The week of Christmas

Let's talk about something fun and bright. Christmas is my favourite time of the year. It is capitalism at its best and I wouldn't have any other way. Every year i celebrate Xmas with my family and mind you the Chinese side of my family. It's not that I am not close with the Indian side of my family, it is more like I cannot stand the majority of them. Unfrotunately this is a case of a few rotten apples spoiling the barrel but what I experienced will make your hair curl and will make you wanna jump up rush up to me and hug me like I have given you the meaning of life or some of my major organs to ensure you live and have loved me more than your life. I am talking rotten to the core, eating your insides out while you are alive and pure evil oozing out like those slime from Ghostbusters (those of you too young to know this, bloody look it up) except that instead of lime green, which gives you an aura of amusement rather than fear, these people ooze blood red slime. i feel sorry for my cousins whom are not so much as their fault as their parents and i wish i had time to know them better....but that's a story for another day.

I digress. I invite all my Chinese family and we have one heck of a party at my place. This is not to say that the Chinese folks dont have their share of evil and quirks but at least theirs is not blood red. We buy presents for the kids, who of course is the ABSOLUTE BEST TIME of the year. Tons and tons of presents....most of them toys which they will get bored after a couple of weeks, some even after the wrapper is off. They hardly get practical stuff like clothes, stationary, furniture, food, etc but come on, these are kids! And no relative wants to be the stick in the mud to NOT give them toys. So kids go beserk and the adults go broke!

My family do consists of some quirks. Some who complain abt the food even though it was perfectly clear that we didnt get Chef Gousteau from a 5-star Parisian restaurant to cook for us. Everything about the food is bad even when it wasnt. Best off, this relative actually complains to the hosts with the face that looks like rabid rats are chewing on his testical sac (i do remember my biology). There are relatives who have the tendency to finish your food even though the host hasnt eaten and the host has made perfectly sure dat he has enough food to last through 3 Siberian winters for his guests. Then there is the clumsy one who will break your house or at least your utensils. He walks past and the pillars fall off. Then there is that relative who comes into your room and goes through your drawers claiming he is chasing a cockroach. I am not going to name names becoz for some reason, only known to the inner recess of my brain (about 1/4 inch), I happen to love all of them very much. Since they can cut the imperfect me a lot of slack then I can definitely return the favour with interest.

so it was a very tiring day starting from a week before xmas, with all the shopping, thinking wat to buy for whom, adjusting your wallet since funds are a little scarce and ending way after dinner on xmas. It was a lunch party. I didnt even get a chance to get out of my clothes. Hmmmm......why de heck did i brought up that point? To me, there is no other way to spend your favourite season with your favourite people which are my family. My kids got most of what they wanted. I didnt but then again, i never did, even as a kid, so it's cool. I slept way into boxing day with a fantastic smile on my face and sweet dreams of every memory of the week of Christmas. God Bless everyone.

Wanna donate to a poor exploited Indian?

Well my PC is back!!! What joy! 51 days of no PC and no internet access at home is enough to drive you up the wall. these last few weeks had a lot of drama. there was sweat, tears, joy, bombings and of course amusement as well since our Govt oso must get into the act. First of, the status of the Hindraf situation. I am in a dilemma over this one. In one hand, I want my USD1Million. On the other, i dont see how in god's good green earth is anyone going to give them that!!! Also, i have to question the method they are going about doing it. I just read the reports and i know there is a debate abt whether our newspaper can be trusted. Anyway, giving them the benefit of the doubt, these guys (Hindraf) apparently engaged the Sri Langkan Tamil Tigers leaders and also some political figures in India. Now, while I dont get involved and give my opinion abt other countries' political struggles, dont you think engaging a waring faction and another country is just asking for it? What the heck did they think the Govt was going to do???!?!?! Applaud and then say "hey, i will help you in your case. If the British dun give you the million each, we will!!!"

Of course, the Govt went ahead and charged them under ISA which means detention without trial. Some of them came out to say, it is not the Malaysian way to demonstrate and take to the streets. so wat is the Malaysian way, just keep quiet and take it up the pooper chute?? Of course the way to show what the meant, the UMNO youth took to the streets demonstrating for peace (so it seems). Somehow the irony is just fantastic. Anyway, there are many ways to make yourself heard and i dont think violence is in the top of list. Violence should be the choice just below "Setting oneself on fire". But i guess my million is not going to come through that channel. Anyone want to donate to a poor exploited Indian?

Compensation for ALL Indians?

As I write now, there are cops all over the major h/ways leading to KL. Their objective is to weed out those who are going to allegedly illiegally demonstrate (or whatever the hell they will call it) in front of the British High Commission on Sunday. The group leading this is the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf). Their purpose is to send a petition supposedly signed by 100,000 Indians to Queen Elizabeth II to appoint a Queen’s Counsel to represent the Indian community in a class action suit against the British government for bringing Indians as labourers here and exploiting them. An estimated 20,000 people are estimated to take part and are said that they will be wearing orange. They are demanding USD1MM for every Indian in Malaysia and that apparently came to about USD4 Trillion in total!

With this new development from my race of people, I am sure like me, you are besotted by three very crucial questions that will shake the very foundation of our country's morality and cultural fibre. One, how do you spell besotted? Two, why does culture have fibre? And three, isn't the British High Comm closed on Sunday? Who are they going to give it to, the security guard at the gates? the police is going through all this trouble for this? The police did say that Hindraf will plan riots and fights. Needless to say, the police didn't say how they found that out. But if fights were planned, between who? Oscar Del La Hoya and Evander Holyfield? Maybe we could sell tickets to the spectacle.

One things for sure, there will be jams all over to spoil our weekend lives. In all seriousness, I am a little ignorant but maybe more confused. What precedented event triggered this lawsuit from Hindraf? What are their chances of winning and what are they really hoping to achieve out of this? Being half Indian, do I qualify for at least half or can I fight for full compensation since my IC says I am Indian? What about those Indians whose forefathers didn't come as labourers but as merchants, chettiars (these are Indian Ah Longs called Samy(s)) and others occupations? Are they eligible to this compensation as well?

Like I said, my views may be very myopic or blissfully ignorant. I have googled Hindraf and they have been getting their views heard more vocally than other groups about a lot of issues regarding the Indian and Hindu community. Like the demolishing of a Hindu temple. Maybe the Indian community needs to be more vocal to be heard since we seem to be overwhelmed by other issues. But maybe we need to be find better ways to be heard and respected at the same time.

Whatever it is, rest assured I will be filling out my list of things to do when I get my million of which one of the things is to donate some back to Hindraf. It will at least help to pay for their phone calls to high comm so that they can find out if it is open on Sundays. Also I am burning all my orange shirts.

The second tech fails

I have been without my most loved PC for the last 1 week. For some reason, the video application or card or some thingamagic refused to work and I can't get the display up. I have sent it to my "tech" guy and he has been on it for a week. I am writing on my office laptop which is obviously not as fun. My life has been a little depressing the last few days without my PC to come home to. Which brings me to think about out dependancy on technology and gadgets. I am pretty tech savvy which means I know about 80% of the acroymns but not always know EXACTLY what it means. I am a demi-geek! Not quite there yet.

I used to work in a little software company from Seattle, USA. You may have heard of it. It's called....i think...oh yeah, Microsoft. It was gadget haven. I had access to either the latest gadgets or people who had access to the gadgets. Smartphones, latest accessories, mouse, joystick, hard drives, USD drive, wireless up the wazoo, etc, etc. It has been 3 years since I left and while I am totally deprived of these gadgets, I am still pretty addicted. I sometimes catch myself wondering into the tech section at the mall and just staring at the lovelies!!! However, since Microsoft I have been addicted to all kinds of IT stuff from gadget to surfing the internet with Facebook being my latest addiciton.

So now, as I lay depressed on my bed listening to my iPod video on my iHome, with my laptop and Blackberry, I began to wonder what life was like without all these gadget so many years ago. Actually it was more like 10 years ago. Hmmm....not so long after all. Today, we absolutely cannot go anywhere without our mobile. We give our kids a mobile phone not becoz of status but out of necessity. the lowest income groups today have mobile phones. We have ppl in the used mobile phone business. Pretty cool industry seeing that only 10 yrs ago it was a premier status symbol.

I am also pretty addicted to my XBox (did i mention i used to work in Microsoft). things are also looking bleak on that front when one of my controllers got busted. We are now stuck with one and I have to fight for it. For those of you who have been living under a hut in a south tropical island where only the crabs are your friends, a controller is what we use to control (duh!) the characters in your game. During the game you can swear and curse at the characters for being inept and not moving fast enough to where you want them to move and for not knowing that you shouldn't go there in the first place (like if there is a hole or a giant mouth with no eyes wating to swallow you whole). No violence, just creativity.

Anyway, since tomorrow is the weekend, I am going to head on down to my baby (the PC you dolts!) and see what is up with her. And if it is not ready or if there is no update, I am going to shove a broadband so far up the repairer's ass, that when it downloads, it will come out of his mouth. Obsess? what obsess?

Blogging for beginners

It has been a month since my last post. I read it back and it looks quite sad. That's becoz i dont know how to blog!!! Anyway for those of you who want to comment about my short forms and lack of punctuation marks, pls bear this thought in mind, "I DON'T CARE!".

There, glad we got that out of de way.

Anyway, I will write about things that happen in our lives. Hopefully they will be insightful and funny. Otherwise, just put it down as me having a depressive spisode. HAHAHAHAHAHA!

Oh, one more thing. I like to laugh in my blogs. Get used to it!

Hopefully through my blogs and insights as someone from the 2 most populous cultures will help foster a greater understanding among our races in our society. I will present the Chindian point of view to the happenings in our surroundings, politics, family, love, etc. It may be different since I have the benefit of best of both worlds and I am able to balance both races' upbringing and social culture to form my opinion. Also, I just wanted an excuse to write and get out of doing chores.

I intend to explore every major facet of "Chindianess" including the historical facet, socialogical facet, physiological facet, psychosexual facet and the facet on why Chindians looks so much better. Every details is derived from very scientific and extensive research and study (available upon request) or I might have made it up. But you can trust me. I am a Chindian.

My best friends

Many will ask me how I went through my childhood with so conflicting cultures and opinions. Having seen it first hand, trust me when I say, there are very many distinct differences about the Indian and Chinese culture. Like Russel Peters said, the Chinese will try to take every penny from you and the Indians will try to keep every penny. Can you imagine the internal conflict just on that point!

However, I had a very fulfilling, fun and I think appropriate childhood. The mainstay for my "normal" childhood were my friends. In primary school, I didnt really have too many good friends. Also at that age, we were more interested in getting ourselves dirty in the mud playing football, rounders, catching, chopping, marbles, taichi, hop n run and a whole bunch of crap games. It always involved running around and hurting someone.

I found my best friends in secondary school, the height of puberty. Some of them came and went but the main group stayed. No matter what I may say about them, they are the best things that could have happened to me. I was the poorest among my friends and definitely the dorkiest. I had the weirdest looking school bag (tearing at the seams), bell bottom pants and always short of spending money. But they always made me feel at home and welcome (either that or I was too thick skinned to get the hint).

For example, my friend Peng Koon actually gave me a pair of his pants for me to wear at his birthday party. Well, in all fairness, either he was too embarassed by wat I was going to come in or he just wanted to get rid of his old pants. Regardless, i was very touched. Also he always helped me out whenever I was short of cash but most importantly he never asked for it back. There was Kok Hin, who was and still is a little wierd. He will take the trouble to teach my brother when I wouldnt bother to. There was also Ooi Khuan who will welcome me to his home and lunch whenever we have library duty in the morning. I will stay in his house until school starts in the afternoon. there are countless other stories that my bunch of friends have touched my life and the blog is too short to mention.

There was also Jer Shyan whom I got to know in Form 4 and the first word he spoke to me was "masturbate". All the sexual innuendo words was always spoken by us in its crude and vulgar form. It was the first "dirty" word we knew that was from the dictionary. Then there was Chee Onn who was always checking his hair in his 20 cents pencil sharpener mirror.

Of course my friends must include Valerie who is also a Chindian but a heck lot better looking. I loved her from the first time i saw her that mid Jan day in 1983. She is still my best friends and the godmother to my daugther. (We guys all know what that means sex wise). It was also through her, I realized I had a poetic talent. I wrote many poems after that, that helped in my quest for love and lust (hey it was the height of puberty; everything involved some amount of lust). ;-)

We dont keep in touch as much anymore. The occasional phone call or IM is at best. I havent seen some of them in 8 years. That is kinda sad but life is such. We all have families and job priorities now and most of them also have English names now. I know Peng Koon went through a whole list before settling for Derrick.

Anyway, it my future blogs, I will be including stories about our exploits as it comes to me. I am not getting any younger and my head is full of useless information so can't remember too many now. These guys are my mainstay of sanity and are a very big, important and humourous part of my life. I do hope I was of the same to them. God bless these guys and gals!

The Chindian dilemma

I'm so used to using short messages that you may see them in my blogs and articles and I am sorry about that. You may see them now and then, so do bear with me. I have been forced upon to use a blackberry so u will definitely see it more often. You will also see spelling and grammer errors of which I m very prone to due to my inept typing skills and for that........I don't care.

So wat's all of this about?

When I was in school (no so long ago) and when I started socializing, people were very confused about what i am and how they shld treat me. You see, I look Malay and speak Chinese but am actually an Indian. For those of you who are still guessing, I am part of the latest fad in genetics called Chindians where my parents are of Indian and Chinese descent.

My name is Alwyn David and if from my name you can't guess which of my parent is of which descent, then you need to put your head in an oven and set to grill. When I was in school, my race was very unique and because there was no such race then, I was classified an Indian to follow my dad. That's the Malaysian law. I think people call us Chindian now and it is all the rage. But back then, it could create some confusion and even people ignoring me. They are not rude but just not sure what to say or do.

the people i came across had a variation of treatment for me. I was treated from almost royalty to a sideshow freak. Sometimes I think there is a very fine line between the two. The good news was, most teachers loved me. I was almost always able to get away with blue murder. I think people are not sure how I will react to certain situations as different races react differently. For example, Chinese tend to like Indian jokes and Indians tend to laugh at Chinese jokes. With me, you never know! That's why my friends and acquaintances tend to be more careful around me.

It is same when I go to my neighbourhood market. There are a lot of concerns faces whenever I start walking to the pork section of the market. However, once I start on my Cantonese, you can see many people taking nice relaxed breaths. I speak very good TV Cantonese, English and Malay. Very unfortunately I dont speak any Indian dialects and I would really love to learn Hindi. So I do feel a little left out among my Indian relatives and friends. So much so that as the years go by, I only have 1 very good Indian friend that I can speak of. I speak Malay with an Malay accent which makes it harder for people to believe that I am not Malay.

For the first part of my years, I was stopped whenever I ate in a Malay restaurant during Ramadan. During the school holidays of 1988, I was working as a temp in Jalan Tungku Abdul Rahman and usually bought my lunch from this jovial Malay lady. We got on well and she use to share stories about her kids with me. During Ramadan, I went up to her and ask for my plate. She looked at me sadly and said that I should have strong faith and not give in to temptation. I told her that I am not a Muslim and she said that not only do i not have faith, I have just added lying to my sins!!!! When I finally showed her my IC, i turned into a sideshow freak as she called all the makcik around her stall to come see the Malay looking guy who is not a Malay. I was super embarassed and just stood there smiling waiting for my plate. However, I got a free lunch that day. :-)

Well, this is my first post and I dont want to make it too long. I think it already is. So I will go ahead and end here. The other articles I will write about my experience and give you my opinion on everyday life situations. Hopefully that will give you a better idea of what we Chindians are like. After all, we do have the best of both worlds.