Problems are a fact of life...

Day in, day out, we face problems. Problems at work, problems with friends, problems with family, problems with everyone and everything!!!

Human comminication is as such that miscommunications happen, the only variable is in its frequency.

Especially in Malaysia, where there is an entire generation of graduates out there who are neither good in English nor BM, and these are the official languages of today. I know that Chinese is the next 'in' thing, but still, emails, messages, memos, and all the sort are bouncing around with horrendous grammar and meaning making.

Blame it on the Government? Precisely!

Those who are at their prime today, the generation of 20-35 year olds out there have lousy communication skills why? Because the Government policy that forces everyone to embrace the National Language, which is Bahasa Malaysia. 15 years worth of people in the workforce now know nuts about proper English, and because BM has been constantly changing, they have lost track as well.

Well, this entire generation of Malaysians have been brought up in the name of National Unity, that everyone must be able to converse well in the National Language, that we could understand each other better. Yes, I do agree that it did enforce a bit of Unity amongst the races, but still...

The problem arose when this generation of graduates came out to work. BM has never really caught on in the corporate world (Although widely used in the Civil Service) Everyone communicates in English! Heck, I actually feel cheated by my teachers back in high-school.

"You must learn your BM well, if not, you won't be able to further your studies in Malaysia."

And what did I find during my first week in metropolitan KL??? Everyone speaks English!!!

Well, the story goes like this. When I first arrived in West Malaysia, I actually arrived in Nilai, enrolled into 'The College that Loves my Money' and I came to Subang for the weekend. So everything went fine, I took my first train ride in the trusted but unreliable KTM from Nilai all the way to Subang Jaya Station, taking a whole 3 hours worth of my time. When I jumped down from the train, escalated because I've never sat in a train before, and boarded the bus en route to The Pyramid, I asked the bus driver, who obviously looked of Malay parentage, "Pyramid Berapa?" (That's "How much to get to Pyramid?") and the reply??

"Sixty Cents!!!"

I was dumbfounded! We were asked to study so much BM during school and now this is what I get??? For all the worrying about my results, and the hard work trying to get myself up to date with the stupid changes made every year to its grammar and usage, and I get 'Sixty Cents'??? Why are we made to study so hard for BM? Only to get talked back in English by a Malay Bus Driver???

But anyhow, my point is, that it has made a great percentage of us out there, neither hot nor cold. In the pursuit of honing our linguistic skills to master the National Language, we have forgone our English and sometimes Chinese/Tamil. That's why, we ahve an entire 15 years worth of future leaders walking around in the highrises of the corporate world who have horrendous English, and have lost touch with BM.

There are GMs / CEOs / BOSSes that's sending memos that makes little or no grammatical sense.

sigh...

I should get paid more for this job of correcting other people's grammar!!!