Intelligence Quotient

Professor Milton Osborne, whose credentials among the Southeast Asian and Australasian academic and diplomatic community are too many to list, was representing the Lowy Institute of International Studies when he visited Auckland to chair an intimate session on China as a paramount power in Southeast Asian relations. As one of the hosts, we showed him around Auckland and my only duty was to walk him to the lecture theatre at the university, where I had promised him earlier I would attend.

Yes, friends, Ezra is now a little bit more aware of politics, no thanks to Rachel Chin and www.malaysiakini.com.

I was initially hesistant when I realised that there were far less people than I thought, sitting in a conference roundtable format. Academics, embassy representatives, researchers...a glorified office assistant (me). Still, it was an incredibly eye-opening 1.5 hour session where the only thing I got out of it (unfortunately I have A.D.D.) was that mindsets are certainly changing towards China, and the Chinese.

Inevitably, the Chinese diaspora popped up in relation to whether these communities (which of course are scattered all over SEA, Malaysia included) helped or hindered the course of host nation-China relationships. This was when the floor was open and a hand shot up from the front.

"Hello Professor, My name is Joe (name chosen because I honestly can't remember - my A.D.D). As a Malaysian Chinese do you think that the success of Chinese outside the mainland, who have been generations removed from the mainland, has helped build inroads for SEA nations tapping into China's economy? I mean that the children of Chinese migrants to SEA nations have grown to be quite successful and are now going back to China as investors and businesspeople and are now kindling inter-region trade..."

Now at this point I was quite curious about the "success" part. What success? For every Chinese migrant's great great grandchild who made it big in Malaysia, there are a hundred who have not and are still eking a living back in Malaysia. Some, like me, have not seen China yet and am just thanking my lucky stars to be able to be in NZ on a scholarship. I reckoned that he was talking about his own glorious account, and the account of his father, and his father's friends, or whoever they may be who broke the mold and afforded to start a new life here.

"...It's quite well-known that Chinese are an, eh, intelligent race. (Insert very small but audible audience groan, even from the Chinese). Take for example the recent Mathlympics (or something like that) in Singapore. NZ only took home a bronze while the Chinese from other SEA nations took home 12 golds. (Groans, definitely audible) Could this skill build bridges into China for the host nations?"

Look mate, I don't know about bridges but you're definitely tearing some down here.

I have to admit, I've never found it easy being who I am. Based on pure ethnicity, being a Malaysian Chinese brought up in a protestant home with Manglish-speaking parents isn't exactly your idea of "cultural". The constant straddling of two (or more) worlds is no one's walk in the park. I had to learn my Chinese roots by force - my folks, who could not speak a word of Mandarin, made me attend 11 years of Chinese school. 5 years on, that section of my mind has putrefied and I'm stringing together broken sentences like a 2-year-old. It's hard enough coming to terms with who you are in the world and your relationships with others without having someone with almost the exact same background coming around and pissing on everyone's toes.

Maybe that's the one thing that unites the Chinese diaspora. We will always be a selfish race. If this country isn't good enough for us, we migrate. If trouble brews, we migrate. "Remember to study hard, you must get into a private uni/college." "Aiyah, the ***** will always be this way. We must fight for our own rights." "Better get a PR (permanent residency), you never know when you might need it." We're better than you because we're smarter than you and that's why you hate us. "Don't hate us cuz we're beautiful/intelligent/rich."

We forget our roots. We forget Cheng Ho. We forget that Chinese diplomats absorbed, not propagated. They never flaunted. Somehow along the line we forget that without a country, we're nothing. Being Chinese doesn't mean that you're from China. And if you scorn the very countries that nurture you, what are we then? Even Taiwan knows the value of a nation. The Malaysian Chinese diaspora may well be the only community that still doesn't really identify with its host nation after generations - even if these same guys have hopped over to Australia, Canada and NZ.

I have a dear friend, very much Malaysian Chinese, who attributes his "American accent" to his years of living in Washington, DC. At least that's what he tells all the friends he's made here. He's never even been to the States.

Me, I blame my forced, half-baked accent on American TV and just a slight shame to be Malaysian Chinese.

Conversations with Cab Drivers

I suppose it's my fault for not telling most of you that I've found a new job with the Asia NZ Foundation. Then again, it's my fault for not touching this for the longest time, but you should know that by now.

Anyhoo, the job's excellent, things are going great, the best part of it is that unlike my previous job, I get to travel. A lot, actually, since we're hosting the Auckland leg of the Diwali celebrations. By travel I mean from the airport to the city and vice versa, not to catch flights unfortunately, but to do a meet and greet. In that sense it's not all that different from my previous job as well, but then again, I finally get to see the blardy sun.

A very alien concept this: I don't own a car. This is practically unheard of among KL and Auckland urbanites. I do have a sheaf of taxi chits, and this is how I stumbled upon taxi drivers.

The wonderful people of the Auckland Co-Op Taxi company, which I use solely because they are everywhere, wield the power to make or break your day. Take the example of my first ride with them back from the airport. This time I was on my way back from Wellington, where I had met the team earlier, a couple weeks before I started on my new job. I was happy and excited and was telling the wooden wall about it for about 15 minutes before giving up. Then he overcharged me by $15. What an anticlimax to an otherwise glorious day being on an airplane twice in 12 hours. Still, that has been the only bad experience.

Rama, who drove me back from the airport after sending someone off, told me about how he spent his long weekend, where he took the kids, and how he was going to drive until 11 that night. "What about the kids?" I asked, to which he said, "They'll have had enough of me over the weekend, and me of them."

Kris, whose wife owns a trinket store, told me how he only moonlights as a taxi driver. "Sometimes I feel as though I'm my wife's unpaid employee." He did the Diwali celebrations in Manukau, manning the stall for hours and ran himself ragged there, and not to my surprise will be doing the one this weekend which I'm running myself ragged for. "See you this weekend," said I as I hopped out. "Unfortunately," said he, wearily. Hilarious.

Jim greeted me in front of the Auckland Museum with the perfect pronunciation of my name. I was surprised on two counts - one, that the operator got it right, and two, that Jim got it right, being a pakeha (NZ European). Now as much a Crown entity as NZ can claim heritage from, the Queen's English is in shocking disuse. Don't get me started on spelling. The other day I heard "hotting up" in a TV trailer. That's blardy national TV. Okay, "Ezra" isn't an English name per se but what about the Christian heritage?

Jim did have an unfair advantage. His alter ego was Jim the preacher, which he actually did to old folks at the Sunset Rest Home. Through the 15 minutes it took for us to beat the traffic back to the New President, he did a social commentary the likes I've never heard of in a long time. Persuasive but never pushy, he sounded more like the taxi driver who gets you to the right places in your mind instead of a pushy preacher. Not that he didn't lament about the lack of drive in the convictions of today, but he did so without prejudice and pall.

I actually walked out of that cab feeling like I just walked out of a church on Christmas morning.