Writing week after week, year after year, about the people who put the 'mal' in Malaysia, the coterie of crooks and incompetents who run the country for their own and their cronies' benefit, really gets me down at times. And no wonder.

As I mentioned back in 2009 in a column entitled ‘The BNality of evil', these people are not only the lowest species of scum, but all their ill-gotten wealth and power doesn't afford them the facility of intelligent thought or interesting utterance, or indeed any facility you could remotely call life-affirming. In fact they're as morally, intellectually and spiritually dead as I fondly hope they'll soon be politically.

So this week I thought I'd let these creatures lie, in both senses of the word, and concentrate on some of the Malaysians for whom my admiration fires my resentment at their being so misled, misused and abused by their despicable Umno/BN compatriots.

Starting with the person whose memory probably inspired this no doubt temporary urge to accentuate the positive, Alice Chong or Tan, depending on whether you know her by her maiden or her married name.

Alice was the first Malaysian that to my knowledge I ever met, as she was the secretary to the creative director at McCann-Erickson, the ad agency where I briefly filled in between long-term creative heads back in 1985.

When I heard earlier this week of her retirement after 32 years in the same agency, I was reminded of what a consummate professional she was. And how modest and self-effacing compared with many of us self-styled high-flyers that she worked for.

In her long and distinguished career she dedicated herself calmly, quietly and with unfailing efficiency to godmothering a string of about 10 creative directors, and outlasted at least seven managing directors, finally serving as assistant to the current CEO of McCann-Erickson Malaysia, Tony Savarimuthu.

Smart and funny

Besides Alice, other former McCann-Erickson colleagues I often recall with great fondness are the hilariously-funny and highly-talented Spencer Wing and Veno Chornalingam, though somehow I've carelessly lost touch with them.

NONE And then there's the irrepressible Harmandar Singh ( left ). Ham, as he's known around the world, now CEO of the ADOI marketing-communications empire he's built, may well be the hardest, smartest worker, the most indefatigable networker, and the quickest writer I ever met anywhere.

And he's more than ably assisted in the graphics department by the man they call 'Chemical' Ali, not only one of the most talented Mac magicians it's been my good fortune to work with, but also one of the most decent and delightful human beings it's been my pleasure to know.

For various perfectly valid reasons, some of the Malaysians I most like and admire may prefer to remain relatively anonymous.

Habibah, for example, whose sheer love and enjoyment of life put my own somewhat jaded view of the world to shame. Tham, whose courage and perseverance in adversity are an inspiration to all who know him. Nora and Zala, who devote themselves so whole-heartedly to raising and educating their kids.

Alvin, who has built his thriving oil-industry service business from scratch without ever stooping to the cronyism and corruption that might have made him richer, faster. Adam, who habitually drives too fast but who always demands a proper ticket when he's caught because he hates bribery on principle. And Lisa, as delightful a mix of cosmopolitan chic and friendly, down-to-earth Malaysian as you could possible meet.

Same goes for Salina, my friend who freelances in PR for now, but whom I'd dearly love to be able to coax back into journalism.

Speaking of which, I'm not sure what Med and Erik are up to these days, but I hope they're still writing and taking pictures, and still as hell-bent as ever on putting an end to Umno/BN's destruction of Malaysia.

I also hope that my favourite IT guy, Sham, is as passionate as ever in his detestation of everything Umno/BN stands for.

I'm reminded of him every time I see a mention of Putrajaya, a place he considers more like 'Putrid Jaya' and has vowed never to set foot in, on the grounds that the government robbed small landowners in acquiring the site, then inflicted months of water-shortages on the people of KL just to fill its ornamental lakes.

Of course many of my favourite Malaysians are fellow writers. Or perhaps I should make that 'communicators', as a prominent figure in the mainstream media, a man of small talent and little integrity, has the gall and misplaced egomania to call himself 'The writer' on his blog.

NONE In any case, 'communicators' fits the bill better, as it includes the Malaysian cartoonist I greatly admire, the brilliant and ballsy Zunar ( left ), and all my colleagues in every department at Malaysiakini and Pak Chong's admirable publishing outfit, SIRD.

As for my idols in the blogosphere, it would take several 1,000-word columns to mention them all and even then I might risk missing some.

So I'll confine myself here to mention of Antares, the man who was smart enough to leave advertising long before I did and now fights for truth, justice and enlightenment from his idyll on Magickriver; Bernard Khoo, who's even more of a hero to me today than the original Zorro was when I was a kid; VJ who keeps me up to the mark with reminders to bad-mouth Mahathir; Ktemoc, who scorns the ridiculous and always gives me a giggle with his trademark manic laugh, "wakakakaka"; and of course Raja Petra Kamarudin for the sheer brio and bombast with which he delivers his anti-Umno/BN bombshells.

selangor pakatan convension 070310 wan azizah Back in the darkest days of the Mahathir era I never thought I'd say this, but now some of my favourite Malaysians are politicians.

Like Anwar Ibrahim, whose indomitable courage has inspired the fight against Umno/BN; Wan Azizah ( right ), the very model of the power of womanhood; and Karpal Singh, not only the scourge of Umno/BN, but a living rebuke to its hordes of law-whores.

Beyond all the people I've mentioned here, and those that space, memory or privacy constraints have caused me to omit, of course I have millions more favourite Malaysians whose names I'll never know: all those who are registering and planning to vote for the opposition in the next general election.

And in that regard, here's hoping that my old friend Alice's well-earned retirement after 32 years' sterling service is a good omen for the sacking of Umno/BN after 50-plus years of misgovernment.

 

DEAN JOHNS, after many years in Asia, currently lives with his Malaysian-born wife and daughter in Sydney, where he mentors creative writing groups. Already published in Kuala Lumpur is a third book of his columns for Malaysiakini , 'Missing Malaysia' . This follows earlier collections 'Mad about Malaysia’ and 'Even Madder about Malaysia’.