Gimme All of It... Gimme All the Directions

Just a quick mention that I’m still very much alive… but only just barely. Had a tough week, at one point was up for 30 hours in a row. Not fun at all… But then again, when you have assignments and mid-semester tests staring you right in your face… you gotta do what you gotta do. Back now… and just wanted to share a lil something which I should have posted ages ago.

The weekend before I came back to the land down under to resume my studies, I took my doggie out for a long walk after giving him his weekly bath. I miss my doggie very much by the way… he is probably the thing I miss the most apart from my parents. Anyway, since it would be a while before I showered my beloved doggie again, my dad does that when I’m not home, I decided to take him for a longer than usual walk around the neighbourhood.

An incident sort of shocked me and got me thinking while walking my doggie, you see when we were walking about and my doggie was doing his usual sniff and territory marking rituals… there was this Indian guy on a motorcycle that rode up to us and then stopped his bike. The first thing that came to my mind was that OMG, he is going to rob us. I wasn’t carrying any cash around since I only needed my house keys to walk the dog, but I had on me my necklace which held my crucifix… I guess the gold coloured necklace was quite visible, and I thought he was gonna rob me of it.

Of course I had no doubt that my doggie would protect me if the guy on the bike tried anything funny, but at that time, my doggie was busy with his sniff and mark ritual… and he paid little attention to the unidentified stranger that approached us.

I took a step back and was about to pull my doggie closer to me when the guy on the bike suddenly said:

“Excuse me, which is the direction to Taman Tun?” (he said all this in malay of course)

After hearing him say that, I was a little relieved that all he was asking for was directions, but I still kept my vigilance up… just in case he was just asking me directions so that he can catch me off guard before he snatches my necklace. It took a while for me to get my bearings, but then in no time I pointed him in the right direction and he was off on his way to his destination.

I was a little shaken by this incident. Mostly because I thought he was a robber and could have stabbed me just to rob me of my possession which isn’t worth much anyway. But more than that, I felt embarrassed and guilty that I have accused an innocent man asking for directions just because he was on a motorbike and was of a different race. To my conscience it was just unacceptable.

He looked nothing like this...


Or this...



I reasoned with myself that it’s because of the frequent news we hear of robber and snatch thieves, especially in and around my area, and so it should have just been common sense that I was vigilant against this dude that rode up to me and asked for directions. But no, it isn’t morally right for me to judge a person just by his looks and his mode of transportation.

In some ways I blame the authorities for not doing their work properly, more often than not, they are busy setting up road blocks, or pestering legal foreign workers with permits in the industrial areas, just so that they can get some extra milk out of the cow, apart from their basic wages. I mean if the authorities had controlled the crime rate better, then us, the citizens, wouldn’t have to live in constant fear that the next person that comes up to us for directions will also rob us. In some sense, my insecurity of the system and my mistrust of authoritarian capabilities, gives me an insecure feeling towards my own safety and also leads me to mistrust my fellow good citizens.

It seems that certain people, in politically correct places, are saying politically correct statements that may lead a change to our country becoming a better and safer place. Though this may just be a sugar coated lie… one can still hope that in the near future of Malaysia, crime rates will be controlled, and us the citizens would not have to live in fear that some other law abiding citizen which only wants directions would rob us of our precious possessions.