Friday, June 27, 2014

How to make friends with Malaysians?

While we are still on this topic of Malaysia, I would love to expand a little bit and include my thoughts on Malaysians and what others thought of us.

I wasn't joking when I said I really could not concentrate on my PhD work and started writing in this blog again since a few days back.  So I started googling Malaysia, Malaysians and the like.

Well what I found was rather interesting actually. Where most Malaysians consider themselves to be very outgoing and friendly, I saw that our foreign friends begged to differ in opinions. 

Basically,a lot of  the western expats including Aussies and New Zealanders (even though they are not located anywhere to our west in the traditional definition) , thought that Malaysians are aloof and very hard to make friends with.

Our Asian neighbours tend to have rather negative opinions on us too. As most Malaysians know, some Indonesians think that we are thieves who stole their culture. Some Singaporeans thought that Malaysians are hopeless and stupid. Some Japanese thought that we are a lazy nation. Too relaxed in attitude. And rather loud and boisterous. Some Philippines thought that it doesn't hurt to kidnap us, Malaysians. Some Chinese.. well you can guess after the MH370 incident... We are not popular there either. (Btw, before you start condemning me, do note that I said, some. not all... )

A few days back, Nouman Ali Khan , this guy below..

Well... he came to Malaysia to give some lectures on Al-Quran. While still in Malaysia he updated his status saying "Malaysia is beautiful, Malaysians are awesome". Of course Malaysians were elated to be praised by a public figure like Nouman Ali Khan, one of the most influential young Quran and Arabic scholars in the world.  But, the amount of comments by other muslims from different countries, drenched with hatred, prejudice, generalizing Malaysians, especially Malaysian muslims, putting us down, trampling our good name and so on increased in just a few hours after he updated his status. 

It made me realized you know, how the world look at us actually.. 

Perhaps there were some truth in what everybody said about us. From the westerners to fellow Asians to brothers and sisters in Islam. 

But then, perhaps there were just too many bloody idiots armed with a keyboard who are sitting in front of the screen, who has never even been to Malaysia, have never even made friends with a single Malaysian, who had too much time on their hands and were not cultured enough to think that being polite does not hurt. Or putting a blanket statement on a nation is a very idiotic thing to do.. Or people who believed everything they read online.. and started to deduce this and that about us Malaysians just by reading yahoo news.. you know... 

I don't know.

What I do know is, there are good people and bad people everywhere. So pin-pointing Malaysia as bad or Malaysians as lousy only shows the mentality of the speaker. 

Do you really want to know how to make friends with Malaysians? Well, here's the big 'secret'. Be nice to us.  Actually, if you don't know it yet.. it's universal. Be nice to people. That's how you make friends. 

Hope that helps ;)






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