I AM...ER..ON MY WAY (The Concept Of Malaysian Timing)

AN Admission.

I AM A HYPOCRITE.

In fact, I am to hypocrisy what Michael Jordan is to basketball. I am the Jordan of hypocrisy.

Now that we have got that out of the way, I am, from this point onwards, free to criticize others, without reflecting on my own behavior, and comment on the growing phenomena of tardiness among the people I call my generation.

There is nothing I despise more than being made to wait (well, except for a diving cheating Barcelona FC).

It is worse especially if you yourself turned up later than the appointed time, only to find out that you are still the first one there, and hence, have to wait for the others to show up.

Case in point, at one particular dinner a couple of months ago that was attended by some of my friends and I. In all fairness, I shouldn't be as aggrieved as another friend of mine, who had the class to reach the restaurant a few minutes before I did. However, the rest of the group of my closest and dearest friends slowly trickled in with nary a reasonable excuse.

Resentment from being made to wait unjustifiably is multiplied when the waiting time involves monetary losses. The basketball training sessions that I've been participating for the past one month is a good example of time being of actual real value, since reservation of the court where trainings are held doesn't come cheap. The first 30 minutes of the training sessions are wasted waiting for everyone to arrive. Often, only 1 or 2 players will be at the court at the starting time.

This lackadaisical attitude towards punctuality has embedded itself so deeply into our society's consciousness that it has its own term, "Malaysian Time". Acceptance of this alternative concept of time is so widespread that those who still subscribe to the merits of punctuality, are questioned, and at times, ridiculed.

In one instance, a friend of mine, lets call her Y, had arranged to have dinner with her colleagues at a Chinese eatery nearby their office. They had agreed to meet at 6 in the evening, and Y, as usual, being the first to reach, found herself alone on a table meant for 10. As the minutes passed and other surrounding tables starts filling up with customers, Y had to sit steadfast, ignoring the stares of the waiters, who seemed to implore her to either order or leave the restaurant, as they were running low on tables with famished customers continuing to pour in.

Fourty-five minutes past the appointed time, Y got a call from one of her colleagues to inform her that they were just about to leave the office. Y's colleague even had the audacity to add insult to injury by asking Y, "Why did you turn up so early?"

Just imagining me being at the end of that conversation makes my blood boil.

Disrespecting time is not just limited to inconsequential functions like birthday parties or training sessions. In a major English daily recently, a letter to the editor written by a foreigner complained that in an annual national police event, the VIP of the event arrived almost an hour later than what was stated in the itinerary, proof that punctuality doesn't come bundled like a warranty with either a Petaling Street knock off or a RM 20,000 Omega watch.

The adult perpetrators of this pervasive and latent problem are setting a bad example for the younger generation. Parents who use their children as excuses for their own unpunctuality is driving the message to their kids that it is not important to be on time.

So, until society as a collective unit rejects the notion of “Malaysian Time”, I guess I just have to set the time on my Blackberry to 20 minutes slower, so I won’t need to be the ridiculed one sitting alone at the dining table (or, alternatively, I'll just resign to eating alone with a newspaper – those things are never late).