my 1Malaysia

when i was just a little girl, my world was filled with chinese stuff.
my kindergarden uses chinese,even though it was..technically...a baptist church.
i watched countless chinese tv programmes,
mixed with chinese friends,
do things that is chinese *i don't know what i'm referring to*
.
then i turned 7.
suddenly i realized that there are chocolate-colored people,
why did some people talk gibberish at 200km/h..
and people who, for some reason unknown to the child i once were, wrap their heads with white cloth when it's clearly sunny outside.
i wondered why did they leave the class when it was 'pendidikan moral' period,
and why do they scribble gibberish on the wrong side of the exercise books.
.
then i turned 13.
i learnt that although there are milk-chocolate people,dark-chocolate people ,and yellow people in our country,
there are, in fact, many more colors that were unknown to me.
i realized that, like what our ancestors realized long ago when they set foot on this land,
that it's okay, to mix among ourselves.
so i grew up in this culture-friendly environment, where my friends+schoolmates could be of indian+chinese descent, malay+chinese descent, malay+indian descent, or the many other kinds of mixture from our 30++ ethnic groups from east Malaysia.
.
an all girls school i was from,
so there are cases where our girls liked each other.
some are undergoing their teenage phase, some are biologically wired as homosexuals, but that's okay, it's they way we're born to be.
even then, chinese girl(s) may become a couple with malay girl(s),
vice versa..
but not forgetting all the other heterosexual beings :P
there are inter-racial relationships going on between them and the boys beyond St.George's lair.
.
i had a malay+siamese friend,who were in a relationship with a chinese boy...
although i've never seen them personally,
nevertheless, i could feel how sweet and heart-warming it is, to be able to be with the person you love...
.
like the late Yasmin Ahmad's movie, "Sepet".
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which brings me to realizing that fact that,
although we keep emphasizing on '1Malaysia' wherever we go,
how open-minded are we to actually accept the culture where we can be with whoever we like to be with,
regardless of their race and religion.
.
over in sggs(my secondary school),
inter-racial relationships are seen as something natural,
interesting, in fact,
because we get to know and understand our friends from other races better.
.
over here where i'm currently studying,
i realized that not everyone is open to this kind of mindset yet.
well maybe they're not against it,per say..
but you can tell how skeptical they are about it.
.
'hharr...your boyfirend is a malay arrr'
or
'you're in a relationship with an indian? are you serious?'
.
i'm not trying to discriminate or oppress anybody here,
i'm merely highlighting the reality of the mindset that the majority of us are having...
.
sometimes,
we forgot the fact that nobody's perfect,
that we, as all humans are,
we tend to remember all the wrong-doings and highlight the flaws,
instead of looking on the good sides others possess,
and do some self-reflecting and realize that we, too, aren't perfect.
.
my question is,
why NOT have a relationship with a person of different race than i am?
why is it weird to like a person of different religion than i am?
what's wrong with it,actually...
because it's not against the law,
nor against the law of nature...
.
if God wanted us to stay in our own races/religions/colors,
why did He create so many different colored people in life?
.
sometimes, when a catch-phrase is coined,
how many of us have actually thought about the meaning and the application of it?
.
all we look at is what are the benefits and loss that we're going to have from the saying,"1Malaysia".
but do we actually know what it means to us, as the rakyat of this country.
.
sometimes, maybe, we just don't have the time and interest to research about simple things like this.
.
what's 1Malaysia.
yes, it means we should live in harmony with each other.
(which is what we have been doing for the past 42years)
yes, nobody can get everything they want, we should compromise.
(which we did, with some Dialog and Mesyuarat and Perjanjian in between)
but is that all the slogan bears?