Malaysian time - another aspect of the third world mentality

I always hate Malaysian time although I am a Malaysian. It just does not make sense, and I do not like to be made to wait. Being made to wait for a very long time without a valid reason just pisses me off. I have been brought up by my parents to be punctual for any functions or appointments I have to attend to and to respect other people's time.

Thus, I'm always early for any functions or appointments I need to attend to. This is because I take into consideration of the factors that would affect me travelling to the place of the function or appointment. Being very strict about punctuality has seen me almost always never late for any functions or appointments I need to attend to. If I am late for any functions or appointments it would have been due to unforeseen and unavoidable circumstances.

An excellent example of Malaysian time would be Chinese wedding dinners. These dinner functions are notoriously well-known to start extremely late; anywhere from one up to three hours from the time stated in the invitation card. The idea of it is that the bride's family should arrive "fashionably" late for the dinner function so as not to be seen as being impatient for it to start or being plain greedy about the food to be served.

Whoever came up with this idea about Chinese wedding dinner starting late could be a moron to the boot, and has no respect and do not value for other people's time. This trend could possibly have spilled over to the other aspects of Malaysian life and thus, causing many Malaysians to get into the habit of not being punctual for functions or appointments they need to attend to.

As Malaysia will be a developed nation in about nine years' time then this mentality about being on Malaysian time should be discarded altogether. Otherwise, we will be a laughing stock, especially to other countries as this actually portrays that our reliability is very questionable in nature. It definitely does not bode well where positive impressions on Malaysia are concerned.

A Malaysian writer, Lydia Teh has termed Malaysian time as Malaysian Rubber Time or MRT in her book, Honk, If You're Malaysian. She was further quoted in this book as saying "MRT can be deadly". It shows punctuality is extremely essential in every aspect of our daily life.