Barrack Obama won the presidency by promising that change would come to America. Come 2012, Americans will decide how much of that change really worked for them. Change is a powerful word, it excites, incites, and depending on the scale on which it is initiated, would garner some kind of reaction or another.
Change can prove to be positive or negative, create waves, give birth to a revolution ( on a macro scale), alter the way people think, encourage innovation, and a whole load of other things. But sometimes change is unnecessary, and that's what my rant is about.
I have a particular dislike for people who want to change something merely for the sake of change itself. If something is good, why change it? But don't tell a change monger that, they will not see your point of view, or pretend not to.
One thing about change mongers though, they don't give much thought about how workable their idea is, all they want to do is implement it and have their name on the plaque! Once the winds of change have a sour air about it, they will be out of the door in no time.
I believe change should only be implemented when it will prove of benefit, and not irritate and confuse everyone involved. New bosses are prime candidates for implementing unnecessary change. I once worked at a publication where my colleagues and I had the misfortune of having to contend with a new editor who was a change monger.
This person wanted to change our editorial process, the way we worked, the way we thought, in short she wanted to change EVERYTHING. The fact that we worked well as a team despite being severely short-staffed and still managed to meet our editorial deadlines was not taken into consideration.
Interestingly she could not provide a good reason for changing systems and processes that had worked so well for the team up to that point. All she wanted to do was to change it. Yet for all her prating, she failed to inspire confidence in her agenda. Why? because all she had was a couple of abstract ideas that did not seem workable. In the end the only thing she ended up changing, was that all of us started actively job hunting!
Leaving a legacy?
Some people want to change things in the interest of progress, they are visionaries, these are people who will be lauded long after they are gone. Then there are those who want to initiate change to carve out a legacy for themselves. These are egomaniacs, we will be wagging our finger at them long after the weeds have made a permanent home around their tombstone.
Hmm for some reason Anwar Ibrahim comes to mind. I don't care who he sodomised or did not sodomise. My ire against him is solely reserved for what he did during his tenure as Education Minister. We have him to thank for KBSR and KBSM ( lame ass education system that does not encourage students to think), and for screwing up our term holidays. One moment our end of the term holidays were in December, then he changed it to November and then back again to December. Boy were we guinea pigs in his hands!
One wonders what massive changes he would have brought upon us, if he had become the 5th Prime Minister. Well there's room yet for that I imagine......Erm for now Anwar can be rest assured that thanks to him Malaysians will never see sodomy or a black eye in the same light again.
Another person who tried to create a legacy and failed is the man we dearly call Pak Lah. He started of as "Mr Clean" and ended up as "Bapa Batik" as he was seen officiating at one too many batik functions.
All in all Pak Lah will definitely be remembered for doing things no other Prime Minister has done in office to date. Dozing off at official functions, losing a wife to cancer and marrying another in record time and handing over five states to the opposition on a platter. Who says you need to be a genius to be remembered?
For some reason this post has turned political considering I am an apolitical person.Well I suppose that's because change mongers always have some sort of political agenda or another up their sleeves.
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