Johor Bahru – Sin City poem

I used to call it City of Crime – because of, well, you know, its crime.

On a tip from Simon Thong, via Lim Kit Siang’s blog:

Sin City, Jay Bee – a tribute to Johor Bahru

by Azly Rahman

Where have all those memories gone
Of the city that never sleeps
Sin-filled you are
… Offering life’s panorama
A pandora box of a lushness of emotions

Jay Bee
You may be called a city of filth
Of gang wars and transvestite agalore
Of rock kapak geniuses conceived immaculately
From the womb of Papa Rock
Ahhh New Johor … New York you may want to be
Thou shall never attain that notoriety

Sweet city sin city
Celebrating the velocity of money
It is there I knew love’s inner beauty
As we walked up and down the Lido Beach
whose middle name is “filthy”
Ohh Jay Bee … you are a soul that is one with me

Jay Bee
Sin city
where politics stink
where corruption gets a nice daily wink
where the power elites are the underground kings
where the poor are hoodwinked
where the children of the working class roam the streets in motorcycles with bilng bing
where the smell of ganja filled the air like a pissed-on fermented drink
Ahh Jay Bee
City of Sins

Your hunchback of Tanjung Puteri is dead and gone
Committed sepuku at the sight of what has become
Of you sin city Jay Bee
Si Bongkok died of a death he long-willed for
As the sight of the crooked bridge broke his heart that exploded with a roar
Ahhh… thanks to the Johor Corridor
And the Disney of Nusajaya Johoreans adore
Sin city
Jay Bee
Your economy, like a Segget River , stinks till eternity

Love is gone
Of the one my heart held on
As I walked countless miles
Along the Lido beach
Time has not been kind
To this city that never sleeps
To this sin city
That weeps
The yesteryears of the loss of pride that run deep
Love is gone
The deal is sealed
Sin city you are now sold
To the forked tongued nationalists grown old like ageing Disneys

Sin city
Jay Bee
You were once mine
You will no longer be

And response from the powers that be:

Shahrir chides blogger over ‘sin city’ JB

By MOHD FARHAAN SHAH and YEE XIANG YUN

JOHOR BARU: A poem on the Net that derided Johor Baru as a “sin city” has ruffled the feathers of its MP Datuk Shahrir Samad and the state government.

Shahrir accused United States-based blogger Dr Azly Rahman of degrading and tarnishing the city through Sin City, Jay Bee a Tribute to Johor Baru that has appeared in several anti-establishment portals, including DAP stalwart Lim Kit Siang’s blog.

He dared Dr Azly to return home and see how the city had progressed.

“Johor Baru is not trying to emulate New York. The crime rate there is much higher than it is here,” he told The Star, when asked to comment on the poem.

Shahrir chided the blogger for living in the past.

“Sorry to disappoint him, but Johor Baru is not like what he had in mind when he wrote the poem,” he said.

Johor Tourism and Environment committee chairman Hoo Seong Chang said such negative poems would not affect the state’s tourism.

“We have proven ourselves with attractive packages that pull in visitors all-year long,” he said.

“I understand the state’s cleanliness has been an issue but we are working on it.”

Hoo said about 16.5 million tourists visited the state last year.

“For the first three months of this year alone we have already attracted 3.9 million tourists an increase of 455,672 when compared with the same period last year,” he said.

Dr Azly, who lives in New Jersey, said he was born in Singapore but grew up in Kampung Melayu Majidee here. He studied at a boarding school in Kuantan and continued his studies in New York.

In his poem, he portrayed Johor Baru as a drug-ridden, corrupted and eco-unfriendly city with a poor economy.

One of the stanzas in the long poem, reads:

Jay Bee

You may be called a city of filth

Of gang wars and transvestite galore

Of rock kapak geniuses conceived immaculately

From the womb of Papa Rock

Ahhh New Johor New York you may want to be

Thou shall never attain that notoriety.

In the final stanza, Dr Azly wrote: “You were once mine, you will no longer be.”

Not being in JB since a long time, I can’t comment on whether it’s crime prone anymore, or nice and safe as Datuk Shahrir says.

Anyone care to update?