Hey. Point to note: I'm through with the year. I know my teachers must be really upset, cuz they like me so much but I'm not retaining.

*Beams*

Hee. =D

Anyway.. Onto other random stuff...

Was talking to Dad sometime ago about how being a Chinese you gotta be proud of your culture, you gotta know the language.

Sure. Yeah, I agree. Its a pity if you don't know it well.

But can you blame me?

Look, all my life, though I've been in Chinese schools and all that, I have been experiencing English oriented lessons, English oriented friends, English oriented CCAs, when you switch on the TV its english, when you listen to the radio its English, hell even the vulgarities spray-painted on the void decks are in English.

What did you expect I'd turn out to be?

No, don't be mistaken, I wasn't being scolded. But I'm saying under my circumstances, I had no choice but to be really bad at the language. And I do feel its a pity.

However one thing I detest is this:

You know when you have all the Chinese cultural performances and all that? Its so.. Fake. And we all know that its the past and has absolutely nothing to do with our present lives anymore. Isn't that right? The calligraphy, the dances, the costumes, the music. It has become so separate from our lives that it seems so out of place. And its not just in Singapore, same thing even happens in the Fatherland. Went Guangxi last year. I couldn't feel the slightest sense of culture. Nothing, not in houses, not in streets, not anywhere at all. The performances were so unreal. It wasn't culture at all, just some messed up dance choreography.

Then I look at Vienna. That was different. It was almost as if you were living centuries of history in that city. I'm serious. Their streets were as they were back to the Renaissance. The things people appreciated, the arts, the music, it was all part of them, of what they saw, felt and heard.

Of what they LIVED.

The difference is this: They managed to integrate their culture into their very lives. That's what we need to appreciate fully and to be proud of who we are. Here in Singapore, we are a young nation. We are multi-clutural. We are small. We have no choice but to succumb the wills and might of those towering over us. We have to ADAPT to SURVIVE. In doing so, we open our doors, we invite the infiltration of others, and the dilution of our identity.

That's the problem.