What it is to be a truly Malaysian?

Malaysian is actually a very special nationality that combined with so many personalities and colourful lifestyles. With years go by peoples with different races, skin, cultures, beliefs and languages living together requires a very rational, an open-heart and a willingness of tolerance among each other. How could we be living together if we are not understand other’s lifestyle? You could say we’re one of a kind because we overcome all the obstacles to stay in a harmony piece of land. Or we could say that we all have the special habits that only could be happening in our country. We doubt you could find another nation will have mixture of people from different cultures and beliefs gathered together to howl down Olympic badminton champion Lin Dan and the almost the same people who could get up at 2 am to watch and yell their hearts out at local mamak when their favourite team are playing in the Champions League. Truly Malaysians find themselves to be very comfortable of doing things that are only acceptable in Malaysia, and nowhere else.

Let's take a look at the lifestyle below which make you feel that you are Malaysian.

BOSS Everywhere!

An interesting example in Malaysia, everyone can be address as a "boss" even though you do not actually work for any of them. Your customer, your barber, your teacher or even the guy who serves you at the mamak – they are all your "boss". From the picture, we might say, "Boss, kuah lebih sikit!" to a mamak waiter. It actually makes no sense at all, but it draw a picture of being friendly and respectful to a waiter. In fact, all Malaysian can be bosses and you could not see this happens in another country.

The Power of Your Hand

If you are a truly Malaysian, you will definitely know what the power of your hand is. By only holding your hands up when you are crossing the road, your fantastic posture of hand can stop most of the incoming car traffic no matter how fast and intimidating.  Those cars, bus, vans or even lorry drivers, they all obey the hand. Also, raising your hand can gets you pass the security guards in residential areas. It is a short, simple, powerful, very Malaysian way of communicating a message. 

“To lah or not to lah” - That is the Malaysian Language.

The average Malaysian speak at least two languages but Malaysian has amazing English that commonly used among each other to deliver a message briefly and it can be easily understood. The most common word you can hear daily from Malaysian are these special words - lah, leh, loh, hah, hor, meh, bo, gua, liao, wor and a lot more. These words could only understand by our people and it becomes a common language that used by most of us in our nation. In other words, Malaysian combined special words from each language to form a sentence to communicate. There is a sentence which can shows that how languages are combined over here, “Wei Macha, you want to makan here or tapau?” From this very Malaysian way of speaking, we can see it contains Chinese, Malays, English, India and Hokkien and it sounds specially friendly and unique. 

We Hope for a Public Holiday Whenever We Win at Sports. 

We wish our lovely government will give us a public holiday if our athletes play well whether it’s our badminton players at the Thomas Cup, our football team at the AFF Suzuki Cup, or our athletes play at the Olympic games. We, as a truly Malaysian feel that winning sport in an important competition is a big deal and we should celebrate it by being allow the whole nations to sleep in on the next day of the wining.

We Love Drain Side Hawkers’ Food and Spicy Food

Perhaps the quintessential trait possessed by all Malaysians is our unabashed dedication to good food. As a truly Malaysia, we love drain side hawkers’ food. Dirty? Unhygiene? We don’t care, we just love the food so much. We never worry when we have to rush for our lunch time because our Roti Telur will be ready in less time than we expect and we never worry what to eat in the late night because the drain side mamak hawkers will operate until late. To us, throwing pepper on our food doesn't consider as spicy. Spicy is like bring in the big guns such as sambal belacan, cili potong and cili padi. We love every food which taste spicy. As a truly Malaysian, how could we resist or say no towards delicious food? We even have Nasi Lemak serve as our breakfast daily.

No Milo No Maggi = No Life

We drink Milo everyday, We bring Milo everywhere!!

As schoolchildren, one of the best parts of school sports days is the Milo truck with their annoyingly inimitable cold Milo. No matter what concoction you experiment with, no Malaysian alive has come close to replicating the Milo truck’s secret sludge. 

And not only is Milo a drink that can be consumed any time of the day, its versatility has even lent itself to madcap creations such as Roti Milo, Milo Dinosaur and most alarmingly, Maggi Mee Milo.

Nasi Lemak for breakfast, 
Maggi for supper.

Maggi’s importance to Malaysians is even higher, as any Malaysian will tell you that at a certain point in his or her life, Maggi instant noodles got them through some tough times. If you’re living abroad, the Malaysian version of Maggi takes on a higher value, given the diluted taste of those silly foreign versions. This actually works well for students who need to do some bartering on account of their budget. 

Being convenient, relatively cheap and most importantly, tasty, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that every home and even office in Malaysia surely has one of each product in supply.

Again, what does it means to be a ‘Truly Malaysian’? 

A heartwarming story about a Malay, Chinese, and Indian drew praise and garnered many ‘likes’ from the social media users gives an answer.
In Petaling Jaya, there is one guy, Balamuraly Doraisamy who is related on the social media website stated his experience at a coffee shop that touches heart of peoples. As he observed that a Chinese is wolfing down four packets of nasi lemak as if he had been starved for couple days. After the fourth packets of nasi lemak have been eaten, the shop owner offered him an additional packet of Koey Teow which the man eagerly accepted and devoured. On seeing this, Balamuraly made a decision to pay for the bill of the additional orders but he had been rejected and informed by the owners that the bill is settled by the owner itself by putting on his own tab. And the best part of this is, where the poor man is Chinese, and the generous owner is a Malay, and he is an Indian.
In addition, he mentioned that instead of bickering and politicizing the dengue and flood relief issue, offer a helping hand to those needy people on the spot, no matter what race are way more meaningful than everything. The point of this story telling us that there were still many people among us who understood the true meaning of what it means to be Malaysian. That is when we all stand up for each other no matter what our race, that’s when we can proudly call ourselves Malaysians.

Show the Best Malaysian’ Attitude

Beside the above lifestyles which show that we are Malaysian, we are also need to show some good attitude toward our beloved country. Everyone knows that Malaysia is a multinational country. We are living together with different culture so we have to be tolerance among each other in order to avoid unwanted conflict. When we are united, war among Malaysian will never happen. Besides creating harmony environment throughout the country, we also need to create a friendly environment to travellers. As a Malaysian, we are responsible in showing friendly attitude towards travellers as this can help in making our country image better.
No deny that not all the product produced by Malaysia not good in quality. We can try to give more support to Malaysia products, maybe things that are made in Malaysia come with good quality and affordable price in the future. We should always believe that our encouragement and support are important elements that may bring the country to become more and more brilliant.

References:
Astro.com.my. (n.d.). 10 ways you know you’re Malaysian. [online] Available at: http://www.astro.com.my/negaraku/ArticleDetails?articleId=2389&catId=92 [Accessed 19 Mar. 2016].
Mo Han, O. (2013). SPM 2013 Continuous Writing (a). [online] Facebook.com. Available at: https://www.facebook.com/notes/ooi-mo-han/spm-2013-continuous-writing-a/579898852057641 [Accessed 21 Mar. 2016].
Reporters, F. (2015). What it means to be 'Truly Malaysian'. [online] Free Malaysia Today. Available at: http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2015/03/27/what-it-means-to-be-truly-malaysian/ [Accessed 19 Mar. 2016].