Do you identify yourself as a Malaysian? Why? Does it matter?

Do you identify yourself as a Malaysian? Yes! Of course I do! Actually there are a few reasons that make me feel proud to be a Malaysian. Malaysia is a unique country due to its diversity of races, religions and culture but the important thing is that all of us able to live harmoniously. When we talk about food, there are a lot of choices for us to choose for example like Malay cuisine (nasi lemak,currypuff,rendang, sambal, satay),Chinese cuisine (bak kut teh, char kui teow, chee cheong fun, lok lok, yong tau foo), and also Indian cuisine (roti canai, mee goreng, putu mayam). Obviously this is a benefit for living in a multiracial country as all of us know that Malaysian love food A LOT! The first thing we ask when we meet our friends is "have you eaten yet?" or "let's go yamcha!",this has been a culture of ours.

Other than that, language is another uniqueness of Malaysia.We can communicate in different languages like Malay, English, Cantonese, Mandarin, or Tamil and we do have our own special slang that only Malaysian can understand. For example, Manglish or bahasa rojak is the feature that best describe us as a MALAYSIAN. This helps a lot in strengthening the bonds among us which we could understand each other more. We don't really have barriers between ethnicity because all of us being raise in the same environment, we met friends from different racial in school or in university. I guess this is the reason why we have a good relationship between each other no matter what color our skin is. 

Does it matter? I can answer this without hesitation, YES! It is! I felt lucky to born as a Malaysian because this is a place which safe from major earthquake. All of us respect each others and accept others religions and culture because we are all Malaysian who live in the same country. I do believe this is the key to the realization of national unity and harmony.