The Tail End

It was coming to the end of Ramadhan, and some of the city dwellers had started their journey back to kampung. This was certainly helped by the fact that Raya would be in the middle of the week, and the school would be closed the whole week. People can travel from one weekend to the next and the weekend had started.

Most of the stalls at pasar Ramadhan had started to close and we were already making plans to return to Gombak, buying groceries and started decorating. Anita had finalised her menu for Raya day itself as a few of our friends had planned to come.

No Pasar Ramadan

The plan was to visit the Pasar Ramadan in Melawati as I usually did every year. But since my Mum-in-law wanted to come along, we decided to stop at Taman Melati to let her do her shopping before dropping her back home. We would then do our shipping.

But, as soon as we reached Taman Melati, it poured down royally. The plan to Melawati had to be scraped. We went to Jaya Jusco instead for a quick groceries. By the time the rain subsided, we had I leave for my Mum's at Bukit Antarabangsa for berbuka. So, the Pasar Ramadan had to wait until tomorrow.

Ayam Dara?

After sorting out Idlan's antibiotics, we had to head out to search for dinner. Rather hungry by then and with my sore throat, I wanted to get some chicken soup. Some chicken soup for the tummy I must say.

The warung just near our place was famous for its 'Ayam Dara'. Wonder what was on offer .......

Incidence at the Neighborhood

Malaysians are generally very accommodating. However lately, it has been very clear that we as a society are being taken advantage off. Unfortunately it is a two-way thing. We are just by nature very welcoming. We open our borders to travelers and tourist. The term tourist now extends to 'health tourism' and 'education tourism'. There are currently so many foreign students in Klang Valley especially that certain neighborhood has been taken over by these 'students'.

One of my colleague had been blighted by this problem since what he thought was a good offer to buy out a unit of condominium near to UMMC. It turned out that his immediate neighbors, both vertically and horizontally are foreigners. They are 'students' at nearby colleges and being 'student' they like to party. Not to mention a rather lower standard of hygiene and selective deafness should you want to take up issues against them. He was having miserable time but had already invested too much time and money to move away. The 'students' are mainly from Africa and judging from their attitude, they either don't deserve to come here to come over to study, or we are so desperate to get money off them that we are willing to take the baggage that come with them along as well.

Here, where I live near Taman Melati, we have plenty of students from the Middle East and North America, coming over to study at UIA. The thing is, they don't come alone. They take with them their family and parents. Looking at the condition they are staying in at the flats around here makes one wonder if they can really afford the tuition and accommodation for everybody. As far as I am concerned, with their visa status, they are prohibited from working. Today, we caught a group of them trying to break into our neighbour's house red-handed. Before we can do anything, they ran away in their car. I doubt should we be able to get to them, we were probably likely going to be beaten up. These lot are big and strong.

In the last few months, there have been a few incidences similar to this but not to our immediate neighborhood. Our community here decided to hire a group of RELA conscript as security men guarding the entrances and exits. Since then, there have been no break-in reported, until today. We think that this is due to the school being opened hence more car moving in and out of the area. It was no coincidence that all this happened during daytime. 

In Medicine, we were always preached that prevention is better than cure. I think it is about time that action be taken to curtail the influx of these 'students' into our local colleges and institution who clearly do not deserve such placement. In the last year alone, I had three such students admitted into UMMC with complications of HIV when their medical check-ups upon entering Malaysia stated that they were HIV negative. Visa can certainly be bought and our Immigrations are definitely tied up to do other things than to check up on these lot. We seemed to be more concern about Indonesians and Bangladeshis coming over into the country, when the majority were here to make a good honest living. Then again, I don't make the rules .....