Being Overseas with #MH370

It was the International Day of Happiness yesterday, but it feels like there can’t be much to be happy about in Malaysia right now.

Just like any Malaysian overseas, watching the events surrounding #MH370 has felt depressing and surreal.

We are so far away from home, but the papers front-paging the news are there, everywhere on the newsstands, in tube stops, on office tabletops. It’s on all the television news programmes and radio chat shows.

I can’t speak for other Malaysian overseas, but to me it feels surreal because in a sea of foreigners, when I see them reading or talking about the issue, I wonder what they are thinking. I eavesdrop, a little. A part of me lights up inside like a circuit has been connected – do you know that’s mine? That’s my country?

Then I remember how it’s been so long since the day that plane disappeared, and the light fades into a flicker - how it is still so agonising thinking about the worst, and hoping for a miracle.

Like most Malaysians in London and elsewhere, I have had to answer questions from foreign friends and colleagues about what we think about the mystery disappearance. The answers have been all shades of “I don’t know” and sometimes, when I’m too tired and lazy to offer another shade, all manners of sighs and shrugs.

It’s mine, it’s my country, but I know just as much as you.

Well, maybe a little more obsessively. Many Malaysians like me wake up in the morning, switching on the news and browsing the net hoping that the Asian region’s eight-hour head start of daylight will reveal answers discovered during our slumber.

When some foreign friends have said “The Malaysian authorities have made a mess out of things, haven’t they?”, I have agreed and disagreed on various points but then have proceeded to explain what I know about Malaysia and how the media works. I tell them not to believe everything they read, to get as much sources of information as possible, and most of all, I tell them how everyone in Malaysia is so caught up with this, and praying for an answer.

There are no theatrics. They have read what they have read, and I am the only Malaysian they know, so they just want to know what I think.

And like most Malaysians, I have been baffled by the earlier coverage, saddened by the odds of what it could be, hopeful when other possibilities were raised, even annoyed by the coverage of some newspapers. When reading some UK Daily Mail pieces on #MH370 lately, I confess I talked to myself animatedly, using my solid collection of colourful language. I was also glad when some news proved the Malaysian authorities were right in withholding some information, and when the Press conferences started looking more professional and collected.

What I don’t share perhaps is the defensiveness on the Malaysian front that has snowballed and been as rife as the speculation on the disappearance thus far.

At first it was anger at the speculation from all corners of the globe, whether from the mouths of aviation experts or your 50-something-year-old aunt in Johor. But didn’t we read it all anyway, because we were also scratching our own heads? Isn’t speculating the act of hazarding ideas or guesses about something that is not known, and didn’t we all do that?

After that there was the Malaysian anger at perceived armchair critics, otherwise known as people commenting on social media. The tone was overwhelmingly ‘How dare they?’ and ‘Please shut up!’. Understandably some of these were targeted at those who offered their theories in rather insensitive fashion earlier on, but later there seemed a time when saying anything other than ‘Let’s pray for #MH370’ seemed to be a no-go. At one point I think it was safer for someone to post happy party photographs rather than an opinion about the flight disappearance.

And then the anger seemed to blur into a huge seething ball – Malaysians were angry at the West? Western media? At China? The Chinese relatives for being so … emotional? Local media? Local commenters? Australia? Other countries? People with other opinions? Anybody not rising to 'defend' Malaysia?

There were some comments online about the Chinese relatives overreacting and not appreciating Malaysia’s help so far. This is so strange I can’t even believe I just typed it. They, like other passengers’ families, have suffered greatly. But compared to other nations, perhaps they have had more (or only) information and speculation from their own Chinese press, and perhaps we can understand what that must be like.

Anyone who has also seen how the Chinese react to tragedies (See artist Ai Wei Wei’s coverage of the Sichuan earthquake disaster) knows how they grieve over the loss of their children or relatives, and how this expressiveness can go unreported in China. This is not making excuses for them behaving aggressively, this is trying to understand where they are coming from, and what they are like.

Sure, this is no competition on grief. But if Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein can calmly say himself that he regretted the actions of officials who dragged some of those relatives out of a news briefing on Wednesday, then what is the fuss? If our authorities are finally beginning to handle things with some elegance, then why are some Malaysians going the other way?

I feel we can feel united in concern and hope, and distinguish between attacks and critiques, facts and opinions, a country’s government and its people.

Malaysians also have to learn that we can hold several different strains of thoughts or emotions at once – we can feel protective but still question, we can be far apart but so close, we can criticise but still love, we can be despondent and still hope ever so greatly.