Life in Malaysia has always been a curiosity. Many people who are like myself, complain about being second-class citizens, but I do not think those complaints are justified. First of all, as natural born citizens, your classification is given, and you could work within the limits to change that classification, but it is quite useless to simply complain about it. Secondly, there are not two formal classes of citizenship in Malaysia ... there are at least three. For example, I am a non-Royal, non-Malay, non-Indigenous citizen, and that is my natural born standing, which I have chosen not to adjust, either by becoming Malay, or by amending the Constitution. Of course, we have also members of our society who are non-citizens, and they too are divided into the superclasses of the PADI, and the PATI (one subclass bears a sort of Schrodinger's visibility, being formally invisible, but empirically visible everywhere).
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Many people say it is pointless to discuss these things, but as organisers of information, we take it upon ourselves to maintain documentation and conversations about pointless things such as this. Many people say it is easy to make money in Malaysia, as there are many opportunities, as I tend to agree with this. It is a lot harder to make money in Malaysia, however, if you seek to avoid dealing with the informal economy. Often times we run into situations where the government will have officially closed a certain avenue of commerce ... such as the legitimisation of expatriate labour ... only for us to discover certain companies advertising their services as special appointees having exclusive access to those otherwise-closed commercial activities. Well, that has seemed to be business as usual - though it is not what I would call "proper" business. It is possible to be woke without being a nice person - and likewise it is possible to be aware of powers that be, without dealing with crony companies ... even if they are held by royalty.
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