BINTULU 5

Bintulu 5 – February 19th to March 23rd 2005.

Bintulu March 5, 2005.

I ponder. I am now into the third week of my stay in Bintulu. It has been two weeks of laid back, easygoing daily routines, keeping up with the two little boys with their pranks, playful and naughty behaviours. Especially Dedek, who still refuses to acknowledge that he is the big brother of the younger sister, and insists that he is Dedek and the younger sister is baby. He would sometime behave as though he is the baby. He would sometime snuggle up on my lap and put his head on my arm as though wanting me to hold him the way babies are held in our arms!! I would call for his feeding bottle so that I can feed him like a baby and usually, on that call, he will immediately jump up and giggle away!! Babang on the other hand is different. He once whispered to me asking me to send him to school everyday. I told him that I will have to go back to KL sometime soon, so Daddy will send him to school then. He said, “When Tok Bah go back to KL, Tok Bah must come back to Bintulu quickly ok?”. Another time, while at the playground and amidst running around and up and down the slides, he came and whispered into my ear, “Tok Bah, please stay here with Babang always”. I told him I cannot because my house is in KL. He said, “If Tok Bah go to KL Babang have nobodyyyyy”. I said, “you have Daddy”. “Daddy got work” he said. I said, “You got Mummy”. “Mummy with babyyyy” he said. I said, “You got Dedek”. “No, Dedek is naughty” he said. I said, “Nooo, that is not right. Babang should be with Daddy, Mummy, Dedek and Baby, here in Bintulu and when Daddy have time you can all come to Tok Bah’s house in KL ok?”. “Ok” he said and went away. Tough time there!! Dedek of course saw the brother whispering something into my ear and wanting to be like the brother also came to whisper something into my ear. He said, “Dedek want to eat roti canai, many many”. Ha ha! One is serious about life and living while the other is serious about food.

I ponder. In this atmosphere of easygoing daily routines, I get the opportunity to serve the net, watch TV – discovery channel, travel programmes, movies, and listen to the news – read the Quran, magazines and so on, beside dosing to sleep at all odd hours of the day, most of the time in front of the TV. I ponder and wonder, what its going to be like in the future for these little kids. When I was growing up, I was used to only the basics. No battery operated toys, bicycles was a luxury, food came off the wood fire stove, toilets were outside of the house and manual too. (I remember doing my job early one morning and while at it the bowl disappeared from under me!! The ‘night soil man’, that’s the man who came around daily to clean the ‘manual’ toilet bowls and take away its content daily, was apparently late that day as he usually did his rounds in the ‘dead of the night’). These days, little kids have it all, electrical or battery operated and electronically controlled gadgets all over the house. (See my earlier dialog with my grandson on money and banking).

I ponder and wonder, how the world is going to be when the kids are grown up say 20 years from now, a world without borders, where currently the rich gets richer ripping off from the poor all across the globe, the strong talking aloud of democracy, world democracy at that, but taking advantage of the weak, hiding behind the name of ‘humanity??’, the cronyism parallel, manipulations, corruptions at all levels of society. Human rights has meaning only when you have power, strength and a stable economy. Others do not have rights, do not practice human rights and must be shown how to by the mighty using their might to take over and administer democracy.

I ponder and wonder if the kids, when they grow up, gather the right knowledge and skills, develop enough capacity, will and creativity to survive. The present day world situation is so much more to cope with that current young adults and children find themselves much engrossed in the techno-commercial aspect of daily living, that their lives are centered in bettering themselves in the electronically related life and daily living enhancers that physical and spiritual aspect are often rated secondary or least important.

I ponder and wonder and hope. Hope that the children will develop enough resilience to accommodate and face the challenges ahead of them much like me facing the challenges I came across during my time. Hope that the children will develop the capacity to garner all the knowledge and skills available from this borderless world and apply to advantage, much like or more than what I could garner and gather for my advantage in my time. It’s a borderless world alright, and its literally getting smaller and smaller a world to face.

MKI Ramblings Unlimited,
Bintulu