There are people who come to visit us...students, doctors, people from religious organisations.....
They greater around my bed, and they watch me. I wonder what goes through their minds, maybe they are thanking god that its not them lying in this bed. Most of them pity me, i feel like a specimen under study. Why wont they touch me? Why wont they ask me about my dreams and hopes? Do they not see that i too, am human just like them?
I want to be touched. I reach out to hold their hand, but nobody would touch me. It is not my disease that will kill me, i will die because i yearn for love and acceptance. My family has abandoned me, is there hope that a friend or a stranger can find it in their heart to love me? Do i even matter in this world? Am i strong enough to change your life? Would you ever have the chance to know? Would you tell your friends that i exist?

How do we decide our priorities in life? Do these priorities only involve “i”? What about the rest?
We strive so hard to be independent individuals. We study hard, we get a degree, we find our perfect job, we buy a car, we find our perfect mate and alas.....we are independent individuals. Does being independent make us independent of our feelings?

I took part in a discussion today called “World Cafe-lights off”.
Imagine if the lights went off one night, and you look outside the window and you realised that the lights were off in the entire city. The next day you wake up, and through word of mouth, you find out that the lights had gone off in the entire country. On the third day, you come to know that the lights have been off in the entire Asia, and the whole world. God knows if there would be hope for electricity again...ever. People are panicking, what about food and communication?

The thing is, it ain’t such a big deal. Like our ancestors, its possible to survive through communal living. We work together, we live together. That's when you really matter. What you decide to do today, might determine if your neighbour would survive the next day. Your joy depends on the joy of your neighbour. That's when we are as human as human can be. When we learn to love the people around us, when we learn to love our neighbours as we learn to love ourselves.

Wheres the Independence? Was there really such a thing when they lived in caves? Independence came from our responsibility over society itself. But things have changed. We don't need someone else to keep us alive. Sadly, our values changed with time too. We got a lil bit disconcerted with the rest. We strayed away. And we fogot the role that we were born to play, we have forgotten our responsibility to love society, our responsibility to love our neighbors.

Who will hold their hand??? So entangled in the “I” “us” and “them”, what about the “we”?
Are we all human beings trying to be spiritual, or are we spiritual beings trying our best to be human?

NGOs hail plan to regulate social workers

PETALING JAYA: Several non-governmental organisations have welcomed the proposed enactment of the Social Workers Act and the move to establish standards for social workers.

Women’s Aid Organisation executive director Ivy Josiah said the contents of the draft bill, however, should be made public for input to be given before it was tabled in Parlia­ment.

“Our concern is the issue of confidentiality (of clients). We are keen to see how the Govern­ment deals with the issue,” she said.

Theresa Symons of Good Shepherd Welfare Centre urged the Government to include a provision to provide the opportunity for existing personnel to be trained as qualified social workers.

Women, Family and Community Develop­ment Minister Senator Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, in a press statement, said social workers must be distinguished from charity workers.

“Introducing the National Social Work Competency Standards is well-timed. The increasing complexity of current social problems requires skilled and trained professionals to cater to the needs of target groups,” she said.

Maria Chin Abdullah of Women’s Develop­ment Collective was interested to see how the law would be enforced.

“We don’t want to have a nice act covering all aspects but failing in implementation,” she said, adding that welfare homes and old folks homes should be monitored to ensure that the operators would not only be interested in profit.

Social Institute of Malaysia director Prof Dr Mohamed Fadzil Che Din said regulating social work could deter bogus social workers because practitioners would have to be registered and licensed.

“This way, children and old folks in need of social care would not suffer due to negligence and malpractice.”

National Welfare Foundation chief executive officer Datuk Sayed Abdul Rahman Sayed Mohd said volunteers engaged by NGOs should be trained so that they could provide quality care, produce good reports and subsequently enhance the credibility of the organisations.


The Star, 6th May

Out of The Ordinary Day

It was an out of the ordinary day. Instead of my usual bar across the street where I head to enjoy a mug of beer after work and watch a band, I ended up at a club on Heritage row. It’s been ages since I went “clubbing” per say, and I don’t quite enjoy it anymore. Gone are my broke collage days when a cheep weekend would be a night out in Bangsar in the sluttiest tiny outfit downing free ladies night vodka Ribena. These days, my definition of Friday night fever would be a cold mug of beer, enjoyed in my favorite pair of jeans, accompanied by all the other regular customers in the bar, watching an awesome band and singing along to some reggae, Beetles, Begees, Elvis and good old Zainal Abidin songs doing the line dance. Some of my friends tease me because I patronize places like Wikikies, Old School, back yard and Cee Jays, but its so much easier to let loose and enjoy the night as compared to a night out in Zouk. I’m usually one of the youngest ones around, but somehow I feel like I fit rite in.

The sudden stray to Heritage Row was actually kinda like a favor to my sister. She had just arrived in KL and she was all hyped up for a crazy night out. I hurried home after work, put on an “extra happening’ costume and dragged myself to the heart of town. It was the launch of some new club, and we had a bottle of Goose on the house. We met up with eight other “to old to be clubbing” people and we occupied a sofa in a corner. The crowd was growing by the minute as the night got older, but somehow our corner made us oblivious to our surroundings. In the center of the club was a huge cage cum dance floor. Some girls we getting their freak on in the cage as they rubbed their bodies on the dance poles. From our little corner, we passed each other the “that’s so yesterday-been there done that” smirk. All we wanted to do was to laugh and have a good glass of vodka- the perfect night, in a not so perfect place. Once in a while we would move our bodies to the retro mixes, and as for the rest of the time, we were completely clueless about what was spinning in the jukebox.

The night faded slowly, and many of our “corner buddies” had headed back home. As soon as our little corner was bare, a bunch of elderly men found their way into our space and got themselves comfortable. They ordered a bottle of liquor and the scanned the dance floor as they smoked their cigar. One of these men smiled at me and invited me to dance. I gave him a polite rejection and I continued sipping on my glass of vodka. This man who was old enough to be my father was quite persistent in his pursuit. He reached out for my hand and tried to pull me to dance with him. At that moment, I had a brave intervention from one of the much more senior and veteran clubber who looked straight at him and said, “she doesn’t want to dance, so please leave her alone”. It was pretty awkward for a few seconds, but it was buried by a sense of relief. She had said what I would have never had the guts to say.

The rest of the night was relatively uncomfortable, and I couldn’t stop my eyes from wondering towards the bunch of old men. Laid back on the sofa, I noticed that the man that had approached me was talking to a very young girl. She was a petite girl, with very long hair, dressed in a short dress, pretty and barely 18. He spoke to her for about 15 minutes on the dance floor and she followed him to his seat. She was accompanied by another elderly woman in a black leather jacket who stood by her. They shared a few drinks, and he started dancing with this young girl.

At this point, the 3 remaining friends of mine were all laid back on the sofa curious and entertained by the mini “episode” that was going on in front of our eyes. What could a pretty young thing as such want with a sleazy drunk old man as such? He held her waist and pulled her closer to him. I caught him lifting up her dress and she panicked as she shoved his hands away. After that, his hands were slowly moving down south, and he gabbed her ass on a few occasions. I noticed that this girl was trying her best to shove his hands away every time he touched her inappropriately. She looked like she was miserable.

I didn’t quite understand the nature of their relationship. She didn’t like what he was doing to her, but yet she choose to stay. Then something crossed my mind…maybe this little young thing had gotten her self in a sticky situation and was too scared to walk out. My conscious was killing me, I couldn’t just sit back and watch a young girl being taken advantage off. I picked up all of my courage, and I walked towards them. The old man quickly got defensive over his new found toy and he blocked my path. I stood there and insisted to speak to this girl. The reaction I got from her was honestly quite shocking. She gave me this real unpleasant look, looked me from head to toe and told the bunch of old men that she didn’t know me. I needed to get something off my chest, and god knows that if I didn’t, I would be carrying a weird sense of guilt over assumed responsibility. She finally leaned forward and heard me out as I said, “ if you want to join us on our table, you may come over anytime’. She nodded her head and I scooted back to my seat.

I was fearful at that moment, these men looked pretty dangerous and there was only one man with me in a group of four. The bunch of old men kept on turning their heads one by one to take a glance at us. We were silent for a moment, and someone suggest that we finish up the vodka because it was getting late. We gulped down our drinks and headed towards the car. On the way back home, we spoke about the incident in the club. For some naïve reason, it never crossed my mind that she might have been on “duty”. Someone also mentioned that the lady in the black jacket was most likely her “guardian” who was keeping watch of her. It all made perfect sense.

It took some time to digest the information, and I played in my head for a few days. I felt so sad on behalf of the young girl. I wondered if she had a story to tell. I thought of the person that she might be outside of her “duty”. I wondered if she had a choice, or was she forced into it by someone or by her circumstances? To her, I may just be some psychotic stranger prying into her life. To me, I hoped her a bright future, and the strength to do things she never thought possible.