Its cool to be Malay, Indian, Chinese, Singaporean, etc.

Ash wants to know how I got around to be proud of being Malay.

I had a good think, and spoke to a couple of people (well, at least one) and we figured that its better not to be proud of being Malay, or Chinese, or Indian, or whatever.

More accurately, we don't think being proud is a good attitude to have. Its like thinking you're of a superior breed just because somebody else who happened to share the same genetic expression as you achieved something noteworthy.

We (as in my fiancee) and I think that its much cooler to just be ourselves. We learnt to accept the colour of our skin and that sometimes people might have preconceived notions of us which are mostly wrong but sometimes right. (Mats still sit under the void deck playing guitar at 1 am in the morning, until I call the cops to tell them to perform ID checks on the buggers.)

I'll state it here, I'd rather be Singaporean Malay - and accept all of my flaws, implied or otherwise, rather than pretend to be someone I am not or be unsure of who I am.

For the record, I believe the moment when I started standing up for my race was when I went overseas for training and I felt really lost. It was my first time abroad for an extended period of time and I must say that I had my share of racist comments and confrontations while I was over there.

As a red blooded male with a good understanding of the context and history of my predecessors and what we had to put up with I guess I prefer to fight for my right to be recognized as a human being entitled to the same rights and capable of doing more than my fair share.

Skin colour and outer appearances are a product of genetic expression and environment variables.

"There's no gene for the human spirit." - Gattaca (1996), a film by Andrew Nicols.