Some pockets of darkness..
 

A few days ago, we had a black-out in my neighbourhood from 5:30pm.By 8pm,almost every house is lighted again except about eight houses along my row. Looking from my verandah, I saw KLCC,situated only 3km away fully lighted. I sat there thinking helplessly and quietly praying for electricity to flow back to my house. It was hot and I felt uneasy...

The black-out  happens all the time when we have heavy rainfall with fierce thunderstorms.KL roads will be flooded again and Jalan Dang Wangi will turn into a river again without fail! Somehow, I always put the blame on Tenaga Nasional failure to create and maintain a system that would not leave people in the dark for more than half an hour. For the record, we got our electricity back only at 11:30pm. By that time I was fast asleep. Thinking that my house is located right in the city of Kuala Lumpur and within MSC,I had a good laugh of our Malaysia Boleh cliche'-{Semua Boleh Black-out dan banjir kilat}. The black-out reminded me of my kampung in Kelantan where we only got electricity in 1978, some 21 years after our Merdeka! My kids made a hue and cry about not having electricity because they could not watch television and got connected online with their computers. When I told them that I only used "pelita ayam" to study, they kept quiet.But I don't think they really understood what kind of life that their parents had gone through in 50's and in the 60's...neither do I really undestood what my parents living conditions  during the World War 11. We had different timezones of childhood.

Being in semi-darkness lighted only by  a few candles for a few hours made think of the less fortunate among us who did not benefit much from the so much development and progress Malaysia has gone through the past 45 after Merdeka. They are in similar situation just like me sitting in semi-darkness -helpless, dejected and angry. Actually, many of them  have electicity,water and telephone but they are living in pockets of poverty all over the country(of course a few still do not have them yet). They may be  farmers, fishermen, contract  workers and self employed people waiting for some form of helps to change their life for the better...I was lucky to wait only for 6 hours for electricity to come to my house, but these groups of people have been waiting for umpteen years and some,a life time for something to change.These are the outcomes from the flaws in capitalism as mentioned by Charles Handy in his book entitled The Empty Raincoat.And his research showed that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer,worldwide!

The question that bugged me is why we still have pockets of poverty despite the government efforts to improve people life for the past 45 years? Have they being denied the opportunities? Or they are just incapable to change themselves for the better due to their "poor" social and economic background? Or they are just lazy and they don't deserve the benefits from a developing counrty like Malaysia?

The waves of globalisation are beating our shores every moment, day and night. They are already affecting our social and economic life, not to mention our values and cultures.In the future, the international issues will affect us more than the national issues.Now we have a superpower that acts like a big bully. I think we better equip ourselves with better and stronger seat belts to ride the rough weather ahead....

In my humble opinion, as a nation we have achieved remarkable progress if measured by the external dimensions of success.Could we say the same thing to our personal life? Just ponder about it for a while...and the pockets of poverty will be there until someone is going to do something about it.

When I woke up the next morning after the black-out, I was so happy to see the sun shines again. Thanks to Alladh swt for it. And to my fellow engineers at TNB,please do not interfere with the lighting of solar system.Otherwise we may have a few hours of black-out for the whole planet.

These are some thoughts that passed through my mind.....

Special Note: 9/9/01- The death of my friend Khairuddin Mokhtar that woke me up from my 'laqa'.