Release all ISA detainees and free Malaysia from tyranny!
Election now!
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Going bald in Seoul in support of ISA detainees
Release all ISA detainees and free Malaysia from tyranny!
Election now!
Monday, May 12, 2008
Earthquake in Beijing - 12th May 2008 2:55PM
I thought I was dizzy, but then I looked up to the lights hanging on the ceiling was swinging. I told my colleague sitting in front of me : "Earthquake!"
Lasted about 1 - 2 minutes, I saw a lot of people outside of my office building here in Beijing, Dongcheng district.
I also heard from my other Chinese colleague that there's also major earthquake in Sichuan province, south of China.
This is the 3rd time I felt the tremor, but I think this is the worse one that I ever felt in Beijing. My building is on top of Beijing subway.
The unusual cold weather and wind also bring some chill in my spine.
Looked at the CNN website 1 minutes ago, and confirmed all the news.
Salam sejahtera from :
Dongcheng district, Beijing, China - 12th May 2008 2:55PM
Lasted about 1 - 2 minutes, I saw a lot of people outside of my office building here in Beijing, Dongcheng district.
I also heard from my other Chinese colleague that there's also major earthquake in Sichuan province, south of China.
This is the 3rd time I felt the tremor, but I think this is the worse one that I ever felt in Beijing. My building is on top of Beijing subway.
The unusual cold weather and wind also bring some chill in my spine.
Looked at the CNN website 1 minutes ago, and confirmed all the news.
Salam sejahtera from :
Dongcheng district, Beijing, China - 12th May 2008 2:55PM
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Why I'm proud to be Malaysian - Anak Malaysia
Living in China for about 2 years now, and it's a very interesting world. This article hit right on to the point on everyday life especially if you look like the common China Chinese. That is why I am so proud to be a Malaysian. It is a real eye opener. But one thing that I still can't grasp is that there are still lot of people in Malaysia that are still prefer to be call a "Malaysian Chinese". Mind blogging, and I just wish those that are considering themselves "Chinese", come to China and live it for yourselves - Anak Malaysia
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Someome sent this as an email years ago, it's a funny list that's done the rounds many of you may have seen it before. What do you guys think about it? At what point does funny social commentary like this slip in to racism? If people talk about the English having a stiff upper lip, eating roast beef and being overly polite no one would ever consider it racism, most would just laugh it off as a collection of old stereotypes - this wouldn't happen in countries where the people seem to have superiority complexes ie China, the USA, Korea etc. Anyway it's quite funny
America
The Chinese regard America as a combination of the Promised Land and the Great Satan. They admire America because it is rich, which in a society as materialistic as China’s is the sum of all virtue. On the other hand, they are convinced that the US is constantly working towards China’s downfall. As a result, they all believe that America deliberately bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, that it intentionally crashed one of its spy planes on Hainan, and that it defends Taiwan because it wants to keep China weak and divided.
Art
China has produced some great works of art- poetry and calligraphy in particular- but in modern China, the term is used largely to refer to items of kitsch. As a result, appreciation of the arts in China is somewhat stunted. Children are told at school that Chinese poems are wonderful, and they are taught to recite some of them, but understanding is confined to what the work tells you about the author’s biography rather than any aesthetic considerations. Calligraphic prints are given multicoloured backgrounds to jazz them up. Excursions to temples and other scenic spots are popular, but only so that people can take pictures of their friends standing in front of them before going off for lunch.
Music in China means Cantopop, Beijing Opera or pastiches of western music written for orchestras of scratchy folk fiddles. In the circumstances, it is perhaps unsurprising that an unusually large proportion of Chinese people profess not to like any music, which may be an indication that they would if they had actually heard any worth the name.
Bureaucracy
Take two thousand years of imperial rule, add fifty years of Communist control freakery and you end up with Chinese bureaucracy. If the aim of a bureaucracy were to consume forests at the fastest rate possible, this would be a world-beater. Nothing can be done without a form. Often in triplicate. Forms are designed on the basis of what questions can be asked rather than what information is needed. If there is no form already in existence for a particular task, you have to create a new one for the purpose, on which you should enter every item of information in your possession. Students in China are required to take lessons in Computing: reasonable enough, except that all they are taught is how to fill in forms on a computer.
Children
Chinese children are weird. Weirdest of all are the babies, which are dressed in outfits with little flaps at the back to allow them to sh*t wherever and whenever they please (in the gutter if you’re lucky, on the pavement if you’re not).
From about the age of four, the girls have their hair put up in two little antennae on the top of their heads, which make them look like monsters from outer space. These are later transformed into pigtails and then a ponytail.
The boys are less attractive specimens: their faces are usually covered in snot, and they are among the most enthusiastic shouters and starers in the country. Once in their teens they are relatively harmless, their main vice being clogging up Internet bars playing Red Alert when you are trying to e-mail home.
Chinese people in general suffer from arrested development, so even the adults in many ways resemble children. They will fight to be the first onto a train even when they have reservations; and to be the first off, despite walking as slowly as possible once they are out. They believe everything authority figures tell them, and their response to any setback is the huff.
Chinglish
The Chinese government has recently realised that English is a more useful language to know than Chinese, so it has launched a programme to teach everyone English. The result is that all students, regardless of subject, have to study what is called “public English”. This is taught by teachers who themselves cannot speak the language, so they teach it in the same way that people used to learn Latin. The exams consist largely of filling in blanks in sentences, so this is all that the students are taught to do.
Chinglish is what happens when you teach someone to fill in blanks and then ask him to speak or write in English. At moments of crisis such as this, the victim will compose a sentence in perfectly good Chinese and attempt to translate it literally. The results are unfortunate. Chinese is much freer with superlatives than English, for example, so they will tell you that everyone and everything is very beautiful and very lovely and that they very love him/her/it. All foods are very delicious. Years in Chinese are said one digit at a time, so they will tell you how excited they are about the “two oh oh eight” Olympics. And you might spend a long time thinking about “Liberation” before realising that they are referring to what happened in 1949. The following are (probably apocryphal) instructions found in Chinese hotels:
The lift is being fixed for next day. During that time we regret that you will be unbearable.
Please leave your values at the front desk.
You are very invited to take advantage of the chambermaid.
Because of impropriety of entertaining guests of the opposite sex in the bedroom, it is suggested that the lobby be used for this purpose.
Tenants are not permitted to bring cattle or live fowls.
Clothes
China is not the most fashion-conscious nation, and apart from teenage fads, most people are content with an immutable Chinese style. For the men this consists of a grey jacket with a label on the sleeve, a grey pullover underneath, grey trousers and grey slip-on shoes, set off by a wispy moustache. The main crime committed by women is a determination to continue wearing skirts through autumn to the bitter end in winter, displaying luridly coloured thermal tights of a kind last seen on the Wicked Witch of the West.
Confucius
Confucius was a very good and very clever man. He opposed the death penalty and promoted benevolence. He also said:
Do unto others as you would be done by. (Analects 15.23).
The good man does not grieve that other people do not recognise his merits. His only anxiety is lest he should fail to recognise theirs. (Analects 1.16).
Is it not a pleasure to have friends come from afar? (Analects 1.1).
Unfortunately the country today still kills its own people, is in the grip of a national paranoia, and is deeply racist.
This is not to say, however, that Confucianism is without influence in contemporary China. His attitudes to authority and social precedence, unsurprising in the context of a 5th century BC China riven by civil war, have helped to produce a culture today in which ossification, subservience and hostility to new ideas are regarded as virtues. All this is very convenient for the government, which has got over its “Criticise Lin Biao and Confucius” period (a Cultural Revolution era campaign) and now sees Confucius as a useful tool for keeping the masses in order.
Death Penalty
Unlike in most countries, crime in China is generally the preserve of the rich. Corruption is much more prevalent than theft or violent crime. The poor are a much softer target, however, so the main plank of the government’s periodic anti-crime drive is killing thieves, prostitutes and drug users. They do this with such enthusiasm that the country is now responsible for three quarters of the world’s executions.
Environment
The Chinese are bemused by the idea of the environment- the lack of people being by definition bad- but they are making tremendous progress in eliminating it. The pesky Three Gorges will soon be safely under water, and China’s cities do well in the lists of Ten Most Polluted. The most recent achievement has been cutting down all the trees in the north of the country to produce dust storms. The government has recently announced a plan to “tackle” the problem by setting up a monitoring centre.
Food
The aims of meals in China are to transfer food onto the table and floor, and to get other people’s spit into your mouth. These purposes are facilitated by eating with sticks, and by swirling your sticks round in the communal dishes. It’s also polite to talk with your mouth full, so that everyone can see exactly what you’re eating. And the Chinese love dogs and cats; normally one between two is enough. Amuse your friends by showing how far you can spit the bones! Chinese restaurants are easy to locate: just look out for what appears to be a pet shop.
Most Chinese people like the idea of trying Western food, but in practice they are invariably disappointed that it does not taste like Chinese food. Ideally, Chinese food should not taste of food at all, but instead of chilli paste, salt, vinegar and of course MSG.
Hello!
Hello in China does not mean hello; it means “I have seen a foreigner”. This is the reason why 99 times out of a hundred it will be shouted after you in the street rather than said to you. The most ardent hello-ers are teenage boys who roam the street in couples with their arms round each other, and who shout at foreigners in what can only described as a queer high-pitched voice. Only in a country where homosexuality is unthinkable could anyone get away with being quite so camp.
Holidays
In China, the holiday is another valuable tool for reducing productivity and spreading the work round. They are helped in this by their use of two calendars: (Western and lunar), each of which has its own set of holidays. The Daddy of all Chinese holidays is the Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year, which they string out for several weeks. This is also the time when about sixty million migrant workers go home to see their families, making travel even more fun than usual. The Chinese words for January, February etc. are “first month”, “second month” and so on, so they will often translate the first lunar month as January as well (to avoid confusion).
Another helper with the Chinese holiday mania is the UN, which has produced endless International Women’s/Children’s/Marmosets’ Days which no one except the Chinese ever notices, but which they celebrate enthusiastically. They think that this makes them just like us.
Another misconception surrounds April Fool’s Day, which they believe is much like Christmas, but a but funnier. If you confess that you haven’t made use of a whoopee cushion since you were ten, they will consider this proof that you are no fun. Religion being illegal, Christmas (“Merry Christmas” in Chinglish) is observed largely by means of grotesque decorations, which are not taken down until February.
Hygiene
China is still essentially a peasant society; some of the peasants now have more money, but their manners are delightfully unchanged. Men, women and children spit anywhere, anytime, indoors or out, which often makes the ground treacherous underfoot. Spitting is also a good means of spreading tuberculosis (a particularly popular disease round here), which breeds yet more spitting. To complement this, the people have an aversion to brushing their teeth, making China the halitosis capital of the world.
The Chinese toilet has a legendary status justly comparable with the black hole of Calcutta. Public toilets have more sh*t and urine on the floor around the toilet than in it, and cleaning seems to be an annual festival at best. The people also seem not yet to have learned how to flush. Washing your hands after shitting is considered eccentric; after pissing, madness. The Chinese also take a robust attitude to washing up, dipping the dishes in dirty water being considered sufficient in most restaurants.
Internet
The Internet is very popular in China, despite its being worse here than in any other country except Equatorial Guinea. The more popular it becomes, the slower it gets, so it’s often worth taking along a book when you go to e-mail. China has Internet Bars instead of Internet Cafes, but despite the name you won’t get a drink there. The Chinese word is Wangba, which can also mean “son-of-a-bitch”, so exercise caution when asking for directions. The best time to try is after America has gone to bed, but before the Chinese students finish classes for the day, and don’t even think about it at the weekend.
In addition to the ubiquitous flaky connections, the computers in most Internet Bars have something horribly wrong with them- a letter E which doesn’t work, a mouse which rolls in only one direction or the like- just to make the experience a bit more challenging. Most unpredictable of all is what you will actually be allowed to look at when you get online. The Chinese government in its wisdom has decided that a number of sites are spiritually polluting and has bravely prevented its people from looking at them. Among these are sites about t-bet, the BBC’s site and most free web hosts, apparently on the grounds that they allow people to publish their own opinions.
Kitsch
The Chinese have a devotion to kitsch surpassing even that of the Romanovs. This is the spiritual home of the novelty lighter, tapestries of fluffy white kittens and multicoloured, flashing, musical fairy lights.
One recent patriotic song was accompanied by a video of a hallucinogenic dream sequence combining Tiananmen Square, workers marching forward into the future, doves, the Yangtze river, Deng, Jiang Zemin and what looked suspiciously like a tractor factory.
The specialty of Chinese television is the song and dance extravaganza, most often performed in skin-tight military uniforms. No grin is too cheesy, no dance routine too hackneyed, no Chinglish chorus too idiotic to feature in these items.
News
China has hundreds of TV stations in its various regions, but all of them carry the same news bulletins supplied by the government in Beijing. The first four items normally tell you what the President, Prime Minister, Vice-President and legislative leader (in order of precedence) did that day. Unfortunately the President seems not to lead a particularly active life: the big news story of the day might be his sending a telegram to the deputy prime minister of Togo thanking him for his support for the one China principle (China is possibly the last place on earth where the telegram is regarded as a modern means of communication). Next comes the news of yet more bumper harvests, followed by five minutes at the end for The Rest of the World. All of this is available in stilted English as well as Chinese, so everyone can enjoy the fun.
Non-action
Chinese people have a tremendous faith in non-action as the solution to any problem. If it is ignored for long enough, it may eventually become somebody else’s business, so they can ignore it in their turn. People have no sense of urgency in work, in their free time or when travelling. If walking, they walk as slowly as possible, drifting from one side of the pavement to the other in order to slow down anyone foolish enough to be in a hurry. If cycling, they move so slowly that they have to weave from side to side to stay upright. The Chinese may cycle more than people in other countries, but they also do it far worse
Numbers
The Chinese have a Victorian mania for categorisation, most obviously expressed in their “number formulae”. The best known in the west is the Gang of Four, but a few others are:
Three supports and two militaries
Four clean-ups
Five Taoist mountains
Six arts
Seven emotions
Thirty-six stratagems
Most of these formulations are either government slogans or generally received ideas, which the Chinese find very useful. If everybody else talks about the five Taoist mountains, there is no need for you to worry about all the other ones. It makes life simpler, and a simple life is what they like.
Paranoia
The Chinese people are convinced that everyone is against them- they know this because the government tells them so every day. So if the Japanese prime minister honours his country’s war dead, it’s to annoy the Chinese; if other countries disapprove of massacring students in the middle of Beijing, it’s meddling in internal affairs; if the world community supports t-bet self-determination, it’s because they’re in league with the Dalai Lama clique. Even the rejection of Beijing’s first bid to host the Olympics was taken as a vote against China rather than a vote for the winning city.
Understandably, they have certain grievances about the activities of the Western countries in the 19th century and of Japan in the 20th, but these have been inflated into a national complex. The Japanese occupation in particular is endlessly recycled, while films and television rehearse the mythical Chinese war against Japan. Even Chinese history books repeat the fiction that China beat Japan in the Second World War, while the Chinese state media stir up anti-Japanese hysteria whenever a Japanese book fails to grovel sufficiently.
The result of all this is a determination to become the most powerful country in the world, presumably so that they can have a bash at occupying Japan.
Parties
The Chinese party is a serious business. The basic format is that of a talent show, although most of the talent on show is Cantopop karaoke. The master of ceremonies will ensure that the programme is not departed from, while those not performing sit in rows surrounding the performer, in the manner of the United Nations Security Council. Relaxation will be taken as a sign of not trying hard enough.
Proportion
Chinese people believe that the world consists of two things: China and Everything Else. And the greatest of these is China. (When in China, you are no longer British, or Canadian, or German, you are simply “foreign”, and are considered an oracle on the question of what “foreigners” believe and do.) Most Chinese people really believe that if “foreigners” knew more about the country, they would think so too.
They therefore learn next to nothing about the outside world, and so they have no basis for comparison between China and other countries. Literature is a good example. The lack of any substantial novelists in the country’s history does not prevent four mediocre Ming and Qing dynasty works from being thought the peak of the novel; Lu Xun, a minor short story writer, is virtually deified and has parks named after him in most big cities; while the writers of interminable plays are considered similar to Shakespeare. Chinese history is considered “glorious” for no other reason than that it is as long as that of any other Eurasian country. Qualification for the World Cup is described as “the culmination of a thirty year long march”. A closely connected problem is that of relativism.
Racism
The official line is that china is a socialist paradise and there is therefore no racism. The small matter of t-bet aside, the reason that most of China lacks the kind of racial tensions found in western countries is simply that the Chinese racists have been more successful in keeping out the darkies than our ones were. China is 96% Han Chinese, including t-bet and Xinjiang, which doesn’t give them a great many chances for expressing their racism in everyday life. Unfortunately this racial monotony also means that they have been unable to get over it, so when you come along you become the focus.
Relativism
Chinese people adapt to their country’s insularity by adopting a particularly idiotic brand of relativism, according to which there are Chinese ideas and Foreign ideas, and the two must never mix. A good example is Chinese medicine. Chinese medicine as known in the west is a more or less usefully different way of tackling minor complaints, for which acupuncture and the like can be very handy. But for the Chinese, Chinese medicine means a full complement of hocus pocus folk remedies and worries, according to which almost any complaint is caused by wearing too light clothes, exposing one’s feet to cold, or eating hot and cold food in the wrong order (although they disagree amongst themselves about the correct order). Any reference to the laws of physics will be met with a smiling assurance that these are “Western” ideas, which somehow cease to apply at the border. The same response is used to any notion which has not been entrenched in Chinese culture for the past two thousand years.
Received Ideas
As a totalitarian society in which difference is a sin and small-mindedness is a virtue, China is a nest of received ideas. Some of the most popular are:
Beijing: Beijing is a beautiful city. You hope to go there one day.
China: China is a great country with a glorious history. It is a developing country.
Chinese People: The Chinese people are very hospitable.
Cultural Revolution: A mistake. See Mao.
Democracy: The time is not yet ripe. You will quote Mao on the necessity of finishing a house’s foundations before building the roof.
Deng Xiaoping: A clever man.
English: English is an international language. You are learning it, but it is much harder than Chinese.
Great Leap Forward: A mistake. See Mao.
Human Rights: No country has a perfect record on human rights.
Mao: A great man who made some mistakes.
Olympics: You are pleased that Beijing will host the Olympic Games. You hope to work there as a volunteer.
Shanghai: Shanghai is an interesting city. You hope to go there one day.
Taiwan: An integral part of China. If the Taiwanese do not like it, that is their problem.
Tiananmen Massacre: You feel sorry for the students, but you have to admit they were unrealistic.
t-bet: An integral part of China. If the t-bet do not like it, that is their problem.
WTO: You think that China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation presents both challenges and opportunities.
Staring
Staring seems to be what most Chinese like to do for fun. In the daytime, at night, indoors, outdoors, on the other side of the street or under your nose, they will stare. There is a theory that because the Chinese lack the western concept of privacy that it is not considered rude to stare in China. This is nonsense. If you stare back at them (go ahead, it causes somewhat less trouble than hitting them), they will normally become shifty and look away, after which they will cunningly glance back at you every few seconds in the hope that you will have stopped. Chinese people don’t like being stared at any more than you do, and the reason they still do it is their failure to grasp that foreigners are real people with real feelings too. It’s pure racism.
Students
Students in China generally look as if they are fifteen or sixteen, and act as if they are eleven or twelve. They wear clothes decorated with pictures of cartoon characters, and their pencil cases feature slogans such as “a real friend true is always love you”. They giggle when they are happy and sulk when they are not. They think it quite unfair of a teacher to ask them a question to which he has not just told them the answer.
Some of the students’ attitude problems may also be due to their being woken up at six each morning in order to do exercises, so that they are ready to fall asleep again during their first classes.
The students are taught rather like British schoolchildren of the 1950s: they sit in rows behind individual desks, while the teacher stands on a platform at the front of the class and tells them what the answers to the exam will be.
Supermarkets
Chinese supermarkets outwardly resemble those in the west fairly closely, but under the skin they remain deeply Chinese. Customers are assumed to be thieves until proven otherwise: in furtherance of this policy, they will make you leave your bags at the entrance; if you decide not to buy anything and leave without going through the checkout then all hell will break loose. Once inside, putting anything in your basket is considered a suspicious act, and will often result in a member of staff hovering at your shoulder for the remainder of your visit. The supermarkets are as over manned as every other institution in the country, and each aisle will have one or two women who are good at chatting, but bad at restocking shelves.
Once past the checkout, you have to remember to allow the security guard to tear your receipt. Even the Chinese have no idea what this is for.
Universities
Universities are run in theory by a President, who lives his life in a very pretty gilded cage, but is not allowed to actually do anything. He is “supervised” by the Party secretary, whose qualifications are having bribed the next highest official and a devotion to Mao. As a result, students are still made to study Mao Zedong thought, and every college has airbrushed pictures of Marx, Lenin, Mao and Deng on the walls.
Teachers also have to be certified as having studied and as upholding the ideas of these four.
Work
Unsurprisingly, there is not enough work in China for one and a half billion people, but the unemployment rate is kept low by employing several people to do one person’s job. Most people finish their day’s work by mid-morning, at which time they start to drink. In the unfortunate event of any work appearing, it is immediately passed on to someone else to deal with. Sacking workers is illegal under almost any circumstances, regardless of redundancy, incompetence, laziness, dishonesty- or of course drunkenness.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Someome sent this as an email years ago, it's a funny list that's done the rounds many of you may have seen it before. What do you guys think about it? At what point does funny social commentary like this slip in to racism? If people talk about the English having a stiff upper lip, eating roast beef and being overly polite no one would ever consider it racism, most would just laugh it off as a collection of old stereotypes - this wouldn't happen in countries where the people seem to have superiority complexes ie China, the USA, Korea etc. Anyway it's quite funny
America
The Chinese regard America as a combination of the Promised Land and the Great Satan. They admire America because it is rich, which in a society as materialistic as China’s is the sum of all virtue. On the other hand, they are convinced that the US is constantly working towards China’s downfall. As a result, they all believe that America deliberately bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, that it intentionally crashed one of its spy planes on Hainan, and that it defends Taiwan because it wants to keep China weak and divided.
Art
China has produced some great works of art- poetry and calligraphy in particular- but in modern China, the term is used largely to refer to items of kitsch. As a result, appreciation of the arts in China is somewhat stunted. Children are told at school that Chinese poems are wonderful, and they are taught to recite some of them, but understanding is confined to what the work tells you about the author’s biography rather than any aesthetic considerations. Calligraphic prints are given multicoloured backgrounds to jazz them up. Excursions to temples and other scenic spots are popular, but only so that people can take pictures of their friends standing in front of them before going off for lunch.
Music in China means Cantopop, Beijing Opera or pastiches of western music written for orchestras of scratchy folk fiddles. In the circumstances, it is perhaps unsurprising that an unusually large proportion of Chinese people profess not to like any music, which may be an indication that they would if they had actually heard any worth the name.
Bureaucracy
Take two thousand years of imperial rule, add fifty years of Communist control freakery and you end up with Chinese bureaucracy. If the aim of a bureaucracy were to consume forests at the fastest rate possible, this would be a world-beater. Nothing can be done without a form. Often in triplicate. Forms are designed on the basis of what questions can be asked rather than what information is needed. If there is no form already in existence for a particular task, you have to create a new one for the purpose, on which you should enter every item of information in your possession. Students in China are required to take lessons in Computing: reasonable enough, except that all they are taught is how to fill in forms on a computer.
Children
Chinese children are weird. Weirdest of all are the babies, which are dressed in outfits with little flaps at the back to allow them to sh*t wherever and whenever they please (in the gutter if you’re lucky, on the pavement if you’re not).
From about the age of four, the girls have their hair put up in two little antennae on the top of their heads, which make them look like monsters from outer space. These are later transformed into pigtails and then a ponytail.
The boys are less attractive specimens: their faces are usually covered in snot, and they are among the most enthusiastic shouters and starers in the country. Once in their teens they are relatively harmless, their main vice being clogging up Internet bars playing Red Alert when you are trying to e-mail home.
Chinese people in general suffer from arrested development, so even the adults in many ways resemble children. They will fight to be the first onto a train even when they have reservations; and to be the first off, despite walking as slowly as possible once they are out. They believe everything authority figures tell them, and their response to any setback is the huff.
Chinglish
The Chinese government has recently realised that English is a more useful language to know than Chinese, so it has launched a programme to teach everyone English. The result is that all students, regardless of subject, have to study what is called “public English”. This is taught by teachers who themselves cannot speak the language, so they teach it in the same way that people used to learn Latin. The exams consist largely of filling in blanks in sentences, so this is all that the students are taught to do.
Chinglish is what happens when you teach someone to fill in blanks and then ask him to speak or write in English. At moments of crisis such as this, the victim will compose a sentence in perfectly good Chinese and attempt to translate it literally. The results are unfortunate. Chinese is much freer with superlatives than English, for example, so they will tell you that everyone and everything is very beautiful and very lovely and that they very love him/her/it. All foods are very delicious. Years in Chinese are said one digit at a time, so they will tell you how excited they are about the “two oh oh eight” Olympics. And you might spend a long time thinking about “Liberation” before realising that they are referring to what happened in 1949. The following are (probably apocryphal) instructions found in Chinese hotels:
The lift is being fixed for next day. During that time we regret that you will be unbearable.
Please leave your values at the front desk.
You are very invited to take advantage of the chambermaid.
Because of impropriety of entertaining guests of the opposite sex in the bedroom, it is suggested that the lobby be used for this purpose.
Tenants are not permitted to bring cattle or live fowls.
Clothes
China is not the most fashion-conscious nation, and apart from teenage fads, most people are content with an immutable Chinese style. For the men this consists of a grey jacket with a label on the sleeve, a grey pullover underneath, grey trousers and grey slip-on shoes, set off by a wispy moustache. The main crime committed by women is a determination to continue wearing skirts through autumn to the bitter end in winter, displaying luridly coloured thermal tights of a kind last seen on the Wicked Witch of the West.
Confucius
Confucius was a very good and very clever man. He opposed the death penalty and promoted benevolence. He also said:
Do unto others as you would be done by. (Analects 15.23).
The good man does not grieve that other people do not recognise his merits. His only anxiety is lest he should fail to recognise theirs. (Analects 1.16).
Is it not a pleasure to have friends come from afar? (Analects 1.1).
Unfortunately the country today still kills its own people, is in the grip of a national paranoia, and is deeply racist.
This is not to say, however, that Confucianism is without influence in contemporary China. His attitudes to authority and social precedence, unsurprising in the context of a 5th century BC China riven by civil war, have helped to produce a culture today in which ossification, subservience and hostility to new ideas are regarded as virtues. All this is very convenient for the government, which has got over its “Criticise Lin Biao and Confucius” period (a Cultural Revolution era campaign) and now sees Confucius as a useful tool for keeping the masses in order.
Death Penalty
Unlike in most countries, crime in China is generally the preserve of the rich. Corruption is much more prevalent than theft or violent crime. The poor are a much softer target, however, so the main plank of the government’s periodic anti-crime drive is killing thieves, prostitutes and drug users. They do this with such enthusiasm that the country is now responsible for three quarters of the world’s executions.
Environment
The Chinese are bemused by the idea of the environment- the lack of people being by definition bad- but they are making tremendous progress in eliminating it. The pesky Three Gorges will soon be safely under water, and China’s cities do well in the lists of Ten Most Polluted. The most recent achievement has been cutting down all the trees in the north of the country to produce dust storms. The government has recently announced a plan to “tackle” the problem by setting up a monitoring centre.
Food
The aims of meals in China are to transfer food onto the table and floor, and to get other people’s spit into your mouth. These purposes are facilitated by eating with sticks, and by swirling your sticks round in the communal dishes. It’s also polite to talk with your mouth full, so that everyone can see exactly what you’re eating. And the Chinese love dogs and cats; normally one between two is enough. Amuse your friends by showing how far you can spit the bones! Chinese restaurants are easy to locate: just look out for what appears to be a pet shop.
Most Chinese people like the idea of trying Western food, but in practice they are invariably disappointed that it does not taste like Chinese food. Ideally, Chinese food should not taste of food at all, but instead of chilli paste, salt, vinegar and of course MSG.
Hello!
Hello in China does not mean hello; it means “I have seen a foreigner”. This is the reason why 99 times out of a hundred it will be shouted after you in the street rather than said to you. The most ardent hello-ers are teenage boys who roam the street in couples with their arms round each other, and who shout at foreigners in what can only described as a queer high-pitched voice. Only in a country where homosexuality is unthinkable could anyone get away with being quite so camp.
Holidays
In China, the holiday is another valuable tool for reducing productivity and spreading the work round. They are helped in this by their use of two calendars: (Western and lunar), each of which has its own set of holidays. The Daddy of all Chinese holidays is the Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year, which they string out for several weeks. This is also the time when about sixty million migrant workers go home to see their families, making travel even more fun than usual. The Chinese words for January, February etc. are “first month”, “second month” and so on, so they will often translate the first lunar month as January as well (to avoid confusion).
Another helper with the Chinese holiday mania is the UN, which has produced endless International Women’s/Children’s/Marmosets’ Days which no one except the Chinese ever notices, but which they celebrate enthusiastically. They think that this makes them just like us.
Another misconception surrounds April Fool’s Day, which they believe is much like Christmas, but a but funnier. If you confess that you haven’t made use of a whoopee cushion since you were ten, they will consider this proof that you are no fun. Religion being illegal, Christmas (“Merry Christmas” in Chinglish) is observed largely by means of grotesque decorations, which are not taken down until February.
Hygiene
China is still essentially a peasant society; some of the peasants now have more money, but their manners are delightfully unchanged. Men, women and children spit anywhere, anytime, indoors or out, which often makes the ground treacherous underfoot. Spitting is also a good means of spreading tuberculosis (a particularly popular disease round here), which breeds yet more spitting. To complement this, the people have an aversion to brushing their teeth, making China the halitosis capital of the world.
The Chinese toilet has a legendary status justly comparable with the black hole of Calcutta. Public toilets have more sh*t and urine on the floor around the toilet than in it, and cleaning seems to be an annual festival at best. The people also seem not yet to have learned how to flush. Washing your hands after shitting is considered eccentric; after pissing, madness. The Chinese also take a robust attitude to washing up, dipping the dishes in dirty water being considered sufficient in most restaurants.
Internet
The Internet is very popular in China, despite its being worse here than in any other country except Equatorial Guinea. The more popular it becomes, the slower it gets, so it’s often worth taking along a book when you go to e-mail. China has Internet Bars instead of Internet Cafes, but despite the name you won’t get a drink there. The Chinese word is Wangba, which can also mean “son-of-a-bitch”, so exercise caution when asking for directions. The best time to try is after America has gone to bed, but before the Chinese students finish classes for the day, and don’t even think about it at the weekend.
In addition to the ubiquitous flaky connections, the computers in most Internet Bars have something horribly wrong with them- a letter E which doesn’t work, a mouse which rolls in only one direction or the like- just to make the experience a bit more challenging. Most unpredictable of all is what you will actually be allowed to look at when you get online. The Chinese government in its wisdom has decided that a number of sites are spiritually polluting and has bravely prevented its people from looking at them. Among these are sites about t-bet, the BBC’s site and most free web hosts, apparently on the grounds that they allow people to publish their own opinions.
Kitsch
The Chinese have a devotion to kitsch surpassing even that of the Romanovs. This is the spiritual home of the novelty lighter, tapestries of fluffy white kittens and multicoloured, flashing, musical fairy lights.
One recent patriotic song was accompanied by a video of a hallucinogenic dream sequence combining Tiananmen Square, workers marching forward into the future, doves, the Yangtze river, Deng, Jiang Zemin and what looked suspiciously like a tractor factory.
The specialty of Chinese television is the song and dance extravaganza, most often performed in skin-tight military uniforms. No grin is too cheesy, no dance routine too hackneyed, no Chinglish chorus too idiotic to feature in these items.
News
China has hundreds of TV stations in its various regions, but all of them carry the same news bulletins supplied by the government in Beijing. The first four items normally tell you what the President, Prime Minister, Vice-President and legislative leader (in order of precedence) did that day. Unfortunately the President seems not to lead a particularly active life: the big news story of the day might be his sending a telegram to the deputy prime minister of Togo thanking him for his support for the one China principle (China is possibly the last place on earth where the telegram is regarded as a modern means of communication). Next comes the news of yet more bumper harvests, followed by five minutes at the end for The Rest of the World. All of this is available in stilted English as well as Chinese, so everyone can enjoy the fun.
Non-action
Chinese people have a tremendous faith in non-action as the solution to any problem. If it is ignored for long enough, it may eventually become somebody else’s business, so they can ignore it in their turn. People have no sense of urgency in work, in their free time or when travelling. If walking, they walk as slowly as possible, drifting from one side of the pavement to the other in order to slow down anyone foolish enough to be in a hurry. If cycling, they move so slowly that they have to weave from side to side to stay upright. The Chinese may cycle more than people in other countries, but they also do it far worse
Numbers
The Chinese have a Victorian mania for categorisation, most obviously expressed in their “number formulae”. The best known in the west is the Gang of Four, but a few others are:
Three supports and two militaries
Four clean-ups
Five Taoist mountains
Six arts
Seven emotions
Thirty-six stratagems
Most of these formulations are either government slogans or generally received ideas, which the Chinese find very useful. If everybody else talks about the five Taoist mountains, there is no need for you to worry about all the other ones. It makes life simpler, and a simple life is what they like.
Paranoia
The Chinese people are convinced that everyone is against them- they know this because the government tells them so every day. So if the Japanese prime minister honours his country’s war dead, it’s to annoy the Chinese; if other countries disapprove of massacring students in the middle of Beijing, it’s meddling in internal affairs; if the world community supports t-bet self-determination, it’s because they’re in league with the Dalai Lama clique. Even the rejection of Beijing’s first bid to host the Olympics was taken as a vote against China rather than a vote for the winning city.
Understandably, they have certain grievances about the activities of the Western countries in the 19th century and of Japan in the 20th, but these have been inflated into a national complex. The Japanese occupation in particular is endlessly recycled, while films and television rehearse the mythical Chinese war against Japan. Even Chinese history books repeat the fiction that China beat Japan in the Second World War, while the Chinese state media stir up anti-Japanese hysteria whenever a Japanese book fails to grovel sufficiently.
The result of all this is a determination to become the most powerful country in the world, presumably so that they can have a bash at occupying Japan.
Parties
The Chinese party is a serious business. The basic format is that of a talent show, although most of the talent on show is Cantopop karaoke. The master of ceremonies will ensure that the programme is not departed from, while those not performing sit in rows surrounding the performer, in the manner of the United Nations Security Council. Relaxation will be taken as a sign of not trying hard enough.
Proportion
Chinese people believe that the world consists of two things: China and Everything Else. And the greatest of these is China. (When in China, you are no longer British, or Canadian, or German, you are simply “foreign”, and are considered an oracle on the question of what “foreigners” believe and do.) Most Chinese people really believe that if “foreigners” knew more about the country, they would think so too.
They therefore learn next to nothing about the outside world, and so they have no basis for comparison between China and other countries. Literature is a good example. The lack of any substantial novelists in the country’s history does not prevent four mediocre Ming and Qing dynasty works from being thought the peak of the novel; Lu Xun, a minor short story writer, is virtually deified and has parks named after him in most big cities; while the writers of interminable plays are considered similar to Shakespeare. Chinese history is considered “glorious” for no other reason than that it is as long as that of any other Eurasian country. Qualification for the World Cup is described as “the culmination of a thirty year long march”. A closely connected problem is that of relativism.
Racism
The official line is that china is a socialist paradise and there is therefore no racism. The small matter of t-bet aside, the reason that most of China lacks the kind of racial tensions found in western countries is simply that the Chinese racists have been more successful in keeping out the darkies than our ones were. China is 96% Han Chinese, including t-bet and Xinjiang, which doesn’t give them a great many chances for expressing their racism in everyday life. Unfortunately this racial monotony also means that they have been unable to get over it, so when you come along you become the focus.
Relativism
Chinese people adapt to their country’s insularity by adopting a particularly idiotic brand of relativism, according to which there are Chinese ideas and Foreign ideas, and the two must never mix. A good example is Chinese medicine. Chinese medicine as known in the west is a more or less usefully different way of tackling minor complaints, for which acupuncture and the like can be very handy. But for the Chinese, Chinese medicine means a full complement of hocus pocus folk remedies and worries, according to which almost any complaint is caused by wearing too light clothes, exposing one’s feet to cold, or eating hot and cold food in the wrong order (although they disagree amongst themselves about the correct order). Any reference to the laws of physics will be met with a smiling assurance that these are “Western” ideas, which somehow cease to apply at the border. The same response is used to any notion which has not been entrenched in Chinese culture for the past two thousand years.
Received Ideas
As a totalitarian society in which difference is a sin and small-mindedness is a virtue, China is a nest of received ideas. Some of the most popular are:
Beijing: Beijing is a beautiful city. You hope to go there one day.
China: China is a great country with a glorious history. It is a developing country.
Chinese People: The Chinese people are very hospitable.
Cultural Revolution: A mistake. See Mao.
Democracy: The time is not yet ripe. You will quote Mao on the necessity of finishing a house’s foundations before building the roof.
Deng Xiaoping: A clever man.
English: English is an international language. You are learning it, but it is much harder than Chinese.
Great Leap Forward: A mistake. See Mao.
Human Rights: No country has a perfect record on human rights.
Mao: A great man who made some mistakes.
Olympics: You are pleased that Beijing will host the Olympic Games. You hope to work there as a volunteer.
Shanghai: Shanghai is an interesting city. You hope to go there one day.
Taiwan: An integral part of China. If the Taiwanese do not like it, that is their problem.
Tiananmen Massacre: You feel sorry for the students, but you have to admit they were unrealistic.
t-bet: An integral part of China. If the t-bet do not like it, that is their problem.
WTO: You think that China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation presents both challenges and opportunities.
Staring
Staring seems to be what most Chinese like to do for fun. In the daytime, at night, indoors, outdoors, on the other side of the street or under your nose, they will stare. There is a theory that because the Chinese lack the western concept of privacy that it is not considered rude to stare in China. This is nonsense. If you stare back at them (go ahead, it causes somewhat less trouble than hitting them), they will normally become shifty and look away, after which they will cunningly glance back at you every few seconds in the hope that you will have stopped. Chinese people don’t like being stared at any more than you do, and the reason they still do it is their failure to grasp that foreigners are real people with real feelings too. It’s pure racism.
Students
Students in China generally look as if they are fifteen or sixteen, and act as if they are eleven or twelve. They wear clothes decorated with pictures of cartoon characters, and their pencil cases feature slogans such as “a real friend true is always love you”. They giggle when they are happy and sulk when they are not. They think it quite unfair of a teacher to ask them a question to which he has not just told them the answer.
Some of the students’ attitude problems may also be due to their being woken up at six each morning in order to do exercises, so that they are ready to fall asleep again during their first classes.
The students are taught rather like British schoolchildren of the 1950s: they sit in rows behind individual desks, while the teacher stands on a platform at the front of the class and tells them what the answers to the exam will be.
Supermarkets
Chinese supermarkets outwardly resemble those in the west fairly closely, but under the skin they remain deeply Chinese. Customers are assumed to be thieves until proven otherwise: in furtherance of this policy, they will make you leave your bags at the entrance; if you decide not to buy anything and leave without going through the checkout then all hell will break loose. Once inside, putting anything in your basket is considered a suspicious act, and will often result in a member of staff hovering at your shoulder for the remainder of your visit. The supermarkets are as over manned as every other institution in the country, and each aisle will have one or two women who are good at chatting, but bad at restocking shelves.
Once past the checkout, you have to remember to allow the security guard to tear your receipt. Even the Chinese have no idea what this is for.
Universities
Universities are run in theory by a President, who lives his life in a very pretty gilded cage, but is not allowed to actually do anything. He is “supervised” by the Party secretary, whose qualifications are having bribed the next highest official and a devotion to Mao. As a result, students are still made to study Mao Zedong thought, and every college has airbrushed pictures of Marx, Lenin, Mao and Deng on the walls.
Teachers also have to be certified as having studied and as upholding the ideas of these four.
Work
Unsurprisingly, there is not enough work in China for one and a half billion people, but the unemployment rate is kept low by employing several people to do one person’s job. Most people finish their day’s work by mid-morning, at which time they start to drink. In the unfortunate event of any work appearing, it is immediately passed on to someone else to deal with. Sacking workers is illegal under almost any circumstances, regardless of redundancy, incompetence, laziness, dishonesty- or of course drunkenness.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Right on the spot - my funny bone almost broke
Even the pro BN mass media screw up sometimes. Look at the picture.
"They were definitely not Ketua Bahagian or Ketua Penerangan Bahagian or any kind of grassroots leaders. Look at the four women in the first row of this picture. The first two girls from the left were some of the teenagers who did not seem to know where they were or what they were doing. There were many women, like the woman in the blue blouse, who looked like they were forced to sacrifice their Sunday shopping to attend this gathering."
"That would make Badawi look like an idiot, again."
I rest my case...
Salam sejahtera from Beijing... from Anak Malaysia
Monday, April 7, 2008
The Malaysia Identity Part 2
For a long time, I have been branded and called Malaysian Chinese. Why? Because that my grandfather came from China and my father is Malaysian Chinese and by decree I am a Malaysian Chinese. Indeed, I wonder why this label have to be put my head? Let's do some analysis.
My grandfather came to Malaya to find a living as most of the "Shin Keh" (New Guests). Most of them have one purpose in mind: to earn a living and then go back to their motherland China for a more comfortable living. So for a long time, they toil their back to earn a living, and living as a "guest" in Malaya. But as time goes, most of them stayed. Some of them settle down and build their new house here. Later after some time, their house become their home. Their children are born into this world into the same land that I was born. Unknown to this "new guests", they are no more "guest" but became a partner in this household called Malaysia.
Until now, I still see a lot of "guest" mentality among the descendant of this "new guests". "We are Malaysia Chinese!" so they called themselves. Well, if you want to be a "guest", then you will always be treated as guest. "We have traditional cloth, lion dance etc etc"; ok you have that, but please remember that once your ancestor decide to build a "home" here in Malaysia, it become part of our (Malaysian) culture. "We speak Hokkien, Cantonese, Chinese!"; ok, so do a lot of African nation that speaks French, South American that speask Spanish, Portugese, but do they call themselves French or Spanish? If you're in Africa and you call a Nigerian a French, you'll be glad that he/she is not a headhunter (literally).
So what's wrong with these "Malaysian Chinese" people? Do they think themselves are still a "guest" in Malaysia? If they still really do think themselves as "Chinese" I think they should just go back to China, where people are "really Chinese" in the land of spits. At one time, I had a Singaporean(Chinese) asking me about my roots because of my limited Chinese vocabulary. Well, I ask him to think of his root! Singapore's national anthem is in what language and how much he knows about his national anthem? He went silence. If he is so proud that he is a Chinese, then go back to China. Why want to stay in Singapore? I can proudly say that I know 100% of my national anthem and each and every words in Negaraku. I am proud that I have a king and have royalties. I am also proud that my country have so many inter-mixing cultures. I think our culture are unique in the world!
So stop labeling me a Malaysian Chinese. You can associate my ancestor to China and a Chinese, but for me that are born unto this beautiful land call Malaysia, call me Anak Malaysia. The association between me and "Chinese" is just that my ancestor came from China, and THAT'S IT! Since my parents are born in Malaysia, and my father grew up and toil this land together with other Malaysian, and even die in his heartland Bukit Mertajam, Penang; why still label me as Malaysian Chinese? Is is that my name has 3 syllabus and thus you label me as Chinese? Tell me please, what is the different between you and me beside skin colors and religion wise? We are born in this land and perhaps one day we will also be buried 6 feet under in this land of ours, like my father, and his father.
So please call me Anak Malaysia (Malaysian).
My grandfather came to Malaya to find a living as most of the "Shin Keh" (New Guests). Most of them have one purpose in mind: to earn a living and then go back to their motherland China for a more comfortable living. So for a long time, they toil their back to earn a living, and living as a "guest" in Malaya. But as time goes, most of them stayed. Some of them settle down and build their new house here. Later after some time, their house become their home. Their children are born into this world into the same land that I was born. Unknown to this "new guests", they are no more "guest" but became a partner in this household called Malaysia.
Until now, I still see a lot of "guest" mentality among the descendant of this "new guests". "We are Malaysia Chinese!" so they called themselves. Well, if you want to be a "guest", then you will always be treated as guest. "We have traditional cloth, lion dance etc etc"; ok you have that, but please remember that once your ancestor decide to build a "home" here in Malaysia, it become part of our (Malaysian) culture. "We speak Hokkien, Cantonese, Chinese!"; ok, so do a lot of African nation that speaks French, South American that speask Spanish, Portugese, but do they call themselves French or Spanish? If you're in Africa and you call a Nigerian a French, you'll be glad that he/she is not a headhunter (literally).
So what's wrong with these "Malaysian Chinese" people? Do they think themselves are still a "guest" in Malaysia? If they still really do think themselves as "Chinese" I think they should just go back to China, where people are "really Chinese" in the land of spits. At one time, I had a Singaporean(Chinese) asking me about my roots because of my limited Chinese vocabulary. Well, I ask him to think of his root! Singapore's national anthem is in what language and how much he knows about his national anthem? He went silence. If he is so proud that he is a Chinese, then go back to China. Why want to stay in Singapore? I can proudly say that I know 100% of my national anthem and each and every words in Negaraku. I am proud that I have a king and have royalties. I am also proud that my country have so many inter-mixing cultures. I think our culture are unique in the world!
So stop labeling me a Malaysian Chinese. You can associate my ancestor to China and a Chinese, but for me that are born unto this beautiful land call Malaysia, call me Anak Malaysia. The association between me and "Chinese" is just that my ancestor came from China, and THAT'S IT! Since my parents are born in Malaysia, and my father grew up and toil this land together with other Malaysian, and even die in his heartland Bukit Mertajam, Penang; why still label me as Malaysian Chinese? Is is that my name has 3 syllabus and thus you label me as Chinese? Tell me please, what is the different between you and me beside skin colors and religion wise? We are born in this land and perhaps one day we will also be buried 6 feet under in this land of ours, like my father, and his father.
So please call me Anak Malaysia (Malaysian).
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
The funniest letter I've ever seen!!!
YAB (Yang Amat Bodoh) Abdullah bin Haji Ahmad Badawi
Perdana Menteri Malaysia
Putrajaya, Wilayah Persekutuan.
Ke bawah DYMM Yang di Pertuan Agong
Sultan Mizan Zainal Abidin
Istana Negara
Tuanku,
Sembah patik harap diampun.
Patik baru sekejap tadi bangun dari tidur dan berhajat ingin mengadap Tuanku kerana kemelut politik Negara ini.
Patik nok mintok maaf atah kesilapang besor patik kerana dok dengor nasehat Tuanku yang bijok. Patik rasa patik memang dok guna, rakyat menderite tapi patik dok kahwin satu lagi, pergi jalang jalang makang anging sedap belake dok habis habis.
Your Highness, pacal yang hina ini ingin meletakkan jawatan sebagai wakil rakyat KEPALA TERBATAS dan sebagai Perdana Menteri yang paling lembik sekali dalam sejak zaman kesultanan Melaka and sejak kemerdekaan dari ratu david beckham. Patik memang tidak layak menduduki takhta pemerintahan sejak dulu dulu lagi.
Tanpa tugas-tugas Negara yang berat sokmo, patik bolehlah ambik masa yang terluang untuk tidur lebih sikit dari biasa, dan berdengkur lebih kuat sikit bisingnya.
Sekian,
BERKHIDMAT UNTUK NEGARA
Paklah.
--------------------------
Kepada
YAB Dollah
Daripada
DYMM TUANKU
Your application has been approved.
SULIT & RAHSIA.
signed and sealed.
Perdana Menteri Malaysia
Putrajaya, Wilayah Persekutuan.
Ke bawah DYMM Yang di Pertuan Agong
Sultan Mizan Zainal Abidin
Istana Negara
Tuanku,
Sembah patik harap diampun.
Patik baru sekejap tadi bangun dari tidur dan berhajat ingin mengadap Tuanku kerana kemelut politik Negara ini.
Patik nok mintok maaf atah kesilapang besor patik kerana dok dengor nasehat Tuanku yang bijok. Patik rasa patik memang dok guna, rakyat menderite tapi patik dok kahwin satu lagi, pergi jalang jalang makang anging sedap belake dok habis habis.
Your Highness, pacal yang hina ini ingin meletakkan jawatan sebagai wakil rakyat KEPALA TERBATAS dan sebagai Perdana Menteri yang paling lembik sekali dalam sejak zaman kesultanan Melaka and sejak kemerdekaan dari ratu david beckham. Patik memang tidak layak menduduki takhta pemerintahan sejak dulu dulu lagi.
Tanpa tugas-tugas Negara yang berat sokmo, patik bolehlah ambik masa yang terluang untuk tidur lebih sikit dari biasa, dan berdengkur lebih kuat sikit bisingnya.
Sekian,
BERKHIDMAT UNTUK NEGARA
Paklah.
--------------------------
Kepada
YAB Dollah
Daripada
DYMM TUANKU
Your application has been approved.
SULIT & RAHSIA.
signed and sealed.
Monday, March 24, 2008
I am proud to have a King!
Just the other day I went to www.malaysia-today.com and for the first time I get to know the name of "Raja Muda Dr. Nazrin Shah". I went thru a bit of his profile and found out an impressive background of this royalty. I also went a bit further and look at his biography and also his royal family, and in that very moment, it struck me. I just can believe it, how diverse our Malaysia cultural and history it is. It is just fascinating. At the very moment when I looked at his family portrait, my colleague, a chinese, ask me the question, " wow, who is this pretty girl you're looking at?",
And then I proudly said "It is one of my country princess".
I am so proud that I come from a beautiful land with royalties!
Hidup Tuanku!
And then I proudly said "It is one of my country princess".
I am so proud that I come from a beautiful land with royalties!
Hidup Tuanku!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
