5. E-hailing Bingo
Death and the fear of dying are never so present in my mind as when I am in the backseat of a Grab car. I go days, sometimes weeks, without thinking about my mortality and then suddenly I am taking stock of my life and its many regrets as the car swishes and swooshes in and out of traffic. I have asked around and this is not a universal experience. It would seem that only I have had the bad fortune of getting paired with reckless drivers every time I use the app. Sometimes it feels as if there is an exclusive tier I'm not privy to on Grab and to access better drivers, I need to first pass a Dominic Toretto stress test.
When I'm not hanging on for dear life, I'm evading the invasive personal questions. I play this game with myself where I guess the questions a Grab driver will ask me. The options are usually related to my ethnicity. In no particular order, they are:
You local ah?
You mixed ah?
What race ah?
Sometimes I get asked all of them - the e-hailing bingo. I never understand what people mean when they say local. Local from a national or city standpoint? The answers I give invariably generate the same responses, which make the whole exchange feel like I'm rehearsing for a play. I'll ask for their definition of local and be met with "local lah, like from here", which clarifies nothing. Then, I will give up and tell them I'm from Ipoh, only to be rebuffed with a "ya lah, local lah". I am left feeling embarrassed by my need to convey clear and precise information, as if I've pilfered some of their brain matter with this useless piece of knowledge about me.
So I try to be as general as possible to avoid inviting further conversation. But that too has proven impossible for someone like me, whose skin colour and physical features don't necessarily reflect the Chinese surname that appears on the driver's end. How I choose to answer also hinges on how much energy I want to spend justifying my existence.
I've drawn a flow chart to demonstrate how it is almost impossible to satisfy anyone's curiosity. The conversation will invariably end with either a lecture on how I should do "better" as an X person or how I don't fit the bill of what an X person should look like. It somehow became my responsibility to reconcile dissonance that I had no part in creating and I have to either manage expectations or exceed them.
I suppose their response is not at all unusual given Malaysia's treatment of minority ethnic groups. There is a genuine fear that our cultural identity is slowly being erased through the abolition of vernacular schools and the reluctance to teach a history that accurately reflects the central role that non-Malays played in the making of Malaysia. It's no surprise that the people who are concerned about my race fall into the non-Malay, boomer demographic. Let me be clear though, Malay folks have been equally curious about my ethnicity, but the questioning isn't as thorough, because my skin does nothing to threaten the status quo. In fact, being disconnected from my roots serves in protecting the state and its institutions. If I'm detached from my communities, then I'm unlikely to stir shit. Joke's on them, my communities don't think I'm X enough anyway.
I can empathise with the concern but it would be nice to arrive at work in one piece without having to deal with an identity crisis, thank you very much. I am still waiting for the overhaul of our education system and its policies so I no longer have to explain why my folks prioritised the colonial language over our mother tongue. The reality is that they didn't have much of a choice: being fluent in English is the only viable way out of poverty. That meant other languages had to take a back seat, but at least their children would secure a job - if not here, possibly across the ocean. I was raised with the awareness that we are unwanted, under-appreciated second-class citizens, that we might as well chance it elsewhere for a better life.
I may not be able to speak the languages of my ancestors, and as a result might probably be missing out on some of life's rich tapestry, but there are other ways I connect with my cultural roots. And we can always invent new rituals that better reflect who we are. If I've learned anything from being a mixed-race kid, it's the familiarity of being an outsider. And if what we are really concerned with is the preservation of our cultural identities, then condescending questions about race aren't going to bring us any closer.
One thing read/listened to/watched:
The Art Of Running Late: A Love Letter: For someone who has the habit of arriving five hours early for their flight, this was a delightful slap in the face.
BALLS: This was a hilarious episode from the podcast All Consuming that I started listening to recently. It was actually the first episode I clicked on because I recognised the product since Instagram kept marketing it to me. If you can’t already tell from the name, it’s a trimmer for your balls.
I mean who hasn’t heard the latest Bruno Mars + Anderson .Paak collab at this point but have you seen this silky choreography from Kyle Hanagami. Skip to 3:27 for what I think is the best one from the lot. Sean and Kaycee have incredible chemistry and their performance was almost hypnotic.
That’s all folks, thanks for reading and I hope April will be kind to all of you.
Al