No Longer Walking, We Are Running (part II)

In a quest for Asian food in Washington DC, i found a considerably sizeble Malay food stall close to Maryland border. Its called the Penang Restaurant. Glad to find that coz id been eating Vietnamese , Thai, and Indian food (in addition to my fave Indonesian food accros the Indonesian embassy in DC).

I stepped in, and got a very warm welcome from the owner, a chinese Malaysian ( I supposed) came over and greeted me You must be Indonesian he said. You dont look like Thai and Filipino, and Malaysians dont go to my restaurant he added.

While ordering my meal, I asked him how long had he been in the States. Instead of responding that, he said something shocking me I will not come back to Malaysia. Its no longer a comfy place to live for people like me. And it stalls. I enthusiastically confronted his statement, coz i knew its not true. Its not the untrue statement I was concerned about. Its his persistence.

It reminds me of someone i met years ago, when I was in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He was somone from the ruling party youth wing, saying that When Indonesia grows up, Malaysia falls down. Vice versa.Again, its not true. Indonesia grows, andMalaysia grows also. Over the last decade, the world had seen the transformation Indonesia underwent, building foundationto go up, thats when Malaysia was leaving Indonesia behind further and further. When Indonesia was reuniting its pieces, Malaysia built gigantic projects and booked outstanding growth. Malaysia set an example on howto runcompanies, andmove the economy. Air Asia, Petronas, CIMB, TM, they are Malaysia-basedgiants. Theyll be more and more, i am sure.

What about now?

Well, the fact that Indonesia is catching up is something obvious. In fact, in some ways, Indonesia does better than Malaysia. While cash outflow was rampant in Malaysia, money from all over the corner was lining up entering Indonesian economy. Jakarta Stock Index clearly outperformed its Malaysian counterpart.But still, Malaysia economyhas its own uniqueness. I! t grows, despiteall the adversities. Indonesia, is i think going into that direction..building its own fondation, creating its own uniqueness.

(to be continued)