Malaysian Idle

“In works of labour, or of skill,
I would be busy too;
For Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do.”

Isaac Watts (1674-1748)
British hymn writer and minister

The above saying may be of Christian origin, but I reckon there's no harm in me quoting it since the logic makes a great deal of sense. Idleness can indeed be the cause of many great mischief. And Malaysia, the land where everything is Boleh, is renown for its very own brand of idleness - the lepak culture.

It is rather ironic that citizens of Bolehland, who strives for a plethora of feats and records (some bordering absurdity) has a less motivated alter ego, one who loiter aimlessly at shopping malls by day and chat through the night at local mamak place or kopitiam.

There's a Malay saying, "bapa kencing berdiri, anak kencing berlari". So if the daddies are lepak-ing with his buddies till the wee hours of the night sipping Kopi Tongkat Ali instead of being home and spending quality time with the family, who's to say that the young ones won't imitate the same behaviour? And also, if the daddies (parents in general) aren't home, who's keeping an eye on the children?

So now that they, teenagers and youth, think it is only normal to be out till late hours, it does not help the fact that it is when they are so free and have nothing to do that they start hatching up, most times the most idiotic of things to counter the boredom. On a milder spectrum, they may just shuffle their way through the night at Bukit Bintang. But taken in the extreme, we have the hot-blooded dare-devil mat rempits.

So for the young generation of today, is it wrong to assume that the combination of bad examples + sheer boredom = delinquents? Or am I jumping the gun?

Another thing to ponder, do we really have THAT much free time on our hand or are we simply not creative or resourceful enough to find more beneficial things to do?


Au revoir!