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Ku sembahmu Tuhan Yesus
Ku puji namamu
Kerana tiada yang seperti mu

I was at the hairdresser's last Sunday and was flipping through one of their magazines. I came across one about hairstyles and somehow I was just so drawn to it. You know how sometimes in magazines, they’re trying to promote something, and you have all these quotes from people telling you how good that product is, and how it has changed their lives? Well I've been really irritated by all this lately- radio adverts, commercials, billboards, they’re all saying the same things. They're all preachy and cheesy and it feels like everyone is trying to sell me something (which is true). But the reason this particular magazine drew me in, was because it was written in Mandarin. This probably wouldn’t have affected the common mandarin-reader, but for me, having this part of me untouched in so long, everything about that sentence just sounded so poetic. Although it was just a quote like any other, trying to sell something, there was a difference, it sounded beautiful. And just think, if having the language make such a difference to my current irritation of adverts, isn’t that language worthy of recognition? It made me think of learning Mandarin again, it made me remember its vast history and the beauty of its culture, and the significance of its every stroke and symbol.

I have a problem with English supremists.
Its the people who are 'pro' everything American, making American jokes to promote their American-ness, scoffing at anything mandarin, even if they don't have any good reason to. Laughing at Taiwanese music, getting irritated by 'lalas' or mandarin speaking people . . . etc. It's the same way I can't stand the way some people denote the Taiwanese music scene. . . Granted there is good reason to with the trashy girl groups and boy-look-like-girl-groups, but there are also amazing bands like Sodagreen and Mayday, who are just as good, just as innovative, indie and underground as any Athlete or Mutemath. Whose lyrics are full of expressionism, romanticism, depth. . .

and like everything else, whose music matters just as much.

I feel like just because you are ignorant about something, doesn't make it unworthy.

The English language has long since been a love of my life ever since my existence. It was from Peter and Jane, to the Eliots and Thoreau's, but that doesn't mean I don't embrace or love Mandarin or Malay. Some things just sound better in another language. Some things can’t be explained in another. Some, like the Inuit language has over a hundred derivatives for the word – snow. Neither of which can be replaced or be deemed as less important.

I feel like often we tease or hate, because we never fully understand. Its like learning that this egoistic person you hate is this way for a reason. Perhaps its insecurity, perhaps its a hard life of never being good enough for his parents, it could be any other issue, but granted they would all be things that we relate to, we understand and maybe some of us may know first- hand. Its harder to hate, when we see the other is just as human as we are, its something I’m constantly learning. . .

"Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, nay, to life itself than this incessant business."

-Henry David Thoreau-