I almost wish I meant this title unambiguously, so I could feel as single-mindedly gung-ho about Malaysia as David Lavoie, the expat Canadian author of an article in the July 29 edition of the New Sunday Times entitled 'How do I love thee, Malaysia? A lot!'.

As redolent of rose-coloured Ray-Bans as I found this piece in places, I found myself in pretty much total agreement with it, at least as far as it went.

I shared pretty well every one of Lavoie's reasons for his love-affair with this country, and mentally added two extra motivations of my own for being positively mad about this place and its people - my Ipoh-born wife and KL-born daughter.

I had no intimation of any intimate future involvement with Malaysia when I came to live and work here for the first time in 1985 - just a nave enjoyment of what was to me a novel and exotic locale populated largely by people who proved friendly and full of fun.

But such impossibly warm feelings can't persist long in the face of cold reality. The first noticeable cooling of my early crush on Malaysia came with the realisation that office politics here were as prevalent and as poisonous as everywhere else. And then came a truly chilling glimpse of a public side of the nation of which I'd previously been entirely ignorant.

In the New Straits Times, in those days still a broadsheet that I blush to recall that I assumed to be a real newspaper, I was appalled to read a story headed 'No Aids for Malaysia' and expanding on this theme with the astonishing proposition by a government spokesperson that this country was safe from the viral epidemic then starting to sweep Africa, America and Asia because there were "no homosexuals or drug addicts here".

Although I wasn't personally acquainted with any Malaysian gays or junkies at the time, I recall thinking how ridiculous it was to deny their existence, and how despicable that any government could be so callous as to put the health and lives of its citizens at risk by feeding them such a load of perfidious "patriotic" rubbish.

But at least it spelled the end of my embarrassingly blind and whole-hearted infatuation with this country. I finally opened my eyes to the fact that, while there's one side of Malaysia that I was and am and always will be mad about in the affectionate and even amatory sense, there's another that makes me ever-more hopping mad.

Full justification

But who do I think I am, I hear the jingoists cry, a foreigner here on sufferance, to abuse the Malaysia's generous hospitality by presuming to offend my hosts?

The first and most obvious statement I have to make in self-justification is that I've shown a great deal less contempt for this country than the ex-menteri besar with two Muhammads in his name did for mine, by getting caught taking his cash on holiday there, then beating the resultant currency-smuggling rap by falsely swearing in court that he couldn't comprehend English.

So, in a spirit of mutuality, or tit-for-tat if you want, I feel I'm well and truly warranted in getting as mad as a hornet and attempting to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about corruption and the perversion of justice in Malaysia.

In any case, I have a more genuine regard and respect for my fellow regular human beings in Malaysia than the ex-menteri besar with two Muhammads in his name or any of his pals among the self-styled political 'elite' apparently have. As far as I'm concerned, that gives me the right to get as mad as a meat-axe at the miserable way Umno and Barisan Nasional (BN) treat the rakyat.

I also have a greater appreciation of the beauty and worth of Malaysia's land, water and vegetation than ethical vegetables like officially-sanctioned illegal loggers, 'developers' and their cronies in government evidently do.

And thus I feel more than entitled to get as mad as a cut snake about the wanton destruction of the nation's share of the world's dwindling renewable resources and declining natural environment.

Another thing is that, at least for the remaining two weeks of my current sojourn here, I'm a taxpayer. Until I've hassled the inland revenue department into paying me the long-awaited RM6,000 it agrees that I'm due, I figure I owe it to myself, my family, friends and other fellow state-revenue slaves here to get as mad as a cage-ful of cats at the way the big spenders of the BN regime squanders our hard-earned cash.

It has enriched itself and its inner circle with scandalously price-inflated mega-projects, calamitously 'commission'-riddled purchasing contracts and catastrophically costly 'investment' schemes, and ensured itself even more time in office by engaging in preposterous levels of pork-barreling and outright vote-buying.

Which brings me to the fact that it makes me both mad and sad to see how many Malaysians are prepared to sell their votes for a spot of hasty election-eve road-resurfacing or a pitiful handful of ringgit.

How anyone with so much as half a brain or a shred of self-respect could possibly live either temporarily or permanently in Malaysia without getting so mad about all this state of affairs as to go almost gila with outrage is an absolute mystery to me.

Or it was until I gradually came to realise just how risky it was - and continues to be - for Malaysians to express their disapproval at the way they're so gruesomely misgoverned. Honest, gentle, law-abiding citizens here are justly terrified of being incarcerated without trial under the Internal Security Act or the Emergency Ordinance if they exercise their constitutional rights to protest.

More and more are getting even madder than I am, however, and becoming increasingly brave and bold in speaking out and standing up for themselves and their compatriots.

So these days I'm more madly in love than ever with the good side of Malaysia, and even madder in my determination to help expose and defeat the bad.