National Day and National Sentiments

Hari ini Hari Kebangsaan Malaysia. Merdeka! Merdeka! Merdeka!

No I'm not going to continue blogging in that vein, ie: in Malay. Too tedious and would be too much like cutting with a blunt knife when I could use a sharper one. It is a fine sunny morning here in Singapore on Malaysia's National Day, and I am giving myself a brief respite from work to examine some thoughts related to this day and to Malaysia.

Here I am, a Malaysian student studying in Singapore because Singapore offers the best value-for-money subsidised education, a benefit which extends even to foreigners within its borders. I am not the only Malaysian flocking to this little red dot to take advantage of its low-priced, quality education -- last night a group of M'sian students gathered in the bball court in PGP for a National Day countdown and to collectively proclaim the historical triple-Merdeka cheer ala Tunku Abdul Rahman on that bygone Independence Day. A heartwarming sight of a gathering of your own countrymen, bless their faithful hearts!

A friend ascribes her patriotism to the Moral Education lessons made compulsory for every student thoughout primary and secondary. I find it sorely ironic that such a half hearted Moral Education course with a solely academic emphasis, which looks fine and dandy and productive on official reports but otherwise has little practical value, would be seen to instill any form of moral values into any of its students. Thinking back real hard, I do vaguely remember memorising a sub-value 'sayang kepada raja dan negara' (loving your king and country) or was it 'hormat kepada raja dan negara' (respecting your king and country)? I would include the definition if I could remember it, but it seems to have left me many years ago, probably soon after I handed up the SPM Moral Ed exam paper. Yet I would not doubt that vestiges of patriotism remain; even adrift in a foreign land, this is a heart grounded on a patch of M'sian soil.

This is a heart grounded on a patch of M'sian soil where air pollution (not only from the smog) begrimes its buildings, where public facilities are poorly maintained, where public buses are atrociously irregular and where the streets are unsafe at night. Where officials in government buildings boldly approach you for a bribe to speed things up, where government measures threaten to encroach and denature the Chinese-based education system, and where taxi drivers ask an extortionate fee to take you a short distance because no one uses meters nowadays.

Ironic also, that 11 years of primary and secondary education in plain, poorly maintained, purely functional, zinc-roofed school blocks with minimal facilities and marginally passable toilets have been more influential than 4 years of higher education 2 of which were spent in a university campus with posh, well-stocked libraries and well-maintained toilets, among other conveniences.

Or perhaps it is only natural this land that has first claim to my allegiance is the one I spent my formative years in. It's not the so-called Moral Education that retains my allegiance, it is not the drab school buildings that inspire this noble sentiment; it goes deeper than that, into the spirit of the people amongst whom I have grown up, into the unspoken bond of belonging and identity that M'sians share.

Or maybe it's just some damn good government propaganda on young and impressible hearts.

*Let our anthem fill the skies/ Come ye faithful Malaysians rise/ But what does patriotism mean when you/ See much you cannot be patriotic to?*

A rose by any name smells as sweet

There is this honorary chairman of a committee that I am in who has persistently been mispronouncing my name into something dreadful like 'Loy-ying'. I used to cringe inwardly at hearing this ghastly rendition of my beautiful name, but soon resigned myself to the fact that no corrections by anyone can have any effect once a certain pronounciation has taken hold in his mind.

Today I finally saw him write out what he thinks is my name -- 'Looi Ying'. He had deleted the middle 'Hooi'. -_-"

Probably mildly dyslexic, poor fellow, to not notice the mistake even after all those emails back and forth. Another girl named Audrey was also persistently addressed 'Audrio' or 'Audrea' by him, depending on how his tongue wrapped itself around those words.

This is a Chinese guy I am talking about, so it's not that there is any Western misconception of Chinese names. He is a loud and talkative person as a rule, so its not because of any sort of speech impediment. I can only conclude it is due to a lack of effort, or a lack of concern, or both.

Second mini-blogpost of the day

Which just proves my hypothesis that I am prone to blogging in fits and starts, followed by a period of silence... Or maybe it proves another friend's hypothesis, that one blogs more the busier one gets. I'm certainly getting busier... and dota-ing less (comparatively speaking).

This afternoon, I pushed open the door to a toilet cubicle only to find the most hideous stone-grey, somewhat hairy spider about the size of a 20 cent coin (legs included) squatting on the wall like a mini troll. *EEK!* And I'm not even a scaredy sort of person as a rule. But that spider was really a bit of a shocker, and stopped me dead in my tracks, as I wondered with a kind of detached horror just what made that hideous spider so hideous. Was it the fact that it was larger than the average spider one saw in a human dwelling? Or was it the fact that it looked lumpy, and was a mottled grey in bits and patches all over and looked like it just crawled out of a something that fell from the planet Zonk?

I used to consider myself very brave where creepy crawlies are concerned. Even in my hostel days I would go to the rescue of my spider-terrorized roommate armed only with a plastic bag over my right hand. One quick movement and a twist of the bag and the spider threat would be effectively neutralised with no bloodshed at all (I wasn't too happy about squashing live creatures, but imprisoning them in plastic bags with a limited supply of oxygen assuaged my conscience somewhat; at least I would not see their final moments). Anyway, I would have to be mad/purple-heart-medal brave/end-of-the-line desperate/coerced gun-to-head style to do the same with that... that thing on the wall. I used another cubicle.

Midnight action

There was some problem with accessing certain webcast lectures. The course convenor was an elderly professor and not one of the most technically-gifted persons on the faculty. He was baffled when he received the first batch of queries from frustrated students and lost no time in assuring us that he would look into the matter. His second attempt at fixing the problem was still unfruitful and I sent him another email last night advising him of the continuing problem.

In the morning, I woke to an email from this professor to all the students in this course informing us that the problem had been fixed, with the kind help of the CIT technical staff. Apparently I was not the only person concerned about the inaccessible lectures, nor the only one emailing him late at night, for in his mail he said: "I am impressed at the number of students still awake after midnight, attempting to access them. Hope you did not lose too much sleep!"

No sleep lost at all. In university, most students consider the night still young at midnight.