Wrote these during my Form 6 days... The second piece won first prize in the school essay-writing competition. :D

Malaysia - The Nation Through Our Years

I woke up with a start, as an all-too-familar shrill ringing pierced the silence of the morning. Groaning, I turned off the alarm, trying to rub the sleep out of my eyes at the same time. It was Friday morning, but for some reason, I wasn't experiencing the elation Friday mornings always brought with them. A sullen mood prevailed as I went about my daily morning rituals.

"You look so down today," a Malay classmate known for her gregarious ways asked in a concerned manner. I shrugged, as if the problem pressing down on my chest could be shrugged off as several other classmate started surrounding me. To my horror, a solitary tear streamed down my face. It wasn't unexpected, as I'd been bottling them up for some time now. "It just had to happen right here huh?" I thought bitterly as sobs started racking my body. It was a rhetorical question, as I knew exactly the reason. The source of all this depression was coming home today....

Not even aware of what was happening anymore, I experienced a temporary flashback amidst the worry-wrought voices of my classmates. "Merdeka today lah, don't be so sad....." The voice sounded like it came from far away.

The canteen was teeming with students, either jostling with the others for seats or queuing up for their food. I had just finished devouring a packet of my perennial favourite, nasi lemak and quickly scrambled out of my seat. Having informed my friends of my early departure, I virtually dashed all the way to the public phone located outside the staffroom and slipped a 50 cent coin into the slot. I dialled home. My grandma picked up the phone in the middle of the second ring. I cut in before she could say anything, "Nikki got the scholarship mah?" My heart pounded to a point where I thought it'd actually burst through my ribcage.

"Yeah lah, she got it! And country is India!" She went on blabbing about how people said India was a good place for medical students but I'd tuned out. I was gripped by a sudden palpable sense of loss. So, my younger sister from whom I'd never been apart for more than a week was going to leave for India after doing her Cambridge A-levels in a college in Sepang for a year and a half . To study medicine. Reality sank in. She was only coming back every Friday, and only on weekends would I get to revel in her company...

The years in which Nikki and I grew up together spanned three states. We were both born in Johor, or to be more exact, Tangkak, to a sales executive and a housewife in their mid- twenties. Our early childhood was riddled with trips to our maternal grandfather's durian orchard. That aside, it was what everyone would call a typical childhood. We argued a lot, yes, but those childish arguments were far outnumbered by the happy times we had spent with each other. It was during those years we learned the pleasure of friendship, as a strong sense of camaraderie always dominated in the kampong that was Tangkak, our hometown up to this very day. The fact we lived between the Malays and the Indians also helped. Hence, the existence of a real melting pot for cultures smack bang in the middle of the proverbial nowhere, in Malaysia.

I recall a certain event still very much vivid in my mind. It happened at night, on the 31st of August in the year 1994. The seven of us (Nikki, I and the others, the walking definition of the phrase racial harmony) were playing like monkeys(in my father's words) in front of our house that night, drenched in sweat. We were chasing each other around, after getting bored of singeing the grass around us with matches under the watchful eyes of our parents, as they chatted with the neighbours in broken Malay. Then, the first fireworks exploded in the sky. We stopped running around to look up at the sky, now pinpricked with a myriad of colours. A second round of fireworks burst into the sky like flora blooming in the spring and we found ourselves cheering and screaming at the sudden burst of colours that surrounded us. "Hari ni Hari Merdeka!" Siti, the youngest of us all yelled. And we stood, transfixed by the beauty of it all. The typical children of Malaysia, abdicated of all responsiblities, standing under the night sky on a very special day to the nation as a whole.

All good things come to an end, however as our parents dropped us a bombshell in the beginning of the year 1996 by announcing we would be moving to Melaka, due to the nature of our father's job. An ominous atmosphere presided as Nikki and I spilled out hearts' contents about the move to each other. That year, we celebrated Merdeka Day without the flare we were used to. The few years after were then spent on navigating the historical waters of Melaka, and we came to love Melaka, especially the Portuguese settlement by the seaside. How can I ever forget how pleasant the breeze ruffling our hair was, whenever we were having yet another evening meal in an open-air seafood restaurant there? And the white tourists! It was quite an experience for Nikki and me as we hadn't seen many whites during our years in Johor.

The years went by in a blur and we moved to Kuala Lumpur in the year 2000. Howdy, city life! How easy was it to fit in and learn the ways of the city people, having been tainted by the progress of a nation, slowly forgetting our roots and identity. Fast forward to the year 2007, I felt like I was on the outside, looking in, when Nikki and I were sitting in the mamak stall near our house, sipping our glasses of iced Milo. It was the night after my embarrassing crying fest at school. The mamak stall was practically alive with the sounds of the Malays, Indians and the Chinese. "Ah ne! Satu milo ais!" "Dua nasi lemak!" "Mari kira!"

The Joys Of Merdeka

It is really just another one of those days you feel on top of the world, as you jabber away with your friends at a mamak stall, sipping from a glass of iced milo. Kneaded in the scene is the proverbial people from all walks of life, all with their own color and stories to tell. Tales of daily gaffes and troubles invade the air. They are the typical anak Malaysia, all united under the palings of living in Malaysia and the things brought with it. And it is at that particular mamak stall they revel in the true sense of the word merdeka.

Your shopping blast in KLCC is coming to an end, as you've just been bombarded by calls from your parents warning you about that accursed curfew. Hotfooting it out of KLCC laden with shopping bags and bugged by painful heels, you reach the LRT station with your friends and it is during the time spent on waiting for the train to reach you all bemoan(not too softly) the crawling slowness and general inefficiency of the nation's public transport system. The train I am in finally reaches and they come in, still talking. Brimming with passengers keen on getting home apace, the train moves and whizzes past the lights of the city. Have we failed to notice the beauty, and that more than half of the world's population have never enjoyed this kind of basic contentment in their whole life? Yes, we are merdeka, we just failed to see it.

Moving along, it is also merely another typical day for me, who has just completed another day of my Form 6 life in school, and is now typing in front of the computer screen, trying to finish up an essay to submit for a school contest. I ponder a little on the fact that I have too, like all Malaysians, condemned the nation's shortcomings, but hey, I love Malaysia with all my heart, warts and all. Those are what make it so Malaysian! And I'm merdeka, be it the imminent end of STPM or for the others, year-end examinations, we're MERDEKA!