COMMENT | ‘Wake me up when 2020 ends’ – I feel like singing (mangling a Green Day lyric in the process). And I must say – I know I am not alone in feeling that this has been one of the most challenging years of our lives.

But as painful as 2020 has been for me – I am one of the lucky ones. A couple of years ago I settled my outstanding loans and I am debt-free.

However, for dozens of my friends in their 40s and early 50s, 2020 has been devastating. What’s worse is that just when they thought they had weathered the storm of the first two waves of Covid-19 in Malaysia, dark days have come back with a vengeance.

One friend of mine is a 42-year-old Malay male who was an official in the Pakatan Harapan government. One minute he was clocking into Putrajaya for work, a couple of weeks later he was coordinating deliveries in a warehouse, doing some of the heavy lifting himself.

That is true, but perhaps over-dramatised as mostly my friend has been freelancing as a copywriter, but he’s prepared to hustle and has got mouths to feed with three children...