OUR PEOPLE

There were moments where I was mistakenly thought as a Chinese, maybe due to my eyes that do not resemble any typical Malay eyes..haha..It was about a year ago, when I was in Terengganu where my family and I had a long holiday and we used it for some sort of a vacation at our own original house that we've left, unseen for many months..no, no..years already. On our way home, we stop by my favourite game store, commonly known as the Lagimura from the locals there. I went quickly to the counter to pay while holding tight the game that I'm looking for in a long period of time. Suddenly, the woman at the counter asked me, 'Zhīfù ne?'. What the heck? After realizing the situation, she told me, 'Alah, sori-sori, saya ingat kamu orang cine ma...ok2, bayar kat sini...'. My parents laughed when I told them the story..haha

While walking out of the store, I noticed that there were no Malay stores in sight around me. All of the lots around the area where filled with Chinese citizens who would like to find their living there. That's something that I've admired from the Chinese people for all this while, which is, the will to survive in any condition, anywhere and everywhere. Where is our people? Extinct? No, majority of citizens of Malaysia are our people. Don't have money to support their shops? No, we have Mara or banks behind us from the very beginning. It's the will that we don't have.

My father have forced me to read this book, written in front with a large, catchy title..The World On Fire by Prof Amy Chua, House of Law, Yale University..haha..there's no way I'm reading it. That's what I thought at the first place. I was surprised when I took a glance at the first page. It's written, ' Buku untuk orang kita...by Pengerusi Mara, Dato' Seri Idris Jusoh' with his own initial below it. Then, I guess that I'm going to read a little. I can't stop reading it. Everything that was written by Amy Chua was so true. Have you ever noticed that in every single district, there will be this huge store where everyone will shop their needs there? It's told that those stores have never been in the hand of our people. Even our people only control barely 35 percent of our country's economy. However we can't just put the blame on everyone. We're still a new civilization that are looking it's own way to survive. Unlike the Chinese, Indians or even the people from the west that have generations of ancestors, we just lived for more or less fifty years on our own. But if we keep on making excuses, there's no way our people can survive for another fifty years since other countries are making a great path for their people while we're still dreaming of  becoming rich by creating more and more foreign trades, not domestically.  Now I've understand why Dato' Seri Pengerusi mentioned the phrase of Buku untuk orang kita in the front page. 

Because we're so left behind.