I am 23, so generally I sleep at the break of dawn. The sound of the azan is the indicator of time to sleep, contradicting from the general idea of the azan which is to wake Muslims up for prayers. Fast forward 5 hours, will be me waking up hair all messed up reaching for my Colgate. Fascinating how most Malaysians might not know the word toothpaste, but everyone knows the word Colgate. Maybe it has something got to do with the tooth-brushing session in school, that makes Colgate so Malaysian. Probably the only multiracial people in the world who look for rice when it comes to breakfast, be it the nasi lemak gang or the Bak-Kut-Teh gang. Being in the nasi lemak gang myself, it’s of course accompanied accompanied by a glass of the national breakfast drink teh-tarik. Believe or not we are so obsessed by teh-tarik that we even have an annual competition to match the skills of people ‘tariking’ our tea around Malaysia. Common practice in Malaysia would be to punch our work card at nine, and get our delicious day starting teh-tarik at 930. That’s how much we treasure a drink that should be considered a national treasure. Walking into class would be quite a journey, between browsing through the dailies while cursing the national football team about reaching the world cup and upholding the high standards of the English league like they are gods. Then there’s the diverse shape and sizes of the opposite sex that gives us a plus point to being Malaysian, each with their shortcomings and their advantages gives you a splendid eye candy to start a new day on a high note.
In class it’s hard to not notice people sitting within their own races apart from the rest forming quite a unique color chart. The big questions prevail, are we really racist? Why can’t we shrug off this feeling after 50 years of independence? Though the general view doesn’t really look positive but on a psychological perspective you have to also look at humans in general and how our brain works. According to the mirror-and-match exercise, if you mirror a person’s behavior without them noticing, naturally they will tend to be very friendly and warm towards you. Being in the same race category definitely creates a bigger mirror with a person than that of a person from a different race group, therefore what we Malaysians generally perceive to be racism is just human and though its needs mending it’s not all negative. Boys being boys, I often don’t bring stationary to class as I find that I have too much testosterone to put together a pencil case. When there arises a situation where I need to scribble something important, I can just randomly borrow stationary from whomever I see having the largest pencil case in the class regardless of race, somehow we don’t seem too racist anymore. The culture of giving in Malaysia is fascinating, when in need regardless of race, color or political views we are very generous. The fascinating thing is that sometimes we tend to be more generous when it comes to giving to another race than our own. Though cursing at each other at the coffee table, a Chinese shop keeper will always be friendlier to a Malay customer than to a Chinese customer, even going to the extent of offering free sweets to the kids. An Indian restaurant owner will be very excited if a Malay or Chinese comes to his shop and tries out a traditional Indian delicacy, even to the extent of giving free samples and shunning off even regular customers. The clearest example of all is when we have tourist, tourist love Malaysia and Malaysians because of our warmth and our ability to go the extra mile to make them feel at home or have a great holiday. Hidden in all of us Malaysians is the urge to exhibit or values and cultures which we brought from home to the other races, we need to be more in touch with this part of us, rather than sink ourselves into what the tabloids and blogs have to say about each other.
When I sit in class and I look at my friends, and the look at me. We know that deep down inside there is pride that only in this beautiful country of mine that the both of us can sit together in a class while the lecturer unfolds to us the mysteries of the physical universe to us in peace. We also know what each and every one of us is missing, the Malays know that they have special rights that give them an upper hand when it comes to opportunities and on the contrary the Chinese and Indians also know that they control most of the economic pie that makes our economy. Perhaps it is time we also took a look over the fence into the other side to see why is the situation such, why do the non-Malays keep questioning the special rights when they know that without them the Malays would drown and get drifted away if they were lifted. On the same basis, being the third generation in Malaysia why does the issue of the non-Malays being immigrants keep popping out at every turn, why are we not being considered as a single integrated race. The truth is that the new generation doesn’t really care about these issues and want to move away from it and address the real issues which are plaguing us, but as soon as we try to do that the moans and groans of our parents echoing the advice of our grandparents are heard. I strongly believe that the sooner the generation and the generations that had any interactions with the first Malays that saw the immigrants or the first immigrants that saw the Malays are wiped out the closer we will get to totally diminishing the racial issues in Malaysia. We have learnt to live with each other in harmony in our own unique and odd way, so why bring up old tales to disrupt them. We should remember lessons from bad history, not bad history itself. As I walk out of class I can hear moans and groans about the next assignment due date, even when it comes to completing assignments we are united as a unit, though the methods of completing may still be improvised with plagiarism rampant, but at least we feel the warmth of being together and helping each other. This has a glaring similarity with the way we annihilated the communist from Malaysia and the way me and my classmates complete our assignments, when there were communist we were Malaysians against the communist. As soon as the communist left, we crawled back into our racial cocoon and start to point at each other differently.
Being borned a Malaysian is a gift, from a very young age we are ready to accept people’s differences, and pointing out a glaring difference is as good as a sin in the Malaysian community. We become more tolerant towards the weaknesses and shortcomings of others and focus more on the strengths that they have. We do not like to flaunt our strength as it may seem arrogant towards the others who are different, it is this innocent natural Malaysian instinct instilled in us since young that makes us show our dark feathers rather that our shiny ones just so that everyone feels comfortable and warm towards each other. This became apparent to me when I attended a mock interview, a few months ago, the interviewer was from a foreign oil and gas company, so the question arised questioning my greatest strength. I was dumbfounded, I couldn’t come up with a single good answer but negative strengths of mine hovered in my head almost instantaneously. Then in hit me that I have been being so innocently Malaysian for so long sub-consciously that when the situation arises for me to flaunt my bright feathers, I couldn’t do as I felt that doing so would make it seem like I am trying to show that I am better than the others. Then I noticed that it wasn’t just me, all Malaysians do it, but my course mates who are from different nations are more interested in flaunting themselves than blending in. This is exactly why I feel that Malaysia is the greatest nation in the world, we are all different and we all have our own strengths but when it comes to facing each other we tend to usher the other person as the best. While we know our strengths, we also know that showing them off is a symbol of insecurity and that is just not the Malaysian way.
There is no doubt in my mind that this is the greatest nation in the world and there is no other place I would rather be borned in, I love my Malaysia.
