(1282)CMCO

This is the second day of CMCO in this town. CMCO probably stands for Conditional Movement Control Order. Sanitation workers came yesterday to dig and suck out of the sewerage channel. That happened at least twice a year.

My son said the only oxidation plant he had seen in town is near our landlord's expensive condominium a mile or so away. It seems that Indah Water (semi government body taking care of waste water) does not exist here. Human waste simply flows out of the sewer through river to the sea. What people take for granted in the Peninsular are not found here.

It is also part of life to put up with patchy handphone reception in certain part of the residential area here. The first house I rented was within walking distance from the only golf course. My neighbour, a young man about to be married, could be found standing in the middle of the deserted road in front of our houses chatting with his fiancee around midnight the few nights before his wedding day. That was the only spot he could find uninterrupted signal to carry on a telephone conversation with his beloved.

What I described above was superceded by a native student who had to build a simple shelter on top of a tall tree which grew atop a hill so she could take her semester exam using an old laptop catching barely sufficient signal. That happened when all college students had to return home and made do with online lessons because of COVID-19.

On the other hand I am most grateful for uninterrupted water and electrical supply. Folks in my old neighbourhood in Selangor were having no water supply because of unlicensed business people dumping chemical waste on the water catchment area. Instead of suffering the preannual haze, I am enjoying clean air with daily sea breeze.

While the population in Malaysia is not alarmingly high, already the water and air pollution levels reached dangerous levels. For a country densely polulated like Indonesia, COVID-19 spread like wild fire. It does not help when certain people groups threatened medical people with deadly weapons insisting on taking dead bodies which had been disinfected and sealed back to their homes so that loved ones could see, touch, clean and kiss the dead. Even though doctors and health officials knew the consequences of that, they had no choice but to give in to the armed and crazed groups.

It does seem like the worst enemy of human beings are themselves. When population becomes too high, things would happen to cut the numbers down. Perhaps that was how the past civilizations ended abruptly.