Goodbye 192

I departed to Ho Chih Minh City the day we say goodbye to 192 on 5 June 2008, another memorable day to mark our last petrol price RM1.92/liter before it hiked to RM2.70/liter, a 41% increase. Today, i went to fill petrol and it hit RM150 before the tank is full. I used to do abut RM105 for full tank petrol. What to say, this is the first direct impact to us, the majority "small people" in the country. Our little wealth become 50% less in the petrol station.

To feel it more precisely, from now on, we are burning at 28sen per km of driving 2000cc car or 28sen per minute if you are driving at 60km/hr. Certainly, everyone know this is not the only item to hike up, many many more to come.

My friend asked me what should we do next to face this challenge? Well, may be we and especially the goverment should wake up now from our "Malaysia Boleh" dream that we used to have for the last 25 years. Our government is like our "look like rich and sound like rich" father. He has subsidise us with cash and encorage us dare to upgrade our living standard materialistically like western countries in all aspects except our competitiveness and quality. And today, he inform us that he is no longer support us and "you think you" in future. We are encoraged to buy bigger and bigger car due to low petrol price, to buy larger and larger house, to go "cuti-cuti dalam dan luar negeri" very frequently so that family harmony, to buy branded things so that we look high class, to spend a lot for our life style, family, chidren, etc, etc, etc.....but unfortunately, our income is 2x compared with 5~10x the material price hikes 25 years ago. The funny part is our government also think like us, taking for granted that the grandfather money would not finish and never prepare if the worse situation happen. In fact, they spent more drastically than us into non-productivity mega projects that didn't benefit the people. Now, the goverment said "tukar cara hidup". Yup, what to do, now it is too late to complain about your "father" why never teach you fishing. The efficient transport system could not built in one day, even though they promise to build 3 years ago when they raised the petrol price from 162 to 192., now also lazy to ask where the money gone. so, my suggestion at this point of time, keep living back to basic.