I have always loved living in KL. While doing my degree in London, many of my Malaysian friends there set a goal of getting a job in the UK and then never coming back. They cited the usual reasons we hear about our brain drain today: Higher pay overseas, better opportunities, better lifestyle and the likes.
I knew all that and it would be hard to argue with some of these points but I personally never wanted to stay in the UK. I always wanted to come home.
Why? Because of family and because I felt it was easier to excel in our home ground than it is in a foreign country. Besides I love KL. There’s so much energy in the city and increasingly more and more things to do in the city. I love the people too. That I can go to a park or go cycling somewhere and easily make friends who speak my language and come from the same culture and background that I came from.
Today I look back with no regrets that I had come home but I have to concede that there are a few things that have changed in the past few years. A few things that have made it harder to live in KL than it was before.
1) Crime
This is a sore point for many Malaysians. Just about every one of us Malaysians have either at one point or another been a victim of a crime, or directly know a friend or relative who has been a victim.
Forget about who’s to blame for our crime rate today. Crime after all is a factor of economic reasons, immigration, enforcement and the likes. So attempting to find the reason for crime we’re facing will lead to a whole long debate. Heck forget that official statistics for crime have come down because that’ll lead to a whole new debate.
Today we talk only about perception. Whatever our official crime rates are, few Malaysians especially those living in the urban areas feel truly safe. When our women walk on the streets, they hold on to their handbags tight for fear of a snatch thief coming along. Wherever we go out we make sure to lock our cars and heck many of us don’t even keep our SmartTags on our windscreen for fear that someone might break in to steal it.
We don’t feel safe from crime and I think we feel even less safe today than we did 10 years ago.
2) Property Prices
One of the plus points of living in KL or Malaysia was that property prices in KL was relatively low compared to the rest of the region. Most of us Malaysians can own a home.
In the past few years though property prices have gone up so much that it has become increasingly difficult for us to own homes. So we settle for living in smaller homes or living further away from the city. But even then it’s hard.
3) Haze
The haze isn’t new. I remember having it around as far back as 1997. The difference with then and now was that in 1997 the haze was expected to last only a certain number of weeks in a year. This year though I can remember just as many days we have with haze than I can without. Cycling, running or doing any form of outdoor sport in clean fresh air has never before felt like a luxury as it does this year.
Sure KL isn’t the only city in the world to suffer from this. Heck there are cities that have much worse air quality. Cities in China, India and Iran to name a few.
But we still have it very consistently. It used to be when the haze came everyone would rush to pharmacies and buy up all the facial masks. That doesn’t happen anymore because most of us stock up a number of masks at our homes. It’s like we no longer see the haze as an unfortunate temporary event. We now see it as a regular thing in our lives that we have to contend with.
4) Water Disruptions
We don’t just not have clean air. We also occasionally don’t have clean water too.
The past two years have seen a number of water disruptions in the Klang Valley. Again we’re not here to debate whose fault is what but the fact is that many of us have had to face this. This year in fact was worse than last year.
Just like facial masks with haze, today many households make it a point to store water or install water tanks. Again we don’t see this as an unfortunate one off event. We see it as a regular thing now that we all have to deal with.
5) Education
I’ve never really had to think about this until I became a parent but now that I am… I do. I think about it all the time. About where my kids will go to school, what will they learn and whether they will have a good education.
I spent my primary school in a private school and my secondary years in a government school. Personally, I preferred my years in government school and always held the belief that I would put my kids through government school as well. Government school after all is real. It’s where they would meet the real people of Malaysia… not just a select upper middle class that you would see in private schools.
Today though many of my peers don’t have the same confidence in our education system as they did before. Which is ironic because we all came from that same education system. Perhaps it’s just a perception problem again…. but you can get a sense of the seriousness of this problem by looking at the demand we have now for private or international schools. Never before have I seen so many private schools in existence and never have I seen such insane school fees just for schools.
So to live in KL, you either have to have the faith that the government school system is as good today as it was during our time a decade or two ago…. or pay top dollar for private schools. The latter would make it really expensive to raise a family in KL… on top of rising property prices.
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Overall I still think KL is a great city to live in. There are many things we still have going for us… the food, the people and the likes. My hope is in the next few years, we’ll see improvements in these areas. Perhaps one day we’ll find KL in the list of the best cities to live in the world.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space