Today, Malaysia celebrates its 48th birthday after 4 centuries of being ruled over by foreign powers who thought they knew what was best for us and still do.

The progress we have achieved in terms of infrastructure, government, education, health standards and economy speaks for itself. Notice that I mentioned progress which means there is still a long way to go but that's besides the point. Sometimes, I really wonder if we have come to point where being first in everything is everything. We look and marvel at the achievements of other countries and then turn back with a magnifying glass on our homeland only to find out that we're so far behind and there are pot holes everywhere in everything so we start tsk tsk here and tsk tsk there. What we have really done is forgotten how far we have come as a country and instead of comparing ourselves with others, we should really give each other a pat on the back and a word or two of encouragement.

As youngsters, we are so overawed by foreign music, fashion, lifestyle and habits that we fail to appreciate our own. "Old-fashioned", "outdated" and "not coooool" are adjectives so feared by young Malaysians and in striving to be the opposite of these and to remain in the cool crowd, we prefer what everyone else prefers. This I've noticed especially when Negaraku comes on, everyone looks around to make sure that everyone else is singing so that we're not the only ones. Most of the time, our national anthem consists of half-spirited mumbles and parts of lyrics disappearing here and there. Maybe that's the real reason Negaraku sounds so bad! The song really doesn't need a faster tempo or a livelier beat but it desperately craves our full attention, respect, pride and courage to sing it out as it really is; grand and uncompromising.

Our forefathers did not fight and toil with blood and sweat for a Merdeka of half-hearted appreciation and lukewarm interest in Malaysia but they did sacrifice themselves for a Merdeka that liberates us to fully embrace our culture, that liberates us to be Malaysians.

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The nature of the human nature
Coloured by twists and turns
Sudden and changing like the weather
Is enough to make one shudder

A field of sunflowers smiling at the sun
The tip of an iceberg lonely on an ocean
Waves gently beckon children with fun
Grows and trashes till all is down and done

But hope is in the light of something brighter
Something warm and whole;a morning star
For by ourselves we will never conquer
The nature of the human nature

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When she had first lit the fire and begun reading, the light had been bright and even and the sky graded rather too evenly from horizon to zenith, white to blue, in the way Ada associated with landscape paintings of less than the highest quality. But now the seal of evening was on the wooden hillsides and the pastures. The sky broke into bands and whorls of muted color until the entire west was like the marbled endpapers of her journal.

~Charles Frazier(Cold Mountain)~

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At exactly 9.45 pm on the 28th of July, I was camping out at the maternity ward at the Kuala Kubu Hospital praying I'll get to see a woman in labour. So desperate were my friends and I that we actually went round the ward time and time again until any woman there would rather give birth to appease us. Well, we waited, the nurses waited, the midwife waited but still no baby knocked on the door so we averted our attention onto a one day-old baby in one of the incubators. Clearly, he wasn't doing well and was plagued with a persistant fever. Time ticked by and around 12.30, the missies packed him up into an emergency trolley and after we gave our goodbye kisses, he was rushed of the Selayang Hospital by an ambulance. I wonder how he's doing, whether he has returned to his mummy's arms and whether I'll see him again.

My wish was soon granted. The next day at 1.20 pm we got a call and a baby was on its way!!! We immediately forgot about our half-eaten plates of very very spicy rice, zoomed all the way to the maternity ward and found dozens of pairs of shoes outside the labour room. Gee... It was like the movies and for a moment there, I pitied the woman who was soon to reap her 9-month harvest. Pitied her I did because not only did she have to worry about a heck a lot of people staring at her pubic area, her baby was a big one and boy, did she have to PUUUUUUUUSH!!! 45 minutes into all the groaning and scolding(the nurse actually scolded her when she refused to push!), a big and feisty, blue and purple baby emerged into the world, greeted and remembered by all her strangers forever.

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