New school, new faces, it's time to explain my blood and culture and faith to people again. Orientation week has been incredibly busy and by the time I reach my dorm I'm exhausted. But what's more tiring than orientation and fighting the lizards in my hall is trying to explain my name to people. My malay facilitator went, "Abidin? How come no binte?" My chinese senior went, "Malay? So you need halal food for camp right?" And my new friends just went, "YOU MALAY?" And because my other Abidin is so good with words, I koped some from her blog because they best describe this identity crisis.
This is my miniature identity crisis – I do not feel any less Christian than the others at church just because I have a Malay surname, yet at the same time, that surname is the only indication of my "race" because I look more Chinese. I suppose over the years, my identity has become less and less of what I feel I am, but more of what others imagine me to be. I'm not "really" Malay because I neither look like one nor speak like one nor practise Islam, they tell me. They also say I am not "really" Chinese because officious documents do not claim so, and my proficiency in Mandarin - though superbly excellent on paper and in theory because I studied so hard! - is dubious because my accent is not accurate. But then again, after twenty years of such emotional commotion, I guess I am already growing used to feeling different. And it doesn't really matter to me!
Though sometimes I really wish I took Malay as a second language instead of Mandarin.