Living in a multi-racial and multi-cultural country is fun. You get more holidays in general *ahem*, you get to experience different cultural activities, and oh you get the choices of eating different types of food everyday! I really like the whole idea in general. Accepting and tolerating the differences, and cherishing the similarity.
But you know, it’s quite a common scenario that we have a pretty generalised concept and idea on other races. Like many Chinese and Indians (I said many, not all yeah… :P ) like to generalise the Malays as lazy. Like many Malays and Indians like to generalise Chinese as greedy. Like many Chinese and Malays like to generalise Indians as gangster. It’s just like when you are talking about a certain race, the whole generalised concept will just pop up, with the idea of oh-my-race-is-the-best. But is this whole thingy true?
I normally need to go to the post office from time to time, well, of course to post stuffs. I like to go to the one at Tanjung Bungah, mainly because they have their own parking area and it’s really more convenient. Over the past few months that I’ve been there, I noticed that they have only one Chinese lady working at the counter. The rest are all Malays.
During my first few visits, I was attended by the Malay staffs. I must say that they were friendly and helpful. Personally I always got confused with the services available at the post office – you know, like the registered and non-registered, PosLaju, Post Express, registered parcel, bla bla bla. And sometimes you were given stickers to stick on the envelope, while other times you don’t need to, even if you were using the same service. It’s just not consistent in all post offices but the Malay staffs there were very helpful that they either helped me to do it, or they explained clearly to me on what to do. Were they lazy? Nope I don’t think so.
However, during my visit to that post office this morning, I was attended by the Chinese lady. There were many people after the long holiday. A guy, well-dressed, was in front of me, intending to send a registered Air Mail to the U.S.A., just like me. The Chinese lady gave him all the instructions, telling him what to fill up, what to peel and stick at where, and even tested an envelope for him. How caring, I thought. And then it was my turn. So I told her that I would like to send both my mails via registered Air Mail.
