wear batik on saturdays

damn! last night (er… yesterday wee early morning i mean) i was blogging on this topic, and had quite a lot up when i accidentally clicked on ‘move back a page’ (or simply put close the site) of my blog-post site. actually wanted to ‘move back a page’ at another site (i usually have 2 or 3 browsers windows open see). i was asked ‘do you want to save this post?’ so naturally i click yes… but then after returning back to my blog post site, i don’t know where my save post had gone to!! so i can’t retrieve it… so that’s why no post for yesterday. can someone who uses blogger.com and also myIE browser (or its equivalent) tell me where the elusive saved post went to??? i remember long time ago, asking lone about it but he said he never encountered such a thing when he was posting.

ok back to topic.

did you hear about the ruling for government servants to wear batik on saturdays? it seems that 2 ministries have made it compulsory for their staff to wear batik on saturday. why so? apparently it came about from the ‘advise’ of our PM to help promote batik in our country.

the 2 ministries are the entrepreneur development ministry and the culture, arts and tourism ministry.

entreprenuer development minister datuk seri mohd nasri abdul aziz was quoted to say:
(something’s wrong with the english here… but hell… i’m not the star paper so never mind).

“let’s make wearing batik a national gesture. we have to be proud of our heritage.”

national gesture? wow. next thing you’ll know he (or some other minister) will say if we don’t wear batik we are not patriotic (like who’s that minister who said if we don’t fly the flag we are unpatriotic).

datuk nasri, many of you might be aware was in the limelight lately when he was under probe by the ACA for the issuance of 6000 taxi permits to an individual person. yep and he was the same person who arrogantly tells us that politicians are not government servants but political masters.

coming back to batik, i wonder where did batik originate actually. it seems that the word ‘batik’ is an indonesian malay word. does batik originate from indonesia than comes to malaysia? an online dictionary stated that the word baik is javanese in origin. and we all know java is in indonesia. if so, then batik is not originally from malaysia, how can we say wearing batik is a national gesture?

i find it strange that, that datuk nazri guy said “it is not true that batik has a casual appearance and evoke a holiday mood among workers” because all along i never thought of that, as all along i know batik is a formal wear. you know, there are rulings like to enter certain clubs/casinos, if you are not dressed in shirt with tie/bow, then you have to dress in batik. so to ‘replace’ the formal shirt-tie, use batik. if that’s the case, then batik evoke a sense of formality. after all our PM did said wear batik for functions, not for ‘play’ or not meant as casual attire methinks.

anyway the reason our PM encourage the wearing of batik is to develop the batik’s industry. at this cue, penang state said they will revitalize the batik industry but there is no compulsion for government servants to wear batik on saturday, though it is encourage.

do you think sooner or later more ministries would enforce this batik on saturday ruling? what do you think of the ruling, esp. those of you who are government servants? do you like wearing batik?