Instead of doing my usual rant about how we haven't really set ourselves free from the colonial mentality, I am going to go ahead and write about something light-hearted instead. Something relatable to all Malaysians, or at the very least, most. I'm going to list down the things that I love about Asia's penis, and yes, I'm going to ignore the 'So gay!' remarks.
1) Quite obviously, the food.
I think I can safely say that I'm not the only one who takes food really fucking seriously. It's something that we all, as Malaysians share; the uncompromising fervour in which we select our food. Frankly, it borders on insanity because where the fuck else would you find people who are willing to take a trip to go to another state just to get something to eat? I remember going back to Penang from Melaka. The trip itself takes five hours and when we arrived, depending on the time, we'll have a quick rest before setting out to get to our usual haunts. The following days are then spent in absolute gluttony.
I used to think that that was it. We love food and are prepared to undertake a pilgrimage just to get what we crave but nowadays, I realised that it's so much more than that. For instance, we don't give a shit when it comes to appearances. Rendang is a fucking ugly dish but who gives a fuck? Nasi kandar has a look that not even a mother can love but all I can think about is how much my tongue is going to orgasm. As long as it tastes good, bring it.
Sure, sometimes we tease each other over what we eat. People look at me in disbelief when I say that I have eaten every part of a goat (Except for the testicles but I'm looking to remedy that) and I, in turn, grimace at the thought of 'budu'. And it's fine, you know, because at the end of the fucking day, food is what brings us together.
2) You, The People
There was this one instance which I believe will stay with more for the remainder of my life. I was in an Indian shop in Melaka, having a banana leaf meal when in comes a Chinese couple. They sat opposite me and I observed them silently. Somehow or rather, the girl knocked over a glass of water and her partner, frowning, said; "Sayang, behave please".
And it made my day because at that moment, our cultures blended in an almost seamless manner. There they were, a Chinese couple, having an Indian meal, speaking Malay. There are many other occasions like this and I'm sure I'm not the only one who has had the pleasure of watching it happen. I was in Kelantan once, in a Chinese coffee shop and I saw the owner drop everything he was doing to help this old Malay man up the stairs into his shop. And then they conversed in a fusion of Hokkien and Kelantanese and that shit fucking blew my mind, man. I was in Penang once, having Nasi Kandar (Behind Chowrasta Market, and if you say that it's not the best nasi kandar place, you can go suck a cat's dick). In came this two guys of uncertain race; I thought they were Indian but then again, who really knew. After the meal they began to talk in a Penangite accent and I laughed so hard because I was expecting them to speak Tamil.
The media insists that we are plagued by racism. We have the superiority groups running rampant, fucking around as if the country belonged to them (I'm looking at you, PERKASA) and we have absolutely retarded, part human part longkang fuckers leading the charge. What's worse is that we eat this up. We are so easily swayed by these rumours to the point where I'm not even sure if any of us have the ability for basic reasoning.
All I ask is for you to chill the fuck out and look at what we have. Look. We are in a massive pot filled to the brim with so many different people and cultures and we are left to cook on a low heat. You know what that makes us? Fucking delicious. Sure, I admit, once in awhile, we'll come across an ingredient which has gone bad but to throw out the whole goddamn pot is ludicrous.
I've traveled to a lot of places and every single time, I find myself comparing it to Malaysia. To home. And so far, none of these places have even come close to the lovable insanity that we undergo on a daily basis back home.
We don't need an Uncle Sim (God bless that man's soul) to come around every year to remind us about racial harmony. We don't need Ibrahim Katak to show us how one person can ruin the reputation of a race. We don't need any of them. All we need to do is go to a mamak and look at how amazing we are. Look at the laughing faces, the multiple faces with slanted eyes, heavy facial hair and brown skin.
And on that note, let's not forget about Sabah and Sarawak either. The tuak swigging fellas are welcomed to stay for the rest of the party. Except for the Kinabatangan cunt.
3) The History
We have been occupied by the Portugese, Dutch, British and the Japanese. Then came the communist years and then finally, our songkok'd brother got up on the podium to tell us, all of us, that we are independent. That's it in a nutshell basically. 1511-1957. That's 443 years, for those of you who are lazy.
On one hand, you might take the morbid path and say that we must never forget the bastards who took our lands and raped our women and used our children as basketballs [citation needed]. On the other hand, perhaps you might look at it in a different way:
We have so much fucking culture, man.
I love our history. It's so colourful and even now, the colours have remained permanently dyed into the canvas of our nation. Take a walk in Melaka - where it all started, as they say - and look at what's left. Or more accurately, what has been retained. I can go on about it like a tourism officer on cocaine but I'll leave that to my more enthusiastic colleagues.
What I would like to focus on is this. We have an epic saga of our own. Our history is a towering epic filled with amazing character development, a plot that extends a couple of hundred years and infused with so much folklore, it's orgasmic.
Take the Malaccan Sultanate for example. You have the classic founding of a city, the rise to glory, the golden years and then the fall. That in itself is very riveting but wait, there's more. Somehow or rather, we decided that this shit needs some goddamn flair and so we added myths. From that bloody cunning mousedeer to Puteri Gunung Ledang to Hang Tuah and his Tamingsari to Sultan mahmud Mangkat Dijulang... It's like the Asian Game of Thrones, only with presumably more nudity and violence.
But that's not all. So the sultanate shifted seats and more delicious stories arose from that. Then we have to keep in mind that the Malacca Sultanate wasn't the only kingdom that existed. Srivijaya, Langkasuka, other stuff with equally complicated names... The list goes on.
Then we have the freedom fighters, champions of the people. Mat Salleh, Dol Said, Tok Gajah... And when the fires of resistance have been reduced to embers, the ones who rebuilt the nation came to be. You know their names.
Yet we have a few voices who have the gall to dismiss our history as boring.
I don't understand this trend of not appreciating our culture. I want to say a lot more about this but I believe that I must do so at another time or I risk setting a figurative fire to this page.
End note: Appreciate our history. Remember what that guy said, you know, the quote on the first page of the Sejarah book.
4) The casual racism
Now I know, this might be the entry that raises a few eyebrows but hear me out.
I've always been a guy who doesn't really belong in any specific race or group. This might be due to the fact that I am an asshole but we'll get to that later - probably never. And so I tend to hang out with everybody, if only for awhile.
This gave rise to the realisation that while we condemn racism, we are, undoubtedly racist at heart. To deny that simple fact is like saying Penang has no good food or that Perak is not filled with people under the influence of Ketum. We are racist, period.
And you've all heard it before. Malays are lazy good for nothings, Chinese are greedy, materialistic cunts and Indians are... Well. Toddy swigging, anal loving, rubber tappers.
And the best thing is we've managed to take racism and actually further the art into something much more intense. Take Malays for example. Malaccans will never get along with Nogoris or Johoreans and vice versa. The east coast states are all backward, uncivilised fucks to the west coast states while the east coast regards the west coast as heathens who will probably have skewers jammed into their asses on judgement day. Penangite Malays are laughed at for allowing Penang to be run by the Chinese and on that note, may I just say that I have not met a person who speaks well for Negeri Sembilan apart from those who are probably under the influence of some good ol' nasi kangkang.
The Indians have the same thing too. I hang out with a lot of Punjabis and man, it's always hilarious when they talk about other non-punjabi Indians.
We are so used to racism to the point where we use them as jokes and among friends, it's part of conversation. And it's awesome.
5) Our unity
You know, for all our bickering over minor issues, we always come together when it matters the most. The recent MH incidences proved that. I'm not very good at sympathy but watching everybody mourn together, as Malaysians fucking impressed me.
And we're not just united in grief. Perhaps that's the benefit of being a small country.
We have a lot of things we take for granted. What I wrote probably constitutes the superficial layer of it. We must not allow ourselves to be blinded at what we have. Having so many difference surrounding us makes it so easy to hate each other but it is absolutely imperative to not allow it to cloud our judgement.
Look at what we have. More often than not, our similarities have saved us from so much hardship. It's so undignified to allow the colour of our skin to dictate how we should act around each other.
I'm sitting in my room right now, preparing for an exam tomorrow and wishing that I'm home so that I can watch some fireworks. Get mad at the fucking mat rempits and shit like that.
Happy independence day, Malaysia.
1) Quite obviously, the food.
I think I can safely say that I'm not the only one who takes food really fucking seriously. It's something that we all, as Malaysians share; the uncompromising fervour in which we select our food. Frankly, it borders on insanity because where the fuck else would you find people who are willing to take a trip to go to another state just to get something to eat? I remember going back to Penang from Melaka. The trip itself takes five hours and when we arrived, depending on the time, we'll have a quick rest before setting out to get to our usual haunts. The following days are then spent in absolute gluttony.
I used to think that that was it. We love food and are prepared to undertake a pilgrimage just to get what we crave but nowadays, I realised that it's so much more than that. For instance, we don't give a shit when it comes to appearances. Rendang is a fucking ugly dish but who gives a fuck? Nasi kandar has a look that not even a mother can love but all I can think about is how much my tongue is going to orgasm. As long as it tastes good, bring it.
Sure, sometimes we tease each other over what we eat. People look at me in disbelief when I say that I have eaten every part of a goat (Except for the testicles but I'm looking to remedy that) and I, in turn, grimace at the thought of 'budu'. And it's fine, you know, because at the end of the fucking day, food is what brings us together.
2) You, The People
There was this one instance which I believe will stay with more for the remainder of my life. I was in an Indian shop in Melaka, having a banana leaf meal when in comes a Chinese couple. They sat opposite me and I observed them silently. Somehow or rather, the girl knocked over a glass of water and her partner, frowning, said; "Sayang, behave please".
And it made my day because at that moment, our cultures blended in an almost seamless manner. There they were, a Chinese couple, having an Indian meal, speaking Malay. There are many other occasions like this and I'm sure I'm not the only one who has had the pleasure of watching it happen. I was in Kelantan once, in a Chinese coffee shop and I saw the owner drop everything he was doing to help this old Malay man up the stairs into his shop. And then they conversed in a fusion of Hokkien and Kelantanese and that shit fucking blew my mind, man. I was in Penang once, having Nasi Kandar (Behind Chowrasta Market, and if you say that it's not the best nasi kandar place, you can go suck a cat's dick). In came this two guys of uncertain race; I thought they were Indian but then again, who really knew. After the meal they began to talk in a Penangite accent and I laughed so hard because I was expecting them to speak Tamil.
The media insists that we are plagued by racism. We have the superiority groups running rampant, fucking around as if the country belonged to them (I'm looking at you, PERKASA) and we have absolutely retarded, part human part longkang fuckers leading the charge. What's worse is that we eat this up. We are so easily swayed by these rumours to the point where I'm not even sure if any of us have the ability for basic reasoning.
All I ask is for you to chill the fuck out and look at what we have. Look. We are in a massive pot filled to the brim with so many different people and cultures and we are left to cook on a low heat. You know what that makes us? Fucking delicious. Sure, I admit, once in awhile, we'll come across an ingredient which has gone bad but to throw out the whole goddamn pot is ludicrous.
I've traveled to a lot of places and every single time, I find myself comparing it to Malaysia. To home. And so far, none of these places have even come close to the lovable insanity that we undergo on a daily basis back home.
We don't need an Uncle Sim (God bless that man's soul) to come around every year to remind us about racial harmony. We don't need Ibrahim Katak to show us how one person can ruin the reputation of a race. We don't need any of them. All we need to do is go to a mamak and look at how amazing we are. Look at the laughing faces, the multiple faces with slanted eyes, heavy facial hair and brown skin.
And on that note, let's not forget about Sabah and Sarawak either. The tuak swigging fellas are welcomed to stay for the rest of the party. Except for the Kinabatangan cunt.
3) The History
We have been occupied by the Portugese, Dutch, British and the Japanese. Then came the communist years and then finally, our songkok'd brother got up on the podium to tell us, all of us, that we are independent. That's it in a nutshell basically. 1511-1957. That's 443 years, for those of you who are lazy.
On one hand, you might take the morbid path and say that we must never forget the bastards who took our lands and raped our women and used our children as basketballs [citation needed]. On the other hand, perhaps you might look at it in a different way:
We have so much fucking culture, man.
I love our history. It's so colourful and even now, the colours have remained permanently dyed into the canvas of our nation. Take a walk in Melaka - where it all started, as they say - and look at what's left. Or more accurately, what has been retained. I can go on about it like a tourism officer on cocaine but I'll leave that to my more enthusiastic colleagues.
What I would like to focus on is this. We have an epic saga of our own. Our history is a towering epic filled with amazing character development, a plot that extends a couple of hundred years and infused with so much folklore, it's orgasmic.
Take the Malaccan Sultanate for example. You have the classic founding of a city, the rise to glory, the golden years and then the fall. That in itself is very riveting but wait, there's more. Somehow or rather, we decided that this shit needs some goddamn flair and so we added myths. From that bloody cunning mousedeer to Puteri Gunung Ledang to Hang Tuah and his Tamingsari to Sultan mahmud Mangkat Dijulang... It's like the Asian Game of Thrones, only with presumably more nudity and violence.
But that's not all. So the sultanate shifted seats and more delicious stories arose from that. Then we have to keep in mind that the Malacca Sultanate wasn't the only kingdom that existed. Srivijaya, Langkasuka, other stuff with equally complicated names... The list goes on.
Then we have the freedom fighters, champions of the people. Mat Salleh, Dol Said, Tok Gajah... And when the fires of resistance have been reduced to embers, the ones who rebuilt the nation came to be. You know their names.
Yet we have a few voices who have the gall to dismiss our history as boring.
I don't understand this trend of not appreciating our culture. I want to say a lot more about this but I believe that I must do so at another time or I risk setting a figurative fire to this page.
End note: Appreciate our history. Remember what that guy said, you know, the quote on the first page of the Sejarah book.
4) The casual racism
Now I know, this might be the entry that raises a few eyebrows but hear me out.
I've always been a guy who doesn't really belong in any specific race or group. This might be due to the fact that I am an asshole but we'll get to that later - probably never. And so I tend to hang out with everybody, if only for awhile.
This gave rise to the realisation that while we condemn racism, we are, undoubtedly racist at heart. To deny that simple fact is like saying Penang has no good food or that Perak is not filled with people under the influence of Ketum. We are racist, period.
And you've all heard it before. Malays are lazy good for nothings, Chinese are greedy, materialistic cunts and Indians are... Well. Toddy swigging, anal loving, rubber tappers.
And the best thing is we've managed to take racism and actually further the art into something much more intense. Take Malays for example. Malaccans will never get along with Nogoris or Johoreans and vice versa. The east coast states are all backward, uncivilised fucks to the west coast states while the east coast regards the west coast as heathens who will probably have skewers jammed into their asses on judgement day. Penangite Malays are laughed at for allowing Penang to be run by the Chinese and on that note, may I just say that I have not met a person who speaks well for Negeri Sembilan apart from those who are probably under the influence of some good ol' nasi kangkang.
The Indians have the same thing too. I hang out with a lot of Punjabis and man, it's always hilarious when they talk about other non-punjabi Indians.
We are so used to racism to the point where we use them as jokes and among friends, it's part of conversation. And it's awesome.
5) Our unity
You know, for all our bickering over minor issues, we always come together when it matters the most. The recent MH incidences proved that. I'm not very good at sympathy but watching everybody mourn together, as Malaysians fucking impressed me.
And we're not just united in grief. Perhaps that's the benefit of being a small country.
We have a lot of things we take for granted. What I wrote probably constitutes the superficial layer of it. We must not allow ourselves to be blinded at what we have. Having so many difference surrounding us makes it so easy to hate each other but it is absolutely imperative to not allow it to cloud our judgement.
Look at what we have. More often than not, our similarities have saved us from so much hardship. It's so undignified to allow the colour of our skin to dictate how we should act around each other.
I'm sitting in my room right now, preparing for an exam tomorrow and wishing that I'm home so that I can watch some fireworks. Get mad at the fucking mat rempits and shit like that.
Happy independence day, Malaysia.
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