Jatidiri? What's that?

I attended my first tutorial today, which was held in the Arthur Lewis Building, and we're divided into 4 groups and each group has been given a paper each on the issues of the relationship between financial development and economic growth.

I'm in the same group as Mohamed, a Sudanese but was raised in Canada and Sarah, from France. There is supposed to be another person by the name of Xing Zhan, which my wild guess must be from China, but unfortunately he or she can't be contacted (emails sent to him or her were bounced back) nor that he or she turned up in the class today.

And we're required to give a 15-minute presentation in front of the class.

I don't want to comment on our group's presentation but I'm quite moved by the presentation given by a Chinese student which I forgot his name. Coincidentally, the paper that he's presenting touched on foreign experiences, including China and Taiwan in integrating the financial development with the human capital in order to promote economic growth. The moment he mentioned Taiwan, he quickly added with "which is not a country, but a province of China".

Obviously, his actics drawed laughter from the whole class except one Chinese female student, who's from Taiwan!

Then, he continued with how the exiled leaders stole capital from mainland China and brought it to Taiwan, bla... bla.. bla...

I guess he got a bit excited and decided to give us some historical "lecture" on why Taiwan is part of China". Luckily, the facilitator stopped him and let us continued with other presentation.

Well, I don't want to be judgemental because I've very limited knowledge on this China-Taiwan crisis, but I really, really admire his courage and intention to stand up for his country. This reminds me of an episode which happened in Taiwan not long time ago, regarding a Malaysian who improvised the national anthem, Negaraku by adding it up with racist lyrics.

When I attended the fresher's week and as I passed by the Malaysian Students Society booth, a couple of multi-racial Malaysians - Malays, Chinese and Indians - joined hand in hand to promote, of course the society, but don't forget they are also promoting the beautiful country of Malaysia to all freshers (I hope I don't sound like a politician).

And I really think this is the step towards building a strong jatidiri among Malaysians, which can clearly be seen among the Jewish, Palestinians, Chinese, Indian, Korean, Japanese or even our own neighbour, Indonesians.

Like what Marina Mahathir said on her blog, saya anak bangsa Malaysia - is this just a slogan or it can really be internalised by all of us, Malaysians. Some may said, it is easier for her to say this because she already there at where she is now. She has everything, yeap... everything.

Hmmm...

p/s: Terima kasih daun keladi for this picture, Lee.