Youngsters!!

By looking at the title, i know i am OLD, but no complain because this is life, everybody grows older day by day, second by second, and well people may wish to be wiser too when older. today i met this interesting lady, a young lady ( ok ok, i am contrasting it like i am really really that old!!!), she was sitting beside me and she was friendly, she turned to me and we started a conversation which went like this : YL-young lady; WL-wai ling



YL: Hi, my name is xxxx, what is yours?



WL: Hi, i am wai ling, nice to meet u..



(in btw there were some questions which were not so important, and then...)



YL: where do u stay?



WL: pandan indah, cheras



YL (innocently): i thought that area is full of chinese and the chinese there are REALLY



"CHINESEE"!! (as in they cannot speak english la), how come ur english is so fluent?? (well only this

sentence itself she's got gramatical mistake)



WL (looked at her in the way that dunno whether to laugh or cry): o...it is because of my family (didn't wanna explain that much).



YL: o...me too, i am from eng speaking family, i stay in damansara and u know (this is the gist of the whole conversation) there are a lot of "BANANAS" there, a lot of chinese cannot speak mandarin, we speak english even with friends and family. (DAMN, AND U SHOULD HAVE SEEN THE SMUG ON HER FACE, SHE'S SO DAMN PROUD!! ) do u speak chinese? (wanted to correct her, chinese is not a language but didn't have the heart to because she was so proud)



WL: yeah i do, i came from a chinese independent high school (now it's my turn to be proud) *wink*.



~conversation ends~



This is the "trend" nowadays, youngsters, especially chinese youngsters in malaysia who are so proud to be BANANAS. Why is there a term like this for chinese who don't know chinese? when u look at the fruit itself, the skin of the banana is yellow and the fruit within ( it represents the culture and personality of a person) is white, hence the term "banana".



English is really important, without which, we might seem lacking in job interviews, we might not be able to keep up with the current issues happening all around the globe, but come on, it is just a language, just like any other language, but the western countries have made it so important and the impact on the people is so great that most in Malaysia might think english is their mother tongue instead. this is sad, i do not blame the young lady, as she's brought up this way, but when a person does not know his "root", he is merely a body without a soul and everything that makes up his way of thinking is just not himself.

There's a chinese proverb and pardon me if the translation seems absurd, it definitely will be absurd because this is the lacking of english language, in chinese, a few words express anything and everything, but u have to try so much harder in english, the proverb is "falling leaves return to its roots(落叶归根)", it signifies that no matter how tall or how great the leave seems to be on top of the tree, it will go back to its roots one day. No matter how "un-chinese" u think u r, at the end of the day, u can never runaway from your birth certificate and more importantly, ur skin colour and facial features ;) i know i am mean....:P