Culture & Language

February 9, 2010

The most frequent phrase I’ve heard ever since I came here is : AMERICA HAS NO CULTURE.

Growing up in the opposite side of the world, having spent almost 19 years in a country called Malaysia ; Disney, Hollywood, Burgers, Pizzas, the glamorous, luxuriously hip lifestyle of the New Yorkers are to me what The United States of America are represented by.

To me, that is USA’s identity.

Americans speak perfect American English, albeit the fact that I am still adjusting myself to the slightly different spellings since  the Malaysian’s education system adapted the UK English.

However, what astounded and took me by total surprise was the high number of American college students that are studying/learning another language ! I even know a number of them who are actually MAJORING in Chinese, Spanish, Japanese etc.

I was shocked when a Caucasian guy conversed with me in MANDARIN and believe it or not his pronunciations were accurate and the sad fact was that he can speak better Chinese than some people I know.

And to think that some of the Malaysian Chinese even REFUSE to speak a word of Mandarin simply because they deem it as ‘unnecessary’ and ‘unimportant’.

The irony of all these ? We Asians revere the western culture and strive so hard to be westernized whereas the westerners themselves are more eager to learn more about our own language and culture.

To appreciate other cultures is to first appreciate our very own.

Thankfully my wise parents decided to enroll me in a Chinese school, although yes, I did struggle a fair bit initially because no one other than me in the family understood the language. To clear up the confusion, learning another language does not directly mean that you have to give up learning English at the same time. Hey, its not like I don’t speak decent English right? It’s possible to excel in both languages!

I feel extremely proud when I get to say - HEY ! I’m Caren from Malaysia, and I speak English, Malay, Mandarin, Hokkien and Cantonese !

Posted in: Mythologies, Stories & Opinions | Comments Off

Cold Stone

January 29, 2010

When we were in Pittsburgh, my French friend Melanie had this strong craving for ‘Cold Stone Creamery’ Ice Cream.

I was rather curious about the ice cream because from the way she described them to be, they were supposed to be one of the best ice creams in USA!

**

First, choose and mix up to 2 ice creams from their wide range of flavors.

The chocolates are quite rich in taste but personally I like more subtle flavors like vanilla, sweet cream and raspberry.

Next stop, select any toppings of your choice. As you can see, they have everything from Oreo, Snickers to almond, nuts,gummy bears and marshmallows. YUMMY !

Basically they’ll just mix the ice cream(s) and topping(s) together like how it is shown above.

They give A LOT of toppings, unlike in the typical ice cream stalls where they just sprinkle a little bit of stuff on the top, in Cold Stone they mix them up thoroughly so that each bite you take contains the toppings that you chose.

This is optional but if you want, cones are available as well.  Personally I like to enjoy my ice cream just like that but some people say it only feels ‘complete’ with a cone.

Melanie’s. Vanilla with Oreo topping.

Banana + Raspberry. Nicholas and Natalia’s. I like that combination !!

Me and Chris’s choice - Cheesecake with chocolate. <3

Honest to god, it was so good that I decided to help myself to a second scoop even though it was like -5 Celsius that night wtf

This time I had cotton candy flavor with rainbow sprinkles. I loved it but Chris said it’s too sweet for his liking. =.=

I <3 Cold Stone Creamery

CAN’T WAIT TO GRAB SOME THE NEXT TIME I’M IN PITTSBURGH !!!!!!!!!!!!

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You Miss Me ?

January 28, 2010

I know you secretly do Don’t lie !

To be honest, I miss blogging. I miss the days where I have nothing better to do besides blogging.

But gone are those once upon a time carefree days and hello to the new ever so hectic schedule.

It’s all good though, I’m happy

Soccer(football refers to another sport here) in the hallway, the girl behind me is Patricia!

Me ATTEMPTING to cut the meat and Aaron overseeing my performance. LOL

Stupid Chris mentioned that this Sea Lion looks like me. =.= REALLY??

And therefore my new Nickname = Sea Lion. Wtf I know.

Aaron’s Kung Poh Chicken. He’s such a good cook cause it was delicious !

Chris’s Beef Stew. Very scrumptious as well, it is indeed proven that guys are better chefs here.

I’m such a disgrace to women for not being able to manage cooking well omgggggggggggg

Chris and myself in the shutter bus.

Oh the buses are my saviors ! Thanks to them I don’t have to walk that much anymore

Emily <3 The most Asian loving American friend I’ve ever met.

We were making bubble tea !!! Miss that beverage so much omg you can’t imagine the cravings !

That’s not ice btw, ITS SNOW !!!

I have crazy friends so we do crazy stuff all the time.

Cheapskate risotto that Chris made. It only costs like USD5 for 5 people, highly affordable ! AND IT WAS SO SO SO SO SO YUMMY !!!!

I guess you could roughly tell who does most of the cooking around here, hahahahahaha.

Aaron’s creation : Pancakes. Add Ice cream or honey and it’ll taste perfect!

I’m tired so that’s what I’m gonna do now….. SLEEP !

Nights all <3

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Ze Difference

January 22, 2010

1. Here, I WALK A LOT.

When I say A LOT it literally means A LOT MORE THAN WHAT I’M USED TO IN MALAYSIA.

Classrooms are always so far away from each other so in order to get from one place to another, you have to put your legs to good use.

There’s a shutter bus but if classes are like 15minutes later like mine, well most likely you’ll be left with no choice due to No 2.

2. PUNCTUALITY

9.35AM means precisely 9.35AM sharp, not 9.40AM onwards. Yes, even 5 minutes makes a huge difference.

If students are late for class even for a mere 5 minutes, most likely the lecturer will kick you out of class simply because you are wasting your lecturer, classmates and your OWN time.

Think you can just skip class ? hahahaha think again. Unless you want to dig your own grave, by all means do it and just get ready to flunk that particular subject.

3. COPY AND PASTE = PLAGIARISM

In Malaysia all us students are so used to the ‘copy and paste’ style of doing assignments, never mind right ? As long as I do my homework, the lecturer should not complain. SORRY TO SAY BUT NO!

In USA, plagiarism is an extremely serious offense and will lead to the worst consequences you could ever imagine.

The lecturers have this machine that will scan through your homework and if it finds out that you copied something right from the internet, you’re pretty much dead and just kiss that A C goodbye. Like they say : ‘If you can google it, we can google it too!’

4. EDUCATION

All I can say is that the education system in the USA is vastly different from ours, we are encouraged to express our opinions and state our facts on why we support this idea etc etc. Even if you don’t agree with the lecturer on certain issues it’s fine as long as you can send your message across, the lecturer will gladly respond to you.

Unlike in CAT(I’m sorry but I have to say this), where most of the time, it is only a one way communication between the lecturer and the student. Or maybe it’s just accounting, I don’t know?

Though I was surprised when I was in my Statistics class today… AS you all know, I thought that BAH Statistics is going to be boring bla bla bla but surprisingly it was not ! My lecturer actually passed us a very interesting article about self-consciously ‘modern’ people who have an urge to reduce assessments of their lives to things that can be presented in tables, charts, and graphs.

Instead of rambling on about medians, means, rations and percentages, he quoted Benjamin Disraeli ‘There are 3 kinds of Lie -Lies, Damned lies and Statistics’. XD

I was utterly shocked and was like ‘wow, is this really happening????’. Granted that was his first class and it was just an introduction to the subject, but hey, it really added some spice into the mundane teaching routine! And yeah, as a student, I really do appreciate that.

5. CAFFEINE BOOST

People here LIVE for coffee ! Caffeine kick starts their day and they need their daily cup of coffee to survive through.

Especially in New York, you can see tons of people with a cup of coffee in their hands. Now I know how Starbucks generate their revenue ! XD

As for me, no I’m not a fan of coffee and I simply refuse to spend 3 bucks on coffee thank you very much.

Posted in: College , School, Random Musings | No Comments »

And Still Busy….

January 15, 2010

Yes I’m still busy, sadly…. But hey it’s ORIENTATION WEEK here !!

I’ve been meeting so many people of different ethnicity, culture, race and it is indeed very eye opening to a small town girl like me. Besides the fact that I need to work on actually REMEMBERING the names of the new friends I’m meeting, everythings great !

Ok no I take that back, everything’s great HERE in the USA but back in Malaysia its seriously ……chaotic.

I feel ashamed and disappointed whenever the question of ‘what’s happening in your country’ pops up among my international friends, I have to reveal to them such devastating news that serves as nothing but a humiliation to Malaysia!

See for yourselves and cast your verdict.

Religious extremists are just fucking narrow minded idiots that contributes to our tarnished reputation in the eyes of the rest of the world.

It’s not that I’m all the sudden patriotic or whatsoever but hey at the end of the day, I AM Malaysian and like it or not I will forever be bonded to this country. So YES I do care and I sincerely hope that nothing of that bullshit ever happens again. Overreacting bastards! And you all talk about tolerance and shit?

Oh yay I actually bravely expressed my opinions without the fear of being judge!

I realized ever since I got to the USA, everything here involves me being out of my comfort zone, be it mingling around with other international students or so. It might sound easy and fun but at the same time it can be stressful and intimidating as well I wont lie.

However I truly believe that since I am already half a globe away from home, I might as well make the best out of it right ? And plus, mixing with people who grew up in an entirely different environment as you really shapes your thinking vastly and yes a little bit of diversity in life is actually nice ! You might need to be extra sensitive by respecting other people’s culture but at the same time you have so much more to gain.

I have friends who teach me how to cook !

Fine I only cooked the curry, and even then I had other people who helped chopped/sliced/cut the ingredients.

It’s ok, everyone needs to start somewhere right?

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