What I understand about 1Malaysia? 1Malaysia means that culture of excellence, acceptance, education, integrity, humanity and loyalty among others. There are three stages of my life where I met different kind of people and experienced a lot of new things while in high school, college and now in university.
When I was in high school, it was a different kind of experience. Each year we will celebrate the National Day in our school and we are required to be dressed in traditional clothes. To show that we are united and our respect upon other religions, we exchange our traditional clothes among friends. Besides that, we also have traditional dance performances by the three main races of our country which are Malay, Chinese and Indian. These shows how we are supposed to respect other religions and to show how patriotic we are towards our country.
The second stage of my life was in college. I was the only Indian in my class and the majority were Chinese students. At first, I felt a bit lonely but as I get to know my classmates I was the centre of attraction for them and it was a whole new experience for me. I got to know more about Chinese customs and their traditions. Whenever they communicate among themselves by speaking in Mandarin, I never felt awkward because they were kind enough to translate their conversations so that I will not feel left out. Not only that, my friends will not eat beef or pork in front of me even though if they feel tempted because they respect my believes and they are understanding.
The third stage of my life, university. It is almost two months since I have joined my course and I made new friends who are from local and overseas. Moreover, this is the first time living on my own and away from family. I have a Chinese, an Indian and a Sikh as my housemates and they are all helpful and caring. Besides that, my foreigner classmates are friendly and it is interesting to learn and get to know more about their country and culture. I have four more years to go and I am hoping to meet more new people and experience new things.
There is a quote "religions are many and diverse, but reasons and goodness are one" is the best explanation on how we meet new people in life, learn new culture and understand each others believes and traditions. We might look different in size and colour but end of the day, we are one.
