Letter To The Editor

Please be patient with Americans

THIS is our last month in Malaysia. I am an associate professor of engineering (and also an avid Star reader!).

Twelve years ago, your Government invited me to come to Malaysia to help develop higher education programmes in computers and engineering.

I have served at three institutions, the most recent one being Universiti Sains Malaysia.

I am happy to say that we are leaving for a good reason -- our work here is done. A fully qualified Malaysian has now replaced me and is doing an excellent job.

Thus the spirit and intent of Malaysian immigration laws have been fulfilled.

My wife and I came here shortly after being married. All of our possessions then were sent in two large cardboard boxes.

As of this date we have two cars, four computers, several hundred books and a huge house full of furniture.

I'm not sure we could fit everything on a ship, much less two boxes. More importantly, we now have five healthy, happy children, all buatan Malaysia. So add five active noisy anak putih to your fascinating mix of cultures and races!

Only three times in the entire 12 years that I have been here has any Malaysian been rude to me.

Two involved traffic incidents, and even then the language used was relatively halus. I don't even think your national language had equivalents for some of the words we use in the United States when we get mad.

Only once was a Malaysian rude to my wife. A young schoolboy once remarked to his friends in the national language that my wife should be shot because she was an orang putih.

Being a professor, I gave him a brief lecture about how he should be more polite to foreigners. He was surprised that I knew Malay, and after I bought dessert for him and his friends he decided that orang putih were not so bad after all.

It is incredible that we could live in a nation 12 years and count the times things like this have happened on one hand!

I, on the other hand, have been kurang ajar at times. I took a diploma course in Bahasa Malaysia at Universiti Malaya and remember an argument with one of my lecturers there about a poem written by one of Malaysia's leading poets, who was writing under a pen name I didn't recognise.

After I insisted that the author of the poem intended a certain meaning, he replied softly, "Well, I wrote that poem, and . . ." Oops!

Nearly all of the students I have taught have had a strong desire to learn. They have been intelligent, co-operative, responsible and a real joy to teach.

The university administrations have been very supportive of my work. The personnel and administrative units at Universiti Sains Malaysia are the best I have seen in any university, here or overseas.

I have never been cheated by any Malaysian merchant or businessman. In one case, wages from a Muslim businessman for my last month of work were withheld so that the Inland Revenue Board could take their share.

Nearly a year later, without any reminder on my part, a cheque for over RM5,000 arrived in the mail, drawn from this businessman's personal account.

No Malaysian official has ever solicited a bribe from me. I did notice, at a distance, another gentleman offer an official what may have been several times her monthly salary for a "special favour."

Not only did she refuse, but within seconds the "special gentleman" was politely and firmly sent out of her "special office."

I experienced no mistreatment by the government bureaucracy. Your Immigration Department was especially helpful in processing the huge number of passes needed for our large family.

In one instance we waited until the last day, and because the official concerned was on leave, we did not have our renewals by the end of the work day.

We did what any law-respecting family would do -- jumped in the car, kids and all, and headed for the Singapore border.

By midnight we were safely over the bridge. Whew! By the next day, the Immigration officials learned what had happened and personally invited us through my employer to return to Malaysia. In two days I was back at work with all passes approved.

Some people tell me Tenaga Nasional Berhad provides lousy service. Huh? We have had two main interactions with them.

In one case, I wrote a letter complaining about our faulty power meter. Within days a response was sent and the meter was replaced.

In the other case the transformer supplying power to our house broke down.

They sent a team of people over in the middle of the night and promptly fixed it. How come major mistakes and problems receive wide publicity and things like this never get mentioned?

I am a Christian and I have felt a complete freedom to attend a local Baptist church and fully practice my faith. The entire time I was here, no Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, or other Malaysian has ever attacked, threatened and even said an unkind word to me because of my faith.

I think that your readers are intelligent enough to draw their own conclusions from this. Living and working in Malaysia has been one of the best experiences of my life.

I would like to end this letter with a request. Please be patient and forgiving with Americans, from our vice-president on down.

In many ways we are technically advanced, but socially quite backward. Keep in mind that our American civilisation is only about 300 years old -- yours is well over 1,000 years old.

In our early days many of us lived miles from our nearest neighbour, and the ability to shoot wild animals was more important to us than relating to others in a mannerly fashion.

Most of us do not want to be isolated from and condemned by the rest of the world. We see a need to learn, and we will learn.

With my own children you have been a great help in this. On a recent trip to America many commented that they were well-mannered. My favourite response to this is that I have been given the privilege of raising them in a socially advanced civilisation.

Letter To The Editor

Leave us alone so we can be Malaysians

I HAVE just finished reading Dr Matthew C. Carroll's letter, "Please be patient with Americans" (The Star, Dec 7) on his 12 years' experience in our country and I know that I have to respond from my heart.

Dr Carroll, I thank you for giving us an objective and even self-afflicting viewpoint of your people.

I thank you, too, that your faith has made you a kindly person that elicits the type of good response you received from my countrymen.

I have always said that you get kindness when you are kind to others; and you have confirmed it. I pray that kindness will be the overall response and attitude of my fellowmen to all criticisms hurled at us.

True, the Malaysian people are not the targets of verbal and editorial abuses we read in newspapers, magazines, and on the Internet. The targets are the present government leaders.

Of course, it is not the people's jealousy against one another. I do not believe Dr Carroll is jealous of our growth.

In fact, he has shown much admiration for our sociological advancement -- even over the Americans -- that we Malaysians often take to be the reverse, due (in no small measure) to the display of technical advancement in the entertainment and electronic industries from the more developed nations.

Therefore, the issues we see today are being played out aggressively not among the citizens of nations but rather among their leaders.

Time and time again we have implored leaders of other nations not to interfere in our internal affairs, but such appeals have been ignored.

Why do we have to be moulded into Americans or Australians or British? Why can't we be left alone to be Malaysians?

Do the smaller and lesser developed nations impose their wills on their bigger and more advanced brother nations?

Where is the leadership? Is it not democratic to allow growth to take place in the unique environment we are being brought up?

The leaders of developed nations should, instead, learn to lead and guide in love. Love for our countrymen, especially the poor and the handicapped; and love for the poorer and less-endowed nations.

Dr Carroll, I believe we (as a nation) have loved and respected you and your family over the years you were here. We also love you because we are a non-violent people and our religions and moral upbringing bring out our best.

And we respect you because you are an American. We respect people from other lands, more so if they have given us Hollywood and Disneyland that thrilled us in our youth.

While it is true that our leadership has erred in some of the policies and the way they have been implemented, which nations have been perfect and true at all times?

Civilisation is more from our heart, less from our head.

And I am proud that we are strong today, defending what we believe to be the right way to heal our nation's woes through due process of the law, however imperfect that may be.

Like a teenager growing up into manhood and telling his father: "Let me grow up to be what I am. I thank you for your help all these years, but I cannot be you because God has made me unique, special, and different."

So we ask the leaders of our better developed brother nations, let us be and let us grow. We can't be you, we may be lesser, or we may be better.

Lead by example. Otherwise a new political order will surely emerge wherein leadership comes not through size or population-wise; not by the technological advancement of a particular society; not by its military might; not by its cash reserves -- and certainly not by its leaders who do not show us the better way.

A new leadership will come by, and through nations which humbly grow from within; which have set and firm social values that respect one another; and which expect nothing in return.

Therefore, may I ask the bigger (but certainly not necessarily better) nations not to use the whip and crack on us.

It will backlash on these nations one day because justice belongs to God -- not to man.

And to my fellow Malaysians, those who love peace and joy of watching their children grow up in harmony with one another, the greatest honour that you can display now is not to respond to what is uncouth and unhelpful.

Let us smile and maintain our dignity. To rebut on something that splits our national unity is both a waste of time as well as playing into the hands of those who want to agitate us and cause division.

Let us rise up instead and display our inner strength which is that we shall overcome our adversities and our adversaries.

To my reformasi brothers and sisters, please work constructively for change. Your style is neither Malaysian nor effective because the majority of us disagree with your approach.

Be Malaysians and take reformative actions by the due process of law. This episode of our national development has driven us into greater maturity than our 41 years of independence.

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