aww! what a nice picture. our dear PM pak lah ‘being taken around kota tinggi in a boat to see for himself the flood situation in the town.’ (text as in pic, taken from NST)

so at last he turun padang, eh?

did the flood wait for him to return from philippine? the first time the flood happened, he was away in perth, the land of oz, officiating the opening of a nasi kandar restaurant.  the second time it happened, he was away in philippine for the 12th asian summit.

“After touring the flood- hit areas in Kota Tinggi, I realise that there is an urgent need to help restore the livelihoods of the flood victims now that the floodwaters are receding and the rains have stopped.

gee, does he need to tour the place before he realised that? just reading from reports here and there, everyone will already be aware of that.

many stuffs had been reported in the paper regarding the flood – the aid given, the plans, the donations, the call for volunteers, etc. etc. but the better read comes from first-hand account of the victims themselves e.g. the letter from the NST and the account of tan ngup sai.
i can emphatise with the johor flood victims as i had experienced flood before too… though it was only at the highest of knee-height.

decades ago when i was a child i used to live in the old tanjung tokong road. just a few metres away from our home, there was a housing development going on, and it was on a hill. each time there was a heavy rain, the water from the hill together with all the mud (from the construction) would washed down to our houses at the foot of the hill. the small drain over-flowed and thus flood occurred.

at one stage the flood occured quite often. i remember every night when we slept, we always always fear heavy rain as we know our house will be flooded. true enough… sometimes i was sound asleep and suddenly when i woke up, and my hand hang out reaching to the floor, suddenly i touched water! then i knew it was the flood. luckily it did not rose higher than knee-height.

the cleaning up was indeed tiring and troublesome… more so because of the thick red mud. the flood with the thick red mus happened quite often at that time, so much so that my late father custom-made a a steel scoop with wooden handle, for scooping up the mud. most of the time it was the adults who did the scooping, then put them in a bucket, and we kids had to carry the bucket to throw away the mud.

indeed those times were unpleasant memories but it also brought some pleasant memories of the co-operation between us neighbours in helping each other to clean up.