Come With Me To The House Of A Rising Sun.

Why don't you buy them orphans washing machine, fridge, rice cookers, kitchen utensils and toasters. Better still, why don't you sponsor their grocery money for a year. But you won't do this because you won't get your face in page 3 on a national newspaper. Them photographers only know how to take pictures of you handing out money packet to orphans lining up to shake your hand. The nice lighting in the hotel makes you look good in a picture. You do what your PR people tell you to do. When they tell you to take them kids for a buka puasa treat at a hotel, you do it like a good client that you are. This way you get a dedicated page in the annual report under the title Good Governance and you'd smile to yourself thinking; I've done my part for the society. I give back what I take from the society.

Come with me, I need to show you something. Come with me to an orphanage in Cheras, Selayang, Gombak, and a few other places in the city. You see those doors, broken beyond repair? It's been like that for 5 years and no corporate bigwig like you ever cared about it. You see that kitchen over there? The fridge don't work too good, it frosts over every 5 hours, but people like you don't care. You see that range over there? The flame don't fire up too good to cook for 200 orphans. You've gotta spend 2 extra hours every meal time to prepare the food. You see those washing machines? Those are for show, none of them machine works. The kids gotta wash their clothes by hand. But you don't care. All you care is one day in a year in Ramadan where you take all these kids to a nice big hotel for buka puasa. These kids are so overwhelmed with foods that they usually don't know what to eat because they've never seen this much food in a year.

That makes you feel good? It makes me like puking to see you smiling like a dog thinking you've done good deeds and you deserve a place in heaven.

Come with me. You can carry my tool box. Come with me every other weekend to fix the doors, floors, lights, switches and stuff that don't work in a house where they keep those orphans. Come with me and I let you stir the soup for 2 hours because the fire don't burn too good. Come do this every weekend. You can bring those PR people along, and the photographers. But I doubt they'd come because the scenes won't make the pictures pretty enough to grace page 3 of the national newspaper.

Come with me. I'll show you what Public Relations is all about. Take those kids to a hotel for buka puasa all you want but I beg you to sponsor the grocery money because they gotta eat 3 square meals for 365 days in a year. You do the maths - one buka puasa treat and that makes you feel good? Eat your heart out.

Fauziah writes about this too here.