COMMENT | When I was a schoolkid, the cliche career options were to become a doctor, lawyer, or engineer. These professions signified social respect and financial security to our parents, and either by parental prompting or fiat, generations of Malaysian kids set off on that educational grail.

But that was in the middle of the last century when Malaya had yet to chart its own dreams beyond gaining independence from Britain.

That was a time when making a phone call overseas required you to make a booking with Telecoms who would call you half or an hour later to say the connection had been made via a deep oceanic cable. A time when urgent news, usually dire, couldn’t wait for the conveyance of a letter – days old by air, weeks old by sea – to reach you, a postman would deliver a telegram bearing the bad, sad tidings to you.

Heck, that was a time when a slab of roti canai cost 10 cents; a roti telur cost 20 cents, but if you didn’t want the man to ...