Should we change our lifestyle?

"Change your lifestyle!" This is what the government urges Malaysians to practice during this everything-is-going-up era. Personally, I don't agree with this statement. What does it mean by changing your lifestyle? Let me give you some example:

1. Instead of eating fragrant rice, change to brittle rice.
2. Instead of driving your car, ride a bike.(with no bicycle/motorcycle lanes on trunk roads)
3. Less movies, more RTMs & TV3s(or pirate DVDs)
4. Less Starbucks and mamak, make your own coffee
5. Buy less books and papers, view online (how about poor people who don't even have broadband?)
6. No Baskins/ HagenDazs, consume low quality ice cream with more chemical and trans-fat
7. Less fresh food , more canned food
8. Less overseas vacation, more Cuti-cuti Malaysia (becoming a frog in the well)
9. Use RON 95 instead of RON 97 petrol, take in more sulfur dioxide.
10. And many more downgrades.......

Come on. Everyone can downgrade, but we do not want to be forced to downgrade. Philippines has better standard of living compared to Malaysia 30 years back. What happened now? Yes, they downgraded their standard of living. They flee their countries too, working in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Middle East etc. Do we want that to happen to us Malaysians?

We have been enjoying 20 years of prosperity from rich natural resources which is going to be drained out very soon. What's more left for us ? Nope, we don't have world-class Malaysian owned technology, product or knowledge. This leaves us with nothing. All that we can do is to CHANGE and DOWNGRADE our lifestyle! What else we can do? I will share on my thoughts about how we can maintain our lifestyle while going through this tough time in next entry. :) Leave your comments!