Gotong Royong

At our mooban, we have a small park with a simple but nice landscape. A couple of months back, I saw an old lady crouching sneakily behind a tree. At closer inspection, I found out that she was digging some plants out (and also she didn't look that sneaky).

Automatically I thought ,"Hmm.. this auntie stealing plant. Aiya, should have thought of that before I went to buy my own pots of flowers." Gooly and I loitered a while more as the sun was kind on that morning. And I watched the old lady sweat away while Gooly got busy with the park equipments.

Oh crap! Shame on me! She was not stealing, she was helping to replant the plants at the park. Now I surely have not seen anything like that back home in KL. We'd leave the job to the management, DBKL, MPPJ, MPSJ etc. Never mind that we expect them to do the job, we'd pull the plant out when we think no one is looking and plant it in our home. (Ok ok, I'd do that, not we.)

When the landscape deteriorate as plants wither or miraculously become lesser in quantity (ahem ahem!), the first thing we do is to complain, "Those lousy buggers. So ugly the park. When are THEY gonna do something about the them la?". Now why don't we take matters into our own hands like this old lady? Don't like the way it looks? Change it ourselves. After all, we are the one staying and enjoying the park should it be clean and nice.

I remember the only time I was involved in a gotong royong project was whilst in school. And this kinda project usually was well-planned, weeks in advance allowing students like me to come up with an excuse not to show up on the particular day. Things are quite contrary here.For the past weeks, a part of the park has been unearthed for a basketball court. Today the old lady has recruited a few more grandmas on a very impromptu and spontaneous project. They scooped the earthen soil into wheel barrows and proceeded to pour them out onto the trees around the area. Nope, they didn't transport them back to their home for their own use, like a KL city folk would.

Ahh... tomorrow I will go help water the plants. I hereby also solemnly vow to stop thinking about perfecting my initial evil plan which involves late nights and missing plants. :)

Never too old to learn and unlearn, eh?