Refleksi Minda

I know, I have not updated my blog in a while. But I guess all bloggers have this stage, the stage where they simply do not have anything to blog about. Especially when one’s as busy as me, doing the BVC. So please bear with the lack of updates.

New Faces

By now, the all the new students coming to Cardiff to begin their university life would have arrived. I personally got to meet and spend some time with some of the new Malaysian students here. I have to commend the MSSCF and Kelab UMNO here for going out of their way to take care of these ‘freshies’, regardless of who these new students are. It’s always nice to see Malaysians coming together, without heed of trivial things such as race or religion. Brings a smile to one’s face. Indeed, this is exactly what we want, Malaysians taking care of other Malaysians. We here, are after all, so far away from home.

I especially enjoy a particular incident that happened a couple of weeks ago. Kelab UMNO (helped by the Malaysian Society) organised a ‘welcoming dinner’ for the new students. Dinner was nasi lemak with chicken curry. They didn’t know, however, that one of the students was a strict vegetarian because of religion. Thus, all that she could eat was the rice, without anything else. After knowing this and after apologising profusely, the President of Kelab UMNO actually went to a kebab shop and ordered a vegetarian pizza for her, even though she was adamant that eating just rice with nothing else was alright. The new student was so touched by the gesture (and so was I). She then shared the pizza with everyone else around her.

It’s things like this that make me realise how far we’ve gone in our search for tolerance and understanding. It gives one hope for the future, and goes to show that even though our politicians may try their best to divide us, it just takes one kind gesture to reverse the damage.

‘Lah‘

What a wonderful little word this is. It doesn’t particularly mean anything, and most of the time we use it without thinking, but this three letter word has gone a long way to shape the Malaysian identity.

Go to London and stand in the middle of Oxford Street. Prick your eyes up and listen to the conversation of the people walking by. If you hear someone speaking English but using ‘lah‘ in their sentences, you’re likely to have heard a Malaysian talking. It’s a word used by all Malaysians, Malay, Chinese, Indian, Iban, Kadazan, whatever. A very Malaysian word.

And yet, it doesn’t really mean anything does it? A friend once asked me, "Can you make a sentence using the word ‘lah‘ wrongly?". It took some time for me to do so. It seems that his former housemates, who are non-Malaysians, tried to use ‘lah‘ as well, but they always manage to use it wrongly. But we never have to consciously try to use it correctly. It just flows naturally.

What’s great also is that this word is not forced upon us. It’s not something which is pounded into our minds by propaganda. It’s phenomenon that has occurred because of the simple fact that we’ve lived together side by side for so long. Slowly, yet surely, we’re shaping our collective Malaysian identity. Something that we can call our own, our own ‘accent’ if you will.

Yet I wonder why this has not been picked up by the higher-ups in our country. Maybe when it’s our 50th year of merdeka, we can change the slogan from ‘Keranamu Malaysia’ to ‘Malaysia; it’s my country-lah!" or something to that effect. Something which incorporates this wonderful little Malaysian word.

Personally, I think it’s a great idea-lah.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 30th, 2005 at 4:50 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.