banana.

i'm a proud english-educated girl.
i can't deny the fact that being fairly fluent in the international language increases my confidence in starting conversations.
i'm not shy in answering questions when a random stranger comes up to me to ask for directions etc.
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i am proud of who i am.
i'm fine with not being able to read 95% of the chinese characters i see...
i'm happy being able to speak and understand mandarin/cantonese/hokkien.
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i'm not fluent in our national language though.
but i can still speak to a certain level where others can understand what i'm trying to say...
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i used to imagine universities as a place where our differences in culture,race,religions won't affect our campus life.
in fact, it made us stronger as Malaysians,and not as Malaysian-Malay,Malaysian-Indians and Malaysian-Chinese.
finally a place where our multicultural community can function as one.
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how wrong was i.
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sometimes it's really frustrating.
you would expect our siswa-siswi to be more open-minded,
since we're (if i may..) considered the more elite group of citizens in this country...
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why does malays,always stick to the malays?
why does chinese,always ends up forming groupies with chinese?
why is it so hard to find indians here?
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sometimes,
i feel like we english-ed people don't have an easy life here.
everyone assumes that we ONLY speaks english.
and know no other languages.
they assume that we don't understand any languages other than english.
are we,the english-ed students,NOT Malaysians?
are we NOT multilingual like you are?
why do you feel pressured to talk to us?
why do you avoid talking to us?
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and with the current Chinese-learning trend,
it almost became a logical thing to speak mandarin to any chinese you meet.
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not to forget the government's effort to strengten our fluency in Bahasa Malaysia,
it's obvious that our Malay friends are the best place we can go to to practice our skills in our national language.
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people say,'you kids stress too much on english,you should focus on your mother language and your national language'.
i say,'SHOW ME PROVE THAT 'WE' ARE DOING SO,cause i can feel my english back-tracking and mandarin improving by a milestone'.
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why can't we improve all languages at the same rate?
why is there a must for us to rate what language should we be most fluent in?
why is there SK,SJK,SMK and SMJKs instead of one single school system where we can learn ALL the main languages that our citzens use in this colourful country regardless of our race??
it is not wrong for malays and indians to learn mandarin,and malays and chinese to learn tamil.
the better understanding in language alone can help settle the many misunderstandings we have between races that happens everyday in our lives.
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why complicate simple things and ruin generations of children in this twisted system???
we are brought up knowing that 'we don't learn things we don't usually use',
and not learning that 'we obtain these knowledges because deep down we realise that someday,we'll need them'.
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honestly,
it's too much to bear sometimes.
malays don't hang out with chinese,chinese don't hang out with malays.
i wish things can be like how sggs used to be.
everyone talks to everyone else...
no,not merely about academics,
about hobbies,music,empty talks.
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heck,
even chinese don't talk to chinese often.
since we have 'chinese-ed chinese' and 'english-ed chinese'
like wtf.
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i'm not usually like this,
but i can't deny the fact that there are too many 'chinese-ed chinese'.
there are too many activities carried out in mandarin.
there are too many people that automatically shuts off when they found out that you're english educated.
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it's frustrating to be treated like an outsider.
it's like i'm not part of the asian community that drifted to the Malaysian Peninsular years ago.
have you thought about how hurt it will make you feel if YOU are stranded in an english/Malay community?
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think about it. before you shoo us off next time.