Buying it vs earning it

It's plastered on the highway billboards. It's on the RapidKL buses, newspapers, TV and all possible paid media. Dreams Are Possible goes the tagline. Come Wednesday our space program participant will fly up into the blue yonder in a Russian Soyuz and come home a week or so later to a possible datukship.

Ho-hum.

I wish the promoters in govt dished the same fervour on Nicol David, world's No1 woman squash player. I wish her face had been on billboards and buses and newspapers and even documentaries.

I wish i had seen Karamjit Singh's face on billboards too, back when he was the world's best rally driver instead of being punked by local sponsors. I wish he had been on Proton and Petronas ads.

I wish they had pumped up the great achievements of our badminton dudes with a ten-storey banner instead of making 'em play exhibition games during the Machap by-election campaign.

Sports personalities, soul folks, writers, artists... heroes one and all living and breathing on this very tanah tumpahnya darah ku. There are just so many things from ground zero Malaysia which we could pick to "...captivate and unite us all".

Yet we decide to throw in the big bucks and pump up the volume on this trip fully manned by the Russians. With that we hope to be associated with the big boys. Like the waterboy among jocks. Like groupies hoping they'd be groped by rock stars.

Will we someday truly deeply appreciate ourselves for who we are, do you think?

Confident enough that we do not have to have an Eye on Malaysia just because there's an Eye on London. Confident enough that we do not have to force a theme park at the IDR just because Singapore's doing its Integrated Resorts.

Just confident. Confident that we have the creativity and resolve to chart our own way with class. Will we get there? Will we finally earn it, do you think?