While J and I were waiting at the vet’s for Cookie’s operation to finish, a man walked in with a puppy. Again, not on a leash and not in a cage. The man was a Buddhist monk and he answered all the receptionist’s questions very abruptly before walking outside with the puppy and setting it down. The puppy started scampering all around (there are automotive body shops next door, so it was obviously a safe environment to do that) while the monk lit up a cigarette.

Living in Malaysia again has hammered home a point about religion. Whatever you know, or think you know, about Buddhism gets knocked for a loop when you start living in Asia. Buddhism isn’t a religion here, it’s a business. And the sooner you realise that, the quicker you’ll not be shocked when monks start inviting themselves to your home because they want to see what’s inside, shaking down grieving families for as much money as they can get for necessary “rituals” for the dead, and expecting preferential treatment because of the type of clothes they wear.

As I mentioned before, belief in God is supposed to be one of founding principles of Malaysia. (Gardenia brand bread. Wrapper. Read it.) Yet I have never met a population that’s so dismissive of animal welfare, so selfish, so arrogant, and yet so ostentatiously religious. Whether Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist or Muslim, they’ll all rabbit on about God’s goodness, but they’ll let their pets starve, beat them at the slightest provocation, abrogate the slightest responsibility for their welfare and think themselves superior to atheists like myself.

And it’s not just pets. Where’s the morality in forcing your choices onto your children? Of expecting blind obedience based on nothing more than your age? Of dismissing or physically pushing children out of the way merely because they’re children? Where’s the morality in skimping on your child’s education due purely to the reason it’s a girl? Of lauding your wastrel sons to the heavens while disparaging your daughters?

The treatment of pets is only the last in a long line of purely selfish and misogynistic Asian behaviours. I cannot stand the Malay men who expect me to let them go first anywhere just because they’re men. They think they’re so damn superior? Well they can suck up some grace and damn well wait till I get through that door. For the same reasons, I refuse to give up my MRT seat to a Chinese man of my age. And I will sit next to an Indian man taking up more than one seat on public transport and push his leg over so he doesn’t have things his own way. And do you know what each of those men do in such cases? They don’t say a word. They may glare at me, as I glare at them, but they don’t dare open their mouths. Such is the manner of true bullies.

If this is how fellow humans are treated then, women and children, what chance do our silent fellow members of the animal kingdom have? Asian values? Give me a fucking break.