Mindsets.

Perhaps many might have noticed him, but I’m confident most have not. He has camouflaged his hiding place well; even though it was so near a place where joggers frequent, he was all but invisible to them.

Four years ago, he was a successful businessman at the peak of his career. Then the financial crisis. Then the fall from grace to a pauper. Incompetent management of his finances brought him here, he says. Things he 
had once taken for granted now he pray to be given.

I wouldn’t have found him had I not gone for a nighttime stroll by the lake. Two burly guy decided to mug me since I looked vulnerable. Indeed, I had to fight tooth and nail to get out of the mess, and yet that wasn’t enough. Until he came to my rescue.

Mr. Alan, his name was. A shame to his ancestors, he says, not revealing his family name.

Paradoxical, it was. To live in an elite residential compound with a poor, homeless man a mere 100 metres away.

I looked at my diary and found this entry:
It was a night when the full moon was beginning to take shape. The birthday of an up-and-rising doctor; how fitting. All friends from each part of the country converged to celebrate the day of his birth.

Excellently done so. Pails were filled with eggs and detergent and all kinds of syrup. Just the kind of stuff you’d pick up in the mart and wouldn’t even bother about the price, you see. Definitely fun pouring it on a person.

Night came. The moon rose to its highest. The bash began. In a residential compound populated by hundreds, twenty gathered and made a din equivalent to a rock concert (emphasis put on din).

Residents woke and were expected to join in the fun, but then why such serious scowls and restless shouting? They should join us in the celebration! Come on, the one and only! He’s here to save, and affect, thousands of lives! All hail him!!!

Nah bother them. We are the kings of the world. Twenty and still counting. Oldie mindset, shoo!

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!

Smear the contents of the pail everywhere! Give the cars an extra coat of protein! The ants shall have a party as well! Honey!! Syrup!! Syrup!! Syrup!!!!!

Immature kids, says Mr. Alan. Rather be a maverick and not conform to the general society if you feel it’s wrong. What happened to the calibration of the moral compass by parents? There seemed to be no place for the future in the past.

All in the name of fun?

Take the money spent into this wastage of materials and send it to Africa. A family would have gotten a meal for a day. Take the time spent into this madness and call your parents. How long has it been since you last heard your mother’s voice?

Mr. Alan and I became good friends, and would occasionally gaze at the moonlit lake whilst having supper together. So many things Malaysians can do, but they choose to take the road much travelled.

Malaysians are rich, yet they don’t realize it.

Does our future still hold hope?