Reflecting on my culture.

by: Abdullah Afiq

I was intrigue with the statements made by Mr. Ricaldi on being curious and always asking questions when it comes to culture. In the perspective of Mr. Ricaldi, I think it is interesting for him to get the opportunity to travel the globe and experience all sorts of culture and human behaviour, which at the same time will made it easy for him to do all the thinking and asking. Narrowing the scope down a little bit, as a Malay man living in an urban, mostly urban area, the pop/ hipster culture and Westernisation has really, really taken its toll on the youth and me in particular. It is hard nowadays to find a piece of an existing real 'Malay' settlement in urban areas, even in kampungs, as waves of modernity has swept everything stretching beyond the lines of our suburbs.

With that in perspective, we should find who we are.  What we made from and how we can know ourselves. If we're curious enough on ourselves, and prepare to hear things we might not want to hear about us, we will ultimately know ourselves.

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by: Adam Khairi

Living in Malaysia that consists of multiracial people could create lots of perception among us. Not enough with that, we also joined by the newcomers such as Indonesian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani that leads us more towards negative perceptions such as stereotyping and ethnocentrism. It is not easy to avoid yourself from perception as you always create one when you observe something that unaccepted and unfamiliar with you. Some of the Malaysian often misperceive that the Indonesian are only work as laborers because they come to our country and work as one. It is happen because like Mr Pellegrino Ricardi said, people see what they want to see but they don’t always see what you see. It is all about mindset. Because most Malaysian is too familiar with the display of Indonesian working as a labourer, they misperceive that all Indonesian are labourer. It is because this is the scenery that familiar with most Malaysian. There is once, I have been described as a Chinese look man by an aunt. Am so confused like I feel like to blow my own head. I see in myself as a man who look like Javanese people as I have Javanese blood in me. Plus, I am chocolate coloured skin. How is that possible?. I did not know what that aunt see in me but I refer back to what have been mentioned by Mr Pellegrino Ricardi, people see what they want to see but they don’t always see what you see. Our assumption is not the same with other because people think differently. In order to get rid of that, we must create mutual understanding by finding the equality between us so that we can globally understand each other and communicate without thinking the nationality or culture.