Moneh

A great fortune in the hands of a fool is a great misfortune. 

- Unknown

One curse about living calmly and at ease without a care in the world is whispers that, "Hey! He's living calmly and at ease without a care in the world! He must have a million dollars in savings!! Quick, run after him!"

Yes, a contented life can be hazardous to your health. Out of politeness to my elders, I've spent many an afternoon listening to fraudulent schemes like the ones highlighted by The Sun a couple of days ago. I've heard it all - MLM, forex, ponzis, Nigerian scams, even a hawt but elusive chick in Singapore who tried hard to entice me. A hunch told me 'she' was actually a bunch of African scammers. The way they wrote their emails was a dead giveaway. Morons.

What's worse than these schemes is the number of kampung people who fell for them. I mean seriously, what can you say when a lucky draw SMS makes people say, "Oh hallelujah!! The Lord has answered our prayers at last!"  Well, God works in mysterious ways right? Who am I to say its not the work of the Almighty?

Funny how these things always require up-front capital, and funnier when the perpetrators justify it by saying you don't expect Him to do all the work right? So there was a time when hardly a week went by without someone calling me and asking, could he borrow Rm100k? No? How about Rm80k? I'll get back 10 times the amount by the end of next week, the caller swears. To add some urgency, he'll say if he doesn't get this loan by tonight, he'll lose the land and the house. Surely I don't want to see Auntie Minah and her children out in the streets do I?

When guilt trips didn't work, some tried to disguise it as an SOS call for food money. Caller says desperately, "Help! I need $5,000 to last my family through the week!" Hmm... $5,000 for groceries for a family of 6 in a kampung where a large family can survive on $500 a month? :-)

I'd give nothing of course and after disappointing a bunch of people, I was bestowed the honorary title of the Great Meanie. Orang tak kenang budi. Lit. the ungrateful one. Nice title.

Ha ha, if only I'm worth a fraction of the millions they think I'm worth. That's not the point though. The point is how long can you stand seeing good people get grounded to dog meat because they ignored your advice to stop playing with these scams. Its worse than gambling. At least in gambling, you roughly know the odds. In a ponzi or African scam, they tell you some confidence building religious words, tell you to have faith in God, then disappear with the thousands you borrowed.

And you know what the funny part is? The same con man can brazenly come back a few weeks later and tell you it was God's will. Its your fault, you didn't pray properly that day. God was angry and made your money disappear. But He's willing to give you another chance so if you could just borrow another Rm50,000, he'll try to get you at least Rm5 million.

And the fool, smarting from the loss of Rm80k but fearful enough of God's supposed wrath, runs all over the place seeking to borrow more money. When that fails, the pressure to pay back his debts builds until something snaps. Suddenly everything's game, even outright gambling, tempered of course with hard prayers to make it legit. Surely God will understand. Surely He'll forgive. As the victim proceeds to lose more than he wins, he goes into an uncontrollable tailspin. A debt of Rm80k balloons to Rm500k and gathers daily interest. All of a sudden strange men are seen hanging around the house. Not angels. Ah Longs.

If people say education is expensive, wait till they see how expensive ignorance is. Oh the blind faith. The surrender of all rationale.

If I seem to have extreme views on gambling and debt of late, this is why. I've seen sinking ships first hand. Its not an easy thing to watch, especially when your advice had fallen on deaf ears, and especially when you're haunted by the desperate screams of the innocent who went down with the ship.

Lessons from the jungle

In the jungle, the mighty eats the weak.

In the jungle, the weak but cunning lives to see another day.

In the jungle, small creepers can bring down a big tree.

In the jungle, there is no decency or morality. Order is created only by fear.

In the jungle, the only way to get someone high up in the treetops is by being a snake.

In the jungle, it is always first come first serve.

In the jungle, you cannot save except in your roots, leaves and fruit.

In the jungle, predators take only what they need and leave you alone after they have eaten.

In the jungle, you are always hungry.

In the jungle, something will always clean up after you.

The jungle never leaves you. You take it to the city.

The jungle can never really be tamed, in body or in spirit. Suppressed, it patiently waits to rise again.

How I learnt that not all traders are bad

When I was a young boy, my parents always sighed about the lack of money. In my 8-year-old mind, the provision man was to blame because he's the one who always took our money. I simply could not relate the rice I would carry home from his shop to the money he would take for it.

Oh I knew money was not easy to come by. My hardest memory was when father was gravely sick and left us with no income. For a while, we survived only on plain rice and salt. I do not know why but I still have vivid memories of the bowl I used to eat from.

That memory had a deep impact on me. I viewed with suspicion traders and anyone who provided anything for a fee. In my mind at that time, if you are poor, it is their fault. They were the ones who took your money. They became the symbol of my family's suffering. Sometimes, I didn't even think of them as human.

My best friend Ah Chai changed all that. I first bumped into him in my teens. I was cycling home from the kedai runcit (provision shop), balancing a tin of kerosene hanging from one handlebar, a bag of provisions on the other and bag of rice at the back when I hit a hole and fell. The bag of rice hit the ground and burst, spilling half its contents onto the muddy kampung trail. The kerosene also spilt. Luckliy the bag of provisions was intact. I was frightened. My parents are going to kill me, I thought.

I did what I could. Quickly propped my bicycle against a tree, put the kerosene tin upright and squatted on the ground gathering as much unmuddied grains of rice as I could find to put back into the split bag. No one saw me because few people used that particular kampung trail.

As I picked out the rice grains one by one from the ground I suddenly heard a voice from behind me. Aiya, lu jatuh ah? I turned around and it was a Chinese boy. He looked about the same age I was.

It must have been obvious with all that mud on my clothes. Ya, jatuh I said. He stood there with his bicycle looking at me with curious eyes, frozen as if thinking of what to say.

Moments later we were both squatting and hand picking grains of rice from the ground. I didn't know his name. He seemed friendly and genuinely wanted to help. Between us, we rescued about 5 handfuls of rice grain. I said thank you to him and cycled home to a royal scolding.

A few weeks later I took the bus to the nearby pekan (small town) to buy a schoolbag. Of all people, I bumped into him. He was also there to buy something. We immediately recognized each other and got into an excited conversation. His name is Ah Chai, he lived in a house not far away. His father is one of the few small rubber wholesalers in that town.

It was the first time I had ever known someone who had a connection to that murky world of business. Over the next few months and years, I slowly came to know Ah Chai's family members and relatives, one of whom ran a shop in the pekan. Through him I saw a side of shopkeepers I never expected - people who were actually as human as I was. Far from being evil monsters, they had families, were capable of feeling everything I felt, and could be kind and generous. They were nothing like the species I imagined.

The other lesson I learnt from Ah Chai was the concept of fair exchange. I learnt that someone who takes money from you is not a bad person if he gave you back something of fair and honest value. These were things my parents didn't teach me, probably because being simple folk they never ventured further than the rubber trees, the latex collection centre and the pekan.

Nowadays, I am able to treat shopkeepers and hawkers like how I treat my own friends and relatives. Yes, not all of them are saints just like my relatives but at least the monsters are gone, replaced by people with hearts, feelings and aspirations. That was Ah Chai's present to me. Something I thank him for whenever I visit his resting place every couple of years.

[I related this story to a friend who remarked it sounds just like one of Yasmin Ahmad's stories. I just laughed.]

What I learnt in 2009

- Empty plastic mineral water bottles make good slippers. You flatten them, use rafia string to make the harness and you have instant selipar jepun (Japanese slippers).

- I can survive on Rm3 a day.

- The people who tell me I need money to be happy are usually the same ones who say money is the root of all evil.

- Given a choice, I can always count on people to choose something that gets them deeper into trouble. This ranges from choice of food to brides to political preferences.

- The more things I own, the more I suffer. Either it goes before I am ready to let it go or it stays when I wish it doesn't stay.

- Sometimes, the best way to make people worse is to help them, and deny them a painful but necessary lesson in life.

- If you like to pray for longevity, make sure the signs are you won't have to keep toiling to keep food on the table well after your retirement

- You cannot find mee jawa in Java, mee Siam in Siam or nasi goreng America in America.

- There is no worse tragedy than children leaving their parents to die alone in their old age

- No matter what you do, your parents will always love you, even if they don't say it

May 2010 make me and the people around me happier people.