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Sunday 3 September 2017

An Accident, Miscommunication And Singaporeans In JB

An accident happened in Johor Bahru.

A bastard ploughed his car at about 3AM into a group of 6 men, who had come in to Malaysia from Singapore.

One of them, de Rozario, was studying in Perth and this was meant to be a light and informal send-off. They were minding their own business and celebrating their friendship over some good Malaysian food, as far as the story goes.

Unfortunately, one man died from his injuries. I hope the driver of the car gets punished to the highest extent of the law for causing all this pain.

And if that was all there was to this story, I would have been sorrowful and deeply sympathetic to the Singaporeans for their loss.

Unfortunately, there have been other ... ummm... complications. Firstly, one of the Singaporean men alleged that the ambulance "took their time", and another added that it took the ambulance 30 minutes.

Then, another one said (because he had such superior knowledge of Malaysia's capabilities) that, "..the hospital was not equipped to perform the surgery," and proceeded to claim that, "staff withheld preliminary medical scans until the family offered to pay cash up-front."

Against better judgment, they got their critically injured friend discharged - instead of proceeding with the surgery that he desperately needed, because of their prejudice against what they perceived was inferior Malaysian capability.

The Singaporeans' handling of the situation was shameful from the beginning. They screwed it up so badly by refusing to acknowledge their poor judgment and instead choosing to go to the Singaporean media to blame and defame the Malaysians.

Unfortunately for them, the world has better technology for disseminating information than it did ten years ago. It was soon discovered that the response time for the ambulance was as fast as it was possible to be.

From ambulance service records, the emergency call was made at 2.57am on Aug 25 and the ambulance left two minutes later and arrived at the scene at 3.10am, before leaving with the patient at 3.15am.

Given that it was in the wee hours of the morning, there were no traffic congestion issues to deal with, and everything was quick and efficient.

When confronted with cold, hard facts, the Singaporeans started to backpedal. "I didn't have a sense of the time and it did feel like 30 minutes," de Rozario, whined. I am shaking my head, because none of them had actually made the emergency call for the ambulance. It was a bystander who had the presence of mind to call for assistance. So in reality, they didn't even know when the call was made.

If they hadn't maliciously tried to pin their failure on the Malaysians, I would actually sympathise. When one is stressed out, time can crawl ever so slowly. It's like waiting to use the lavatory and the situation is looking like imminent disaster.

Actually, it's much worse if your friend is in pain and dying. So I understand. The 13 minutes that it took the ambulance to arrive must have felt like forever.

De Rozario also eventually admitted that his injured friend was treated “straightaway” at the Hospital Sultan Aminah (HSA), contrary to initial allegations that the hospital was expecting them to pay before giving treatment.

Their behaviour makes them look like whiny little bitches.

According to De Rozario, the general hospital’s staff were speaking Malay while he and his friends were speaking English, leading to “difficulties communicating”.

“At that point of time, what I heard was that we had to pay and in cash — it couldn’t be in card. We didn’t have a large sum of money on us and we had to run around finding an ATM. From our point of view then, it felt like we had to pay first,” he was quoted saying.

“Nothing was really communicated properly so it could have been a miscommunication. We didn’t even know where he was at the time, but after we paid they told us to go to the red zone.

“Truth be told, I don’t know and I can’t comment on whether the hospital did all they could. I’m not medically trained and we had communication problems because we did not speak much Malay. So we thought it was better to bring him back. Perhaps there were things lost in translation,” the Singaporean added.

If you go to a foreign country, and you don't speak the language, it's not their fault that there's a miscommunication. I am frankly shocked that these Singaporeans would have such a sense of entitlement. The expectation that everyone should speak the same language that you do, is ridiculous.

In most European countries that I visited when I went backpacking back in 2005, I could barely get the people in the convenience store to speak any English. In fact, the tourist information centre in Paris proudly said "No," when I asked them if they spoke English.

I don't know how good European healthcare is; I fortunately never had to find out.

In a nutshell, the problem is this: the Singaporeans were ill-equipped for dealing with an emergency situation. They probably panicked, insulted the staff and failed to get the information that they needed - just poor communication skills. The Singaporeans made a bad decision to discharge the victim instead of proceeding with the surgery, which probably killed him.

But they couldn't handle their failure, so they had to pin it on someone else. A country that they thought would just cower under the bad press and slink away quietly.

Not in your life!

I am all about highlighting the corruption, embezzlement and heavy-handedness dictatorship of the Malaysian government.

It angers me when pastors are abducted in broad daylight and the authorities do nothing about it. I will defiantly shame the authorities into behaving themselves.

I will bring up the 1MDB issue whenever I can, because it needs to be discussed. People don't understand the magnitude of the problem.

I absolutely hate that Barisan Nasional is always voted in at every election, because it isn't a level playing field and we don't have free and fair elections.

But if you try and defame Malaysia just for kicks, I will come down hard on you because I will not allow you to demoralise public healthcare staff who genuinely do their best and are dedicated in saving lives.