A Malaysian Thing

A very prominent local paper; The Star published an article about what will South East Asia's first astronaut do in space. The news headline titled 'Malaysia's first astronaut to do what no one in space has done before" was a catchy one.

Here's the excerpt of the news as featured in the paper online on 14 November 2006 (and published in its circular copies on 15 November 2006):

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's first astronaut will do what no one in space has done before: play traditional Malay children's games without gravity.

The astronaut - yet to be selected - will play "batu seremban,'' or "five stones'' and spin traditional Malay tops in space, Agriculture Ministry parliamentary secretary Rohani Abdul Karim told parliament on Wednesday.

Rohani, who was replying on behalf of the Science, Technology and Innovations Ministry, said the astronaut would also do batik painting and making teh tarik.

While this does have its merits, I find this is stuff is blown way out of proportion. Some astronauts can do an armpit fart in space and he/she can be known as doing "what no man has done before in space!"...well you get the drift. Camon, Malaysian taxpayers don't want to see that they spend Rm95 million on some dude to play "batu seremban", print batik or making teh tarik in space. Leave this to the Malaysian enterpreneurs! Geez...

This is one thing I like about being a Malaysian (and I am sincere when I say this. No pun intended). Malaysians know how to make small stuff looks big, big stuff looks small and bad stuff disappeared into thin air.

Oh yes, Malaysians like to invent new terms to enrich the national language; the Bahasa Malaysia. A colleague of mine told me this once on what he heard over the local radio and it makes perfect sense.

When Russia sends a man to space, the man is called a cosmonaut.
When America sends a man to space, the man is called an astronaut.
When Malaysia sends a man to space, the man is called canornaut (pronounced as 'can-or-not').

I should probably stop here. However I can't help but to complete it as how my colleague or the radio ended it:

When Singapore sends a man to space, the man is called sureonaut (pronounced as 'sure-or-not').

It's a joke! If you get it good for you! If you don't (that's when you go 'huh?' and don't feel entertained) well then...life goes on :).