Oily business!

There's too much work, and too little sleep.  Now, there's the oily business of high oil and food prices.  Add a few oily colleagues to the equation and you get quite a greasy situation!

One friend sent me an email full of statistics showing why Malaysians should not have to pay so much for our petrol because profits from the national oil company, PETRONAS is enough to cover their exploration and expansion needs as well as domestic fuel consumption at the prevailing price before an 80 sen increase from RM1.90/litre to the current RM2.70/litre.  I would give that email more thought if our politicians from both part of the divide provided statistics for debate rather than the government justifying the need for development and the opposition challenging an un-endorsed set of numbers.

Newspapers in Malaysia reported a staggering number of advice from various government politicians on the need for the public to prefer public transport.  One report even lamented commented about Malaysians dismal use of public transport to Europeans.  What that report failed to show was the frequency of bus/train trips per route, and number of routes served per locality.  Perhaps with both sets of data in the same report, things will finally even up.  I live 5 kilometres from my work place.  To use public transport, I would have to change buses four times, taking a total of five different buses!  It would have taken me about an hour to leg it all the way - except that a woman was kidnapped and raped on part of the same route about two months ago.  Do I have a choice?  Unfortunately yes, pay RM71 to fill up my fuel efficient car, and try my best to achieve a constant speed of 60km/h to achieve better fuel usage and lower emmissions.  I already live in a non-air-conditioned house, and don't iron all my clothes, eat rice once a day, with amount of rice per meal set at about 50 - 80 grams.  I cannot think of anymore substantial ways to change my lifestyle to pay less.

In this, I'm very much reminded of how my mom used to cope.  Dad lived in another state due to the nature of his work.  We lived with mom in a different state to attend better schools.  Still, the schools, an all-girl Convent for me, and an all-boy school for my brother.  Both are a stone's throw from one another, but both are about 7 km from home.  That meant school buses were out of the question.  Even if there were school buses willing to take us, we would leave for school two hours before school, arrive late for classes, and arrive home three hours after school!  A school closer to home would solve our commuting problem, but it was a Chinese vernacular school and it was decided that my brother and I would get an English-Malay education.  Our neighbours thought we were odd: 'single-mother' family, who looked Chinese but shunned Chinese education, never gave our house a lick of paint in twenty years, and built our own pavements.  The latter two because paint and labour were beyond our means.  

To make the money go further, mom packed lunch, drove us to school in the morning, I attended morning school, my brother did his homework in the school grounds until it was time for his afternoon school, and then I had my lunch and did my homework while waiting for my brother's class to finish, and then we'll go home in the evening.  Schools back then had to operate in morning and afternoon sessions because they weren't enough school buildings at that time.  All the while mom will sit with the child not attending class either in the car, with the doors flung open for ventilation, or in the canteen.  Extra after-class tuition was provided by mom.  So all in all mom made two trips to school, rather than six trips if she had gone back and forth.  It was not a comfortable arrangement, but she ensured we had a good education, and there was food on the table everyday.  Had she prefered the comforts of home, my brother and I would not have that many hours to do our homework or we would have gone hungry.  Our mother sacrificed so much!  

Today as I try to live frugally, those memories become even more vivid.  It is heartening to know that she could now sit back and not worry about money anymore.   She watches Wah Lai Thoi on ASTRO most of the time, enjoys the occasional eating out with dad.  And, most heartening, she tells me, 'I love you' at the end of every telephone conversation whenver I call her.  

(to be continued...)