My blog over at Blogdrive is somehow suspended since Blogdrive won't load and I think I've lost my comments. So, this might be temporary, or it might stay. :) Let's see how Blogger fares against Blogdrive, okay?

Anyway, I've been asked by Vincent to write on Project Happy Malaysia. This couldn't have come at a worse time. Not that I'm unhappy about Malaysia, but rather, I'm still Internet-deprived for about another week, and I have two exams on Saturday that I have yet to study for. Not to mention the fact that I have a presentation in less than 2 hours and I'm definitely not in the mood to stand up in front of people who don't want to listen to me rambling on about nothing.

Rubbish aside, I can think of a story now. When I was much younger, possibly about eight or nine years old, my family and I were out on a Sunday at One-Utama, which is the most famous shopping centre in my area. Back then, it was big, but now after including another wing, it's a massive place. It was just grocery shopping and aimless walking around as our family time together. Unlike Australia where shopping malls are quiet during weekends, it was packed as sardine, and everyone seemed to be content with just being another random shopper, paying a dollar to park their cars there and walking around a big shopping mall with no agenda.

I don't remember who was pushing the trolley; I was standing on the trolley's horizontal legs and watching the people go by, wondering why the hell sales were that captivating. Then we noticed something amiss. My younger brother was missing.

Panic engulfed us all as we looked high and low for him. It was every family's nightmare in a crowded shopping mall. I believe my father went off to the information counter to page for him and my mother just continued searching and searching. Fast-forward, I was in the car, peeking out the window, thinking hard as to when I last him, when he disappeared from sight. He's two years younger than me.

We might've prayed, though not together; we're not religious. We tried brushing away horrid thoughts of possibilities that no one should be condemned to have. Almost everyday, there's news of these horrible things happening to children. It's a global curse, almost. Oh God, what could we have done? I wept silently as I continued to look out the window. Please, don't let anything happen to him.

And then my father got a phone call from him. A lady had found him sitting alone in tears and lent him her phone to call my father. She also offered him a lift to get to where my parents were. The details are a bit blurry now, maybe slightly inaccurate, but I believe that's how it went. To say that we were relieved was definitely an understatement. Overjoyed might just be the word to describe how we felt.

See, when I read that poll about how discourteous Malaysians are, I really was in disbelief. How could anyone have made such a large generalisation? When there exists people like that lady who pretty much in my eyes 'saved' my younger brother, I am not inclined to go with the flow and quote the statistics to anyone who will listen. There will always be defiant minorities everywhere. What, there're no rude Australians/British/Americans? Of course not. There's always that possibility that the chosen sample did not represent the entire population. In my case, I was so, so sure that that possibility rang true.

It's not hard to remember why I love Malaysia and my fellow Malaysians when I reflect on times like this. :)