Who Am I

I am no Jackie Chan, but really who am I?

Chinese! I bear Chinese name no doubt, but I was born in Malaysia after her independence in 1957. Hence I carry with me a Malaysian passport and identity card; which the locals here termed NRIC.

I went to Chinese primary school, where Mandarin was the main medium of communications before I proceeded to national schools and finished my General Certificate of Education (GCE ¡®O¡¯ Level) in late 70¡¯s with aggregate 11 in 5 subjects. So what, to add to the mockery of the aforesaid examination, I¡®d obtained better grade in English ( A2 ), Bahasa Malaysia ( C6 ), than Mandarin ( P7 ). So who am I by then? A Malaysian Chinese? So shameful!

By this time, I could easily converse in our national language ¨C Bahasa Malaysia ( BM ), English, Mandarin plus my own dialect which is Fujian. Moreover, I can also understand some basic associated dialects like Cantonese, Hakka, Teochew, Hainanese etc.

Next, because I idolized Barry Gibb of the famous trio Bee Gees, I had adopted a ¡°Christian Name¡± of Barry; although going to Sunday Mass is still alien to me till this very day! I remember telling a good childhood friend of mine donkey years ago; name Danny that we were actually ¡°Anerican Chinese¡±, how strange! Who was I by then, I wonder?

As I progress and got assimilated into our cultural and religiously diverse society, I made many more friends from all walks of life, different in creed, color, origin & religion so I began to think again who am I?

A Malaysian Chinese?

A Chinese Malaysian?

A Malaysian? Or

None of the above? ¨C As if I was filling some kind of forms¡­¡­..

Correct me if I am wrong; I could still recalled that my English teacher Ms Teoh said - an adjective descript a nonce and I must say it was rather confusing even until now despite having As for my English during GCE ¡°O¡± level. Which of the above were more appropriate?