Everyone's a wee bit political

Wow. Really wow.

I got into some conversations these past few days with random different people I know and it really dawned upon me that perhaps Malaysians do take politics seriously. You know, the general feel and consensus is that Malaysians -especially Malaysians my age - are apathetic about the politic of Malaysia.

Well, we're not. I was speaking to a mild-mannered chinese lady whom you thought was all urban and just enjoying life as it was, but the moment we swung the conversation about the petrol prices *potential* increase due to Najib's recent front-pager in The Star, she was all passionate about the issue.

Then there was Chua Soi Lek's announcement yesterday. It was amazing to suddenly have so many people looking me up on MSN and starting conversations on what his indiscretion meant for Chinese politics and MCA.

I'm not going to share the discussions here or viewpoints - those are our private conversations and thoughts, but what I'd like to observe here for a moment is that people are actually caring about our country. And as long as people care, then there's some hope.

Here's where I share a little silly anecdote:

Back when I was in secondary school, I spent a lot of time frequenting mamak stalls around Bangsar with my good pal Willie Wong. It got to a point when we went to different mamak stalls every night and got to know some of the mamak store owners very well.

One night, Willie and I were having a conversation (bear in mind these are two 15-year-old kids) about politics and how we should both run in the elections as independent candidates. The strategy was, since we both knew so many mamaks around, we would go from mamak stall to mamak stall to get stall owners to vote for us.

For the entrance fee - which was I think RM 2,000 to the election commission - we thought we could easily make that back if we secured the 5% vote necessary. The plan was, we would be 21 in the next elections and could actually stand for elections at that age. We would represent the voice of the youth. The most important bits of improvement to the Bangsar / Lembah Maju constituency, according to us, at that time were:

1. Re-laying the Copper Wiring - so we could get faster internet speeds (even if it was dial-up)
2. Developing a section of Bangsar for good food (because the both of us kept going out every night to look for the best food around Bangsar - like Tomyam :)
3. Upgrade Bangsar Sports Complex (we swam a lot at that pool and it was green in colour. Nuff said)
4. And some other stuff too controversial to list here. It's really funny stuff, but also a bit controversial.

On hindsight, it's probably best I never started my political career. Might have ended up not so nice after all.