Lemang and lemang again...

Since I'm back home for a short visit cum holidays, i took time to make myself available for any sort of short stint holidays around the country. I had been to the northern part of the country and made time to the east coast recently.

What came to my amusement was the roadside stalls selling sticky rice in bamboo stick also known as lemang. Along the way somewhere in Terengganu, i saw more than seven stalls selling loads of the Malay delicacy being sold alongside few jars of pickled fruits. What i cannot comprehend was why do they (the seller) set up stalls selling the same bloody thing.

I mean, what was the first thing on their head everyday when they opened up their stalls? Seeing thy neighbour selling the same thing.
Maybe the different would only be in the taste of the food itself, or perhaps how the food is cooked; would it be well-cooked, over-cooked or just nicely cooked.
What kind of competition that is? Duhhh.....

For us buyers we would merely stop and probably walked over to the nearest stall and make our purchase, or perhaps we walked over to few stalls screening through their cooked sticky rice and beef or chicken 'rendang'; the usual accompaniment for the sticky rice and purchase what comes to our liking.

But that still didn't answer my questions on why do they have to do the same type of business?
Why cant they be innovative enough and create something different. Sell something different?
Or is it because they are just too plain lazy to do other thing besides selling the same food as others. Just don't care much as long as they do sell something when they managed to get the stalls from the municipal.

It's just lack of effort and creativity that would lead people to brain dead.

Malay again!

I have had one conversation with a person in regards to this race, Melayu or Malays.

All of us know that the Malays are not the original dwellers of Malaysia.
The Malays in Malaysia came from the Malay Archipelago and nearby islands that speaks the Western Austronesian language used as the official language of Malaysia and Indonesia; Bahasa Indonesia.

The people of the Malay Archipelago are predominantly from Austronesian subgroupings, and all correspondingly speak western Malay-Polynesian languages. Also, this region of Southeast Asia share more social and cultural ties with other Austronesian peoples in the Pacific than with the peoples of Mainland Southeast Asia.

Often, the mainland part of Malaysia, which is known as Malaya, is included as part of Maritime Southeast Asia in order that all the non-Oceanian Austronesian peoples can be included together in one cultural region.
The main religions in this region are Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and traditional Animism.

Thus there is definitely no Bahasa Malaysia. Bahasa Malaysia is just a term used to differentiate it from the original Bahasa Melayu aka Bahasa Indonesia.

Over centuries ago there would be a lot of traders from other side of the world that came down to this peninsula but majority would be coming from neighbouring country, Indonesia.
They are the one that found this land and later developed it and became sultans of certain states after this little country had been subdivide according to the strenght of the head of group.

From then on the earlier people would inter-marriage and breed off springs. One who knows Malaysia and its multiracial people would know that those Malays from the northern part of the country would resembles more of an Indian and Arabs people with high nose and certain features opposite of their southern counterpart, whom would be more of a Bugis looking people originated from Indonesia besides from some small state Indonesia such as Minangkabau and such.

Coming back to the conversation i had with that person; according to history those people who came down here from Indonesia are those lots that of a 'sulky' attitude and that those who are very resentful and cant make it well back in their homeland.
It seems that they came here to this malay peninsula to seek new land and console themselves; thus the feeling in some of the Malay people now would be very reflective of their ancestor.
They would always feel the need to show off their dissatisfaction but without wanting to go harder in getting what would be good for them. Would always be complaining and always sulking .....hhhmmmm....if you asked me the relevance of this theory; i got no comment but have to agree on certain attributes in the Malays nowadays.

Another Malay 'legacy'.

PENGAJARAN DAN PEMBELAJARAN SAINS DAN MATEMATIK DALAM BAHASA INGGERIS 2 - Che Det


The only problem about this is the mentality of the Malays themselves.
I figured the people that joined in the rush for the return of teaching of Maths and Science in Bahasa Malaysia are those folks that would be die hard with the 'ketuanan Melayu' because mainly i saw only the Malays in that particular gathering organised recently.

These are the type of folks would not hesitate to give a cynical comments when passing by you if you tend to be different a little bit in your overall 'presentation', also the folks that would gave uncalled for remarks when you walked with another race of the opposite sex in an intimate manner. The kind of remarks that made them to be like 'jakun' (jakun is a name of a clan of indigenous people living in the Semenanjung Malaysia forest but that term are also used as an informal insult to people with bird's brain).

These sort of people are around. A lot of them.

I had come across this type of low mentality people here in this country which im living right now when one lady commented on me speaking to my young daughter in English.
Probably her undying need to be cynical to me made her claimed that she would not want to speak to her children in English because she is 'afraid' that the children would not know how to talk in Bahasa Malaysia later on in life.
At that instance, i thought that this lady must not be very well informed or read!

In the first place, if she were the well read type, she would not say that kind of things to another person out of respect of one person's liking and whatnot.
Secondly, how could she ever want to converse in English when she herself doesn't have a very good command of the language and that the children are of the public school 'offspring'; the typical Malay children and those who'd just kept quiet when you asked something in English to them.

I am not trying to belittle some people with certain handicap but honestly, when one are well read, one will surely know that children will naturally picked-up their mother tongue language along the way. I am not an English lady and so does my husband.
We do converse in Bahasa Malaysia at time but i personally prefer to have my conversation in English due to my upbringing and my being very easy relating things in that particular language.
I can see it in my own and extended families. Mixed marriage are not uncommon. Chinese, European and the best case study is my own sister who is married to an Arab man. Her children speaks in English among themselves and still can speak good Bahasa Malaysia with the mother. Besides that they can understand and speak soft Arabic.
Thus my conclusion about that person who commented on me speaking in English is that she is a real 'katak bawah tempurung' or in English ' frog under coconut shell' or something like that.....nevertheless, although the frog had leaped out of the shell, it will still be too blind to see the real world due to overtime living in darkness; due to not opening her 'eyes and mentality' to something that will bring benefits to her off springs later in their life.

Likewise when Dr M says although he might speak and dream in that language, that doesn't mean that he is an ounce lack of the 'Bumiputera' blood on his vein. He still carry his ID stating that he is a Malay. But he is a very different type of Malay. He is not the PAS (an Islamic political party managing one very unhygienic and dirty state in the East coast of Malaysia) type of Malay, he is definitely not the Keadilan (another baseless political party formed to fight for justice of one man that will one day sold this country away) type of Malay. He is a Malay with vision and have developed this little country to be recognised worldwide.

Those people who fight for the return of Bahasa Malaysia to the two subject in school are mere 'rioters' and 'attention seekers'.
I can imagine how their children struggled in school speaking that international language because of their parents fault.
No wonder almost 90% of the Malays student who studied overseas still can't converse in good English. They are forced to memorised just to get the grade. But when it come to the reality of life, they'll be slacking behind the non-Malays who can speak and converse in good English besides having the attitude that is slacking in the Malay overall; the go getter type.


My word for this people is ; TOO BAD!
Live on with your Malay legacy!