I am a Banana!

and i am proud to be one too!

don't think dirty.
am not speaking of anatomy of any sort.

in case you don't know what it means...
it refers to any chinese who has not been to sekolah jenis kebangsaan cina in his/her entire life.
in UM, such people are called OCBC- orang cina bukan cina.

my dad used to regret that he didn't send me to a chinese school.
he felt embarrassed that his daughters were not able to write or speak a decent sentence of mandarin.
so he made me go for POL classes....the once in a week thingy...supposed to teach me some mandarin.
to be honest, i only learnt some simple words...and still couldn't speak proper mandarin.
i only remember using the black ink for chinese calligraphy to draw on valerie's white shirt.
and she did the same to me. in the end, i had to get a new shirt. hehe.
and the exams were kinda stupid.
i had to memorise a story...a paragraph only...and be prepared to write the whole thing during the test. so being the smart-ass/donkey, i wrote the whole thing on the table and copied from there.
how to learn chinese like this??
and that teacher, was a horny old fart!
he liked to touch girls' nametags, pretending to look at their names clearly. you should know that we wear our nametags near our chest.

and...

a form 2 girl should be able to hold the calligraphy brush right?
but he didn't seem to get it.
he would guide us by holding our hands! see....he would've easily taken advantage from each girl for at least 5 seconds!

so in the end....
i gained nothing from those pointless classes....and that old man had everything to gain.

i learnt even more chinese from songs and chinese series.
though i still could not read a chinese paper, at least i could roughly guess what's being sold at those hawker stalls by looking at the chinese words.
though my spoken mandarin is not as good..but still good enough to save my ass for daily conversations with my coursemates.

what i am trying to say is....
it's not such a BIG DEAL afterall.

my dad is now glad that he sent to me convent instead of any chinese school.
because i have been complaining to him how most of my chinese coursemates can't string a proper sentence of english. how they lose their confidence when required to speak english at public. how they have not migled with anyone from other races before. how kiasu and selfish they are. how their lives only involve studies, studies and studies. how they think they are more superior compared to other races.

will i send my kids to a chinese school in the future?
well...

if the education system doesn't change..the answer will be a NO

mandarin is getting more important...i know that..but i still think that english is way much more important.

being able to speak decent mandarin will be fine.
not being able to...is still fine.