Wikipedia: Wilting Mother's Day Surprise...

Technorati tags: Humor, Wikipedia, Mother's Day, Melayu, Wilting+Race

First of all, Walski's apologies for the lack of updates this past week. He's been busy moving office, on top of the regular busy-ness that he's subjected to... But more on the move, where he's moved to and some parting shots to the spot where his office has moved from, in a future post...

Having had some time after the busy week, Walski looked up the Mother's Day page on Wikipedia, primarily because the Mrs asked him when it was, and offhand Walski couldn't remember exactly - sometime in May, but not sure exactly when.

As it turns out, Malaysia follows the US Mother's Day observance, which falls on the 2nd Sunday in May - or May11 this year.

Out of curiosity, he then scrolled down the page to take a glance at how one says Mother's Day in various languages around the world. The entries for Bahasa Melayu and Bahasa Indonesia were not quite what Walski had expected...
(screenshot of the defaced Wikipedia page, and more, in the full post)

Apparently, in both languages, Mother's Day is "Melayu Makan Babi".

Remember this the next time you wish someone Happy Mother's Day...

Walski decided to take a screenshot because, Wikipedia being Wikipedia, defaced pages don't stay defaced for very long (like the one about Yusuf al-Qaradawi being from Negeri Sembilan). That's the power and beauty of peer editing. Okay, so it does open up itself to abuse. But hey... that's what makes Wikipedia one of Walski's Fab Five - the adventure of not knowing just what you might find!

But Walski reckons, just like the Qaradawi page defacement, the slimy little maggot who did this to the Mother's Day page is very likely to be from Malaysia. Why? Well, for starters, only Malaysians identify ethnic Indonesians as "melayu" - a term made up by the British colonialists, but still used with reckless abandon here more than 50 years after we broke the yoke.

Second reason - this fixation about Malays being so vehemently anti-pigs is exclusivey a Malaysian thing (no thanks in a big way to the UMNOputeras running the show), which was lately capitalized and politicized, via the modern pig farm proposal.

But no, Walski is not offended by the Wikipedia entry at all. In fact, he finds it hilarious - the perfect bit of surprise humor to end a rather tiring week. Plus, Walski doesn't really identify himself much with this made up term "Melayu" in the first place.

Melayu, incidentally, can also mean wilting (layu = wilt). So while those racial supremos harp on and on and on about how their wilting race is at risk, Walski would rather stand tall and proud - as a Malaysian - with the rest of his sisters and brothers who would rather stand tall and proud.

On that note, have a mother of a day, people... and happy weekend!