Manic Day Out

At this current point, I feel like my tummy is about to explode from eating too much, I always eat too much when I meet up with Sheila, and my eyeballs are about to fall out from exhaustion. I think I’ve had about 6 hours of sleep each night for the past two weeks and I think one of these days, I’m going to completely fall asleep as I’m walking to my car.

So if you see me sprawled in car park somewhere, snoring blissfully, it’s due to my body finally caving in.

Today was certainly one of those incredible days. Despite sleeping at 3:30am staying up for elections results, I crawled out of bed at 8am to have breakfast and then headed over to Alex‘s place to work on our stage script.

Lunch time was spent with the lovely Kelvin, having banana leaf in Bangsar. Bangsar feels odd, a little subdued, perhaps still reeling from Shahrizat’s loss. Shahrizat and her old constituency, Lembah Pantai personified what the BN government was to Malaysia. We’ve had the relationship for ages but honestly, it wasn’t healthy anymore and it was time to break up. As with any relationship, you feel relieved, you look forward to the future but you can’t help but miss some of the good times and be a little sad.

Shahrizat’s posters were still pasted all over Bangsar, smiling and all smug, kissing babies and hugging old women to show that LOOK! I CARE! Their war room was next to Bangsar Village, abandoned and depressing with only Shahrizat’s smile adorning the room. The men and women who campaigned on her behalf must have been crushed, and I could only imagine how they felt as they packed up late last night.

As much as I detest the woman, seeing the fading posters strewn carelessly all over Bangsar couldn’t help but make me feel sorry for her and I wanted to stop my car and pack up the posters for her. I stepped into a new country today and there’s no place for the old guards anymore. It’s a new country and the mood is hopeful but cautious. But it’s all good because Malaysia has just entered a territory with sophisticated politics and that is something that we ought to be very proud of.

Again though, this is all coming from a very cynical ex-civil servant. The rest of the day continued to be manic. After lunch, I headed back to work on the script with Alex. Eizwan stopped over to help work and IT IS DONE!

Fantastic.

The rest of the evening was then spent catching up with Sheila who had just returned from Cambodia. The company and conversation as always, was fantastic and I would always, always overeat. Finally headed home at 10:44pm and here I am at 1am wide awake from all the coffee I’ve been drinking to sustain my manic hours.

But I’m going to sleep soon for tomorrow is a brand new day, and for the first time in a long time, I’m very much looking forward to it.

Mixed Feelings

Being absolutely honest with myself, I have mixed feelings about the election results. I saw one minister I admire lose his seat, and this minister is actually competent and intelligent…my heart just fell. I was talking a friend of mine, and she said she felt the same way. Quoting my good friend SW, she said “Sometimes the head needs to rule the heart as well.”

To be honest, I am absolutely nervous about the new questions that will be asked in parliament. We’re not talking about questions on corruption. More like, “Why can’t we increase fuel subsidies?” or stuff like, “Can’t we have more price controls?” And the dreaded, “Why does the stock market go up?” Dammit, read Wikipedia for the latter!

As a citizen, I’d love to have more of those things. But as a level headed economics student, we can’t. Not without bankrupting the country. Subsidies are awful, they create economic distortion that eventually will run the country down.

My hope is simple. With no 2/3rd majority in Parliament means policy making will slow down. Which is a good thing since you can actually ask the right questions. The key here of course is right questions and not letting emotions rule over your head.

Which is going to be bloody difficult because a chunk of economic policy-making will be counter-intuitive. Helping the country can actually mean raising interest rate, removing price control and God forbid, cutting down on oil subsidies. Incredibly unpopular decisions that will save the country.

If you do want to help the country, for goodness sakes, put your heart and emotions away when you make the decision. No economic policy gridlock, please. If there is one thing that I’m okay with the country is how we run our economy. It’s run relatively well, and hats off, especially to BNM and to Dr. Zeti, Governor of BNM.

But other than that, the evil side of me is relishing with opposition in power. BN always needed a kick in the butt and quoting the Guardian, it’s always easier to be opposition, mischief-making is much, much easier. Running a state? Two different things.

And, temptation is always there. Money is what makes this government go round. Let’s see how long everybody’s moral standing can last.

I take back what I said. No mixed emotions. Ooh, we’re in for a fun ride. I can’t bloody wait.

P/S: Thank you EC for running what I perceive has been a fair election. =)

Conspiracy

With elections just around…well, tomorrow, it seems kinda wrong for an ex-politics student like me to actually not comment on politics. I did however, work for two years in Government (yes, I was with The Enemy) and having signed agreements that said “Thou shalt Not Spilleth or We Shall Incarcerate you…4EVA” has sort of made me a little wary about sharing my feelings on politics publicly.

To be fair, this year’s elections have been rather mild and aside from the “Deny Barisan 2/3rds majority campaign!” which bloggers have been falling over themselves to write about, there’s nothing really exciting going on. So far, we’ve only had one incident of pelting of students with rocks because emotions ran high and people thought they might be phantom voters running about, spoiling the votes. It wasn’t the case however, and they were just students so that’s okay. I consider tensions running high when a TV3 newsmen has been kicked around. So far all TV3 newmen are safe so probably one of the more peaceful elections yet.

My only political opinion that I would like to share with everyone is this and it’s not even an academic one: I understand that tensions are running high and that it isn’t easy competing against an incumbent who has the machine at hand. It’s very easy to blame conspiracies when things go wrong especially during the election process.

But take it from an ex-government servant. Most government servants spend their office hours sitting down around at the pantry, exchanging baby tips and then berating themselves because they have no idea what they’re supposed to do. If you’re telling me that these people are the ones cooking up conspiracies, I’d be laughing at you. It’s incompetency you’re dealing with here. Rarely conspiracies.

I hope that everyone voting will be nice to the people at the polling booths and understand that if something does go wrong at the polling stations, it’s probably a mistake some doofus of a civil servant made, rather than a political conspiracy. The civil service ARE people too (despite some quarters assessing we’re not quite human) and they are part of the electorate. Kindness goes a long way at winning votes rather than angry words.