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MALAYSIA Tanah Tumpah Darahku

LOVE MALAYSIA!!!

 



Friday, July 18, 2025

The invisible club

 

I’M OFTEN told I look normal. In fact, when I sit in the waiting room of the neuro clinic for my annual check-up, I might even look like I’m there for someone else. I dress neatly. I walk in unaided. I respond when my name is called.

There’s no oxygen tank by my side, no slurred speech, no visible signs that something once went deeply wrong.

But I’m the patient. I’m the one with a brainstem cavernoma—a rare malformation tucked deep inside the pons, where vital things live: breathing, swallowing, balance, vision.

Mine was discovered almost by accident in late 2015 after a year of quiet, persistent numbness. No real pain. Just a strange tingling on the left side of my body — like when your leg falls asleep. Except this one didn’t wake up.

Even after diagnosis, I felt mostly fine. Until I didn’t. On my 41st birthday, after a small slice of cake, I vomited. Just once. But I remembered what my neurosurgeon had said: If anything changes, head straight to emergency. So I did.

What followed was a slow spiral—days in a hospital room, my vision narrowing, my head heavy as stone. They drilled a hole in my skull to relieve the pressure.

And when things didn’t improve, they opened it properly. They removed the cavernoma. And with it, a part of the person I used to be.

The surgery was a success. Technically. The mass was gone, but the aftermath lingered. I emerged with right-side facial paralysis and fine motor loss in my left hand. I couldn’t use a straw to drink. I couldn’t button a shirt with my left hand.

I couldn’t pronounce the consonants F, V, B, or M without sounding like I was underwater. These were not headline-worthy losses. No one made a documentary about it. But they changed my daily rhythm in subtle ways. And now, almost a decade later, they still do.

In the neuro clinic, I’m often the most “normal-looking” person in the room. There’s a cruel kind of irony to that. Some patients shuffle in, others are wheeled. Some can’t speak. Others don’t respond.

Then there’s me—smiling halfway, speaking carefully, nodding with one side of my face. And because I pass, people assume I’m fine. That I’ve recovered. That the story is over.

But recovery doesn’t always mean return. Sometimes it means reinvention. I’m not who I was. But I’m someone still becoming. We live in a world obsessed with how things appear—with symmetry, vitality, performance.

And we admire recovery when it ends in a triumphant “after”. What we don’t talk about is the middle. That long, awkward middle where you’re not who you were, and not yet sure who you’ll be.

It’s in that space I’ve quietly learned how to live again—how to laugh when others flinch at my half-smile, how to teach when my words won’t form the way they used to, how to type research papers when my fingers fumble with the home keys.

Haruki Murakami once wrote, “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” It’s the kind of quote that looks great on a poster, but feels slippery in practice. Pain can change you long before you choose how to respond to it.

And sometimes, just waking up and carrying on is the only choice you have. Murakami’s characters often walk through surreal landscapes of loss and disorientation, not to escape their pain but to better understand it.

I think about that often—how we don’t really get out of the woods, we just learn to walk differently within them.

I like to think there’s a quiet club for people like me. We don’t meet. We don’t speak of it. But we recognise each other—in the slightly delayed grip of a handshake, in the gentle sway of someone regaining balance, in the pause before a word that’s harder to pronounce than it used to be.

Paulo Coelho once wrote, “The strongest love is the love that can demonstrate its fragility.” Maybe the same can be said for strength itself. Real strength isn’t loud. It doesn’t announce its victories. It adapts.

It hums quietly beneath the surface of ordinary things: holding a pen, buttoning a cuff, walking into a clinic with your head held just high enough.

Over time, you learn to stop explaining yourself. People will think you’re fine, and you let them. Not because you owe them silence, but because you’ve made peace with being misread.

When someone asks me if I’m fully recovered, I say, “I’m well.” And I mean it. I’m well in ways that matter. I teach, I research, I write. I raise three sons with a woman who knew me before all this. I show up. I adapt. I live.

But once a year, when I sit in that neuro clinic—surrounded by wheelchairs, soft-spoken nurses and a neurosurgeon who never forget my face—I remember that I belong to a quiet category. Not the visibly broken. Not the visibly healed. Just quietly altered.

And maybe that’s the mark I carry now—not the scar at the back of my head, not the asymmetry of my smile, but the quiet knowledge that looking normal and being fine are not the same thing. Not even close. 

Ir Dr Nahrizul Adib Kadri is a professor of biomedical engineering at the Faculty of Engineering, and the Principal of Ibnu Sina Residential College, Universiti Malaya.

The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of  MMKtT.

- Focus Malaysia

Confusion over MATTA and MATA—intentional or otherwise?

 

I REFER to the Bernama report “New tourist bus safety regulations in Malaysia from Aug 1” published on July 14.

The first paragraph is reproduced here in toto: The Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agents (MATA) has voiced strong support for the Tourism, Arts and Culture Ministry (MOTAC) in enforcing new regulations for tourist bus operations.

And the following paragraph: Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Khalid Harun JP, MATA president, stated that the updated rules, effective from Aug 1, will introduce stricter maintenance schedules, driver working hour limits, GPS tracking, and compulsory six-month safety checks.

Over the past six years, some reporters and editors were unclear or confused between MATTA and MATA, and they were not at fault if they had been misled or not corrected, But it had brought much confusion among the public.

MATTA was established half a century ago, and its registered name was “Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agents”.

Its acronym was also used in the 50-year-old logo. The headquarters of the association is housed in its own building in Kuala Lumpur named Wisma MATTA,

On the other hand, MATA was founded six years ago in 2019 and shares the same Seremban address as Housecoff Travel & Tours as listed by MOTAC, with Datuk Seri Dr H Mohd Khalid Harun as the president & CEO. Interestingly, Khalid served as MATTA president until 2013.

But on Sept 11, 2014, MATTA held an extraordinary general meeting which voted overwhelmingly to expel five of its members, including Khalid, who were office bearers of MATA for causing moral and material damage to MATTA.

MATA was registered as “Persatuan Agensi Pelancongan Malaysia” and the correct translation is Malaysia Tourism Agency Association and abbreviation MTAA. Both the above official Malay and English names are stated in its website mata.travel.

Instead of using MTAA, MATA was used to masquerade as MATTA and its popular MATTA Fairs.

Before the pandemic, there were more than 3,600 MATTA corporate members in 2019. MATTA’s website allows the public to verify all its members listed in “Member Directory”.

In contrast, MATA’s website has only four names, all from its “Executive Committee” and an occasion scheduled in 2022 is still listed under “Upcoming Events”. It appears there were hardly any activities in MATA, but claims to represent the majority of tourism players in Malaysia.

There are more than 10 travel associations in Malaysia listed in “Travel associations are one too many” published on May 28, 2020, which may provide an inkling as to why they were set up.

Are these trade bodies serving their industry or just a platform to draw attention and gain importance? 

YS Chan is master trainer for Mesra Malaysia and Travel and Tours Enhancement Course and an Asean Tourism Master Trainer. He is also a tourism and transport business consultant.

The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of  MMKtT.

- Focus Malaysia.

Guarantee first-choice placement for top STPM students, MOHE told

 

THE Democratic Action Party Socialist Youth (DAPSY) has called for the Higher Education Ministry (MOHE) to implement substantive higher education reforms and correct the systemic bias between STPM and Matriculation pathways, starting by automatically granting first-choice university and course placement to STPM students with a perfect CGPA of 4.0.

Its national publicity secretary Ho Chi Yang was responding to Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Zambry Abdul Kadir’s announcement on July 17 that all pre-university pathways will be transferred from the Education Ministry to MOHE.

“However, the announcement made no mention of structural reforms to improve fairness or quality within the system,” the Tanah Rata state assemblyman lamented.

“Without real change, this move risks being purely cosmetic—form over substance. Malaysia urgently needs a fairer and more transparent higher education system.

“At present, systemic imbalances between STPM and Matriculation pathways put STPM students at a distinct disadvantage, making it more challenging for high-achieving STPM students to gain admission to their preferred top public universities and courses.”

Ho said despite STPM’s internationally-recognised academic rigor, its students often face systemic disadvantages and greater hurdles compared to Matriculation students in terms of acceptance rates, course allocation, extracurricular scoring and study duration.

These imbalances, he added, undermine STPM’s appeal and cause many top students to miss out on competitive university placements.

“Since being elected as DAPSY national chief, Woo Kah Leong has led the youth wing in pushing for four key policy reforms, one of which is to push for implementing a unified university admissions system to build an equitable higher education system based on meritocracy and needs,” he remarked.

“In line with this vision, DAPSY urges MOHE to take the first bold and crucial step towards higher education reform, by guaranteeing STPM students who achieve a perfect CGPA of 4.0 their first-choice university and course.

“This reform will restore confidence among all students that hard work and excellence demonstrated by STPM students will be rewarded and recognised by our institutions.” ‒  Focus Malaysia

Groom vanishes, father steps in to wed bride in viral wedding drama

 

SOMETIMES, we pay our internet bills not because we want to remain connected to the digital world.

We pay it, and gladly too, because the cyberspace is filled with bizarre, jaw-dropping stories that make us pause and think that this is a very fascinating planet that we live on.

And today’s novelty news has something to do with marriage. Netizen @jllmisai brought to light a story where the groom apparently ran away from his wedding ceremony, leaving the bride and everyone else in the cold.

The solution? His father was forced to marry the bride instead.

While it is difficult to wrap one’s head over the story, some netizens conjectured that the father had always wanted a second wife and it was just an elaborate setup for him to get one.

The post was also filled with sarcastic comments from netizens who said they too were willing to shoulder the “responsibility.”

Apparently the story came to the attention of netizens when a video went viral on social media.

In it, a man can be seen wearing a long-sleeved batik shirt, sitting opposite someone believed to be his father.

The video then continues with the solemnisation of a marriage between the father and the woman who was supposed to become his daughter-in-law.

According to TribunNews, the woman’s elder brother said their family had arrived at the wedding venue as soon as they received the news.

“The guests had already turned up in response to the wedding invitation. The groom’s family then informed us that their son had gone missing and could not be contacted,” he said, adding that his younger sister had been in a long-term relationship with her fiance.

He further shared that their family suffered losses of up to Rp25 mil (approximately RM7,630) in managing the wedding preparations. As for the father-in-law, we have only words of respect for the “sacrifice” he must make. — Focus Malaysia

TunM to PMX: No harm stepping down due to public pressure; both Boris Johnson, Sheikh Hasina did so

 

TWICE former premier Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has urged his once disciple-turned-nemesis Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim to resign immediately because he is clearly clueless on running the country, thus only creating a wide array of hardships for Malaysians at large.

Speaking at the Periktan Nasional (PN)-fuelled Himpunan Mandat Negarawan rally in Alor Setar last night (July 17), the centenarian said various gatherings have been and will be held are to persuade PMX to step down from his position of Prime Minister (PM).

Last night’s gathering also featured PN chairman Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, Bersatu deputy president Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainudin, PAS president Tan Sri Hadi Awang and Kedah Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Muhamad Sanusi Md Nor.

Although it is customary for PMs to step down from office through elections, this is not necessarily so as evident from what has been done by PMs of several countries, according to Dr Mahathir.

“In the UK, Boris Johnson who was embroiled in the Partygate scandal which entailed gatherings of government and Conservative Party staff during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 (when public health restrictions prohibited most gatherings) reigned half-way following a mass revolt by ministers.

“In Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina was forced to resign as mass protest was held to demand her resignation till she eventually fled to India,” Dr Mahathir told a crowd of more than 30,000 who attended the gathering at the Suka Menanti Stadium in Alor Setar.

“In Japan, even if he makes the slightest mistake, the PM has to quit. Many Japanese ministers, too, have resigned in this manner. Don’t wait for the election. When the people already dislike the PM, he should step down.”

Speaking from experience, Dr Mahathir recalled that he himself had resigned as PM because some quarters disliked him in stark contrast to PMX who is facing mounting pressure to step down.

On this note, the elderly stateman who helmed Malaysia for a total 22 years and 22 months quantified that there were so many mistakes made by Anwar, including “failure to utilise the nation’s wealth properly till many subsidies meant for the rakyat were withdrawn.”

In essence, Dr Mahathir who is now the PN adviser is confident that Malaysia would be better off with a change of government given this would overcome the various hardships, including poverty which Malaysians should not be subject to. –  Focus Malaysia