COMMENT | Life gearing down to a dawdle

COMMENT | If a film was to be made on life under a lockdown, there should be a lot of slow-motion sequences as daily routines gear down to a dawdle (except for food deliverers zipping down car-less roads).

Life may be largely in suspension, but this being Malaysia, we can still expect an almost daily spectacle of some 'Very Idiotic Person' or 'Yang Bodoh' in intimate proximity with fawning minions. It’s glaringly obvious our gene pool is long overdue for draining and cleansing, becoming a health hazard but management is blithely hopeless.

Biasa lah (as usual), after weeks of confinement it is excusable if one’s sense of outrage at idiocies or injustices is sluggish, replaced by resigned acceptance.

Even Tourism, Arts and Culture Minister Nancy Shukri waffling nonsense about the arts industry barely warmed my vitriol. This from someone who has invested over five decades in the arts.

That five decades of immersion in the arts is also the defence for my lack of volcanic passion – in that time I had many occasions dealing with mentally challenged public servants for whom order and logic are alien concepts. Biasa lah (cue music, Jethro Tull's "Thick as a brick").

Where do I begin? The fact that she condescended to note that the arts are a “complementing” element? Wow, what a compliment.

The arts industry will be the fastest to recover post-Covid? Leaving aside the lack of any substantiation for that assertion, what about the toll on those now while under lockdown – film crew, dancers, musicians dependent on gigs and productions for income, and productions and shows suspended?

Nancy said they had been engaged and “it is easy for them to plan things and we are always responsive towards them”.

I am not sure what easy to make plans mean...