After all, we're still alive!
Hi everyone, it's another week, happy to be still alive. Today, I have decided to tell you guys a little bit about myself. I'm a Ph.D. student, supposed to be in Shanghai right now, but the fact is I have stuck for almost two years in my home country, Malaysia, due to the pandemic. At the first six months of the pandemic, I thought maybe I would be back the next day. I didn't even buy a sim card and used the number I bought from the KLIA 2 airport. In the following six months, I was still feeling the same but getting a little worried since I haven't completed my laboratory works and there are many pending tasks and emotions to be managed. By then, I have been using the airport number for almost a year. For the next six months, I was filled with disappointment and resentment. I was helpless and didn't see any sign I can complete my study. Both countries' embassy and foreign ministers didn't respond to our petitions to go back for our studies, not even when we're willing to comply with all safety precautions and pay for our own quarantine.
SO FAR, THERE ARE AN ESTIMATED HALF A MILLION INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS STRANDED OUTSIDE CHINA WAITING TO GO BACK TO CHINA.
Going into the ninetieth month, I was not angry anymore. I'm still frustrated but have seen many things. I have seen all sorts of problems people faced in this pandemic. Police recorded 468 suicides in the first five months of 2021, climbing from an annual total of 631 in 2020 and 609 in 2019. I could imagine how those people felt before they committed suicide. They're stranded in such a situation that nothing they could do to get out of debts and many other troubles. However:
Suicide is a selfish act and should be condemned. When it is wrong to murder someone else, how could we justify murdering ourselves?
Pandemic had shut the world down into a shithole. No one can escape. The pandemic could end in just 63 days, the three covid virus life cycles if everyone cooperates and shuts themselves up for three months. But we are selfish in nature; no one really cares about someone else when we're in distress in nature. Covid is a mirror to humans; it shows how selfish we are in nature. You can see how fatigued frontliners or the healthcare workers are in this pandemic, and I myself respect those who do it because they love lives but do you know many of them do it because that's their job and it's their rice bowls? It's just a job for some of them, not because of your life or my life. Below is the incident in which a woman, believed to be a medical doctor, made an illegal U-turn and cursed an oncoming vehicle on the opposite road to almost crash into her. She shouted, "I hope you will get Covid." This is not uncommon anyway. Many medical staffs or teachers who conducted crime said, "I'm a doctor", I'm your son's teacher." This is not job discrimination but human nature.
I have also experienced political turmoil firsthand on how the Malaysian leading party changed three times in two years. In fact, our ex-leading party, Barisan National has been there from 1957 to 2018 until we experienced the first shift of political power. I was away from Malaysia for few years. Malaysia was a little foreign to me, and now, it's barely recognizable. We have a backdoor government that replaced the people-elected government and had stay in power for almost a year now. There is nothing we can do to have a slight change. Protest is not a way out, especially when covid hits hard. The backdoor government had proclaimed a "Darurat" or emergency curfew since early 2020 with the excuse of the pandemic. In fact, everyone knows they did so to prevent elections so they can stay in power. With the excused to prevent the spread of the virus, they had shut the parliament off for seven months but continue to get paid. The average pay of our ministers, 222 of them, is about 40k Ringgit Malaysia per month.
With no relief plan, the government continued to shut the economy down for almost two years. Then, when the case is a little low, they allowed some public festivals that are completely unnecessary, and after the infamous Chinese New Year, Ramadhan, and many more, our cases are flag high again. So the lockdown began and ended like an incessant karma chain. I don't see much difference between them and "Junta" in Burma, to be honest. Both of them did what they think the best to stay in power. So we had come into the third nationwide lockdown, and after two months of battle in hunger and joblessness, our case rose from four thousand two weeks ago to nine thousand. No one knows if it is because the government is playing with the number because of the new Delta and Lamda variants that recently invade our country. But Malaysians are done. Many rose a white flag (picture below) due to extreme poverty and hunger. THEY ARE SEEKING FOR HELP! At least for their family and kids.
The national vaccination program is a major failure. It started in February this year. We had spent trillions of ringgit purchasing vaccines, "subsidizing" some of the industrial sectors that lose income in the lockdown, maintaining emergency room facilities for dying covid patients. Yet, we failed to vaccinate 10% of our population with two doses. The vaccination was meant to be slow initially to not achieve herd immunity fast enough for the emergency state to end and an election to come. Our government claimed that we did well and have everything under control until the Delta variant attacked. Brazil declared bankruptcy in December 2020, and a decade ago, Greece bankrupted when the national debt hits 1.4 trillion dollars. Without parliament meeting for seven months, no one really knows the depth of the debt crisis Malaysia is currently facing. Our prime minister refused a parliament meeting since January of this year with "Emergency State Law". We knew they spent more than a trillion and debted for more than one trillion, but no one really knows the exact number. When our prime minister was pressured by the king to restart the meeting, he was admitted to the hospital due to diarrhea the day he was supposed to decide the date. It has been a week, and still, he refused to do what he should.
This is human nature. One tends to cling to power despite the fact that it may cost our dignity. It is so funny that despite how religious we could be, it's hard to let go when we have a taste of power at hand. Trump has demonstrated that in November of last year. Many Christian leaders supported him, but he is one of the most ignorant men I saw. I have to say that he has something in him. He believed in what he says, misleading or false facts. He really believed in it; this is a strength we must have to be a good criminal. However, God says The house of the wicked will be destroyed, but the tent of the upright will flourish. After all, we have to acknowledge that we are not superheroes, and not many of us can change the world, although we had such a dream when we were kids!
After all, I'm glad that I'm still healthy and live to see another day.
Thank you for reading!
Stay safe!
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