Malaysia Today: Year 2004
=========================

Well, I visited my land of birth again in February this year.  And it
was for a mixture of reasons.

First I went to the campus of the Multimedia University in Cyberjaya to
be briefed on the progress of its IT Faculty for which I am an external
examiner.  This is a private university set up by Telecom, but which
has a "hands-off" policy for its administration and academic affairs.
I also visited later its campus in Melaka.  It suffices to say that
this is now the premier IT university in Malaysia, with its graduate
quality matching that of good universities in established countries.
My buddy Prof Randy Goebel is also an external examiner.

Second, I attended the 100 days ceremony commemorating my mother-in-law's
death.  This is a Taoist-Confucianist ceremony to mark the end of the
mourning period for the family.  The rituals were heavy and awe-inspiring,
as should be a rite of passage.  The year 2003 was an unhappy one for
Yokelin as she lost her father in August, then her mother in November.
I made it to her father's wake, but not to her mother's, hence I felt
obliged to attend the 100 days.  Yokelin's father had a magnificent wake.
Its scale, duration and elaborate ritual was an eye-opener for me.
You see, I am largely a "de-tribalised" overseas Chinese, having lost
most of my culture partly because I am peranakan, but principally
because of my education.  So I was fascinated especially by the ritual.
I was in mourning clothes, and I took my turn at staying up all night.
The wake streched over five days and nights, and on each day there were
several cycles of prayer led by a different Taoist/Buddhist priest in
each cycle.  Family participation was mandatory.  I am not sure anyone
understood the prayers, chanted as they were in as many Chinese dialects
as there were different priests, but hey, who understood the Church
Latin in the old days before the vernacular was OK'd by the Vatican?
A learned-sounding chant has the ineluctable elements of mystery and awe
essential to farewelling the departed. On the night before the funeral
we had the most spectacular of the chants and rituals.  A token bridge
was brought into the huge marquee where the guests sat.  It was a raised
bridge, with steps approaching and leaving it, only a meter high at its
level arch.  On either side was placed a large tray of water, signifying
(I was told) the river beneath it.  We were all given a handful of coins,
and as we crossed the bridge we dropped coins onto the "river" below.
And all this to the accompaniment of a mournful but rhythmic chant.
What was this about, I naturally wondered (oh, how detribalised I had
become!).  Well here is what I was told.  We looped over the bridge 8
times -- this number is a Buddhist magic number, as in the celebrated
Eight-Fold Path, the Buddha's advice on how to expiate bad karma.  So we
had symbolically crossed eight bridges, and at each one we paid a --
I kid you not -- a TOLL!  That's what the coin dropping was!  You know,
at that moment I had a strange epiphany, like, deja vu?  Where the heck
had I been through this before?  Not at my parents' funerals -- they had
very austere Theravada Buddhist ones that would have pleased Siddartha.
So where indeed?  Then bingo! The ferryman Charon, the river Styx (some 
say it is Acheron) and Hades!  The SOB Charon collected toll too!
Mercy me, Jung was right!!  These are archetypes that independently arose
in two cultures -- one ancient Hellenic, and the other ancient Chinese --
that were presumably effective in helping relatives cope with traumatic
emotional loss.

Now I cannot leave this account without also telling you what happened
after this last "crossing the bridges" cycle as it is symptomatic of
the pragmatism of Chinese traditional religion.  Justly praised for its
eclectic absorption of all and sundry -- you will find that the latest
religion that "invades" China is simply added on as another layer to all
the pre-existing one -- it is also full of formulas to both appease the
gods and seek favors from them.  So, Yokelin's nephews and nieces (all in
their early adulthood, professionals and probably largely detribalised
too) gathered around Jim, Yokelin's elder brother and the eldest in
the family (Yokelin is no. 2).  You see, they had been told that the
bridge crossing was to ask the gods at each point to "ease the passage
of grandpa's soul to Paradise".  (Oh heck, another deja vu for me, my
own grandma's soul had to be eased thru Purgatory by repeated Masses.)
One niece was bold enough to ask, "So uncle Jim, how do we know that the
ritual will work?"  Jim: "Well, we bribed all the gods that mattered,
and many times over!"

Some interesting developments occurred in Malaysian politics when I
was there.  Mahathir had retired as PM and his successor Abdullah Badawi
was his annointed successor.  Badawi was widely described as colorless
and upright, and many believed that he would therefore not last long
as PM.  Then he did a few surprising things.  He cancelled a number of
high-cost projects that he considered to be wasteful and unnecessary.
He freed the ACA, and they immediately arrested two Mahathir cronies for
corruption, one of them Badawi's own cabinet minister.  Then he initiated
an investigation into police corruption.  The opposition Islamic party PAS
were at first perplexed, then when they realized that Badawi's integrity
and forcefullness undermined their campaign issues, they panicked.
PAS is now (March, 2004) going around the country attmepting to besmirch
Badawi's Islamic credentials.  They have even attacked his wife for
not wearing the tudong (hijab).  Well, well, it's going to be difficult
for PAS as Badawi is an Islamic studies graduate of the distinguished
Al-Azhar University in Cairo, and his father was an Islamic cleric!

Postscriot added in April 2005.  As we now know, Badawi took back
the state of Trengannu from PAS, and in the remaining Islamic state of
Kelantan PAS is just hanging on by a 1 seat majority.  My prediction for
the next election: PAS will lose it.  Badawi also assured the judiciary
that his goverment respected its independence.  Result?  The judiciary
freed Anwar Ibrahim.  I am so fearful that Badawi's enemies (and they must
be legion) may do something bad to him.  May Allah preserve this man,
and protect him, for my home country that I love as much as Australia
needs a noble soul like him.