Alam Melayu

I was reading a colleague's blog about the boycott of American products that some NGO's are calling a boycott for. As the blog was in Malay, I wrote the below comments:

Senarai barangan wajib di boikot ini tidak seimbang dan hanya menyenaraikan
jenama-jenama terbesar. Kenapa jenama seperti Coca-Cola di boikot dan bukan
Pepsi? Kenapa McDonalds dan bukan Burger King?

Adakah kejayaan
'branding' jenama-jenama ini terlalu 'american' sehingga selintas pandang, terus
disenaraikan untuk diboikot?

Tidakkah kita terfikir mengenai 1700
pekerja di Coca-Cola F&N Malaysia Sdn Bhd? 60% daripada pekerja mereka are
pekerja Islam.

Bagaimana dengan pelabur-pelabur dalam dalam syarikat
ini? KWSP juga melaburkan duit simpanan kita di dalam syarikat ini.

Kebanyakkan daripada jenama ini dibawa ke Malaysia oleh seorang rakan
kongsi rakyat Malaysia.

Akhirnya, rakyat Malaysia yang akan lebih 'sakit' daripada semua boikot ini. Saya tidak menulis ini untuk protes boikot ini, hanya untuk menyeru pembaca untuk fikir semula senarai barangan yang ingin di boikot.

Tun Dr. Mahathir sudah pun berkata, kita harus boikot mata wang Amerika. Dengan tindakan ini, mata wang mereka akan turun nilai.

Bagaimana ini boleh dicapai? Kalau satu dunia boleh berhenti menggunakan
mata wang ini sebagai mata wang perdanganan antarabangsa, ini boleh dicapai.

Yes, I do write in and speak Bahasa Malaysia. I would admit, my spoken Bahasa Malaysia is much better than my writing.

Today, I had the most interesting conversation with another colleague. She asked my comment what is the different between gaya dan style. I said, gaya was the malay translation for style. She said she was planning to do some slides and they had words like kontemporari and tips. I told her she should use terkini and petua instead as those would be a better word as the ones she used although was correct, it was borrowed English words.

Another Malay colleague walked up and he gave the exact same comments. I laughed and said to her, "don't just take it from me because I'm Chinese, even a Malay just told you the same thing!". Right after that, she immediately walked of to refer to our boss if she could change the slides.

Anyway, back to the issue of the boycott. I think Tun had something good going on there about boycotting the US dollar. Currently, crude oil and even palm oil is traded internationally in dollars. If Malaysia actually made it a law that anyone who wanted to buy our palm oil or crude oil has to pay us in european currencies, that will create a ripple effect.

As it is, we buy more American things than the Americans buy our Malaysian product. Just look at our exchange rate. What isn't stopping some redneck American from starting a boycott Malaysian product campaign? Think about it.