Bleepping Kitty Dipping

"The EPF is assisting the rakyat to own houses; it is commendable that EPF is doing a public service."

Please. The EPF fund is not a Tabung Sosial for all and sundry.

It is OUR Simpanan Hari Tua, and we expect the fund to be managed for OUR BENEFIT and the way I see it, the huge RM402 billion fund is nowadays the Main Kitty for the government.

No wonder PMNTR was so smug with his declaration that Malaysia does not need to borrow from the IMF, bla bla bla..

Of course. Not when there’s a huge Piggy Bank with an almost open access to its content to be dipped into.

Assisting the Rakyat to own houses? Yeah, right...

It took me a long and often financially painful journey to be able to finally afford a home which a chunk of my hard-earned savings plonked into the EPF helped purchase.

Now, it seems that some Rakyats will get their loans to Perumahan Murah from the same EPF fund.

A small portion, I must concede, but the dipping into the kitty has been going on for years now like nobody’s business.

Who know what else the EPF fund has been subsidizing of late.

According to the Big Kahuna who seems to be popping out everywhere these days, (Side comment: A bid to propel him as THE MAN in view of an upcoming GE13 battle against Nurul Izzah perhaps?) there is nothing to worry.

"If the buyer does not repay the loan, then action will be taken. The house will be forfeited and sold to some 30,000 other housebuyers who are eagerly waiting for a chance"

Funny Ha Ha.

And where - pray tell - will these other 30,000 house buyers – whom I assumed will similarly come from the poor and down trodden to qualify for this – get their funding from?

Together now: THE SAME BLIPPING EPF-CREATED FUND.

As the Malays are fond to say: Gali lobang tutup lobang.

Stop dipping your greasy palms in the kitty as one fine day, it will dry up.

All it needs is like some 400 similarly-conceived schemes to supposedly HELP the RAKYAT.

KUNUNNYA.

Sweating Cash

I once dreamt of a swimming pool
Olympic sized, its water bluish cool
On the undulating fluidic carpet floats
Millions in cash, a mix of red, blue and purple notes

In my dream on the diving board I stood
The world around me encircled in a fish eye lens hood
Readying to dive, thinking head first or foot
Into all that wealth, a life of riches, so magnificent a loot

Scents crisps of printed value assail my every inhale
To take it all in, I could well be a whale
Around me, people unknown, unrecognized, their laughter hearty and hale
Partaking a frenzied orgy, drunk from overfilled moneyed ale

I readied myself for a plunge so blissful
Encouraging shouts and whistle, urging and egging
Even as the watery stash gave birth to more cash by the bucketful
Spilling outwards, a bulging ogre’s torso to my horrific imagining

Jump, they shouted
Take the plunge, they brayed
A worldly paradise, they hinted
Arms wide, grinning, their words honeyed

The wind rushes past my flanks as I vaulted headlong
A whiff of sadness, whisper of regret
A soul succumbed, a fate forgone
My whole world then so sudden so quiet so dead

Notes red, blue and purple embraced my arrival
Edges sharp, cutting, snipping, engulfing, encircling
There was no water, in papers I was drowning
I thrashed, I grappled, my cries more and more audible

A plunge going deeper and deeper
All around me, chattering, chirping
Passing wealth of worldly boaster
A deathly oblivion, a sickened passing

I woke up in dread
A sweaty dream more a nightmare
As a RM note, red
Flitted freely traversing the fanned air

Shell Shedding Peanuts

Despite my disgust of the current entity that is Umno, its member Nur Jazlan Mohamed has earned my admiration and wholesome support.

The Pulai Member of Parliament and eldest son of the late Tok Mat hinted his integrity and mettle by quitting his post as TM’s audit committee chairman after the irregularities were found but was not investigated.

His latest interview in the Edge on both the so-called Bumiputera (or should this be Malay) Agenda and UDA Holding’s plans for its Pudu Jail landbank is both frank and hard hitting.

Reading the two articles in whole is a welcomed breath of fresh air in a country stinking of rotten rhetoric and racial chauvinistic statements, especially when taken in the context that Nur Jazlan was also taking about advancing a much maligned idea of a community’s re-engineering.

There was no denying what needs to be done to propel the Bumiputera agenda further, according to Nur Jazlan.

“We have to have a format or formula on how to define this cost of the bumiputera agenda. If it is going to be the government giving money all the time, think again….. We don’t want to leave the next generation with debts.”

It has been something like 40 years since the so-called Bumiputera Agenda came to the forefront with the NEP.

Has the community’s economic standing been advanced all this while?

A burgeoning middle-upper class Bumiputeras group aside, the trickling down of the distributed wealth courtesy of the Bumiputera Agenda policies is exactly in such a state: TRICKLING.

The bulk of this wealth goes god knows where.

We have our suspicions, of course.

In fact, there is actually another Umno member whom I, urm, agree (not always) with - Blogger SakMongkol AK47.

SakMongkol, you see, has equally been hard hitting in his assessment of his party’s current ways of doing things though his words (posts) has basically fallen on deaf ears.

I’ve always asked him this question: “Why are you still there?”

Datuk Sak has his reasons, I suppose.

What of Nur Jazlan?

Kacang lupakan kulit; will say his detractors. Would he be where he is now had he not been Tok Mat’s son and a party member, they will decry.

It will be interesting to see what happens next and if the Finance Ministry would accept UDA’s so-called Bumiputera-interest's sidelining proposal.

I doubt so going by the MRT JV criteria’s fiasco.

One way or the other, pockets just simply need (side)lining.

Worldly Toils

Last in a line of none
Staring was quite a luxury for him
Unblinking, the opaque screen was nonplussed still
How could it
Soulless, it talks without responding

Outside the freezing light-filled space
Motorists noiselessly zoomed pass
Under his breath came a choiced curse
Once inadvertent, now emitted nonplussed

Flickering neon numbers were certainly bigger yesterday
Four digits the result of a month's toil
Figures he wished higher everyday
Instead of one rollercoastering downhill

Where had they gone, he wonders
House, cars, bills, kids, he figures
Where else, he himself quizzes
Or, was he leaking like a sieve, he shudders

He sighed a resigned resignation
Fingers to panel, a three-figure number keyed
His mind tired to feign even frustration
Thinning wallet patiently waiting to be filled

A whirling of mechanicals then
The sweet, sweet sound of notes chugged
As he waits for a modern day drug
Stuck in an unfortunate, uncontrollable den

Pieces of paper jeer through an open orifice
In blues and reds, they beckoned his taking
What will be a week’s sustenance, for fuel and meals
Swapped from machine to wallet swiftly unflinching

Out popped his card, a small receipt follows
Black prints on white, its surface warm to the touch
Pulled it out, three digits the balance shows
The two behind, alas, not worth that much

Monthly toil
Gone in a whiff...

Paper Chasers

We are a country of big money but no money.

RM800 million Palace, but no money to pay the workers. RM4.6b (or is it 8b? 12.5b?) for the PKFZ and no money to pay the bondholders. Billions here and billions there and YET no money to fund brainy / crème of the crop / brilliant students at Ivy-league Universities.

Let’s not count the leaks of Felda, Sime Darby, et cetera et cetera (Not to be mistaken with Peter Cetera. Wonder what the former Chicago crooner is doing these days?)

Like Bonnie Tyler used to sing:”Where’re all the money gone and where are all the cash?” (My tweaks, of course)

Sometime it is so bloody depressing to read the news that you just skip everything and go right to the adverts, the entertainment pages, the sport pages, the cartoons, the tech-pages..

I’ve gone beyond cynical to being downright disillusioned: a total disbelief of anything that comes out of the mouth of our authoritative mouthpieces.

Everything seems to be agend-ise towards the furthering some grandiose money-making (for somebody, I suppose) scheme or project or whatever.

Have we reached a stage where “Money rules” over everything else?

I was teaching my daughter of Year 2 the usage of countable and non-countable nouns of much, a little, many and a few the other night and came to a sentence with the word “money”.

I told her that money falls into the non-countable nouns category, which elicited a bewildered look on her face.

“You gave me RM4 everyday to school. So how can money be not countable?”

I have to admit of not learning this facet of the English Grammar, having learnt the language via the “If it sounds, correct, it must be” technique, so I just murmured that it was the rule. Fortunately, it was way past her bedtime and she no longer cared less for grammatical nuances than the coziness of a dreamless sleep.

We could all use a good sleep from all these shenanigans, don’t we?

If only. Like the PKFZ quagmire, all these are headaches that are in for the long term.

Headaches that we seemed to be gearing up to inherit our children and- if we’re not careful – their children, too.

Right up to the point where money are UNCOUNTABLE nouns because there are none to count in the first place.

“Where’re all the money gone too and where are all the cash?”

Flaunt Snubbing

RM40,000 for a limited edition handbag. RM800,000 Merc. RM200,000 wristwatch.

Wow. What a crass, crude show of wealth. Talk about having and flaunting it, eh?

I wonder what was playing on the mind of the editors concerned when they decided to go ahead with this kind of “news”.

Granted, this is showbiz, and flaunting is part and parcel but there are many who are wont to this kind of showy-ness.

Footballer Theo Walcott girlfriend Melanie Slade, for a recent example, turns down a Ferrari he'd given her as a birthday present.

"She was embarrassed her uni mates knew she had a car worth so much when some students struggle to have enough money to eat," quoted the Sun.

You go girl!

Not many people would have done the same. Would you if the same car was presented to you?

(I'd probably sell it off, used the cash to buy something else which is less flashy and put the rest of the money into my ASB.

After all, our punitive duties would mean that the same car is millions here instead of the 140K price tag in the UK. So there is much more moollah to be had if ever a Ferrari is presented to you.)

Melanie already drives a Beetle and I supposed for her: a car is a car is another car that gets you places.

Theo is, by the way, an Arsenal and England winger who happens to be amongst those footballers who earns quite a bit, and probably don't really know what to do with all that excess sums of money.

Being philanthropic seemed somehow not so much in the good books of these young millionaires.

Unless, that is, they do so without being seen or being in the limelight.

Something like what Juan Sebastian Veron (the former Man United so-called flop) is currently doing at Argentinian football club Estudiantes.

Showbiz, eh?

Ferrari California

Sick Money

“The first sign of trouble was powder in the baby's urine. Then there was blood. By the time the parents took their son to the hospital, he had no urine at all.”

Sometimes it takes details like these to drive home the tragedy that is the Melamine tainting scare.

Statistics alone never works to convey the enormity of what had been let loosed to the world at large: 4 babies dead, and 53,000 sickened.

I remember an episode of CSI: Las Vegas (I stand to be corrected) where someone went around injected poisonous substance into mineral water bottles.

It’s an act that is calculated to do the most damage to the public at large as anyone and everyone could end up being the victim.

Case in point: excessive Melamine was found in Malaysian-made biscuits with further test concluding that the tainting having originated from raising agents from China.

Biscuits.

And for once, consumers thought that avoiding milk products from one of the biggest Asian economy would be safe enough only to be jolted with the realization that the culprits – faceless to date – had moved the goalposts to include possibly non listed ingredients.

How in heaven’s name would concerned parents go about in filtering the items their children take on a daily basis?

At schools, in kindergarten, their own purchases from the grocery stores, which might or might not know of excessive melamine exposures.

What are we to do? Stop them from eating?

Yi Kaixuan was 6 months old when he died from the melamine tainting. The details above describes the moments leading to his death.

He was one in millions, and it could well have been any child.

What were they thinking?

This “money-over-everything else” is downright sickening.

Waiting the Wait

Edward Degas "Waiting", 1882

“RM6,000 easily for every RM2,000 investment. There are ready customers. Two months only and they have already received calls from a customer from Johor..”

I feigned interest amidst the torrent of “facts” on some venture involving freshwater fish from my dearly beloved wife during a good weekend when we managed to sneak in some cozying hours with our daughters succumbing to their hectic morning play schedule.

Apparently, some colleague of hers had made some investment and telling others of how big a potential and how lucrative it was.

Having covered one such assignment involving a similar state government mooted project sometime back, somehow their calculations on potential revenues and earnings – to me - seemed overly optimistic, to say the least.

She caught my doubts (hiding them from her has never been my forte, really) and she asked if I wasn’t even a wee bit curious of the opportunity presented.

I did what good husbands always do when caught red handed and blabbed something incoherent.

The venture – as far as I can recall – goes something like this: you buy a container (some new age plastic thingy), breed some 1,000 or so freshwater fish inside and when they mature, sell them off to give you – the owner – your money back and more.

All fair, really, except for the level of enthusiasm that somehow belittled the level of effort and the patience required before you could eventually get your investment value.

My own quantification show that you would have to wait a full year before the sale figure would allow you to break even and this is without taking into account the required investment into feeds and other costs.

There is no such thing as easy money.

We were introduced to another “business” last year promising much for so little and that much, much money would be coming our way by following simple, simple moves. It seems kosher (pardon the phrase!) so we went in.

It was much later that I learn of the great Charles Ponzi and his ingenious method of making money and how those in the tail end section of the grand scheme would not be making that much after all.

(I so hate to use the Malay phrase for something so alike what we went into. The shame, the humiliation! )

There are, of course, success stories but, as I have come to realize since, these sort of income are not sustainable once the enthusiasm level wanes.

My wife continues to look for opportunities, while I am too tired to believe in such grand projections anymore and sticking to my freelance articles writing which gives me such pleasures (and headaches when the topics are dull) as I work late into the night finishing them.

The pay I get is hardly even 10 percent of what I earn every month, but the satisfaction when I see the increment in my account is non quantifiable. It reminds me of the good old days of my writing scripts for a now defunct television series.

It was a lot of hard work – the scriptwriter has to be there during the shooting for some impromptu amendments and such – but seeing the check makes the effort worthwhile.

Just as it is the first sip of rose syrup makes the whole day of fasting worth in gold.