Of Spooks, Surface and Yahoo! On the Blink!

Never thought it would happen. But happened it did and almost the entire e-community in Malaysia and some parts of South East Asia are ‘suffering’ from an earthquake tragedy that shook Taiwan some one week ago. The telephony cable to or from Taiwan became disconnected and quite a number of Malaysians seem to have laid siege to Jaring and TMnet due to the exasperatingly slow or no connection to Yahoo! That’s right! Yahoo! is not on the blink, but the two mentioned telecommunications giants’ gateways are! Somehow in the entire furor, not one – except for a lady who wrote to the Star’s readers’ column – noticed that the tragedy affecting the Taiwanese is worse than the deadly slow lines we’re experiencing. It is a tragedy…of the human mind.

It just so happened that the cakapaje bloke too was affected. Had it not been for that by chance tabloid bought that day, I too would not know what actually happened. Pardon me, but I do not buy newspapers on a daily basis, except for a Malay tabloid meant for my mother’s reading pleasure. And I don’t listen to the news – the 8pm especially. Day in and out they spew nothing but almighty praises to the government; that, which is known as propaganda.

It does seem to the media, that what the government doles out are the truth and nothing but the whole truth. Even when an entire village - one right under the nose of the people of KL and Selangor, and has been in existent for nearly 3 decades – was bulldozed by officers of a local government as well as the police force, the media played the story down and, I believe, branded them as ‘reluctant squatters’! The fact that they were to be relocated not to the low cost housing promised to them, but to an obscure and perhaps over-built, cramped housing some 30kms away was not reported at all. Neither was the brutality involved in the operation which saw one resident admitted to the intensive care unit of a hospital reported too! Hello! Are they not Malaysians to be treated in such a vile manner? Even if they’re not, they’re humans! Or, are we living in an Iraqi syndrome where ‘to heck with the people, it’s the US interest that’s more important!’ where here it’s the developer’s interest a greater concern. My regret was that when the entire episode happened, I was unable to go online and assist the people by spreading the news and make more Malaysians aware of the real situation in their country. My role as a moderator was greatly curtailed this past one month or so.

Alhamdulillah, I am back online. The deadly slow lines we’re experiencing now will soon return to the slow speed of data transfer we were accustomed to previous to the tragedy. In the meantime, I will be able to watch 2 of my eagerly waited TV shows – Spooks, and Surface.