Still on 1Malaysia...

12.1.2010

Still on 1Malaysia…

When I was growing in the 70’s, at least the vision I had while growing in the low cost flats of Rifle Range in Penang, was that the Chinese were not well versed in conversational Malay. The young and old alike gave two hoots to learn the lingo what more to use it. They need not use it. They converse among themselves and their friends (who are also Chinese) in their mother tongue. They frequent shops run by Chinese and they chose to dine at shops serving their kind of food.

Fast forward to 1988 and 1990’s – scenario pretty much the same – at least from the experience I got while working at HTAR Klang. They could not converse and give a decent description of their symptoms (but they can describe in detail to a fellow Chinese doctor/ nurse about their detailed salient progression of their disease complete with details about their escapade to the local GP and sinseh and the previous days’ treatment regimes. Bottom line, they had money – so who cares- they would not speak Malay!

Fast forward again, past Y2K, scenario still the same. I am now in private practice. Only difference now, smatters of Indonesian Malay have fused in (e.g. 15 tanggal bulan 2) –due to bear necessity to converse with their Indonesian maids so that they can perform their dirty jobs at their pasar malam stalls so that they can get more money!

Bangadeshi, Myanmarese and Vietnamese who all started coming to Malaysia after the 90’s have all mastered the Malay language and can hold decent conversations with non-Chinese Malaysians. The irony of all these is that the non-Chinese Malaysian cannot communicate as well with his fellow Chinese Malaysian as he can with a foreigner. This is of course exaggeration! I do have many Chinese Malaysian close friends, colleagues and decent speaking patients.

The seed of racism is planted in each Malaysian individual. When he sees a fellow homo sapien, he will tend to automatically categorise and sub-categorise that individual him into his ethnic and sub-ethnic background – whether he is Malay, Chinese, Indian, Chindian, Eurasian or anything in between. This may need other sub-divisions in the case of Indians – whether Northern Indian, Southern Indian (Tamil, Telugu or Malayalee), Moslem, Sikh, Hindu, etcetera, etcetera.

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RIFLE RANGE BOY

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