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Kenangan Terindah on Hari Raya
When I was young, I used to have Malay friends equivalent to the population of Singapore. Hahahaha! Now, the quantity has dwindled away, perhaps due to inauspicious circumstances. Racial polarization takes place as one grows older. People kvetching about each other because of their race/religion, which I find rather deplorable. Some blogs bitch and rant about racial/religion issues just to garner hits.
I envy the older generation, where Ah Kau, Ahmad and Raju can hang out at the kopitiam, chattering constructively about everything. They valued each other’s friendship, and our generation seemed to have lost that.
I vividly recall during my younger years, where I experienced something similar, where we convoyed in hoards to visit friends during Raya, CNY and Deepavali. I remember how my friends used to come in droves to my house for X’mas. That’s my kenangan terindah. 
SELAMAT HARI RAYA EID UL-FITR!
You know where the problem comes from? Parents. Look, you throw 4 toddlers of different races and let them spend a day together, no one will say “Eww… your skin different colour one…”. It is the parents who instill the racial prejudices later in the kid’s life that will lead some of them to grow up to be bigots.
Wombat Excellent point. Parents are partially to be blamed, as well as society, because parents were once children too.
Hey Dans,
Thanks for the wishes. I agree with Wombat. Despite of much said bout being one nation… there are a LOT of ppl who think their race is superior… even stereotyping between races is very much obvious, if Malay must be Muslim (which cant really be changed), if Chinese must wear red and kiam siap, if Indian must be dark skinned and so on…
The country can say this and that bout living in peace and such but are we really? My dad’s a great example, he loves to diss ppl’s mistakes and blames it on their skin colour. I on the other hand see that it all goes back to where they came from. There’s much can be said but Dan, I’m sure you tak mau masuk ISA kan? So I leave it here… Happy Diwali/Eid y’all!
hahaha, well, i feel the same way about my friends, but fortunately i still have many houses to go to for Raya courtesy of my colleagues.
have a great holiday, my friend
Lex True, but I think the change is up to us instead of faulting our parents. For me, it was never my family. If you could only see my family gathering, people would get confused. My immediate relatives are Indians, Malays and Chinese.
I feel that we need to analyze our principals of life to be more tolerant towards other races/religions, and not joining the bigotry bandwagon. 
Laksa I only have TWO and a HALF (chinese malay) colleagues in the office, and none of them live in the Klang Valley.
Gallivanter: You should see mine. I am Chinese with a Filipino wife. So my two kids are termed as Sino-Filipino. Do I have a problem with this? Not one bit. Do some dick head bigots have a problem with this? Definitely, thus the stares and the sniggers at the back.
I don’t give a bark to all that. At least I have better looking kids than theirs. Must the the Spanish DNA on Mrs Wombat’s side.
Wombat They’re just jealous that your kids are better-looking.
As difficult as it sounds, just snub them bigots.
LOL at the title you ping-ed at PPS!
Haha, blardy damn true man …
back in secondary(dont even mention primary la k, back in primary, skin color is not a matter at all …)
back in secondary, you there are like groups or should i say gangs, haha, there was like chinese gangs, the malay gangs, the indian gangs … but us – we had this multi racial gangs, we had malays who can speak chinese, we had chinese who speaks tamil … so our gang is freakin huge
we normally see gang fights which involves only 1 color against 1 color or involving the same color, mess with us, youosee multi color in our group, so naturally we were huge back then …
but nowdays, i dont see student in national schools mixing much with other races, seem to be a barrier in between …
lilian Danke danke!
earl-ku In primary school, we are all color-blind (not sure bout these days). Secondary, we could already see the racial thing, but not obvious. My best friends in school were mostly Chinese. Still had a couple of good Malay friends and Indian friends too. The bigots seem to have influenced society.
then never let us forget the better world of our childhood days, where every malaysian regardless of race or creed, are able to stand next to each other proudly in friendship, and where the judge of a character is the sincerity of the heart, not the colour of the skin.
we do not have to repeat the vicious circle of discrimination.
our education system, university quotas and government policies may discriminate – people can choose not to. and i have always believed that it is ultimately the people that matters.
a utopian idea, i know. but for as long as even if a minority of malaysians believe in this, there remains hope.
I agree..if only we could enjoy what people in the past had.
I enjoy celebrating and mixing with all kind of people..but that’s maybe coz i’m Indian+Chinese+Pakistani mix
yup..i have some family members who are celebrating Raya today..also have members who just celebrated deepavali..and will be looking foward to Christmas and CNY too.
philters I wholeheartedly agree with you. The change is down to us, the man/woman in the mirror.
footy I did enjoy racial harmony, and would do anything just to experience it again. *SIGH* Looks like we have something in common, a muhibbah family.
Selamat hari raya Dan.. I know you dont celebrate raya, but you did fast – so celebrate!!
Sha It certainly wasn’t easy. And I only managed 19 days. Selamat Hari Raya!
Dan: Yeah I agree it’s up to us… I have no problem with others… unlike your family which I envy of having so much of different people, I’m even disgusted to admit that they actually look down upon family members who gets married to other races. Of course, I’m like the black sheep in the family. It was really funny when my dad told me I can nvr have a chinese boyfriend or get married to one. Go figure
Same like Sha, selamat hari raya and congratulations on the 19 days of fasting. I couldn’t convince that big baby of a boyfriend of mine to fast for even HALF a day.
My hat goes off to you.
I have no problem with befriending a person of a different background from mine. Heck, my bestfriend since high school is a Chinese. Mainly its the malay society I grew up in that frowns upon mix cultures.
A good friend of mine once said “The only thing that should be segregated is laundry.” I so agree.
Lex Well, sometimes, even families with a muhibbah background like mine run into feuds too. The onus is on each of us to shelf pride/ego aside and accept the fact that life’s too short.
Ness Selamat Hari Raya to you too! Danke danke. It wasn’t easy, hence only managed 19 days. It is down to us to do away with that mentality of sticking to our own races/religions. As philters aptly put it, as utopian as it may seem, as long as even if a minority of malaysians believe in this, there remains hope.
I came up with a new word, or phrase that you might like.
“Mamak Stall Fascist”
I’ll define it.
Its a Malaysian, of any race, (Chinese, Indian or Malay), who moans about any or all of the other races, but when it comes to the mamak stall, has no problem talking and socialising with friends from any or all of the other races. It goes in varying degrees.
And…..the Matt Salleh/Gweilo get to moan about everything, but like it so much that we can’t be bothered going home, because home is even worse than it is here, OR, maybe, just maybe, Malaysia is one of the nicest places on earth, but unlike the Americans, Malaysians don’t think it, or are figuring out how to fix it. Sometime before 2020…..I think.