A little Something i got from a Friend. Click on to read Everything.

Through The Wide Angle Lens:

A Generation Gone to Waste
She couldn’t have been more than 15 years old. Standing at the bottom of the escalator, her face plastered with a little bit too much make up, hanging out with friends, back slapping and calling out to acquaintances that were going by that busy Saturday afternoon. Sounds like any other teenaged girl hanging out at the mall on a weekend. So what’s wrong with this picture? Was it the fact that she was obviously pregnant and wore a maternity dress that looked like it was made for someone much bigger and older? Was it the fact that despite her condition, she was still going around with an attitude and brash manners to ‘lepak’ with her friends? The whole problem with the picture to me was the foolhardiness of a wasted child who, in spite of the situation that she had gotten herself into, would probably never learn from past mistakes. A friend muttered while observing her, “sik sedar diri…”

She wasn’t the only one we have been observing from the sanctuary of a friend’s eatery outlet on the ground floor of Medan Pelita in Kuching.
Saturdays and Sundays there are akin to a circus of the worst sort. Malay teens and children as young as eight years of age turn up in throngs, dressed in a bizarre assortment of fashion, in all shapes and sizes, smells and stenches; and loud and uncouth in mannerisms. What do they get out of hanging out there, we wonder. They do not spend at the games arcade. Neither do they eat or drink at the eateries. They stagger around, giving one another pushes, whacks on the backs, yakking nonsensically away and picking up fights. Some of them high, on what I assume could be either cheap liquor, glue or benadryl or all three, vomiting in the elevators, on stairways and other corners of the building. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are drug pushers around who target these kids.
I emphasize ‘Malay’ kids here, not because I am bias. Neither am I racist. Some of my best friends are Malays - really good, successful people and I adore them. It is just a fact that these kids are from this particular community. One doesn’t witness kids from other communities congregating at the ground floor of the building between 3-5 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.

The Chinese and Indigenous kids who actually spend money and patron the eateries and games arcade, as well as the movie crowd would disappear during these few hours. What went wrong and where? Would it be that such state-of-affairs exist because there is a disparity between the socio-economic backgrounds of the communities? Could it be that these kids from the lower income group of the Malay community are trying too hard to fit in? Or are they trying to create their own identity?
Standing at the doorway between breaks from flippin’ out cheap eats, a friend commented to me that it was a session to ‘cuci mata’ (feast one’s eyes). On the contrary, to me it was a session of ‘pedih mata’ (to sting one’s eyes) and a myriad of feelings – disgust, angst and even amusement.

Take one teen that we observed for example – a very confused school boy dressed in low and tight capri cut jeans, strappy heels that were so worn out that they create a loud ‘click clack’ sound above the din created by the other kids as he saunters in his ‘catwalk’ mode all around and squawking around like a chicken with constipation. And to top it all off, he’s wearing a sheer halterneck. Beneath the halterneck you notice that his bra is no longer in place (yeap…it’s running over to the left side) and you’re just anticipating for the stockings or tissue that have been stuffed in there to start to fall out.

I observed several very sweet looking girls - natural beauties marred by the badly applied, too thick make up or by their ill-mannered actions and coarse words or both. Perhaps waiting to follow suit the girl at the bottom of the escalator?
The older teens come in clad in out of this world punk get ups. You wouldn’t even see such punk fashion in other countries. Definitely cannot blame MTV or Channel V here. It makes one wonder where they conjured up such clothes combination. What makes it worst is that I personally have a strong urge to aim a pressure powered water hose loaded with anti-bacterial cleaning solution at them. When did they last bathe? When did they last wash their clothes?
Speaking of clothes, my friends had observed an older teen who sauntered in late Saturday afternoon garbed in a metal studded denim jacket, a chain attached to his jeans and belt. He had been in ‘battle’ before as he only had one functional eye. I suppose that he walked and talked too cocky as the next thing that happened was that he was running around, hand shielding his face. His prized jacket, shirt, chain and belt had been stripped off him by another group of young men and luckily, not his only functional eye. Interestingly, the following day, the young man who stripped this particular guy, proudly wore his conquest – the jacket and the chain. I shudder at the non-hygiene of these people while I am amused at the conquest of the clothing items and bewildered at their behavior.

We have been informed by the management of the building and other tenants that before my friends took over the outlet near the arcade, the area in front of the outlet was ‘fully booked’ with fights when weekends rolled around. But since my friends opened up there, there have been no ‘outbreaks’ occurring. Glad to note – my friends are all tough lookin’ people that you wouldn’t want to mess with. However fights still break out outside at the entrance by the road and in other corners of the food court and it gets pretty embarrassing for a proud Sarawakian showing tourists around to witness the folly of our young.
Several years ago, three main shopping complexes in the Golden Triangle of our little city were also target ‘lepak’ places for such kids. Eventually the management of these buildings beefed up security and obtained the assistance of the authorities to ‘clean up’ these venues on weekends. Why not here as well?

These kids are not good for business during the weekends. The hordes of these “lost generation’ who hang out there scare off paying customers at the food court, games arcade and shops on the ground and first floors. The complex is not such a bad place. With better security enforcement and some cleaning, better lighting and paint, it could become a value-added pit-stop for tourists who live in the nearby hotels and visit the nearby handicraft shops.
The guys who run the eatery have brought up the issue of security to the building’s management to try and prompt the ‘cleaning up’ of society’s trash. But why couldn’t have the management done it on their own accord? Why are the authorities not involved in curbing this phenomenon? The way we see it, the authorities and even agencies like Jabatan Agama Islam Sarawak should put more effort and time on the younger generation. Get to the problem when it’s young before it gets out of hand. It makes your blood curl when you watch these kids and think that they’re going to be the future. Would it be too much to ask the authorities to stake out the place on Saturday and Sunday afternoons and witness for themselves a circus of foolishness?

As harsh as it sounds, I do perceive these kids as society’s trash. But who is to blame? Society? Their parents who leave them to do as they please? I’ll leave that to the government, sociologists, behavioral scientists and psychologists to write numerous papers and form committees about. But when they’ve actually figured it out (I am sure that they have), please don’t just sit around discussing these issues at dialogues, forums, conferences and committee meetings. DO SOMETHING about it. Walk the talk. I could help by aiming the anti-bacterial solution loaded pressure powered water gun at these kids…

by

C.E
Kuching

Courtesy OF a Very Thoughtful person.

PS. I did not write this piece but I find it very thought provoking and makes you Wonder what is going on.