Of a time when I was proud to be a Malay, and prouder still, to be a Malaysian.

Selamat Pagi Malaysia. It is now 6.22 am in Melbourne. Friday. I have been up since 4.30 am, writing and thinking about home. Bangsar. And thinking about time past.

Muhyiddin Yassin, DSAI, the late Yahaya Ahmad, Zeti, Patrick Teoh, Kadir Jasin...among others...were all born in 1947 - the year that I too, was born in Segambut. Just a year earlier, in 1946, UMNO was formed with Datuk Onn Jaafar as its leader.

A decade later, in 1956, we were living in Johor Baru. I remembered starting school at Ngee Heng Primary and I remembered the funeral of Sultan Ibrahim....the one with the Mat Salleh's wife. In Johor Baru, my life at school and after school was being lived among the Chinese, the Indians, and of course the Sikhs. The British too were everywhere. We had them as our neighbors, but we rarely mixed with their children who were our age. I remembered that they lived in better houses, their children had better toys, and they lived their life differently from ours.

In 1966, I was living in Kuantan. My life in Kuantan was probably the last of my truly carefree days. Nothing remotely problematic clouded my horizon. I was in Lower 6 at SABS Kuantan. Our house at Telok Sisik, just across the road from Istana Teruntum, was close to the beach facing the South China Sea.

My immediate memory was learning the joys of sailing from Joe. Imagine if you can gliding silently across the waves in shallow waters and see fishes and ikan pari swimming below you. I remember camping alone by the beach. I love the solitude of camping, knowing that home was less than 100 yards away. Sometimes I see an old man would walk the length of the beach with his Jala – casting for belanaks. He was Joe’s grandfather, a former MB of Pahang – Dato Sir Mahmud. He did not disturb me nor I, him. This was a man completely at one with the sea. Sometimes I will take the Aluminum Dingy and go into the river upstream towards Kuantan town and lose myself in the maze of inlets of the river. Always alone.

A few years later, in 1967, I boarded a BOAC flight at Sungai Best for London. Nothing in my life before 1967 prepared me for London. And by the time I left London four years later, nothing in my life was ever the same again. I was married at 21 to my dear wife, a Greek. May 13 happened while I was in London and I came back to a Malaysia where being a Malay put you first among 'equals'....well, let us be honest with ourselves...there were no equals to the Malays. Nothing in my life before 1969, prepared me for the Malaysia that I came back to.

And really, for me, life went downhill from then on.

I remembered very well the first time I asked myself this question. Why was Pernas, a 'Malay' company with all the advantages of being a company backed by the Malay Umno government, competing against me, another Malay, in business? Why did I have to write letters to the government in Malay when I have been educated in the English language all my life?

Why was Islam now being shoved down my throat when my own parents taught me about Islam by example...they prayed and lived their lives with grace and respect for Islam and for others who were not Muslims....and now I am being told that if I do not go to Friday prayers I will be arrested. If I do not puasa, I will be arrested. And it seems that every decent 'Malay' office now has a prayer room, where everything stops at prayer time. Everyone prays, and you need to join if you are not to be thought of as being a kafir.

And why was politics, Umno to be exact, becoming a dirty word? Yes, as far back as then, money politics had begun to rear its ugly head. You need to know someone important in Umno to do business. Government contracts, tenders, licenses, quotas, import permits, APs...anything you want to do in business need politics to make it happen. Everything having to do with government, you need politics to get done. It is who you know that matters, not what you know. I knew the right people, but it was the 'what you have to do to get things done' that sickens me.

For a while, I was part of this new Malaysia that was emerging after the 1969 May 13th NEP. I was swept along by a heady mix of political power and the money to be made if you somehow managed to hitch a ride along the tidal wave that was sweeping through all things Malaysians. I remember the first time we bought a Mercedes, walking around with Mobiles phones as big as bricks, having coffee at five-star hotels doing business deals with all sorts of Umno Ketua Bahagians, YBs and the odd Ministers here and there. I was part of all that.

But always in everything that I did, there was this greed and corruption that was festering and bothering the me that I have become. And if it bothered me, I am sure it bothered many others - Malays and non-Malays...and so we began to think that maybe, there was a better way to live our life elsewhere.

And so, over thirty years ago, I packed my bags and came to live in Australia.

No regrets.

The Malaysia I left has now become the Malaysia of BossKu and an Umno where Cash is King. Race, religion, politics, and royalty have damaged our society and our nation, maybe, beyond redemption, maybe beyond repair. I do not know what the future holds for those of you who still call Malaysia home. All I can do is write about the Malaysia that once was and remind you guys that there was once a time when I was proud to be a Malay, and prouder still, to be a Malaysian. At 75, I hope to come back to that Malaysia after PRU15. If I do not come back or cannot come back after PRU15, then I fear that the time for Malaysia to change for the better has passed. Enough said.