Friday 31 August 2012

Hari Merdeka events

Good morning! Selamat Hari Merdeka! Today is a brand new day because today is the 55th anniversary of independence. The theme for national day celebrations is "Janji Ditepati" (promises fulfiled). Media Prima is the company that initiated this theme where it is first used for the "Karnival Janji Ditepati" where the carnival promotes how Malaysia has achieved with the 1Malaysia spirit. Speaking about Media Prima, one of Media Prima's personalities who appears on 8TV, Baki Zainal, a Malay, can speak fluently in Mandarin and interacts well with people of different races. He can speak fluently in the language because he had experienced studying at a Chinese school in Johor Bahru. You can see him in "Step Forward" and other local programmes in Chinese produced by Primeworks for 8TV. Adibah Noor also speaks Mandarin fluently in a commercial for Libresse, a sanitary pad brand. You can see her commercial on Youtube.

This morning, there will be a national day parade at Dataran Merdeka. My school has sent 100 students for a choral speaking performance in Malay for the parade. My Perdagangan teacher in my class is assisting the students for the performance. They have been practicing this for a month. Choral speaking in Malay, which is called "bicara berirama" is a whole new thing for the Malay language, influenced from the English choral speaking which was started many years ago. I'm not sure whether "choral speaking" is a really unique Malaysian thing because I haven't seen any historical information about this. 

Tonight there will be a national day gathering at Stadium Nasional Bukit Jalil. It reminds me of a similar thing, which is the national day rally in Singapore. It is named "Himpunan Janji Ditepati". The event will use Twitter as its social media tool. The national day gathering will set the world record of having one million tweets with messages of independence hashtaged #Merdeka55 between 8:15 and 9:15 pm. I'm sure this event will make my country proud!

In the past, national day songs were mostly made by RTM, but nowadays, we can see national day songs and patriotic songs made by Limkokwing and others.  For example, "Kita 1Malaysia" which is sung by Limkokwing students.

Before concluding this blogpost, I would like to express my feelings about my country. I am proud to be a Malaysian because I can interact with people of different races and experience other people's culture. Learning the history of my country has helped me to realise that the people in the past have struggled to make our country free from the colonials. I can feel the uniqueness of my country because my country has the Yang di-Pertuan Agong as the head of the government selected from the nine sultans of Malay states and the cusine of different cultures such as roti canai and char kuay teow. I can also feel the peace of my country because my country is stable.

More blogposts soon!

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