My Blog

Met up with my friend for dinner some time ago and over tapas, she complains about her colleague who claims to be ignorant of her mother tongue and the Rukunegara because she considers herself “American”. Despite spending only a measly two years there for university.

“Tell her Americans are cocksuckers,” I say, making her burst into a fit of giggles.

I don’t know what’s the deal with people going abroad to study for a year or two, then coming back with an accent and this smug perception that mingling with white people have made them more cultured, worldly and better than the general population. I think it’s because Malaysians tend to have this national inferiority complex. My high school history teacher once said that countries that have a history of colonialisation tend to suffer from this complex. Everyone seems to think there’s nothing about our country to be truly proud of, other than two really tall towers.

Sure,  Malaysia’s full of pollution, corruption, appalling urban planning and many of the persistent problems plaguing any developing nation…Wait, what was my point again? Just kidding. Frankly, it’s really not a half bad place to live.

I grew up in the US, moving around a fair bit before my decidedly bohemian parents decided to settle down in a quiet, leafy suburb outside Washington DC. After spending my primary years there, we came back to Malaysia where I was enrolled into a British international school. And even then, my parents would send me overseas during the school holidays. Sydney was somewhat my second home. Being shuffled around like a hockey puck as I was, it’s no wonder I’m in the cultural limbo that I am now. (And yes, that also explains my quasi-American accent mangled with the occasional British pronunciation, with a modest smattering of lah’s and lor’s thrown in. So yeah, I know I talk funny, thankyouverymuch.)

After high school, my parents made me apply to a bunch of universities in the UK and Australia but as the acceptance letters started pouring in, I decided I wanted to get a taste of local education (go ahead and snigger). So I turned down a place in University of Manchester to study International Relations and a place in University of New South Wales to study commerce for a law school situated in Petaling Street, nestled between two seedy rumah tumpangan.

Of course, the really challenging thing about moving from place to place is learning and absorbing all the quirks and idiosyncrasies of the local culture. You can go to the same state in a different country and feel like you just crossed into alien territory. An ignorance of these disparities is why senior management in MNCs, usually foreigners, are often mocked by us locals as “clueless mat salleh”. I am appalled when I meet expatriates who have been in Malaysia for a decade or more and never bothered to pick up the local language, customs or cuisine.

How can you be in a foreign place and not soak up the culture, immerse yourself in the surroundings and just saturate yourself in the atmosphere?

How can one possibly cocoon oneself in the safety of the familiar without venturing forth and discovering all the diverse possibilities that the world has to offer?

But after having a rather nomadic childhood, it’s nice to finally be firmly rooted to a place I can call home. It’s nice to finally belong. I probably might not be here for the rest of my life. Like my parents before me who roamed the world in search of home? fortune? happiness? the meaning of life? who knows?, I might venture to other places in the future. But for now, this is the place I call home.

Malaysia negaraku indeed.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 12th, 2007 at 8:10 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.