Blood is thicker than water?

Someone once said something to the effect that we are born with relatives, thank God we can choose our friends.

When I was a kid, my dad went through the dilemma of having to take an unpopular action just to please a nephew. I did not know of the situation until a few years later when the picture became clearer.

Our workshop units were fully occupied when one day, a cousin of mine came to see my dad, to explain how he had got a great business idea of starting an electro-plating business. He came a few times and pleaded that all he needed was at least 2 units of space. He even identified the units occupied by a panel-beater cum spray-painter, who was none other than the father of our 3 playmates who were of the same ages as my two older brothers and me.

Having known the circumstances later, I could understand why, at one stage, the father was very angry with us before they finally moved away. Who wouldn’t? The sad part was that my cousin's electro-plating business was soon taken over by someone else. Such people are commonly known as "sum fun choong yit tou" which translates to mean literally someone who gets excited over an idea but for "only 3 minutes when it is hot".

Years later, when I was managing a brother’s business, another cousin asked whether we could allow his son to park his car in our compound as he was working nearby. My brother must have felt awkward in refusing him, told him to ask me! At that time, his development company was active and just for ourselves we required 3 parking spaces and we used to have purchasers, contractors and consultants coming over now and again, so I had to say, “Sorry, no.” The effect was felt till today!

My sister was told by a neighbour that the cousin’s wife had been telling everybody how mean we were now unlike my father who was known to be generous.

In retrospect, I realized that dealing with some relatives, we are supposed to accede to whatever they requested, otherwise we are being mean. In other words, we cannot say no!

Using this as an analogy, government leaders would invariably deal with special requests from relatives and for those who acceded to them, it is more than likely to be unfair to those deserving cases and very likely to be less efficient in allocation of scarce resources.