{"id":1588,"date":"2012-04-22T06:23:23","date_gmt":"2012-04-22T06:23:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/?p=1588"},"modified":"2012-04-22T06:23:23","modified_gmt":"2012-04-22T06:23:23","slug":"my-grandfather-the-policeman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/?p=1588","title":{"rendered":"My Grandfather, The Policeman"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nI wonder what my late grandfather would think of today’s Royal Malaysian Police Force – today’s FRU, today’s Special Branch, today’s ACA (renamed the MACC) and today’s traffic police, since he was one of them. Some of these, I only knew thanks to this article in the Malay Mail<\/b><\/a>.<\/p>\n


\nI never really asked him about his police days. He had long retired by then, and the only things I knew as a kid was that he received the Kesatria Mangku Negara (KMN) from the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, which hangs proudly in his home, and that he had a shotgun, which he’d use to hunt crows (I can’t remember if this was with the MPPJ or DBKL.)<\/p>\n

I also knew that he had to relocate a lot – my mom went to so many different schools!<\/p>\n

One of my uncles was in the Royal Malaysian Air Force – I don’t know of all his roles but I know he was a traffic controller once. He often said the sense of duty to the country seeped down to him.<\/p>\n


\n(No, not this uncle.)<\/p>\n


\nAlthough I only really got to see him during festivities, somehow his values were transferred to me by some sort of osmosis through my mom – he was a teacher, and he being a SB officer might explain my investigative streak. My mom is a very by-the-book person, fastidiously following law, extremely trustworthy and accountable, and far more chivalrous than most men. (I did not inherit the chivalry bit, though.)<\/p>\n

Heck, I could hold my mom to her word, which is why I have a problem with women when they don’t hold their word. She was quite like Optimus Prime (the righteous cartoon version, not the live-action ass-kicking version.)<\/p>\n


\nI knew though, briefly, that he was a bit disappointed in today’s authorities. I didn’t ask him more, as I was young and was not yet very concerned about where the country was going, and where the police were not following procedure. Plus it was Christmas and I didn’t want to spoil the jovial mood. <\/p>\n

I wonder what he would say now, if I had a T-shirt with Che Guevara’s face on it. I don’t have such a shirt, but I know children of army men who do!<\/p>\n

I wonder what he would say about the communists, and the young men and women involved in politics who have been wrongly accused of being communists.<\/p>\n


\nIt was because of my grandfather that I do not have a motorbike. My grandfather showed my mom plenty of pictures of motorbike accidents when he was in the traffic police.<\/p>\n


\nSomewhere in Cheras, I think.<\/p>\n

The funeral procession was flanked with police motorbikes, and they stopped traffic for us at junctions, which was quite cool!<\/p>\n

My other grandfather was also a teacher, and he told me horror stories about the Japanese Occupation, but I thought they were just stories to scare you as a kid. I wish I believed him, and I wish he was still around when I had to learn about it in History, in school.<\/p>\n

Don’t worry, I am not sad – this was back in 2009. Though I am sad about today’s police, though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wonder what my late grandfather would think of today’s Royal Malaysian Police Force – today’s FRU, today’s Special Branch, today’s ACA (renamed the MACC) and today’s traffic police, since he was one of them. Some of these, I only knew thanks to this article in the Malay Mail. I never really asked him about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pictures","category-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glaringnotebook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}