An astonishingly unique Malaysia

An astonishingly unique Malaysia. Geographically, we may have a larger piece of land than the two island cities, BUT mentally, we seem to be lacking in free space. Our residential areas do not have public compounds for the residents to roam around. Our cities do not have adequate trees and parks to balance the development of sprawling concrete buildings. Even hotels have reception concourses marginally smaller than the same in these two island cities. Since we do not have enough playgrounds and parks for the yound and old to spend their energy and time, seniors would have to get locked behind caged homes and wait for their time to be up, while juniors can all go 'rempit-ing' on roads. (Rempit-ing has become a Malaysian favorite pastime, driving a heavily modified motorbike like they do in racing circuits. Oh yes, we have legalised circuits for these activities, BUT 'rempits' prefer to save a few admission bucks) Our roads do not have appropriate shouder pavements or five-foot-ways, even if you can find them in some areas of the city, you are sure to find the pavements occupied by cars with dog-cat registration plates, or worst still, kiosks selling all sorts of non-nutritious junk food. Ah, you guess it, pedestrians please walk on the tar roads. If you happen to be a tourist, do likewise, but make sure you do not get run down by cars. You are walking on their roads, mind you! Even shopping complexes nowadays don't have a lot of free area for shoppers to walk around, you can find every inch of the walkways capitalised by pasarmalam style hawker stalls. Shops or restaurants. would not have enough space to house their patrons, hence they need to place their goods or tables on the tar road, or corridors of neighboring shops. If it rains, do expect the need to walk out onto the road in wet, because you won't be able to pass through using the corridors. It makes me wonder, are the restaurants not earning enough to pay for the shop rrental/ or premise loan instalments, THAT they have to occupy public parking lots in order to make a living? Although we thought that Malaysia is mentally smaller than Singapore or HongKong, our people are also physically retarded by a big margin. You can see that most Malaysians need to drive their cars up to the doorstep of whichever shop they intend to patronise, they would rather double- or triple-park than to leave their cars a few hundred metres away just to save their legs from doing any walking. Maybe Malaysians have shorter legs, making it difficult for them to walk compared with Singaporeans/ HongKese? BUT on the other hand, Malaysians could do a lot of walking in shopping complexes without getting tired. It could be the coolness of the air-conditioning in complexes which make the 'walking effort' less obvious. Most Malaysian homes are built relatively small based on our land resources, which makes every house owner 'obligated' to install air-conditioners before they can reside in the house. Of course, the usage of air-conditioners stopped there due to the hefty power rates imposed by our one-and-only power utility monopoly. In order to avoid paying high monthly power bills, people would rather spend some petrol money and toll fees to 'enjoy the coolness' in shopping complexes than stay at home with the air-cond units switched on. Some people would tamper with their power meters to slow down the power flywheel. Once tampered with, your power bill may be too low that the power company can get suspicious and propose to do a check on your power meter. To prevent that, people have to turn on all electrical appliances when they are at home, so that their power consumption 'looked' more 'normal'. What a strange society.