When I leave Malaysia for Australia or somewhere else next month, there's lots I'm going to miss.

And I can think of no more appropriate literary formula for expressing my nostalgia-to-be than the one employed by Mitch Albom in his Detroit Free Press column of Sept 10, 2006 and Brendan Pereira in his New Straits Times column of Oct 30.

Naturally I'm aware that some pedants out there will accuse me of plagiarism.

But just as New Straits Times Press chief executive Syed Faisal Albar absolved Pereira of copycat columny on the grounds that the topic of Albom's article was Sept 11 and Pereira's was about Dr M, my alibi is that - while Messrs Albom and Pereira used the rhetorical repetition of the present-tense phrase "I miss" - I'm altogether different in employing the future tense "I'll miss". So here goes.

I'll miss a great many Malaysian family members, friends and colleagues, though I have no intention of getting them on some snoop organisation's shit-list by naming or otherwise identifying any of them.

I'll miss my mother- and father-in-law especially. Not just for their benevolent company, but for their great kindness in caring for my daughter while she attended school in Ipoh.

I'll miss my daughter's equestrian school in Ipoh, where James and his cheery and talented team so expertly teach the kids to ride and care for the horses.

I'll miss the garden I've had the pleasure of caring for at the house in Ipoh.

I'll miss all the driving back and forth to Ipoh, especially stopping off for Nescaf tarik at the clean and tidy rest stops.

I'll miss the reassuring presence of Plus emergency crews who, in my dealings with them, have performed their duties promptly, professionally and to my initial astonishment, without the slightest sign of demanding duit kopi.

I'll miss the stunning sight of Ipoh's limestone hills, most of which have thus far miraculously escaped being either flattened for 'development' or quarried for conversion into cement.

Suicide missions

I'll miss my Kia Sportage, a vehicle of such spectacular unreliability that it must have saved me a fortune in fuel and tyres through spending so much time in the workshop.

I'll miss mamak shops, especially my favourites like Devi's in Taman Tun Dr Ismail, Lotus in PJ New Town, and the ABC in Taman Desa Petaling. But not the one I often patronise out of convenience opposite AM Bank in Changkat Yap Kwan Seng, as unfortunately its staff are as slack and surly as its surroundings are cool and shady.

I'll miss affordable cigarettes, especially if I find myself in Australia, where a pack costs the equivalent of something like RM30.

I'll miss the apartment at Taman Desa Petaling Condominium with its delightful view of the pool and a management team that gives the lie to the claim that nothing's properly maintained in Malaysia.

I'll miss the feeling of relief I've felt every time I've driven into the car park of the same condominium, having survived yet another suicide mission on Malaysia's maniac-infested roads.

I'll miss the freedom to commit virtually any atrocity I fancy on the roads and to park wherever I please, and to hell with everyone else's safety or convenience.

I'll miss PJ Traffic Court, where I've spent so many hours accompanying my wife to repeatedly postponed hearings of a traffic offence against her. A sergeant originally offered to settle at the station but, after she declined to do so, they apparently "lost" her file.

I'll miss throwing trash on the ground or in the drain because there are no rubbish bins and in any case almost everyone else seems to do it.

Spin and sleaze

I'll miss reading the Malaysian 'newspapers'. Not, of course, for the who, what, when, where and why of the news, but for the intellectual challenge of unraveling the latest spin, and for the more complex if not frequently utterly insoluble puzzle of trying to spot the stories they deliberately play down or utterly fail to mention at all.

I'll miss the comedy of errors and terrors reading outrageous statements by government and administrative personages attempting to either peddle the party line or protect themselves and their associates against highly plausible allegations of incompetence and/or corruption.

I'll miss the insouciance, good cheer and even optimism with which most Malaysians I know face the inconveniences, irritations, idiocies, injustices and outright crimes to which they're systematically subjected by public officials and their cronies.

I'll miss even more that small but I hope growing band of Malaysians, many of whom not only have the grit to continue living and working in this climate of pervasive sleaze, but also the guts to speak out in opposition to it.

Journalists and bloggers many of whom I've never met save through their writing, including, in no particular order, Steven Gan, Premesh Chandran, S Vicknesan, (cartoonist) Zunar, Padmaja Padman, James Wong Wing-On, Soon Li Tsin, Nathaniel Tan, K Temoc, Azly Rahman, KJ John, Sim Kwang Yang, M Bakri Musa, Josh Hong, Citizen Nades, Terence Fernandez, Jacqueline Ann Surin, Ahirudin 'Rocky' Attan, Jeff 'Screenshots' Ooi, Bernard 'Zorro' Khoo, Marina Mahathir, Elizabeth Wong, Susan Loone, Stanley Koh, Raja Petra Kamaruddin, Patrick Teoh and a great many others - plus political voices like Lim Kit Siang, Karpal Singh and Anwar Ibrahim.

But I won't really miss these people at all, of course, as thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I and anyone else can read them any time from anywhere in the world.

Which is why, despite strenuous efforts to suppress or silence them, they'll surely eventually make their voices heard sufficiently to make a difference.

As to whether they'll eventually be able to change things for the better, I can't be sure. But if enough Malaysians follow their lead in speaking out and standing up for their rights, I can't see how they can miss.