After almost three years of not reading malaysiakini, I took a look at it again the other day. One thing that struck me as very sad was the fact that the tone of the letters is still very much the same after these three years. Communal and angry in nature. I guess the debate over unfairness/ discrimination/entitlement, etc, will continue to be feature in malaysiakini for some time to come.

To get us out of this vicious cycle, I propose that every Malaysians try to do what I have outlined below as part of their personal mission to help the country. The objectives are to quantify our current worth to the nation, set a personal mission to help the country to become wealthier and to get us out of the grip of stupid policies that has rule the country.

The first thing is to take a look at your income and see how much of it are earnings from overseas. For example, if you work in a multinational company that derive most of its earnings abroad, then most of your earnings are from overseas.

If your company does not earn foreign exchange, try to quantify how your job will help others to earn foreign exchange.

Now, what else do you do for the community? If you are a teacher, try to count the number of students that you have managed to educate well enough and you think will be able help the country earn foreign exchange in the future. If you are a social worker or a volunteer, try to count how many fellow humans you have helped that are now productive for themselves and the country again.

Now, try to sum up your earning contributions to the country. Then, try to think how you can help to increase this earning so that the economic pie can be bigger for every Malaysian. My suggestion is increase your learning. Of course, there are two type of learning, tangible and intangible.

My personal example is something like this. I am paid 60K (not the exact figure, mind you) per annum by my employer, and almost all of it is foreign derived. I intend to increase my foreign exchange earning by educating myself continuously so that my knowledge contribution to the company becomes more significant. And that will make my salary higher.

On the intangible part, I want to influence my colleagues to jump on the learning bandwagon so that their earnings also increase. So let's say I get five of them to start working as a knowledge-based worker and as a result, they get a annual increment of RM200 each, then I have made RM1,000 for the country. And that will be continuous as long as my colleagues work.

When people have a full tummy and are knowledge-driven, they will be smarter, stronger and more principles-driven. So, good luck to all Malaysians. Let's make our country a place with more money and strong principles.