MASSOC Essay Writing Competition - 'What does being a Malaysian mean to you?' Second Prize

By Yu Kit Lee, University of Sheffield

You ask your parents to drop you off just a couple of meters away from your school's main entrance in the morning. When they pick you up in the afternoon, you pray to all the heavenly gods that they do not stop right in front of the gate where you would be chilling out with your friends who instinctively make fun of you for being an 'anak emas' or 'mama's boy'. You know you should not be embarrassed about your parents' acts of love or their care and concern for you. From their point of view, they just do not want you to have to walk any further than you have to in order to get to and from school. But you do it anyway.

You come back late from a friend's place only to see one, sometimes both, of your parents dozing off in their seats in the living room downstairs. They told you to come back early as they have lectured you a million times over about how dangerous the streets of Malaysia can be. You know you could have been home earlier but the enticement of being with company your age; enjoying the same stupid jokes; talking about that cute girl or guy who your friends confidently declare that, confirm plus chop, he/she likes you as much as you like them; was just too much for you to leave early. A tinge of regret creeps its way into your heart as you quietly lock the front door and gently wake them up. But you do it anyway.

You habitually ignore the stranger who hums nonchalantly to the tune of the latest hit from Hitz.fm about a lady who just cannot seem to get a signal on her phone. Hello, you know that song. Hello, then again, how could you not? Hello, it has been playing on repeat on the radio for weeks now. Hello, you hate that you know exactly how the melody goes even though you are irretrievably sick of it. Hello, you try your utter best not to sing it in the backseat of the uncle's taxi as the DJs play that song again. But you do it anyway.

You hold your hand out as you cross the street, expecting the oncoming car to magically develop some sort of consciousness and seize moving for you. In reality, all you get is a honk and a well-versed "oi ni jalan bapak ko ke apa?!"(emphasis added for unnecessarily realistic dramatic effect). The driver even responds to your hand raise with a hand-raising of his own. However his palm is facing the sky. You know what he means to say and you know you should rely on the traffic lights rather than cross the road whenever your heart tells you to. But you do it anyway.

You wait impatiently for her under the meranti tree behind your secondary school. You asked a friend of a friend of another friend to pass a note to her, cordially inviting her over to this exact spot where you would finally confess to her. She has to like you too, right? You have been sitting beside her since form 1 and have been bribing all of your friends to help you sit beside her in every class ever since. What more, those same friends are the ones who told you that they overheard her saying she has feelings for you. While you lean against the tree, constantly shifting your feet, you catch a glimpse of her in the corner of your eye. There she is, sashaying in her baju kebaya bearing your school's crest, looking like Siti Nurhaliza before she got married, only a million times prettier. She sheepishly walks up to you and after a brief moment of obligatory lame jokes on your part, you prep yourself to tell her how you feel. Everyone your age confessed through social media and text messages, and you really wanted to do it that way too. However, she told you before that such confessions held no sincerity. Your friends say her standards are way too high; they say a beautiful nyonya girl like her could never fall for a regular guy like you. Still, it is too late now as you see her eyes fixed on yours. Your palms get clammy and you feel like fainting. But you do it anyway.

You are on your way to the local mamak for your morning serving of Maggi goreng and teh tarik when all of a sudden the intoxicating aroma of that tantalising pisang goreng from your favourite Kadazan auntie's stall hits you like a bas sekolah running late. And just like that, your breakfast becomes a three-course meal with an added fruity, oily entree. Sinful? I call it blissfully ignoring the fact that you are getting one step closer to finally signing up for that health checkup you have been postponing all this time. It is about time you stopped binge eating like this. But you do it anyway.

You share a box of needlessly expensive popcorn in the cinema with the man you have spent the last 6 years with. For some reason you start recalling all the ups and downs you have had with him. He ponteng-ed school that one time to stay by your side and fed you ais kacang when you had a fever. You surprised him at work on the 888th day since the two of you began dating and he blushed for the first time in his office as you escorted him out, surrounded by all his cheering co-workers. Your parents did not approve of him but you never cared and he never gave up. A Chinese girl and a Malay guy? They were too traditional to understand that your love transcends boundaries. Suddenly, you bite on something hard. You reach your fingers into your mouth to pull out what you assume to be a kernel when you feel something else. You pinch onto it in disbelief as you watch him getting off of his seat to kneel down beside you. You told yourself you would not cry. You told yourself that maybe after all the things you went through together that perhaps your parents were right. You want to tell him to give you some time to think it over instead of squealing "yes!". But you do it anyway.

You sit with your small clique of friends at the nearby coffee shop and talk about all the nothings and everythings in the world. You talk about how disappointed you are in the government and how things were so much better when so-and-so was in charge back in the day. You and your friends are old enough to recount the day Malaysia itself was formed and you love this country to bits as you were here since the beginning of it all. You see your friends' children come over to bring them home and all of a sudden you realise that the only company you have left are the empty cups of kopi-o. You know you should be spending more time with your loved ones rather than complaining about everything that is wrong with the things around you. But you do it anyway.

Being a Malaysian encompasses all the experiences a person would have to journey through as he/she grows up in Malaysia. Allow me to provide you, my dear reader, with a simple simile which should adequately describe what being Malaysian means to me. Being Malaysian is like being a stereotypical Asian parent. I brag about my country's delicious(honestly, there is no contest) food and multi-ethnicity to anyone from another country who would listen. Once I get home, however, all I do is complain about how substandard my country is compared to other countries. I focus on the best aspects of my "child" in the face of people who are not a part of my family but I laser in on only the negatives when I am among people of my own. Sure it sounds horrible, but I do it anyway. For all of you who felt a tinge of guilt after reading that, do not fret macha, I feel you, and you are not alone.

Then again, can I really be blamed for doing this? I have learned, although the hard way, that the traditions and practices that we take for granted in our country do not extend far beyond the nation itself. During my first few weeks of studying in the UK, apart from being called 'zhamen'(comrade) by a dozen students from China and being asked if we eat dogs in Malaysia by the locals, I would be asked if I am a Muslim just because I am from Malaysia. This would then lead to a very long discussion about how having different ethnicities in a single country does not equate to everyone having the same religion.

It thus became clear to me that being Malaysian in another country comes with its own set of terms and conditions. The same sort of T&Cs that jump at you before you sign up for anything; the same one we so happily click 'agree' on without even getting past the heading of the document. For all I know, I could be agreeing to donate my eyebrows to the fictional Balding Hamster Care Centre but it is fairly obvious that the sooner I agree to that wall of text, the sooner I can get my hands on that free KFC coupon. However, jokes aside, being Malaysian requires an individual to be able to smile in the face of all the confusion and mockery; to refrain from walking away and instead calmly educate the ignorant on how Malaysia works; and ultimately, to resist choking the next drunkard who thinks you are from China and screams "ni hao" at you with a devilish smirk, not unlike the one pasted on the Joker's face from the Batman series.

It may seem weird when foreigners see us traveling in groups consisting of not only very Asian-looking Chinese people, but Malays and Indians as well. While walking with my Indian friend, people assume that the filming of the next Rush Hour is about to happen and mouth the name 'Jackie Chan' as they pass me by. Such ignorance — What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!(Please refer to the actual Rush Hours movies for this particular song reference).

It is undeniably challenging to be a Malaysian. On one hand I love the food and the people in general. I love the Ramley burgers you can get from the stalls that decorate most roads. I love how we always seem to find each other no matter where we go. Our ears are so naturally attuned to the "lahs" and "lohs" of our mixed-up language that we can spot a Malaysian from across the room. On the other hand, there are certain things I hate which cannot be included into the essay for safety purposes. Apart from that, I hate all the smokers hanging around outside my neighbourhood Seven-Eleven. I hate the need to be constantly vigilant of my surroundings when not only walking on the street but while driving my car as well. I hate how much I love being a citizen of a country full of untapped potential. I hate how that uncle is shaking his head disapprovingly, thinking that this generation has been dominated by technology as I type this on my laptop in a hipster cafe, sipping my green tea frappuccino.

But I do it anyway.

Why?

Because I am, in every sense of the word, Malaysian.