Anatomy Of A Stupid.

What 20 minutes of TV can do..

…to Malaysia.

At 11.25pm my dad had stormed into my room to inform me of something. The way he banged through the door was like I spilled the juice on the carpet or something but actually he just wanted to tell me, in a very excited and some females would say cute (lol to that) way that there was a program on the Discovery Channel about some SMART tunnel that was being built in Malaysia.

It’s actually about the dual purpose tunnel in the middle of KL that can handle traffic or storm floods at any one time. Funny how Malaysia’s governments always flaunt miniscule facts like they’re sending a minister to visit a tribe village or what not but I have never heard about this tunnel being aired on national news or press before. Ironic indeed. Anyways the program’s called Extreme Engineering : Malaysia Smart Tunnel.

Now, before I begin ah, do trust me when I say I love the Discovery Channel and I like the way that guy in Extreme Engineering, what’s his name? Doug? Steve? anything la, the way he elaborates on stuff, it’s all good with me. I tuned in to the channel at 11.45 because I was watching an episode of One Tree Hill why attempting to solve an add math question when dad told me about it.

So yeah, they show the process of building the underground tunnel, some information about the way the tunnel boring machine works and repair procedures. But wait. I immediately see something wrong, the images shown contain zero elements of anything related to Malaysia. Why? All I can see is some angmoh, a couple in Indonesian and Indian workers and a chinese guy that speaks English like he just arrived from mainland China yesterday.

This isn’t what Malaysia is about, yes, but I really fear the way these guys are making Malaysia look like. In the travel channel the bald guy that came to Malaysia visited on of the worst mamak chain restaurants and ate some pore fish testicles and complained about it. Again, this isn’t what Malaysia is about. Belancan isn’t fish paste, it’s shrimp paste.

Continuing with the documentary, now suddenly I see this guy trying to describe Malaysia’s soil quality. Man, that tone that he used sounds so much like belittle even my dad enquired at the same time. How he said, it was like "In Malaysia, the ground is like a digger’s worst nightmare" or "In Malaysia, if you own land, you own it all the way to the centre of the earth".

It’s like he’s implying that the problem only exists in Malaysia and nowhere else and cannot be solved? WTF?! If only he knew that his tribe of angmohs were the ones that created that stupid land system then maybe he’d shut his mouth. Maybe I should be saying "In Malaysia, if you make an offending remark then we take you to a corner and wollap you"? Geez.

Make lah more interesting sentences like "In Malaysia, you can buy DVDs for less than 5 dollars and not get arrested for it" or "In Malaysia you actually can marry 4 wives". Not quite, only muslims can do that, but you get what I’m saying, yes?

Then came the 12 o’clock news. Of course during this week Thailand’s military coup will dominate the most of any news programmes or news prints so the first news to pop up was about Thailand’s plans for a new government. In this segment, included a comment from some political scientist that had a name like Paninitayam Traywattnignanom - something something that I would rather not try to spell out to not offend anybody - about the coup’s future plans. My conclusion is, this guy ALSO looks like the guy on Extreme Engineering that looked like he just arrived from China yesterday, but damn his English is more fluent than mine!

Ergo, you can see how bad of an image this programme has potrayed upon Malaysia in a nutshell. Imagine if I was also an angmoh to be tourist and couldn’t decide where to go for my next holiday. Would the scenario for my decision be something like this….

"Hmm. Gee, Malaysia’s got this new tunnel thing going on and it sure looks like the whole city’s filled with smelly construction workers and people who can’t even speak right? Shucks, I’d rather camp out in India and then Hong Kong than go there. Mmmmm, Thailand, yeah they’ve got hot chicks there, heck there’s even dudes with really really long names and funny faces that talk like John from the local grocery store. ‘Sides, they got a coup going on and it looks like a public holiday! Thailand it is!"

….?

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