About Youth, and Friends Worldwide
This week, we bring an inaugural piece by Lim Ka Keat, who writes today of his experiences in widening his circle of social interaction whilst in the UK - a topic sure to be of great relevance to a great many of us.
“Amongst us, we can see many Malaysian students today having the habit of only mingling among themselves when they are overseas. Although this is not a completely bad thing, in terms of nation building and racial unity, it does somehow defeat the purpose of us being abroad.”
By Lim Ka Keat
Although we (IMU students) were enrolled in a twinning programme which allowed us to spend the final year of our course in Scotland, integration between the Malaysian and Scottish students had been poor. The polarisation was obvious, even during lectures. Realising how negative the situation was, a group of students decided to be innovative by initiating a ‘Buddy System’.
For this voluntary programme, Malaysian and Scottish students who signed up were paired to become ‘buddies’, and were supposed to help each other (in practice, it turned out to be much more the Scottish students helping the Malaysian students to adapt to the new environment). Prior to the transfer to Scotland, contacts were exchanged and everyone kept in touch with each other ala pen pals through Facebook, e-mail and MSN.
Thanks to the seniors’ initiative, my year was the second year that the Buddy System was operating. It went quite well. A few of us who were actively involved in the system got together to organise some activities. First, we had a Halloween Party for everyone, which was the first Halloween for many of us - it was really fun to see everybody dressing up in their own creative costumes!
During Chinese New Year, all the 100+ Malaysian students prepared lots of food and invited all home students and lecturers to our halls (all the Malaysian students were staying in the same block of flats in the student village) for their first taste of a Malaysian ‘open house’. Interestingly enough, we had more of a truly Malaysian spread of curries and spices, rather than just Chinese food, for those were what we missed most from home! Muslim students in the class also helped out to prepare halal food for the Muslims. The turnout was good and everybody enjoyed themselves. Later on, the home students organised a Scottish Night in one of the local pubs in return. Besides that, we also worked together to organise our Graduation Ball, and printed a common yearbook at the end of our course.
It is hard to put into words how eye-opening this experience was, and how much I had learned from my Scottish friends throughout my one year - or rather, how much we had learnt from each other. Some of us had also made several good friends there whose friendship we really cherished, and with whom we still keep in touch. It made us feel that we had achieved much more during our stay than just academic results alone.
Now, let’s take a step back. Amongst us, we can see many Malaysian students today having the habit of only mingling among themselves when they are overseas. Although this is not a completely bad thing, in terms of nation building and racial unity, it does somehow defeat the purpose of us being abroad. We end up missing the opportunities to network, to learn about different cultures, and to really see how a different society functions.
We Malaysians are truly unique, as we are one of the few nations to have progressed despite the differences between our races - indeed, we are well-known for being a kaleidoscope of cultures. If we think more deeply about things, we should realise that our decision to study overseas is not just a purely personal issue. On another level, we are the ambassadors of our country, for we carry Malaysia’s name! Therefore, it is equally important that we carry our friendliness, politeness and open-mindedness wherever we go.
It would be great to see more efforts like this coming up from the current crop of Malaysian students, not just at university level but also at a personal level. You can make your life overseas more fruitful, but it is only you who can take the effort. To quote one of my Scottish friends, who said the following in our first meeting, when trying to convince me that our Buddy System was going to work, “We are all youths of the same age. There is nothing to stop us from getting along well with each other.”
The result? I was convinced. “Yeah, we are not that different after all.”
Lim Ka Keat was previously studying in the University of Strathclyde under the IMU-Strathclyde Pharmacy Twinning Programme.
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Thanks Hizami! =)