new year celebrations
i received an invitation from the malaysians at penn to a chinese new year lunch at a thai restaurant this afternoon. sitting around the large table, i recounted how i met one of their members in london who subsequently purposed to invite me to any malaysian gathering. we talked about our past lives, writing karangans about saya sebatang pen and saya sepasang kasut; we talked about lepaking; we talked about anwar ibrahim; mostly, they talked about i banking, internships, and jobs.
i sat there wondering how i have suppresed my malaysian identity in the past two years how resigned i am to facing my old self again. but then i thought about how privileged this group was, how even though they identify themselves as malaysians they would gladly trade nationalities for jobs. they represent malaysia although the opprtunities and wealth they possess are uncharacteristic of the ordinary malaysian person. how peculiar this malaysia is.
