mwm

Actually, what I wanted to write about was the malay writing week or month or whatever it is which starts this month. Heh, got confused with the timing leh. Im not going to write in malay anymore. Not because my malay sucks but because it always ends up sounding like im writing a poem or a typical malay soppy I lost my love, he made my life hell and im dying of cancer kind of novel. And if im not writing it that way, it will be like the bahasa pasar which is kind of not appropriate or nice. Nope, never going to blog in malay again. Anyway, back to the malay writing thingy.

We are suppose to write about the malay culture, social stuff and our language. Well, our language is beautiful but the thing is, my generation and the younger ones, dont really appreciate it. Yeap, we misuse it by jumbling it up with English, Chinese and tamil or hindi in some cases. But the adults cant blame us. Blame it on the education system.

You see, what I can remember about malay lessons in primary school was that it was a time to joke around with your friends and to finish up the assignment as fast as possible. And in the later primary school years, it was the time when I found out there was such a thing as teachers pet, biasness and profanities. Ooooh, yes, I started that bad habit in primary school. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

Then came secondary school, it was an awkward moment where emotions were fragile and loneliness was felt even though youre in a room full of crazy and screaming juveniles. The first 2 years of malay lessons has got to be the most boringest, I know there’s no such word, lesson. My long lost buddy ,still lost in planet Pluto, and I spent the 1 hour or so crapping and bitching about our malay teacher. And all that I can remember was that I got sent out of the classroom twice for talking. One time it was only me sitting on the cold hard cement floor. God, that was soo embarrassing. The final two years was more intense because we had Cikgu Sahlan as our malay teacher. He was scary, a bit temperamental and a very loud person. But hes cool. Thats when we realize that our malay was not quite atrocious but not excellent either. Man, we didnt even know what kata majmuk was. Bengap eh?

And poly life was, how do I say it, there was no malay lesson at all. We were invited to join the malay club thingy but being the shy, unsociable person that I am, I didnt bother. Yes, I AM SHY. I couldnt go through another round of introducing myself to strangers because I was still in shock after getting the taste of ID life. Furthermore, we were so caught up in our projects that we had no time to think of cca. And for the whole 3 years, every conversation we had was in English. We still converse in English even when we were among our own people. And up till now, that voice in my head is not in malay but in English. Can you believe it? So this answers Xians question about the dream with the Dalai Lama. They were talking to me in English.

So, what should be done by the education system now?

1. Organise monthly or yearly trips to any malay heritage place.
2. Organize scriptwriting, songwriting or essay writing competition in malay, since young people nowadays love to sing, write and blah, blah, blah
3. Make it compulsory to speak proper malay during malay lessons, and sue the people who speak in english.

Well, thats all that I could come out with. Not much help right? But its a start. I dont know if theyve done this now but there was none of this during my time. So lets hope that the generations of malay to come would respect the language more than we do now. Heck, I hope they still know how to speak malay by that time.