Parents and Intelligent Quotient

Nowadays reading the newspapers require a great deal of skimming and scanning skills as most of the news and articles are basically rubbish. So you tend to quickly run your eyes over the pages to see if there's any gems in the morning paper (can't let your recorded Amazing Race programme waiting!). "Girl Missing After Shopping Trip" the Star dated 6 March was something that caught my attention. As a mother with a young daughter, my eyes zoomed in and I rapidly read through the column. What started out as curious sympathy soon turned to shocked fury.

Did you know that there are parents out there who actually let their 5 year-old child leave the house, walk a block away to run an errand? Buying instant noodles and eggs with a written note and RM4 in their pocket? The parents became worried after an hour had passed and the child had not returned. Hello! What do you expect? What were they thinking?! I have a 10 year-old daughter (that's twice the age of this young girl) and I won't let her go out and buy stuff at the tuck shop a block away. Are they crazy? With the level of violent crimes in Malaysia be it Kuala Lumpur or Johor Baharu, a full grown adult is not safe, let alone a child of 5.

Insanity aside (I refuse to believe both mother and father are potential mental asylum inmates), there's only one other reason for their actions. Their IQ must be so low. I know, my mum has told me many times not to attack other people's mental capabilities but how can you not comment or question their rationale behind letting a 5 year-old girl go out to buy noodles? What on earth were they doing that they cannot buy those things themselves?She's not even kindy-going age. She is to be protected by her parents, to be loved and taken care of, to be given shelter and food, to grow up in a safe and loving environment until such a time when she can fend for herself and go out into the big, bad world equipped with knowledge and skills to decide how best to negotiate KL traffic tehehehehehehe I just couldn't resist getting KL traffic into this melee.

Should potential parents be IQ tested before having children? Sounds horribly like a plan devised by a villain in an Isaac Asimov's fiction but maybe, just maybe we should start doing just that. It is a crime, I feel, to let morons and nitwits bring life into the world. Perhaps if one spouse is idiotic and the other is normal, we should let that pass but if both parents cannot exercise sound judgment and go on to let their 5 year-old run their errand for them, someone must save their children from them (this couple has three children.) Take them out from their home. In the UK parents have their children taken away for lesser crimes. I'll tell you about this obese British couple and how their child was taken away because the authority were worried about the child's health if allowed to live with his fat parents. Ehemmmm...of course this is another ghastly philosophy, another extreme on the other end of the continuum. Common sense is fast becoming a rare commodity, perhaps to go extinct and the tragic bit would be no one realizes that it's gone.

Going back to this particular parents who heinously allow their young child to run an errand for them, I sincerely hope they find her safe and sound. There's only one victim in this pitiful case: the five year-old girl.
Losing a child is too high a price to pay, for any parents, idiots or otherwise.

"Not My Problem Bah!"

I must admit I was not surprised that a foreign tourist was charged RM450 for a short ride in KL, as highlighted in the papers. It's probably a good bet that this sort of thing happens much more often than we realize. The only difference is other victims kept their disgruntled silence and let the shameful incident go unreported, justifying the horrid experience as one of the pitfalls of world travel.

We Malaysians have let the irresponsible taxi drivers run around "ber-maharajalela" targeting good paying customers for far too long. I'm sure the relevant authorities have ways and means of identifying and tracking down these culprits. What I have long feared and suspect is the lack of enforcement. What do these errant cabbies get? A slap on the wrist? Will their taxi licence be revoked? If suspended, for how long? Who will be making rounds to ensure that offenders be punished? Not trying to sound draconian but sometimes getting to the root of the problem in a consistent and in a "Saya tak main-main" attitude might work. However, if the authorities insist on dealing with an isolated case and do nothing about taxi drivers in general, sorry lah Pok, nang sik jadi. Personally, I don't feel that enough is being done to address the issue. Insufficient workforce, corrupt workforce (the more likely reason) and the uncaring attitude of Malaysians in general all, contribute to the problem. Malaysians have this attitude of "It's not my problem, I don't take a taxi." Hence we see a proliferation of other serious road problems in Malaysia (Ooopppppsss! I digress to bad road users-that's another post entirely).

That sort of sorry episode will continue to grace our headlines because no one will think about doing anything about it. Just lots of huh-hah for 3 days at the most.

 Malaysians: "Not my problem bah!"