Over the years, many of my friends migrated overseas. The Foochow community in which I am part of, value education over many things. So, our parents worked hard, scrooged and saved to give us, their children a good education. We grew up with an extra awareness that we needed to work hard because the extraordinary is required of us to make it. Cos our system was so bent on the quota; many of us who were deserving could not get into the local uni (which was the cheapest to study in) or if we secured a place, not a course of our choice. So, many parents sent their children overseas. It's still the same today.
Now if you send kids in their formative years to a country where better opportunities are in the offing, it is only natural that many of them would want to try work there for a while. But the 'while' soon become permanent. Some came home, tried to settle in but found it hard because the system here does not recognize their talent or hard work. And so, they uproot again and move back to the country where they studied, to familiar territory, so as to say.
But over the years too, I've managed to reconnect with quite few of them (with the help of FB). I've also gained 'peeks' into their lives. You see, most of them are 'bananas' (Chinese on the outside but very Westernized in their thoughts). But when I look at the photos they share, most of the time, what I'd see would be their friends are mostly from the same ethnic or at least Asians. Birds of the same feather.... they kinda still flock together.
The only thing is... even though my friends tell me, racism also exist in the places they've chosen as their new home, their opportunities are not exactly reduced by it. They have many laws to protect everyone's rights too... that's to put it very simplistically.
So, over here in Malaysia... we've all the different ethnics. We should actually be able to live together and prosper each other. If we do things rightly, it is only natural to expect progress. But ours is a society built on perceived rights... that one race has more rights than the others. So, we get a brain drain... but what should probably alarm us more is, by not doing things right, we've also allowed corruption and rot to set in. When there is no need to work hard, you can never hope to bring the best out of us. And if everything is made easy.... we'll just become lazy.
It's okay to have birds of the same feather flock together. It's okay to have your community and my community. The thing is, we've got to have the same set of rules for everyone so that we can do right....
7 comments:
AJ7, ....however they are but all only feathers like skins of whatever colours, they are but only all skins.
Yup.. under the skin, it's made up of the same stuff and also going to meet the same destiny.
oh no! i seem to have run out of bananas!!!!! what a tragedy LOL
Hhahaha....you are 100% correct.
But i am different hoor....you see my pics all are diversified with people of all colors.
This post speaks so much truth. Wither do we go but out of the country.
I think it is not wrong to leave the country if it is progressive & there is an opportunity to move out. As long as the Majlis Raja-Raja still exist...special rights are preserved under the protection of this very powerful non-political authority. Even the PM is still below the monarch. Unless one day we become like Libya...then it would change to The Republic of Malaysia. Hahaha
Yup, nothing wrong about leaving for greener pastures. Opportunities have always been a pull factor and repression, calamities, cruelty, injustice have always been push factors. Special rights, etc, etc..... Don't you sometimes think that they are actually also tools to re Ian in power?
Post a Comment