Fwd: Wake up Call - An article from Sin Chew

The moment when dream is awakend...
I wonder you feel the same as me, all the sudden I realized friends and
relatives around me seems to get less and less.
Those years when the New Year drew near, all sorts of gathering
appointments almost completely filled the diaries, but this year seems so
quiet.
Even in normal time, phone calls become less and less, face to face meet up
also become much less.
Perhaps, everybody is busy with their own things, or perhaps, nowadays
people prefer to stay in.
However, it is not entirely like this, thinking further, actually old
friends and relatives are not around any more. God bless, they are still
alive and well, they just left the country, Malaysia.
They have gone to China to set factory; Ah Wang quit his engineer job and
migrated to Australia to set up his little food store business, Ah Fong
left the local University went to Hong Kong as a lecturer. 'Frog' went to
Taiwan to pursue his second career life. Others went to Americia, England,
even Indonesia...
At first, I thought these are individual cases, but gradually, people
around me realized the same, these are not individual cases but a general
symptoms of our society. they are not small numbers but the pretty big
indeed.
Department of Foreign Affairs released the figures earlier, it confirmed
the situation is real.
From March 2008 thru September 2009, a total of 300,000 Malaysian migrated
to other countries, among them 200,000 left between Jan - Aug 2009. (in 8
months)
Cummulatively, there are 2 million Malaysian migrated, this figure is close
to the number of Indonesian workers in Malaysia today.
The difference are, those migrated are mostly professional and middle class
people.
They have many reasons to leave: pursue career development, for the future
of their children, in search of better life and environment... In one
sentence, they lost hope of Malaysia.
50 years ago people said: Malaysia is very good, better than Hong Kong and
even Japan.
30 years ago people said: Malaysia is not bad, comparable to S. Korea and
Taiwan. (No mention of Hong Kong and Japan any more).
20 years ago people said: Malaysia can do la, at least better than China
and Thailand (Cannot compare with Taiwan and Korea lah)
10 years ago people said: No matter how bad Malaysia is, cannot be worse
than Vietnam and Indonesia ko-ah. (China is already in a different category
/much growth ).
Today, the economic growth rate of Vietnam and Indonesia already far
exceeded Malaysia, Social activity and intellectual development of the
country is also better, the gap between us and them is closing up.
Why worry? There are still Philippines, Cambodia and Myanmar behind us.
However, according to an economist who recently surveyed Phillipines, he
think in 20 years' time, Malaysia can replace Phillipines to become the
World exporter of Malaysian maids.
Over half the century, Malaysians live in the big old imperial housing
complex, closed up and survive on properties left behind by the ancestor;
continue to consume up social resources, wasteful, and drive away talents;
they never talk about competitiveness, totally neglect productivity, and
hate meritocracy.
When Asia economic storm hit in 1997, Malaysia closed their doors, thinking
we beautifully avoided a disaster, they even think of themselves as genius,
being able to handle the situation so well.
However, just look at other countries in our neighbourhood, they stand up,
face the storm, and walk out of the storm. They overhaul the system,
improve the processes and march forward, they moved up to a new level. And
Malaysia, still walking on the spot.
It's time to wake up! We are very very late now!....