Instead, we are comfortable putting up buntings and
banners with printed bunga raya, along with Jalur Gemilang, at official
functions. You won't find it being used as bouquets at important gatherings.
That's the respect we accord our national flower these days.

I decided to talk about this because a friend who
returned from Mexico
told me how he was taken by a tour guide to "see our beautiful and beloved
national flower".

The guide, who spoke with great pride, said it was
something he must see. On arrival at the destination, my friend saw rows and
rows of the striking and beautiful hibiscus in red and yellow.

The same sentiment takes place if you visit Hawaii.
Known as the pua aloalo in the Hawaiian language, the locals will speak proudly
of their official state flower that is always used in illima leis (garlands)
presented to visitors.

At the Royal Botanic Gardens in London,
one can find the hibiscus flower, in different varieties, being displayed at
its Palm House with detailed explanations for visitors.

If you travel to Jamaica
or Mexico,
chances are you would be offered a hibiscus-flavoured soda and that they will
tell you the hibiscus drink is good for your liver or blood pressure.

Scientists who boiled the flowers and filtered the
solution to obtain concentrated hibiscus extract have found that it can help
reduce triglycerides or bad cholesterol levels in the blood.

The flower is also taken seriously in several parts of Australia,
especially Brisbane, where the city
council reportedly imported these plants from India
for landscaping.

According status to the bunga raya is one thing. The
trouble is we have not used the plant to our commercial advantage. The roselle
drink, made from hibiscus extract, should be the preferred drink for foreign
hotel guests arriving in Malaysia
instead of some strange concoction.

On this point, not many Malaysians are even aware that
the roselle drink is made from this flower.

The bunga raya should also be the flower that greets
these guests in their rooms instead of other foreign flowers. If we impose
these requirements on our hotels, it would be a boost to our flower growers,
especially those in the rural areas.

In fact, we should go a step further. There should be a
garden where tourists can find hibiscus of all varieties – it is not too
far-fetched because the hibiscus is a tropical plant.

Originating in Asia and the Pacific
islands, the plant has been found even in cooler places like China.
In the United States,
it is found in abundance in Florida,
besides Hawaii, where the
American Hibiscus Society is based.

In colder parts of the US,
efforts have been made to grow the tropical hibiscus in heated greenhouses to
enable the public to see these plants.

In Malaysia,
we do not bother to give the flower a second look because it can be found in
our backyard in rural areas. However, in the urban centres of Kuala
Lumpur, Penang or Johor Baru,
no one can be sure where you can find the plant.

We are obsessed with trends. Hotels and homes are turning
any available land into Balinese gardens. At one time, we busied ourselves with
Japanese gardens or the bonsai craze.

Then we decided to line our roads with expensive imported
palm trees from Africa because someone, presumably, saw
them in an affluent part of California.
The palm trees look nice but they have been planted at the expense of our
national flower.

The bunga raya plant may be too scrubby and small for our
roads, but surely they can be planted at government offices if we wish to show
our foreign guests our national flower.

I may not be into flowers or floral arrangement but, like
many fellow Malaysians, I get uptight when people take this country and its
beautiful things for granted.

Telecom operators, universities, fast-food operators,
shopping malls and private companies are investing in hotspots to enable PDA
users with Wifi and Bluetooth (wireless connections) to remain online.

Even our police have started using PDAs on a trial basis
to access data. I am told that at least 1,000 PDAs are being used by
enforcement agencies for surveillance. That's Information Technology for
Malaysians.

But not everything is that rosy. PDA users are grumbling,
mostly in cyberspace, about an absurd decision by the Customs Department to
impose a 10% sales tax on PDAs with wireless connectivity built-in. In short,
it will cost Malaysian consumers up to RM300 more for each PDA.

You can get them cheaper by crossing over to Singapore
and helping the businessmen in Orchard Road.

If you are an honest bloke, you can follow the rules and
declare the newly purchased PDA at the Malaysian Customs on returning home. But
since the device is so small, you can just walk past the officer.

Unless the officer does a body search, there is no way he
can detect the device.

If your PDA is flawed, you need only go to a Malaysian
distributor to get it repaired for free – at the expense of the local
distributor.

For the rest of us who buy these devices in Malaysia,
we would have to pay more.

That's how baffling the situation has become – all
because someone at the Customs Department is unsure whether the wireless PDA is
a computer, a mobile telephone or a media player.

The impact is immediate: the consumer pays more, the
local distributor earns less, Malaysia
loses its shopping status, and profit-oriented traders take the opportunity to
sell parallel or "underwater" imports.

The IT world is changing so fast that many prefer to talk
about the convergence of IT and embracing it instead of wasting time trying to
draw a line to differentiate between computer equipment and telecommunications
devices.

Why impose the sales tax? IT equipment, whether they be
PDA or notebook, should be made cheaper if we wish to make more Malaysians
computer literate. Price is a major factor in the buying of computer equipment.

The Customs Department decision runs contrary to what has
been said by their boss – Prime Minister and Finance Minister Datuk Seri
Abdullah Ahmad Badawi – that the entry point for Malaysians to adopt ICT must
be lowered as a way to bridge the "digital divide", especially the
socio-economic gap between those with access to ICT and those without.

Speaking at the 8th annual meeting of the Multimedia
Super Corridor's International Advisory Panel in Cyberjaya in September, he
said ICT should not be elitist but should touch the lives of every individual.

In a nutshell, IT is for all and it should be made
affordable. Imposing taxes is surely one way to kill enthusiasm and
affordability.

This is not the first time the Customs Department has
reacted strangely. In 1999, it slapped a 10% sales tax on palm computers,
saying they were electronic organisers and therefore not eligible for the 1996
tax abolition on computers. When it was pointed out that IBM Corp's Workload
had the same operating system and features, the tax was lifted the following
year.

PDA users believe that Customs officials could possibly
be misguided by the decision to impose tax because of their failure to grasp IT
development. After all, wireless connectivity was already available in other
devices such as notebooks and projectors that are not taxed.

Another possibility is that the Customs Department wants
to increase revenue but taxing IT devices certainly runs against government
efforts to promote IT.

If it's all about increasing revenue, then it should
focus on expensive imported cigars, branded goods, golf apparel, horse-riding
gear, luxury cars and cosmetics.

As a PDA user, I urge the Prime Minister and Second
Finance Minister Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yakcop to please review the decision of
the Customs Department.

It may hurt but the fact is that the state lost its
competitive edge long ago. It's not news any more but what is sad is that there
appears to be a state of denial and indifference on the part of the state
leadership.

The decay in Georgetown,
especially the inner city, is sad. Just count the number of shops along Penang
Road and Campbell Street,
once bustling areas, that have been forced to close.

The degradation of beach and environmental conditions at
its numerous tourist spots such as Penang Hill, Botanical Garden and Ferringhi
Beach has not helped either.

I see little point in anyone, especially politicians or
those in the tourism trade, pointing their fingers or being defensive because
the damage has been done.

It's better for the Penang leaders
to put on their thinking caps and come out with an innovative and creative
marketing approach to sell Penang as a popular
destination.

Last week, it was reported that tourists were bypassing
the state for more attractive destinations in the country and overseas.
According to the island's Tourism Action Council statistics, tourist arrivals,
both domestic and foreign, had been on the decline in recent years.

There were 3.78 million arrivals in 2000, compared to
3.03 million last year. In contrast, tourist arrivals in the country – except
last year – had been increasing.

There will always be disputes over statistics. The
officials will say their numbers are right, to justify and protect their
positions, while the operators will say they are on the ground and would know
better. Figures, they argue, can be manipulated and there would even be double
counting by officials to make themselves look good.

State Tourism Development Committee and Environment
committee chairman Teng Chang Yeow said the overall number of tourist arrivals
increased this year, compared with last year.

But another newspaper reported earlier, quoting a travel
writer, that Penang had disappeared from the radar
screen of the international hospitality and tourism investment scene.

"It's one of those insidious things that creep up on you
and even before you know it, it's happened and you don't even know when it took
root," Yeoh Siew Hoon wrote.

She related that she was attending the recent Hotel
Investment Conference Asia-Pacific in Hong Kong, the biggest annual gathering
of hotel investors and developers in the region, when "it suddenly dawned upon
me that Penang no longer figured in anyone's discussions, whether in conference
sessions or during coffee breaks".

Adding to the depressive scene is the closure of the
31-year-old Shangri-La Rasa Sayang Resort for a RM70mil redevelopment. Regarded
as the state's premier resort, it will only re-open some time in 2006.

Teng has responded to the tour operators' call for new
tourism products by naming new attractions such as the Islamic Museum, Peranakan
Museum, Penang
War Museum
and the Tropical Spice
Garden. Come on, the state cannot
be serious.

Teng surely cannot expect tourists to come in hordes to
look at these museums which other states already offer, such as Malacca and Kuala
Lumpur's Islamic Arts Museum.

Surely we can be more ambitious and more imaginative.
There has to be a strong political and financial commitment from our leaders to
put Penang in the limelight again.

Teng is right in saying that instead of blaming the
government for the drop in tourist arrivals, the tourism industry should
cooperate with the state to face this challenge together.

Penangites are parochial and passionately proud of their
state, like I am, and they would chide Teng, a Johorean, for not knowing Penang
as much as they do since they were born and bred there but an outsider's
perspective can bring fresh ideas and impetus, too.

The state should consider setting up an advisory council
of prominent Penangites from various industries, both living in Malaysia
and outside, to come out with a comprehensive plan.

These Penangites, with their extensive business, social
and political contacts, can form a powerful network to help revitalise Penang.
These people, having no agenda except their deep sense of belonging to Penang,
would serve as a good promotional tool for the state.

Whether the state leadership wishes to adopt their ideas
is essentially up to the state but Chief Minister Tan Sri Dr Koh Tsu Koon
should help pump the adrenaline of these Penangites.

The state leaders must seriously decide what kind of
identity Penang wishes to project. If it still wants Penang
to spell warm seas, golden beaches, lush greenery and delicious food, then the
money must be spent to keep it that way.

If Penang still wants to sell its
quaint old buildings, with its exotic mix of various cultures, sights and
sounds, then the state should not let the heritage homes decay and crumble.

If it wants to keep the island as a natural scenic
splendour, as one website tries to project Penang to
tourists, then the state must be more committed to keeping Penang
clean.

But there has to be new tourism products, as the tour
operators have pointed out. Penang seriously needs a
huge aquarium, in sync with its reputation as a sea state, that can match the
likes of those in Osaka, Shanghai
and Brisbane.

Penang can do with a bird park that is larger than the
one in Jurong and surely it is time we have a truly reptile park of
international standard, now that you can count with your two hands the number
of snakes in the Snake Temple.

The Botanical Garden, for example, needs a spruce-up.
There could even be a section where the many varieties of the pinang tree can
be planted, which the state is named after.

If silk is identified with Thailand
and cheongsam with Chinese cities, then Penang must be
made the home of batik and kebaya, synonymous with its peranakan heritage
image. It must be the place where tourists can come and buy these beautiful
fabrics and clothes.

But most of all, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad
Badawi, an anak Pulau Pinang, may want to consider restoring Penang's
free port status. Penang needs all the help it can get to
make the pearl shine again.

In both cases, they were not angry that their maids had
quit on them as they had every right to do so but the lies that were thrown at
them in their attempt to cover up their weaknesses.

Often, we read of maids who claimed they had been
mistreated by employers but let's not forget that bosses, too, have their share
of pain. The only difference is that there are no non-government organisations
to take their problems to the press.

But there has been an increase in the number of
grievances against maids, especially those from Indonesia,
over the past few months, supposedly because their quality has dropped.

It's a case of Malaysian employers getting monkeys
because we are paying peanuts, according to the Malaysian National Association
of Private Employment Agencies.

Last week, its president Datuk Baharom Abdul Ghani said
better-trained maids were going to places such as Hong
Kong, Taiwan
and Singapore
because they were better paid there with wages of between RM700 and RM1,000.

Malaysia,
he said, had become the last option for maids because of the low monthly wages,
adding that the RM350 to RM380 that was currently paid by Malaysian employers
worked out to about RM10 a day.

These maids, he added, also complained that Malaysians
had bigger houses to be looked after for small money while in places like Hong
Kong, Taiwan
and Singapore,
they cleaned small houses for bigger money.

While there are valid points to these arguments, maids
must also realise that they encounter less cultural shock working in Malaysia
and that most employers here are likely to be religiously and culturally
sensitive to their needs, unlike those in other foreign places.

These maids also have less language and cultural barriers
to contend with in Malaysia.
The travelling distance between Indonesia
and Malaysia is
also much shorter in comparison to the other countries.

But the number of high-profile cases involving maids has
made many Malaysian employers take a second look at whether having a stranger
in the house is a good option after all.

Last week, a 22-year-old Indonesian maid was sentenced to
death for killing her employer after a spat over burnt curry. The High Court
threw out her defence of insanity, saying she knew exactly what she was doing
three years ago when she attacked Soon Lay Chuan with a mortar pestle.

On Thursday, it was reported that a three-month-old baby
nearly suffocated from the mittens stuffed in her mouth and bedclothes piled on
her, allegedly by a maid. A medical report revealed that a high amount of
anti-seizure drug was found in the baby's stomach.

On Oct 26, there was a letter from a reader in a
newspaper about a psycho who appeared caring and hardworking to the working
couple until they installed a video camera in the house.

They saw, to their shock, her kissing their baby so many
times on the mouth and putting her finger into the two-month-old baby's mouth.
She was apparently giving her saliva in the mistaken belief that the baby would
obey her.

When the couple confronted her, the maid denied
everything but confessed when she was shown the video recording.

As my colleagues discussed these incidents on the
editorial floor, a colleague revealed a theft involving a maid who was about to
leave for home in Indonesia.

Small sums of money and branded clothes had been missing
from the house but nobody thought that their well-behaved and seemingly
responsible maid could be the culprit. They thought it was due to their
carelessness.

But on the day of her departure, the maid agency advised
the family members to do a body search. There was much reluctance, with some
members debating about her human rights and honour.

In the end, the agency's representative did the dirty
job, so to speak, and found her wearing five expensive panties belonging to a
family member and stuffed inside her sanitary pad were gold items such as rings
and gold rings.

My brother decided to stop engaging maids recently when
his two children left for overseas for their tertiary education. Although he
has a huge house, he has decided to do the cleaning himself.

I have heard countless agony stories from him about
maids, including one strange maid who only ate instant noodles and nothing
else. Another employer, it was reported recently, brought her case to the small
claims court when she found that her maid refused to take baths.

But there are, of course, heart-warming cases about good
maids. One colleague is paying her Filipino maid of 11 years more than RM1,000
a month because she has been good.

Another friend even took her maid on family holidays
overseas and even lets her drive the Mercedes Benz because they trust her. She
is like a family member and her employers only have good things to say about
her.

I have taken an interest in this issue because I am
contemplating engaging a maid but I am taking my time to listen to the merits
and demerits of becoming a household employer.