JYSim for jobless-yokel Sim

I came back to Malaysia with a mental note to solve some problems I encountered in  Taiwan. Before this I had noted that my presence in Taiwan was a little of a semi-existance state - a far cry from what I experienced in CLHS. I suddenly became the youngest in my class, and whether it is because of that fact or not, I transformed into the young guy with near-to-zero credibility and hard to rely on. Perhaps it is due also to the sharp focus in my studies I decided to put effort into that I deliberately neglected other (often better) things. I did not participate very actively in co-curriculur activities (because there’s no marks allocated for it), and I no longer volunteer to become committee members of some planning group. In short, I became quite reserved (even though I wasn’t known for my active state in co-curriculur activities when I was in CLHS either).
Even before I came back I complained to Mum about the problem - I wasn’t the (blush) popular and (some say) brilliant guy I was anymore. I was a meagre medical student no one will remember after the semester, I was just the normal sim jun yi (note no capitals for SJY). Perhaps by now you’d say the Sim Jun Yi is so arrogant and he wasn’t anyhow popular or brilliant last time either, but all in all, my character changed from the first day I stepped into TCU.
Once I’m home I discussed the matter tete-a-tete with quite a number of people. And to my amazement, the problem just dissolved and shrank in my very own eyes. From my state of ‘oh dear, this gotta be corrected soon’ to ‘it isn’t that serious seriously’ to the current ‘aiyah, i can try to ‘activate’ myself next semester still’ - it was a comforting and always enriching experience to share my problems with all these people - Zi Yi, Ms. Cheah Joo Ean and a couple of teachers in school.
Up to this point I feel obliged to share the small observation I made from this semester - I noticed Chinese from South Malaysia tend to be more ‘Singaporean’, meaning they’re more aggressive in nature and they have this ‘go, let’s do it! Do it now!’ attitude. Chinese of North Malaysia are more relaxed in nature and they’re like ‘cincai lah, aiyah, whatever you do, as long as you give me the right things on time’. The North Malaysian Chinese, if it can be said, chooses to walk life with a slower pace. Of course at the end of the day we can’t say each and everyone of us is something described above, but at least I got the feeling of so. It’s just a generalisation after all.
At the end of the day, wherever our discussion may lead to, we will always end with ‘you still need more time to adapt to the different environment,’ ‘judging by your current circumstances, I think you did not bad overall. Allow yourself more time to evaluate and excavate your talents.’ etc.
These advices reminded me of my humble (and perhaps rugged) start in CLHS. I started Form One in Chung Ling not anticipating how Chung Ling would instill its good values into me. I wasn’t a very-typical Chung Ling student too, if you judge by the CLHS legacy. Anyway, I came out of CLHS with my very own ability to analyse things (very gifted in Taiwan), have a point of view of my own, and communicates relatively effectively in Manglish. Maybe TCU has other things to offer at the end of my 7th year too. And maybe that’s just what I have to go through in order to absord what it has to offer. And now I remember ‘nobody every said going on exchange (being a foreign student) was easy’.
I guess I’m still a typical Northern still - doing nothing is the best way of doing things, sometimes. That again reminds me of something Queen Elizabeth II said in ‘The Queen’ - that is how we do things, silently, and with dignity, and that’s what the world admire us for.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 8th, 2007 at 7:26 am 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.