From hot heads to wise old men

We have progressed over the last 50 years, and in two months time we will be celebrating 50 years of self government. During the early years of nation building, many of the ministry and dept heads were young and hot headed task masters. They howled and they growled to get things done. They were intolerant of mistakes and heads would roll at the smallest of errors. They demanded the best and no ifs and buts. In a way these were brash and rash men in a hurry to get things done. The room for errors were small. There were heads being given the boots for sending their peons to buy lunch or lottery tickets. Today, as we celebrate our manhood as a nation, we can see the change to a more mature people, civil and graceful. Mistakes were accepted as part and parcel of a job. No risk no mistakes. Big risk big mistakes. No sweat, another day's job. In a way we have grown to be kinder and more forgiving, a sign of maturity and age. We have arrived as a rich and graceful people with plenty of botok on the face, full of forgiveness and compassion for the people. No more hot heads in charge, but plenty of Yodas.

I Sultan

Najib could not have gotten a worst start in his attempt to stamp a mark as PM with a new approach on how Malaysia should be managed and its relations with Singapore. He started with lots of promise for cooperation and development, and to do away with the time consuming and unproductive politicking of Mahathir's days. Unfortunately in his haste to get things moving, he forgot that there are Sultans in Malaysia. And Mahathir's way of by passing the Sultans is over. Building bridges, straight or crooked, is not a simple affair and the Sultan must be consulted. Now, before anything can happen, the Sultan has made it clear, I Sultan, cannot be ignored. I am still around and kicking. How is Najib going to negotiate this mountain is going demand the best political skills from him. And his key party members are starting to voice their opposition to the idea as well. On hindsight, LKY should make it his last stop at the JB Istana for dinner before coming home.

Scoring hospitals

Lee Soh Hong, an accountant, started a website to monitor performances of public hospitals by feedbacks from the public. If this is taken positively without fear or feeling under scrutiny, it could go a long way. No one likes to be publicly scrutinised or have a complaint box ready to receive complaints about them. But this will be the trend as customers wise up to their rights and demands better service for the money they are paying. I was at the NUH for a couple of occasions recently and have made some observations. We have very good medical and support staff manning the institutions, especially the doctors and nurses. We have the best and most modern equipment available. But they are not perfect, especially the software. I feel that they need to have someone full time to look at the software aspects, on how to take good care of customers and their needs, not just medical alone. The quality of the medical care is a given. It is the small nitty gritties that are still found wanting. I did mentioned in the previous post about the PA system. Maybe it was because of some restructuring and relocation due to the H1N1 crisis. Even then a little thought will have make things easier and friendlier to the customers. When I raised this to the staff who was trying his best to help, he told me to write in. This amazed me. Why my on the spot feedback was not enough for him to raise it internally? Why is it that feedback must be written officially for it to be acted on? The other part that I want to repeat is the appointment time and when the patients will eventually be seen by the doctors. After 30 or 40 years, we are still seeing patients having appointments at 9am and seen at 10 or 12 noon. The wait is unnecessarily long. Perhaps there are good medical reasons to do so. To a patient, going to the hospital early and having to wait and wait is bad. In my recent encounter I find that if the staff were to put more urgency or priorities in clearing the patients and let them off over some routine paper works, it would surely help. Spending 5 or 6 hours waiting for a treatment which often ended with 10 or 20 min with the doctors is very difficult to justify. Attempts should be made to cut down this waiting time as many people's time are wasted unnecessarily. My comments are from someone looking from the outside. There must be good reasons to drag the procedure for hours. If not, then the long waiting time is unacceptable.

The new sandwich

While we are seeing the fading away of the old sandwich class, it is surprising to see the emergence of a new sandwich class. Is this new sandwich necessary? The old sandwich came from a period of adject poverty, when educational level was low and many were caught in the low income trap, from parents to children. The short job cycle and the formula of retiring at 55, which was necessary in many hard labour jobs, resulted in many with little savings. The children would have to continue to provide for the old folks and their own children. Today, has the picture changed? Many with families are likely to own a flat, have some CPF savings and with children that are having bigger income. Relatively the people today are much well off except for the dysfunctional families, the remnants of the illiterate and ignorant generations and the squanderers. The problem is or should not be pervasive. Why the need to legislate laws today to create another sandwich class by compulsion? What went wrong? One possibility is the breakdown of the family and family values. The children do not see it their responsibility to look after their aged parents. Of course this is only a generalisation and may not affect too many. Then there is this ‘heart willing, pocket not willing’ situation when the cost of living has made caring and looking after a small family that much more costly financially. And to pay for and look after children and parents simultaneously is not an easy option for many. Law or no law, if the pocket is empty, there is not much that can be done. Isn’t it an irony that in today’s context, with so many levels of protection and provision, the oldies should be happily retired without having to be a burden to children and society. What causes this failure to see our olds retiring to the sunset amply provided? Or retiring to the sunset is a fleeting dream? How many will turn into sour sandwiches, unable to look after their own families and legally bounded to look after their parents? I think if this is becoming such a problem, we have failed as a society to give the people a better life. Too much money and resources are wasted in maintaining a costly lifestyle and with little left to look after parents. Can we then blame the new sandwiches for failing to be filial or were they the victims of circumstances that were promoted as the good life?

Euphoria lost even before LKY is back

I read some of the comments in the ST about the responses and reactions of Malaysian politicians on the LKY visit. Khairy, Anwar and former minister Idris Haron and Johore MP Shahrir Samad were quoted and all were very negative. Even Najib's proposal of a third bridge was attacked as a useless idea. And Khairy stood firm in not selling sand to Singapore. Oh, according to Shahrir, the third bridge is unnecessary as the two bridges were not fully utilised. How come he did not say the crooked bridge was unnecessary for the same reasons? Anyway, Najib is going to have a hard time if his cabinet or MPs were to stand against him. Luckily the third bridge is not Singapore's idea. And the killing of the idea of selling sand to Singapore is as good as calling everything off. The LKY trip started very promising. Now it may become another wasted effort. No fairy tale ending. Just a fairy tale.