Viewpoint

Hurray Sara's coming home at long last. She's now in Dubai or maybe already in the plane on the way to KL. Its been a really long year - however fast other events seem to be, Sara's being away is always longest. I really miss my baby girl, the doctor-to-be! Wan is back from Macau and Shasha is back from Singapore. So today at least, or tomorrow perhaps most of my children will be home. Tomorrow we'll go back to Malacca. Need to take mother back from Ipah's house. I wonder how she is. Sometimes I really feel sorry for her, she must be feeling terribly displaced and being her, does not want to disturb her children by being too demanding. But I also think she gets upset about small things, thinking negatively about things we say that are not even meant to be negative. As the other day when I mentioned to her whether Alan has called to say he's coming. She told Yatie that I asked her because I was worried that Alan's children will break things in the house when actually I asked her because I wanted Alan to come and visit her. I didn't want her to feel alone in the house because we were away in Singapore. I guess as we age little things like that can be sensitive. I want her to stay with us, at least with me she can rest easy.

Malaysia's economy isn't doing too well these days. Everyone is talking of a recession and someone said its better to save money now than to invest. But I think if we all think like that, we will indeed go into a recession. I remember Dr Mahathir's time when there was a world slump in 1997 - the year the hedge funds dropped and our money went down in value. That was a really bad year for us but Dr Mahathir encouraged spending and said we have to keep the money moving or there will be a slump. I also remember a number of people criticised him. Oh the number of times the Opposition threw brickbats at him - yet he carried on, with dignity and determination because he knew what he was doing would be right for us. And it was right. But did we praise him and thank him? No - we all just accepted it as our right. And because of his tactics - he got the banks to lower interest rates - we recovered quite quickly. But Abdullah Badawi is no Mahathir. He's too scared and too afraid to tilt the balance. Our politicians too are not helping - especially Anwar with his accusations of political intrigue to purposely derail his plan to get a position into parliament. I believe that he's doing all the intrigue himself, if there's any. All our MPs seem to be at loggerheads. Across the spectrum of issues - whether its the bar council or the economy, everyone is disagreeing with each other. Not only do they disagree, they disagree loudly and vehemently. The Opposition party throws disagreements to the Ruling coalition, they spit at each other in Parliament and hurl vitriolic remarks at each other. In fact both parties can be quite creative at the invectve they use. When can anything be achieved if this goes on all the time in parliament?