940s. I went through every line and saw that his friends were captains of all the sports teams and winners of essay-writing competitions, chess tournaments, and so on. But my father’s name was nowhere to be seen. Unless they spelt his name slightly wrong, in which case he did win the “Hygiene Award”. What does that even mean?

When I was 11 years old, I wrote a school project about Napoleon and won a prize. I fully deserved it because it was brilliant. Six years later, I was studying for my A Levels (perhaps I shouldn’t use the word “studying”). We were asked to do a project during our summer holiday and obviously. I didn’t because it’s called a HOLIDAY. So I panicked and handed in my old project on Napoleon. Miraculously, I won first prize, which was actually quite embarrassing. I read it again and although it was good, it was obviously written by an 11-year-old. The college must have set the bar for winning the prize really low. I must have been the only entrant and the college must have been pleased that I at least had the cognitive skills of an 11-year-old. So it was a bit embarrassing.

Since then, I haven’t won any prizes because it’s hard to find any awards that require absolutely no effort. Perhaps I could win a prize for leading by example in the category of “Scrolling through Facebook while swatting mosquitoes”. And if that doesn’t work, then I do have an old project on Napoleon.

Dear Kam,
I just won top prize at school for computer coding but my father thinks it’s for playing computer games and says it isn’t a real achievement. How do I get through to this old man?
Smart student

I wish I could help you but I must admit that I don’t know what computer coding is either. I keep reading about how young people must learn computer coding because it’s the key to success in the world of the future. That may well be true but technology and priorities keep changing. When I was at school I had to learn Latin and my teachers insisted that knowing a language that has been dead for 1,500 years would be important for future success. Guess what? It isn’t. I’m not saying that computers will meet the same end as the Roman Empire, but who knows what technology will come next.

But I imagine that computer coding is like something out of The Matrix and if it is and if you can invent a time machine that takes you back to Ancient Rome, then my knowledge of Latin might suddenly become useful. But only if it involves conjugating the verb to farm, because that’s all I can remember. But we’ll always need farmers.

Reprinted with the kind permission of