1Malaysia~

Bismillah


Being schooled in MRSM right from Form 1 till Form 5,
my secondary schooling has always been with Malays,
so I must say, it's a pretty new experience to have non-Malay classmates.
I do have non-Malay classmates back in primary school but that was quite a long time ago. Plus, my spoken English was pretty lousy back then, so I have to say I felt some inferiority to them.
I have this one Chinese classmate who I rarely talk to, but she's nice, really.

In that kind of environment, Malays tend to stick to Malays.
Even so when I'm at Uni, there are not that many non-Malays,
so they tend to stick to themselves, and Malays like so.
I personally felt that as something bad,
and often I would feel bad about it, I'd try and join in with the Chinese.
Or try to plan for something that everyone can do together,
to build a bridge, build a bond between us.

Now that we're in the new campus,
each and everyone of us are struggling to fit in to this new environment,
it's kinda funny when even Malays need to translate from English to Malay to talk to Malay patient. Got really used to interviewing and giving instructions to patients in English, I must say. Struggled even with words like palpitations etc etc. A friend of mine kept on directly translating the questions that it sounded pretty awkward. "Adakah makcik pernah cuba menggunakan apa-apa ubat untuk mengurangkan kesakitan". Sounded soooooo weird, right?

And if we are struggling with Malay,
imagine how would the Chinese be.
This one friend of mine said to the patient,
"Makcik, aku tarik langsir aa?"
"Makcik, aku nak tanya soalan ni aa.."
Guess he didn't realize that "aku" is really not appropriate back then.
Now he's alright I think.
Tried to help them translating some questions to Malay since there's quite a lot of patient who can speak only Malay and not English.
But a friend of mine who partnered with another Chinese friend got a Chinese patient, so the two of them talked in Mandarin and my friend just stood there flabbergasted.

It came to me that if they can speak Malay,
how come we didn't take any effort to learn their language?
I remember when we were on our way to our patients' house,
a friend called and I talked in Malay through the phone.
After I'm finished, I dunno why but I asked her, what did she feel listening to me talking in my own language,
and she said that she felt bad and thought it kind of ignorant for them not to even bother to learn other languages when other people can talk in English. I agreed with her, but yeah, I'm suprised to know she felt like that.

Plus, it's a bonus for myself if I can interview Chinese patients.
Patient care could be improved, at least.
And so here I am trying to learn Mandarin.
Asked a friend to teach me, in return I'd help her with her Malay.
Not my 1st attempt to learn Mandarin though.
I remember after PMR, I bought a Mandarin-Malay dictionary (or was it English-Mandarin?) hoping to learn,
but found out that I don't know how to pronounce them. *sigh*. Pretty dumb move, I know =___="
I still have the dictionary at home. Cuz well, I'm a mix of Chinese, Indian and Malay (there you go, 1Malaysia!), but I can only speak Malay. I was forced to watched Hindi movies every Saturday when I was a kid, losing to my mom over the TV, so I kind of caught a few basic Hindi words. I could even sing Kuch Kuch Hota Hai which suprised my Pakistani friend a lot. He often asked me to sing with him. heh. Missing the old days.

Anyway, I've learnt a few basic sentences and questions like how to introduce myself, asking if the patient has any pain, and asking where it is, and more importantly, learnt how to say "I speak little Mandarin!" cuz there would be no use if I can ask and then he would answer with a full story of it, not knowing I don't understand a word he said. So far so good, and it was kinda fun learning.

And I'm not sure since when, I've been pretty sensitive to racism.
I even felt bad when I hear someone used the word Keling instead of Indian cuz I know they don't like it.
And Indon instead of Indonesian. Back abroad, a friend once used the word Indon in front of an Indonesian, and I saw his face changed. And I don't like the word Bangla too. Bangladeshi sounds a lot better.


ps: when we were doing some renovation to our house in Ramadhan as a preparation for raya and my brother's and sister's coming wedding, I was told to clean up the fan. the Bangladeshi who work for the construction came over and helped even though that was not his job and it was lunchtime when he was supposed to get his rest. Kinda touched. Had a brief conversation, and he told me his boss didn't allow him to fast. Pity him. Asked him if he's going back home for raya. He celebrated raya here in Malaysia. *sigh*


with love,
~hS