Kedai Makan MELAYU???

Tahukah anda bahawa Malaysia ini sememangnya istimewa, berdasarkan bancian yang saya rekacipta semata-mata Kuala Lumpur mempunyai lebih banyak kedai Tom Yam berbanding Bangkok, Mee Bandung dan Sirap Bandung tidak terdapat di Bandung dan orang Amerika tidak pernah dalam seumur hidup mereka makan atau memasak Nasi Goreng USA (melainkan mereka datang melancong atau tinggal di Malaysia).
Maka benarlah kata slogan propaganda Kementerian Pelancongan iaitu Malaysia Truly Asia atau bak kata penunjuk perasaan Indonesia yang marah sewaktu tewas dalam piala bola AFF tempoh hari, Malaysia Truly Maling Asia (maling bermaksud curi).
Namun penulisan hari ini bukanlah tertumpu kepada kehebatan tukang masak kita mereka bentuk masakan. Pada hari ini kita melihat lebih kepada sudut perniagaan yang menyediakan hidangan yang disebutkan di atas, kedai makan Melayu.
Dari nasi campur waktu makan tengah hari di belakang pejabat hinggalah ke kedai tomyam tepi jalan sesungguhnya kedai makan Melayu mewarnai corak kebudayaan kota Kuala Lumpur dan saya yakin setelah anda habis membaca penulisan saya ini anda juga mempunyai suatu kisah yang tidak dapat anda lupakan sewaktu anda singgah di kedai makan Melayu itu.
Sebelum ini ada yang mempersoalkan tentang sijil halal Old Town White Coffee, kas-kas dalam nasi kandar atau mitos ramuan seluar dalam terpakai dalam sup tulang Jalan Doraisamy yakinlah bahawa pengunjung mereka tetap tidak akan berkurang.
Orang-orang Melayu akan masih lagi bersepah di Old Town dan Kedai Mamak bukan kerana mereka suka akan masakan mereka akan tetapi kerana mereka tiada pilihan.
Untuk lebih memahami apa yang dimaksudkan saya apa kita kita melihat senarai ciri-ciri stereotaip kedai melayu

Ciri-Ciri Kedai Melayu
Pelayan
Pelayan merupakan barisan hadapan sebuah restoran, ini kerana mereka yang akan bertemu dan berinteraksi dengan pelanggan, imej sesebuah restoran itu banyak bergantung kepada personaliti mereka.
Maka sebab itulah restoran Melayu itu sering sukar untuk dilupakan terutama dengan penampilan kualiti pelayan yang begitu hebat. Sudah menjadi perkara biasa untuk pelayan restoran untuk duduk di sebelah anda sewaktu mengambil pesan, seolah-olah dia datang untuk makan sekali bersama anda dan keluarga anda.
Untuk lebih memahami konsep pelayan di kedai Melayu adalah mudah, secara tuntasnya pelayan ini tak kuasa nak melayan anda, maka janganlah menaruh harapan besar untuk teh tarik anda menjadi kurang manis, nasi goreng anda untuk tiada cili padi ataupun mee goreng anda kicapnya lebih, kalau anda memesan Nasi Goreng Kampung tak mahu pedas sambil tambah ayam lebih, kemungkinan yang akan tertulis pada kertasnya adalah ‘nasi goreng kg’.
Menu
Setelah anda berdepan dengan pelayan yang nampaknya memang menyampah hendak melayan anda kini anda berhadapan dengan senarai pilihan makanan. Sebagaimana kebanyakan kedai makan melayu pilihan menu mereka memang hebat, semua tidak mahu kalah, dari tom yam, mee goreng, kuih lopez sampailah ke hidangan barat (Western Food) namun selalunya dialog ini yang akan keluar
Anda : “Apa ada dekat sini?”
Pelayan : “Semua ada bang”
Anda : “Mana yang sedap?”
Pelayan : “Semua sedap bang”
Anda : “Ok bagi saya ikan kerapu Vietnam masak enam rasa”
Pelayan : “Hari ni ikan kerapu habis bang, nelayan tak turun laut.”
Anda : “Pulak, tadi kata semua ada, habis apa yang ada ni?”
Pelayan : “Yang lain ada bang”
Anda : “Ok bagi saya chicken chop lah satu”

Pelayan : “Oh tukang masak western cuti hari ni, kenduri, anak sedara jiran dia kahwin”
Anda : “Pulak! Bagi tom yam perahu pecah satu”
Pelayan : “Itu pun takde, tapi masa pergi Tesco lupa nak beli ramuan perencah Adabi”
Anda : “Habis itu apa yang tinggal sebenarnya ni?”
Pelayan : “Kejap ye”
Setelah ke dapur, 10 minit kemudian
Pelayan : “Tukang masak kata yang ada sekarang ni cuma nasi putih, sup kosong dengan ayam kunyit”

Boss
Dalam kedai Melayu konsep boss adalah sangat ketara, dia bukan sahaja boss kepada pelayan dan pekerja malah dia juga merupakan boss kepada pelanggan juga. Sebab itu kalau boss duduk di kaunter bayaran dan tiba masa untuk membayar dia tidak akan datang kepada anda, tidak, kastanya terlalu tinggi untuk berjalan sejauh 5 meter untuk ke meja anda dan memberi bil, anda yang perlu ke mejanya untuk membayar, sila fahami konsep ini setiap kali anda ke kedai makan Melayu.
Boss akan duduk di meja paling hadapan TV bersama kawan-kawanya, menonton rancangan kegemaran beliau sambil makan, kalau ada pelanggan yang datang dia tidak akan bangun dan melayan akan tetapi hanya sekadar menjerit kepada pelayan mengarahkan untuk datang ambil pesanan, almaklumlah boss, restoran itu ibarat rumah beliau sendiri.
“Leha… Leha… Ada pelanggan ni woi, cepat pergi ambik order.. Kejap ye dik nanti dia datang” Kata tuan punya restoran sambik duduk di depan televisyen menonton wrestling sambil menggaru kaki.
Kucing
Kalau rojak pelengkapnya adalah cendol maka restoran Melayu pula pelengkapnya adalah kucing. Seolah-olah ianya menjadi satu dosa kalau dalam sebuah restoran melayu itu tiada kucing yang datang menyentuh kaki anda meminta sedikit dari makanan anda.
Kucing-kucing ini akan berkeliaran dengan bergayanya termasuk duduk di sebelah kerusi anda dan tatakala semua ini berlaku boss dan pelayan restoran berkenaan akan berlagak seolah-olah kucing itu ajaib dan hanya anda seorang sahaja yang nampak.
Jadi selepas ini kalau anda makan di restoran Melayu dan hendak berkira-kira jangan lupakan kucing-kucing di sekeliling anda.

Terima kasih
Sebagai pelanggan anda seharusnya berterima kasih kepada pengusaha restoran Melayu ini kerana sudi untuk melayan anda makan. Sebab itulah sewaktu bayar anda yang perlu pergi kepadanya dan melunaskan bil dan kalau tiada duit pecah tersedia sewaktu anda membuat barayan jangan terkejut kalau anda mendengar ayat ini
“Takde duit kecik ke dik? Akak takde duit tukar la, adik pergi tukar dulu duit ni kat kedai sana tu nanti datang sini bayar kat akak.”
Iya, terima kasih kakak sebab akak sudi bukak kedai dekat dengan rumah saya dan tidak perlu saya memasak hari ini, dan maafkan saya akak sebab saya tidak menyediakan wang tepat untuk pembayaran dan sebagai tanda mohon maaf biarlah saya membeli ‘cikedis’ atau ‘air gas’ yang saya tidak mahu di 7-11 depan sana supaya saya mendapat wang tukaran untuk membayar akak.
Sebentari lagi saya akan kembali dan sekali lagi saya mohon maaf atas kesulitan ini.
Kesimpulan
Jadi itulah dia tuan-tuan dan puan-puan sekelian, walaupun sehangat mana email anda menyoal sijil halal atau konspirasi kedai mamak yang anda ada, lupakanlah, kerana selagi kebanyakan kedai-kedai Melayu menyediakan perkidmatan yang membuatkan kita terkesima lagi kelu seribu bahas, rasanya orang akan lebih rela duduk minum kopi mahal tak sedap atau makan roti canai sejuk yang disediakan oleh tukang canai dari Kerala.
Barangkali perlunya kita ada RTP (Restaurant Transformation Plan) dan sememangnya kita perlu ada KPI yang baru untuk usahawan bumiputera dalam industri ini, sesungguhnya saya masih lagi menantikan zaman yang mana saya tidak perlu berkongsi nasi daging masak merah saya bersama seekor kucing yang berwarna jingga.

Pakatan Rakyat???

And that is what we should seek. We should learn from more than 200 years of history. And the lesson is: we may see a change of government but that does not mean we are going to see a change in government. This is what I normally call old wine in a new bottle.

Can we be assured that by changing the government we will see change? Can a change of government guarantee us a change in government? Can more than 200 years of history be wrong?

Well, just look at the so-called changes of recent times such as in Iran in 1979. Did the US see change with Obama at the helm? Did Britain see a change when they kicked out Labour last year?

Look at Egypt. The people took to the Tahrir Square to force a change of government. But they did not see a change in government. So now they are taking to the Tahrir Square again and the killings are continuing, barely a few months since the last revolution.

And this is the history of the French Revolution as well. We always talk about the French Revolution of 1789. But how many of you know that that is actually the First French Revolution. And that revolution was a disaster. There was more anarchy and chaos after the revolution. They needed a second revolution to address the errors that the first revolution brought. But no one talks about the Second French Revolution of 60 years later (in fact, many are not even aware of this second revolution).

I am not gungho about Pakatan Rakyat. That does not mean I am gungho about Barisan Nasional either. It is just that I am not gungho about all politicians who use the people to change governments and then grab power and perpetuate what the old government did.

Over the next few months I am going to demonstrate why we need to focus on a change in government and not a change of government. I am going to reveal the excesses and transgressions of those who are offering themselves as the saviour of the nation.

My purpose in doing this is not to frustrate a change of government. Certainly, ABU must happen. So we need a change of government for that to happen. But we must not only remove Umno (and its cohorts in Barisan Nasional). We must also ensure that the spirit of Umno is removed as well.

Why would we want a new government that perpetuates the spirit of Umno? Is this not what Britain is currently facing? And why do you think the British voters are going back to voting for Labour in the by-elections barely a year into a new government? My own area in Manchester fell back to Labour in the recent by-election.

I have evidence of some very troubling shenanigans in the states currently under Pakatan Rakyat control. And what I see is basically a continuation of the spirit of Umno. But are you, like me, also concerned about this? Or would you rather we close our eyes (and our minds) to all this and pretend that nothing is wrong?

As I said, more than 200 years of history has taught us how changing the government without focusing on a change in government can bring about disastrous results. We have more than 200 years of history (plus what is currently going on in Egypt) to learn from.

Pakatan Rakyat needs to know that we are not stupid or naïve and we know what is going on. This does not mean we will not support them and will instead support Barisan Nasional. But Pakatan Rakyat will have to earn our support and not take us for granted or assume that we are fools. This is the message we have to send to Pakatan Rakyat.

And if Pakatan Rakyat continues to be just like Barisan Nasional in the states they are running, how can we trust them as the new federal government? Will we need to do a Tahrir Square Version 2.0 later after voting them into Putrajaya?

That is what we wish to avoid. So Pakatan Rakyat has to accept the whacking. It is better we whack them now than the voters whack them at the ballot box.

I know there will be allegations of selling out, turncoat, Trojan horse and whatnot. But that is how they normally respond when we whack the opposition leaders. They regard criticising the opposition leaders as if we are insulting Prophet Muhammad. But then the opposition leaders are not Prophet Muhammad and above criticism. This, they need to learn and we shall teach them this lesson how much it may hurt.

GE 13???

WITH the political season heating up, our daily diet of speeches has gotten hotter. This is the time for political speak, which is often high on rhetoric and metaphors.
So for the upcoming general election, Umno and Barisan Nasional (BN) members have been advised by their president to prepare for war, while Pakatan Rakyat leaders have been asking us to help them to save the country.

Some speeches are to inspire, some to motivate, some to proclaim, while others to incite. Politicians, by profession, do a lot of them to drum up support and rouse people into action (read vote). Some do that and nothing else, ever on the stump from the first day they were elected.

People get the exaggerations and the over-the-top-ness of great political speak, since they add colour and vigour, and are able to encapsulate ideas in a nutshell for easy and manageable bites. They get the adrenaline going and make an otherwise passive act of listening into a participatory thing.

But even if people understand that in the heat of battle we tend to say things, they are unlikely to tolerate flippant, chauvinistic and racist remarks -- hence, for example, the controversy that followed Pas deputy president Mat Sabu's belittling of dead servicemen and Perak assemblyman Nga's racist reference to his mentri besar.

When Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said his party should be prepared for war, we know no one was training for combat nor expecting to put life or limb on the line. It's war, but not the warring kind -- the battlegrounds are the constituencies; it is not turf nor resources the fight is all about, but instead a share of voters' hearts and minds.

Politicians like to evoke a sense of battle. In politics where ideas are grand and visions are pure -- it is the "fight" between good and evil, us against them, our way of life and theirs, etc -- the images get them along quickly.

War suggests battles, and the ultimate outcome of war is that the winner takes all. The loser, too, loses something more precious, which is his sovereignty. So if Umno or BN members don't get the message -- they lose everything if they were defeated in the political battlefield -- then, I suppose, nothing else will.

In political speak, many try to evoke a sense of the divine, too, or semi-divine. The Pas president was famous for branding Umno infidels to the point that animals slaughtered by them were haram. Its adviser, too, can do no wrong and comes out with edicts almost at will.

A sense of drama would be great, too. DAP "Godfather" Karpal Singh suggested that he was willing to die -- over his dead body -- in his opposition of the hudud. I believe it was a figure of speech from him, rattling the cages, though not necessarily literally fighting to the death with his mates in Pas, who at this moment still see hudud as the end game in a Pakatan Rakyat takeover of the government.

It is also good to be lumped by association with underdog political figures, like American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, or Myanmar prisoner of conscience Aung San Suu Kyi, or South African freedom fighter Nelson Mandela, by referring to them in political speeches.

Us, the unwashed masses, should be too thick to see through them, I suppose.

Righteousness is such a common commodity in the Dewan Rakyat, peppered in all speeches that at times we hope all of the righteous right honourable elected members could practise it beyond the confines of the august hall.

But it is when politicians decide to disband from the metaphors and start being specific, which is not along the lines of someone saying that someone is God's gift to Malaysians, that we should worry about.

When the member from Gombak, Azmin Ali, wanted to tear down the walls of the Sungai Buloh Prison to free Anwar Ibrahim if he were to be found guilty at his current on-going trial for sodomy, or a leader promising to take to the streets if the election results were not to their liking, then we should be careful.

Similarly, there is no poetic reference to a suggestion that our submarines cannot dive. There is no vagueness in the statement. Was the intention in the political speech then to rouse anger by propagating unsubstantiated untruths?

Would Azmin really be bringing Anwar supporters armed with hammers and picks to break down the walls? If he was not, then he better find a better speechwriter; his metaphor sucks. There was no reference to the alleged walls of injustice, for instance, but instead the brick and mortar walls of the Sungai Buloh Prison.

If he is serious, then he must surely be an anarchist. The specificity of his threat to create chaos or tear down buildings is a threat at subverting law and order and to create chaos.

Former Bar Council president Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan suggested that Myanmar is better than Malaysia in the issue of human rights. We have made the case that politicians -- which I think Ambiga is, based on the company she keeps -- like to exaggerate. But even then, I cannot reconcile her statement with the images of street protesters shot in the streets by the armed forces, and guess what, we are worse off than that.

We can live with the hyperbole. We know when they are full of rhetoric and when they are not. We know they are political speak, mostly words to add spice to the situation.

But surely, we can live without some of them.

Perhaps we can laugh at them as the consequences of politicians getting shallow on ideas trying to drum up emotion in the absence of substance.

Fatwa???

Isu pendaftaran anak tidak sah taraf atau luar nikah di ’bin’ atau binti’ selain ibunya dalam sijil kelahiran mendapat bantahan Persatuan Peguam Syarie Malaysia yang menyifatkan tindakan itu hanya menimbulkan kekeliruan di kalangan masyarakat Islam.

Presidennya Mohd Isa Abd Ralip berkata isu itu hanya akan mengelirukan masyarakat Islam dan menjejaskan kehidupan seharian mereka secara umum.

Ketika dihubungi FMT beliau berkata, adalah jelas dalam hukum syarak tidak membenarkan anak tidak sah taraf di bin atau binti selain daripada ibunya.

“Saya tidak setuju dengan cadangan tersebut membenarkan anak tidak sah taraf di bin atau binti dengan bapanya untuk mengelak kanak-kanak terbabit menghadapi trauma atau tekanan perasaan semasa bersekolah walaupun dari satu segi ia menyelesaikan masalah kanak-kanak tersebut.

“Namun pada umumnya ia akan mengelirukan masyarakat dan menyebabkan masalah lain timbul kerana ia bertentangan dengan hukum syarak sedia ada. Dalam hukum syarak larangan Allah SWT untuk di bin atau binti anak tidak sah taraf, selain ibunya.

“Jika terus dilakukan, langkah ini akan memberi kesan kepada masyarakat kerana mereka tidak akan takut atau bimbang untuk melahirkan anak haram.

“Kita tidak mahu pandangan sebegitu. Nanti masyarakat tiada kesedaran. Saya membantah kerana ia boleh menyebabkan anak menjadi keliru juga,” katanya.

Implikasi negatif

Ujarnya, implikasi negatif lain yang timbul ialah apabila membabitkan soal pewarisan, keturunan, aurat dan sebagainya.

Mohd Isa menjelaskan kemudaratan atau kesan negatif yang akan diperoleh bila dibenarkan di bin dan binti seperti anak kandung.

“Sebagai contoh katanya, jika Ahmad seorang anak tidak sah taraf dan ayahnya sudah meninggal dunia dan mempunyai dua orang anak lain. Walaupun Ahmad lebih tua daripada dua beradiknya lain dan dianggap anak sulung, beliau tidak boleh menerima waris dan tiada hak kerana tiada pertalian darah.

“Anak tidak sah taraf ini tidak mempunyai hak yang sama dari sudut perundangan dan hukum syarak. Dia mendapat perlindungan penuh daripada ibunya, keluarga ibunya dan pemerintah,” jelasnya.

Mohd Isa berpendapat isu tersebut tidak perlu dipanjangkan memandangkan ia merupakan perselisihan pandangan semata-mata.

Katanya, cadangan itu hanya sebagai alternatif untuk memastikan kanak-kanak tersebut tidak menanggung bebanan emosi dan terhukum kerana kesalahan ibu bapa mereka.

Malah jika fatwa berkenaan dilulus dan diterima oleh negeri-negeri maka pindaan undang-undang juga perlu dilakukan. Isu anak tidak sah taraf hangat dibincangkan apabila kerajaan negeri Terengganu mencadangkan agar anak-anak sebegini didaftarkan dalam sijil kelahiran dengan bin atau binti bapa bagi mengelak kanak-kanak itu menanggung tekanan emosi berpanjangan.

Malah satu kertas kerja itu dibuat bertujuan untuk memasukkan maklumat berkenaan adalah untuk memberikan taraf kewarganegaraan kepada bayi sekiranya bapa adalah warganegara Malaysia.

Kertas cadangan tersebut juga akan diserahkan kepada Majlis Fatwa Negeri untuk dibincangkan pada mesyuarat Majlis Fatwa Kebangsaan tidak lama lagi.