Now that I'm back in Penang, I feel differently about the people. About the place. It is still the place I grew up in. That's a fact, it cannot be changed. What changed is my perspective. My attitude. Just something within.

I feel ashamed or sad or grim, having the @_@ expression when I hear people speak Penang Hokkien. I was asking myself why. And now, I still don't have a definite answer for that.

Not that I'm not grateful of having to understand at least half of a conversation in Penang Hokkien. I'm thankful for it, that I semi-understand another dialect, have an edge over others when I was in Xiamen, Fujian province, when I could understand at least a little of what Da Tou's grandma was saying, thereby having an advantage over people who are clueless about the dialect. In Taiwan, it is similar too, though not 100% the same, that I can understand a little of the Taiwan Hokkien. (On 台语, I'm not too sure I understand that. I think there's a difference between Min Nan Yu 闽南语, the root of Penang Hokkien, and 台语).

It's a contrast to what Gerald feels about Penang, where he relates being in Penang, hearing people speak Penang Hokkien as homely.

Maybe it is because what the dialect represents in my head and the association of the dialect with Penang. When I come back here and see how the people behave, how they dress, I feel sad. Not ashamed just as yet, but sad. I want to ask them: do you know that there is a big wide world out there? Do you know there are so many things to learn? Do you know how much I have learnt by leaving Penang? Have you left Penang before, and tried surviving else where?

Maybe it's because I cannot relate what I have experienced overseas (across the causeway) with them. Similar to what I felt when I came back from China, where I felt no in Penang or Singapore understand how I feel, that the closest person physically who can understand what I experienced is Wan Xian, who was my dear Singaporean exchange friend.

I feel the same when I hear people speak Malaysian Chinese. If I haven't heard it for quite some time, hearing it gives me the cringes. Oh my. I try my best to speak with my China accent in Singapore, with my current China friends, with my Singaporean friends (sometimes I speak with a Singaporean Chinese accent, esp with my grandparents) with new friends. But yet, when someone speaks to me in Malaysian accented Chinese, especially my Penang friends, I think I would quite naturally slip back into that Malaysian accent, the singing song, imperfect accent. Maybe it's also because my accent for any language will vary according to whom I'm speaking to.

I'm a victim of what I have said. I think I am more comfortable with myself now, yet, I have to beware that I may also become a victim of what I hate, and have long vouched against becoming one of them, like a typical Singaporean, of haughtiness, with an air of pride.

On the sideline, I think what my mum said today made sense. I commented that the reason I was transferred to a Chinese primary school from an international ang moh school was because when my dad asked me whether I wanted to learn Mandarin, I didn't really respond, and probably just said okay. My mum was in a dilemma whether to put me in a Chinese primary school, cus the public education here it so segregated. Chinese go to Chinese school. Malays go to Malay school. Indians go to Tamil school. Yes. I do not have any Malay friends here, the irony of things. And yea, if I were her, I'd probably be in a dilemma too. Thank God for my education in Singapore, in China, to the Middle East, to open my eyes, to see the supposedly other people categorised in Malaysia as the same.