Malaysia Developed??

We still have along way to go before we become a fully developed country. Why?, you might ask, although we have the biggest, longest, (fill in)est, man made structures in the world, sociologically we still have a long way to go.

What triggered this statement is what happened in front of me this morning. See, I hate litter bugs. Its one of my main peeves (thanks Dad*). It was in a typical morning jam on the Sg. Besi Hwy and the idiot 2 cars in front of me threw what seemed like his trash from home out the window. He must have been so proud that his plastic bag flew straight in to the monsoon drain 20 feet away. This just demonstrates how big and heavy the trash was as if it was small and light it wouldn’t have traveled the distance.

I felt like picking up the trash and throwing it back to his car. I bet he would probably be the first person to complain of flooding due to rain. Dumb idiot!!

Here my theory on why this happens. While the country was engrossed in tangible developments like having the tallest building, a super corridor, world class ports, etc. It forgot about developing the people. Infrastructure wise we developed at a great pace. What took the Europeans and Americans a couple hundred years took us 40 years but sociologically we are still pretty much left behind. Courtesy and respect towards other beings is irrelevant, what is relevant is self satisfaction. How many times have you heard someone say “Thank You’ or “Excuse Me”. In a fully developed country you would hear it an uncountable amount of times a day from your bus driver to your boss but not here. Here, its like saying “Terima Kasih” is a taboo.

I just hope that sociologically we will catch up to the rest of our development. Then only will we be fully developed and able to compete on the world stage.

*Dad is one of the strickest most disciplined creatures on the Planet.