Countdown to merdeka (Malaysia Independence Day)!

For the benefits of readers from outside Malaysia,it falls on 31st August every year. Malaysia ceased to be a British colony and gained its independence on 31st August 1957. To those who are born after this date there is no emotions attached to it,what little emotions they may have could be quite different from their parents'. The younger generation may feel proud that we have our own identity,while the older generation feel the freedom from foreign suppression. My parents and uncles/aunts used to relate to me stories how the local people were made to feel inferior to the colonial masters. Many of the people living in the town where I grew up were rubber tappers in the large rubber estates nearby,naturally many of such stories happened in the estates. Those days if you saw a zeep passing by,you had to quickly jump off your bicycle,stand at attention and salute.Failing which you would be scolded or even slapped by the "Mat Salleh" driving that zeep. If you were collecting dried fallen branches from the rubber trees as firewood for cooking and a zeep zoomed pass,you really have to thank your lucky stars if that zeep did not stop. If the zeep stopped a "Mat Salleh" would come down and accused you of felling his rubber trees! You would be ordered to leave empty handed and banned from entering again! "Can't he tell the differnce between dreid dead branches from a live rubber tree?" I asked naively.Then my parents will look at me with sad eyes and did not reply. If any of you ask "why use firewood and not cooking gas?" then I will look at you with tears in my eyes and laugh.