JYSim for jobless-yokel Sim

So, after your JPA interview do you…
- forget everything you read recently in the newspapers?
- forget Rukun Negara which you’ve so laboriously memorised since last week?
- forget to always end your speech with ‘thank you’?
- forget how to self-introduce yourself in Malay?
- forget what is the major focus of the government in our 9MP?
- continue to be impunctual, rude on the roads etc?
- don’t pay your bills, income tax, or JPA loans?
- forget we have 2 government tv channles, previously tv1 and tv2, now rtm1 and rtm2?
- return speaking Manglish with -lah, -mah etc ending every sentence?
- continue to be courteous when speaking to other people? Or try to dominate the conversation everytime?
Enough of the things you’ve forgotten. What I’m trying to say is that sometimes, Malaysians can be a little pathetic when it comes to preparing for interviews and meeting top officials (not that JPA interviewers are respected people).
Awareness of current issues is something each and every Malaysian should have. Malaysian students tend to become current issues professionals before interviews but after the interview they’ll forget who’s our prime minister. Not that bad perhaps, but who’s our former first lady? Why she passed away and where? If you can’t answer this, you might as well jump into a well.
And as Malaysians, you should at least be able to introduce yourself in Malay. Those who scored A1 for BM in fact should be made to present an impromptu speech in Malay. You can write bombastic and groundbreaking words in your essay and boast you wrote 5 pages on ‘cara-cara menangani jenayah’ but when it comes to self-introduction you stumble. It is your responsible to master your national language. During my interview yesterday several students memorised their self-introduction speech and the results are disastrous. Trust me, though JPA officers may be only lepasan SPM with no extra training, they’ll still be able to spot who whipped up their speech and who speak fluently and confidently. Not that I spoke perfect, but compared to the guy who said ’selamat pagi’ when it’s 3pm and ‘terima kasih kepada JPA kerana menjemput saya datang’, i think i flared.
No requests for speaking perfect English, but if compared to fellow Italians, we have much more exposure to English from movies, novels, and daily conversations. You should at least be able to express yourself in decent English, if not a little Malaysian-English. Mind you, my Italian classmates can speak and write good enough English to win themselves to a fully-paid trip to Germany. So there are no excuses why you can’t outdo them. And they have no Erican or British Council there.
Courtesy in speech is another thing common Malaysians neglect, not that I’m extraordinarily courteous when speaking. But saying ‘I’m afraid I don’t have the CD,’ rather than ‘No CD lah!’ sounds nicer. One way to make speeches nicer - observe how air stewardesses serve and speak the next time you take a flight.
Be a Malaysian and be yourself, not now, not in the future but all the time!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 5th, 2006 at 10:33 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.