Be End's Cupid

They say the corruption in this country is sinking to its lowest depth. I believe them. Having traveled a wee bit, I may have seen a much worse scenario. Like my experience with an immigration officer at an airport sometime back. An acquaintance and I were both new to a certain company and was sent to this city we shall call DJ, to learn the trades from their officers there. This acquaintance, K, was a much senior person but from the way he moved and talked, I gathered he has not been around much. And true enough, much to my woe.

K was standing in front of me in one of the lines at DJ's airport immigration check. When the officer called him, I just stood lazily waiting for my turn, for I do get bored waiting in queues and what not. Then my ears began picking up K's voice rising in pitch and began wondering what the heck was going on. I mean, immigration check through should be a whiz at the time before 9-11, and this should not be an exception as well. But no. That old goat K, feeling all high and mighty for being sent here, proudly boasted to the immigration officer that he was here for a business trip, which meant a different visa than tourist we were traveling as. So, being a country that's largely made of people who are used to taking things under the counter, the officer began harassing K. In turn, K, being the *rs* he is, pointed to me and said "What about him?" The immigration officer called me up and in a loud voice I asked him back "How much do you want?", which made heads turned towards our direction. Well, I got through just fine after that with a parting of RM50. Its either that of a flight back to KL, where I would certainly have to bear the cost of coming back. But K had to forked out RM150 very quietly. Served him right too for trying to squeal on someone else.

Looking at the episode above, and the level of corruption in Malaysia, I could swear we are heading into the sewers, where the country above was 10 years ago. Though corruption level there is still high there, public awareness is growing and there are changes to show an improvement for the betterment of the society there as a whole. Unfortunately, such is not so true here. And through the use of the media which is controlled by the goons in power, they are painting a rosy picture of a highly efficient and clean Malaysia. Even worse now, day in and out they are painting the opposition as hooligans. Its come to a point that the opposition has advised all concerned to boycott the media. And thus, I too have followed suit, missing out on my Tuesdays and Thursdays tabloid. It does get me down.

While rummaging through a stack of old tabloids, I came across one reason why I should continue boycotting. It does seem the propaganda run by the goons has seeped to such a low level that almost nothing is impossible to be bought. I gaped in sadness when I saw this section and makes me wonder where we are heading to next.

Only some few days back, news was abuzz about the goonies penchant to seek bomohs and dukuns especially at this time of the year. Even Cikgu wrote a sort of satire about it which had readers chuckling quietly by themselves. Oops! Make that by myself as I do not not know about the rest of the readers, but each night I sit alone in front of the pc while laughing, jabbering and chuckling by myself, while emak's downstairs either in prayers or reading her stuff. Or, she might already be sleeping as she normally does after Isyak. Hang on, I'm going way off now. Where were we? Ok, the bomohs and dukuns.

Its not surprising. I mean, bomohs and dukuns are the 'professionals' in their what ever field, that the list of their clients may include even the top most goon in the country (Who that top most goon is, I leave it to you to decide). Anyway, when I saw this section, apart from it leaving my mouth wide enough for a mosquito to come flying in, I also had to slap my face in disbelief! I mean, take a look for yourself...even Cupid's now corrupted!



Sheesh! Don't it make you feel sick to the...heart!

Hmm...oh well. Nothing much I can do there now but carry on with the struggle in an effort to make things better. In the end, who knows, that Cupid guy might just take me into his heart and let fly one stunning shot in the direction I would like him to. But till then, I guess I just have to listen alone to the song below.