Psst! I have a confession to make. I have a shoe fetish. Everyone around me seems to underestimate the statement a simple pair of shoes can make. To me, though, the shoes I wear are not merely covering for the two feet on which I tread, but a reflection of who I am.
So, who am I? Why don’t you look down at my feet? I could be wearing my high-platform sandals—my confidence, my leadership, my I-want-to-be-tall-even-though-I’m-not shoes. My toes are free in these sandals and wiggle at will. Much like my feet in my sandals, I don’t like being restricted. I have boundless energy that must not go to waste! Or maybe I’m wearing my furry pink pig slippers. I wear these on crisp winter nights when I’m home spending time with my family. My slippers are my comforting side. I can wear them and listen to a friend cry for hours on end. My favorite pair of shoes, however, are my bright red Dr. Martens. They’re my individuality, my enthusiasm, my laughter, my love of risk-taking. No one else I know has them. When I don’t feel like drawing attention to my feet or, for that matter, to myself, I wear my gym shoes. These sneakers render me indistinguishable from others and thereby allow me to be independent. I wear them running, riding my bicycle alone through the trails surrounded by signs of autumn, and even when I go to a museum and stand, transfixed by a single photograph. My hiking boots typify my love of adventure and being outdoors. Broken in and molded to the shape of my foot, when wearing them I feel in touch with my surroundings.
During college, I intend to add to my collection yet another closet full of colorful clodhoppers. For each aspect of my personality I discover or enhance through my college experiences, I will find a pair of shoes to reflect it. Perhaps a pair of Naot sandals for my Jewish Studies class or one black shoe and one white when learning about the Chinese culture and its belief in yin and yang. As I get to know myself and my goals grow nearer, my collection will expand.
By the time I’m through with college, I will be ready to take a big step. Ready for a change, I believe I’ll need only one pair after this point. The shoes will be both fun and comfortable; I’ll be able to wear them when I am at work and when I return home. A combination of every shoe in my collection, these shoes will embody each aspect of my personality in a single footstep. No longer will I have a separate pair for each quirk and quality. This one pair will say it all. It will be evidence of my self-awareness and maturity. Sure, I’ll keep a few favorites for old times’ sake. I’ll lace up the old red shoes when I’m feeling rambunctious when I feel that familiar, teenage surge of energy and remember the girl who wore them: a young girl with the potential to grow.
I am entering college a naïve, teenage bundle of energy, independence, and motivation. My closet full of shoes mirrors my array of interests and at the same time my difficulty in choosing a single investment that will satisfy me for the rest of my life. I want to leave college with direction, having pinpointed a single interest to pursue that will add texture and meaning to my life.
So there you have it. I’ve told you about who I am, what I enjoy, and what I want from college. Want to know more? Come to walk a day in my shoes.
Tuesday, 17 July 2018
Appearance is not a race
I feel sick. I’m nervous and my stomach’s turning. The room is lined with neat rows of desks, each one occupied by another kid my age. We’re all about to take the SATs. The proctor has instructed us to fill out section four: “race.”
I cannot be placed neatly into a single racial category, although I’m sure that people walking down the street don’t hesitate to label me “caucasian.” Never in my life has a stranger not been surprised when I told them I was half black.
Having light skin, eyes, and hair, but being black and white often leaves me misperceived. Do I wish that my skin were darker so that when I tell people I’m black they won’t laugh at me? No, I accept and value who I am. To me, being black is more than having brown skin; it’s having ancestors who were enslaved, a grandfather who managed one of the nation’s oldest black newspapers, the Chicago Daily Defender, and a family who is as proud of their heritage as I am. I prove that one cannot always discern another’s race by his or her appearance.
I often find myself frustrated when explaining my racial background, because I am almost always proving my “blackness” and left neglecting my Irish-American side. People have told me that “one drop of black blood determines your race,” but I opt not to follow this rule. In this country a century ago, most mixed-race children were products of rape or other relationships of power imbalance, but I am not. I am a child in the twenty-first century who is a product of a loving relationship. I choose the label biracial and identify with my black and Irish sides equally. I am proud to say that my paternal great-grandparents immigrated to this country from Ireland and that I have found their names on the wall at Ellis Island, but people are rarely interested in that. They can’t get over the idea that this girl, who according to their definition looks white, is not.
Last year, at my school’s “Sexual Awareness Day,” a guest lecturer spoke about the stereotypical portrayal of different types of people on MTV’s The Real World. He pointed out that the white, blond-haired girls are always depicted as completely ditsy and asked me how it felt to fit that description. I wasn’t surprised that he assumed I was white, but I did correct his mistake. I told him that I thought the show’s portrayal of white girls with blond hair was unfair. I went on to say that we should also be careful not to make assumptions about people based on their physical appearance. “For example,” I told him, “I’m not white.” It was interesting that the lecturer, whose goal was to teach students not to judge or make assumptions about people based on their sexual orientation, had himself made a racial assumption about me.
I often find myself wishing that racial labels didn’t exist so that people wouldn’t rely on race alone to understand a person’s thoughts, actions, habits, and personality. One’s race does not reveal the content of their character. When someone finds out that I am biracial, do I become a different person in his or her eyes? Am I suddenly “deeper,” because I’m not just the “plain white girl” they assumed I was? Am I more complex? Can they suddenly relate to me more (or less)? No, my race alone doesn’t reveal who I am. If one’s race cannot be determined simply by looking at a person, then how can it be possible to look at a person and determine her inner qualities?
Through census forms, racial questionnaires on the SATs, and other devices, our society tries to draw conclusions about people based on appearance. It is a quick and easy way to categorize people without taking the time to get to know them, but it simply cannot be done.
I cannot be placed neatly into a single racial category, although I’m sure that people walking down the street don’t hesitate to label me “caucasian.” Never in my life has a stranger not been surprised when I told them I was half black.
Having light skin, eyes, and hair, but being black and white often leaves me misperceived. Do I wish that my skin were darker so that when I tell people I’m black they won’t laugh at me? No, I accept and value who I am. To me, being black is more than having brown skin; it’s having ancestors who were enslaved, a grandfather who managed one of the nation’s oldest black newspapers, the Chicago Daily Defender, and a family who is as proud of their heritage as I am. I prove that one cannot always discern another’s race by his or her appearance.
I often find myself frustrated when explaining my racial background, because I am almost always proving my “blackness” and left neglecting my Irish-American side. People have told me that “one drop of black blood determines your race,” but I opt not to follow this rule. In this country a century ago, most mixed-race children were products of rape or other relationships of power imbalance, but I am not. I am a child in the twenty-first century who is a product of a loving relationship. I choose the label biracial and identify with my black and Irish sides equally. I am proud to say that my paternal great-grandparents immigrated to this country from Ireland and that I have found their names on the wall at Ellis Island, but people are rarely interested in that. They can’t get over the idea that this girl, who according to their definition looks white, is not.
Last year, at my school’s “Sexual Awareness Day,” a guest lecturer spoke about the stereotypical portrayal of different types of people on MTV’s The Real World. He pointed out that the white, blond-haired girls are always depicted as completely ditsy and asked me how it felt to fit that description. I wasn’t surprised that he assumed I was white, but I did correct his mistake. I told him that I thought the show’s portrayal of white girls with blond hair was unfair. I went on to say that we should also be careful not to make assumptions about people based on their physical appearance. “For example,” I told him, “I’m not white.” It was interesting that the lecturer, whose goal was to teach students not to judge or make assumptions about people based on their sexual orientation, had himself made a racial assumption about me.
I often find myself wishing that racial labels didn’t exist so that people wouldn’t rely on race alone to understand a person’s thoughts, actions, habits, and personality. One’s race does not reveal the content of their character. When someone finds out that I am biracial, do I become a different person in his or her eyes? Am I suddenly “deeper,” because I’m not just the “plain white girl” they assumed I was? Am I more complex? Can they suddenly relate to me more (or less)? No, my race alone doesn’t reveal who I am. If one’s race cannot be determined simply by looking at a person, then how can it be possible to look at a person and determine her inner qualities?
Through census forms, racial questionnaires on the SATs, and other devices, our society tries to draw conclusions about people based on appearance. It is a quick and easy way to categorize people without taking the time to get to know them, but it simply cannot be done.
Finding Truths
In my life, I have taken many journeys without which I would not have experienced important truths. My father started us off early, taking us on many journeys to help us understand that true knowledge comes only from experience. We took trips every winter break to Madrid, Mexico, Costa Rica, and to Jamaica and Trinidad, my parents’ homeland for Christmas. Silly things I remember from those trips include the mango chili sauce on the pork in Maui, the names of the women who gave out the towels by the pools in Selva Verde, Costa Rica, eating dinner at 10 p.m. in Spain. These were all tourist experiences that I, at first, found spellbinding. My truths were the truths of the tourist brochures: beautiful hotels, beaches, and cities. I did not see the blindfolds. I did not appreciate how being held hostage by the beauty of the surface—the beaches and cities—blinded me to the absence of Puerto Rican natives on the streets of San Juan; I did not understand how the prevalence and familiarity of English conspired to veil the beauty of the Spanish language beneath volumes of English translations.
I learned more about these truths in my sophomore year of high school, when I was among a group of students selected to visit Cuba. My grandmother was born in Cuba, yet I had never thought to research my own heritage. I have remained the naïve American who saw Castro as some distant enemy of my country, accepting this as fact because this seemed to be the accepted wisdom. I soon became intrigued, however, with this supposed plague to my freedom, my culture, and everything good and decent. I began to think, just what is communism anyway? What’s so bad about Castro and Cuba—and I hear they have good coffee. I believed that what was missing was a lack of understanding between our two cultures, and that acceptance of our differences would come only with knowledge.
My first impression of Cuba was the absence of commercialism. I saw no giant golden arch enticing hungry Cubans with beef-laced fries; I did see billboards of Che Guevara and signposts exhorting unity and love. I realized, however, that much of the uniqueness that I relished here might be gone if the trade blockades in Cuba were ever lifted. The parallels and the irony were not lost on me. I was stepping out of an American political cave that shrouded the beauty of Cuba and stepping into another, one built on patriotic socialism, one where truths were just as ideological as, yet very different from, mine.
History, I recognized, is never objective. The journeys I have taken have been colored by my prior experiences and by what my feelings were in those moments. Everyone holds a piece of the truth. Maybe facts don’t matter. Perhaps my experience is my truth and the more truths I hear from everyone else, the closer I will get to harmonization. Maybe there is no harmony, and I must go through life challenging and being challenged, perhaps finding perspectives from which I can extract—but never call—truth. I must simply find ways to understand others, to seek in them what is common to us all and perhaps someday find unity in our common human bond. This is what life has taught me so far, my sum of truths gleaned from experiencing many cultures. I don’t know if these truths will hold, but I hope that my college experience will be like my trip to Cuba—challenging some truths, strengthening others, and helping me experience new ones.
I learned more about these truths in my sophomore year of high school, when I was among a group of students selected to visit Cuba. My grandmother was born in Cuba, yet I had never thought to research my own heritage. I have remained the naïve American who saw Castro as some distant enemy of my country, accepting this as fact because this seemed to be the accepted wisdom. I soon became intrigued, however, with this supposed plague to my freedom, my culture, and everything good and decent. I began to think, just what is communism anyway? What’s so bad about Castro and Cuba—and I hear they have good coffee. I believed that what was missing was a lack of understanding between our two cultures, and that acceptance of our differences would come only with knowledge.
My first impression of Cuba was the absence of commercialism. I saw no giant golden arch enticing hungry Cubans with beef-laced fries; I did see billboards of Che Guevara and signposts exhorting unity and love. I realized, however, that much of the uniqueness that I relished here might be gone if the trade blockades in Cuba were ever lifted. The parallels and the irony were not lost on me. I was stepping out of an American political cave that shrouded the beauty of Cuba and stepping into another, one built on patriotic socialism, one where truths were just as ideological as, yet very different from, mine.
History, I recognized, is never objective. The journeys I have taken have been colored by my prior experiences and by what my feelings were in those moments. Everyone holds a piece of the truth. Maybe facts don’t matter. Perhaps my experience is my truth and the more truths I hear from everyone else, the closer I will get to harmonization. Maybe there is no harmony, and I must go through life challenging and being challenged, perhaps finding perspectives from which I can extract—but never call—truth. I must simply find ways to understand others, to seek in them what is common to us all and perhaps someday find unity in our common human bond. This is what life has taught me so far, my sum of truths gleaned from experiencing many cultures. I don’t know if these truths will hold, but I hope that my college experience will be like my trip to Cuba—challenging some truths, strengthening others, and helping me experience new ones.
Monday, 13 June 2016
Manja – Bahasa Melayu
It was yesterday when my family and I were having our vacation at Pangkor Island, which is a resort island off the coast of Perak. Beside our room was a family from America that probably came here for a vacation too. I noticed that there was a little boy in the household and he looked so “manja.” That night, we had our family dinner in a restaurant that was popular nearby so did the American family coincidentally. Consequently, we had our time together with that family talking about each other, laughing and eating together. The boy looked at me, and I called him, but he didn’t come. I said to his parents, “Your kid is adorable and so “manja,” and they were just silent because they did not know what “manja” was. Therefore, the word “manja” needs clarification for native English speakers to understand it.
When I was seven years old, I still remembered that my mother used to call me “manja” once. She was divorced five years after I was born and she had no one else except me. Obviously, it was the toughest years for her to take care of me without any support from my father. Growing up without a father upset me as a son. Almost every day in the morning my lovely mother will send me off to the school by car and picked me up in the evening even though the distance between my school and my house was just 500 meters. One day, she had a fever; therefore, she felt sorry for me because she could not send me to school today and told me to walk there with my friends. I refused to do so and didn’t want to go to the school. Then, my mother said gently, “Please son, don’t be so “manja.” I know you can do it.” As a result, I braced myself and walked there with my other friends. That was the first time I heard the word “manja.”
Furthermore, “Manja” does not necessarily mean someone who is acting cute. A person who is “manja” is someone who is overacting about something with someone who he/she is close to. It could happen anywhere or anytime especially in a family. For example, when my sisters, Sofiya and Ilyana, were still nine years old, they were very close to my father. They would be excited when it came to Eid-ul-Fitr because they will get their new clothes which are baju kurung. As usual, all the clothes, which are baju melayu and baju kurung, will be the same in color for everyone and that somehow made Sofiya mad because she didn’t want the same color as anyone else. Indeed, my father had been planning the theme for that year is blue, so everyone in the family will be wearing clothes blue in color. Ilyana was feeling happy about it. However, Sofiya disagreed, and she still stuck with her choice which is the green color. My father reminded his daughter not to be “manja” otherwise it will be none for her.
There is the way that people can know if someone is “manja.” One important requirement is that the individual is overacting. It means that when something that is straightforward and easy-going, and someone who is “manja” making it more complicated and hard to deal with; in other words, things would be difficult to do if working with him/her who is “manja.” The second requirement is it is intentional. That is to say, the person is intended to do so because of what he/she feels, and this often happens between family members and friends. Another requirement is to feel distracted when the person does it. An individual who is “manja” will usually make the people surround him/her feel troubled with what that person does. It is not like feeling annoyed. However, it is just difficult to concentrate on what we are doing when that kind of person is near us.
Also, an example of a person whom I consider “manja” is my friend, Susan. One day, she invited me to go to the cinema to watch a horror movie called The Sinister. Without further ado, I accepted the offer because I liked watching movies especially the horror one. She told me that she didn’t have any car to go there, but I suggested her to take a bus because it would be easier. At first, she agreed but then plan changed. When I was on the bus, she contacted me and told me that she needed to go with her mother as she was afraid to take the bus. As I arrived there, I waited for her for almost half an hour. I just could not stand it anymore, so I called her again and asked her maybe she was in her way. I was shocked that she was still at home waiting for her mother to get back from work. I felt so frustrated and ended up watching that movie alone. That was because of her “manja” attitude.
While eating dinner together with that family, I explained to the parents’ boy about what is the meaning of “manja.” As a result, they understood it and felt relieved that “manja” was not a bad attitude to have. In fact, they seemed comfortable with their son’s behavior because it was common to have that in every child. They also agreed that the word “manja” was not able to translate directly from Bahasa Melayu to English.
When I was seven years old, I still remembered that my mother used to call me “manja” once. She was divorced five years after I was born and she had no one else except me. Obviously, it was the toughest years for her to take care of me without any support from my father. Growing up without a father upset me as a son. Almost every day in the morning my lovely mother will send me off to the school by car and picked me up in the evening even though the distance between my school and my house was just 500 meters. One day, she had a fever; therefore, she felt sorry for me because she could not send me to school today and told me to walk there with my friends. I refused to do so and didn’t want to go to the school. Then, my mother said gently, “Please son, don’t be so “manja.” I know you can do it.” As a result, I braced myself and walked there with my other friends. That was the first time I heard the word “manja.”
Furthermore, “Manja” does not necessarily mean someone who is acting cute. A person who is “manja” is someone who is overacting about something with someone who he/she is close to. It could happen anywhere or anytime especially in a family. For example, when my sisters, Sofiya and Ilyana, were still nine years old, they were very close to my father. They would be excited when it came to Eid-ul-Fitr because they will get their new clothes which are baju kurung. As usual, all the clothes, which are baju melayu and baju kurung, will be the same in color for everyone and that somehow made Sofiya mad because she didn’t want the same color as anyone else. Indeed, my father had been planning the theme for that year is blue, so everyone in the family will be wearing clothes blue in color. Ilyana was feeling happy about it. However, Sofiya disagreed, and she still stuck with her choice which is the green color. My father reminded his daughter not to be “manja” otherwise it will be none for her.
There is the way that people can know if someone is “manja.” One important requirement is that the individual is overacting. It means that when something that is straightforward and easy-going, and someone who is “manja” making it more complicated and hard to deal with; in other words, things would be difficult to do if working with him/her who is “manja.” The second requirement is it is intentional. That is to say, the person is intended to do so because of what he/she feels, and this often happens between family members and friends. Another requirement is to feel distracted when the person does it. An individual who is “manja” will usually make the people surround him/her feel troubled with what that person does. It is not like feeling annoyed. However, it is just difficult to concentrate on what we are doing when that kind of person is near us.
Also, an example of a person whom I consider “manja” is my friend, Susan. One day, she invited me to go to the cinema to watch a horror movie called The Sinister. Without further ado, I accepted the offer because I liked watching movies especially the horror one. She told me that she didn’t have any car to go there, but I suggested her to take a bus because it would be easier. At first, she agreed but then plan changed. When I was on the bus, she contacted me and told me that she needed to go with her mother as she was afraid to take the bus. As I arrived there, I waited for her for almost half an hour. I just could not stand it anymore, so I called her again and asked her maybe she was in her way. I was shocked that she was still at home waiting for her mother to get back from work. I felt so frustrated and ended up watching that movie alone. That was because of her “manja” attitude.
While eating dinner together with that family, I explained to the parents’ boy about what is the meaning of “manja.” As a result, they understood it and felt relieved that “manja” was not a bad attitude to have. In fact, they seemed comfortable with their son’s behavior because it was common to have that in every child. They also agreed that the word “manja” was not able to translate directly from Bahasa Melayu to English.
Thursday, 20 August 2015
We are not friend, we are family!
Hey guys, it's been two weeks I've left my blog without any update posted. I'm so sorry because lately I'm kind a busy preparing for Toefl which I'll be taking this Saturday at Petaling Jaya. Wish me and my friends good luck. So, now I'm going to share with you guys something that I feel which would be difficult for me to forget.
I really hope that we can meet there. Thank you so much for the memories. I really appreciate it. One more thing, please forgive me for my wrongdoings. I will never forget all of you especially those that I always have problems with. (Hope that person will notice it) LOL
We are family! :-)
Friday, 31 July 2015
The uses of a daily newspaper
Nowadays, we live in an age of science. We live in a world that is
changing fast every minute and every hour. Everyday, new advances in every
sphere of life are reported through the newspapers. If we do not read
newspapers daily, we shall be quite in the dark as to what is going on around
us. It is better for us to know what are the uses of the daily newspaper. There
are many uses of it and a few of them are keeping our knowledge of the world
up-to-date, catering for all kinds of tastes, and gaining our general
knowledge.
A daily paper keeps our knowledge of the
world around us up-to-date. It has become a necessity. Newspaper reading is
essential for all cultures. If we do not get our morning daily on a certain
day, we feel sore about it and we also feel mentally hungry. A daily paper
satisfies our mental hunger. We might eager to know what happened yesterday or
may be what will happen tomorrow and most of the time we really want to know
the things that currently happen today. For instance, if a cricket match is
going on between a foreign team and a home team, the cricket fans are anxious
to know the score of the teams. Therefore, it is crucial for us to have a daily
newspaper as it will keep our knowledge of the world up-to-date.
Besides, a newspaper caters for all kinds
of tastes. It satisfies varied wants. A share broker is anxious to know the
daily rates of shares of Mumbai and Russia stock exchanges. A bullion merchant
is interested in the latest rates of gold and silver. Film fans look for the
page reserved for the 'Screen'. Sportsmen read accounts of matches going on.
Also, every good daily paper has special corners for women and children.
Children love to read stories and riddles and their solutions while women love
to go through the articles on cooking recipes and housekeeping. Advertisement
columns are a great attraction. There are 'Situations Vacant', 'Agents and
Canvassers', 'Educational', 'Lost and Found', 'Public Notices', and various
other types of notices. There are also weather reports and forecasts. So, it is
proven that daily newspaper uses to cater for all kinds of tastes.
Other than that, a daily newspaper also
gains our general knowledge as it contains a magazine section. This section
contains useful and learned articles on various political, social, economic,
historical, and cultural topics. The study of these articles helps us to gain
our knowledge. A habitual reader of a daily fare well at university and
competitive examination and interviews. He does not remain a frog in the well.
Indeed, every important English daily has one or two columns reserved for
'Letters to the Editor'. The study of these letters acquaints us with opposite
views on a particular subject. It enlarges our mental horizon. The editorials
of a good English daily are very informative. A good student who wishes to have
an alert and sensitive mind must read such articles.
In conclusion, we must read more than one
daily to keep ourselves well-informed and to have an open mind on the various
important topics of the day.
Tuesday, 28 July 2015
My Last Holiday
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