inferiority complex thy suffer…

Oh how am i astonished that the Americans have landed and proclaimed this nation as their 51st state and no one bloody told me.

I’m talking about the longwithstanding young-urban obsession with everything western from food to linguistics.I read with mild interest an articel on  Klang valley youngsters confusion  that emulating the westerns deemed as the coolest thing on earth.The writer also brought forward few anecdotal evidence on how the american culture rear its ugly head and how poor, carefree adolescents fall prey to it.Just few days ago, my good friend  voiced his grievance over how  the western obsession  had an effect  on our choice of , ehem, garments especially towards our female counterparts and how he despised them.It bothers him so much he suffered from first -stage insomnia worrying over the phenomenon.Thus, enough excuse for me to write something.In Italic are extracts from the article that i read.

" I overheard a conversation , spoken in a mixture of faux British and American accents, between two Asian girls donning faux British and American wardrobe ( I assume)"

Girl 1= I just had sucky. I liked it.

Girl 2= Oh, thats nice. Sucky is so good. I always loved sucky

" My head did an impossible 270 degree turn upon hearing this, exposed as i was to pornographic radiation since 12"

Finally, the writer get it. Its SAKE, actually.Pronounced as Sah-kay. The Japanese rice wine.

Now,  sake is quite a posh liquor drink , sets you back a couple of dollars if you wish to have one.And scarcely available at local, common pubs.The point is, people just try so hard, dont they?.So hard to be cool. So hard to be cultured. So hard to be foreign.

Because foreign is cool. Foreign is exotic.Foreign is high class.Which all make sense now the current style of clothing, our talking and dining.And they like to ram it down everybodys throat. You know, the sort of crowd you might mingle in Jalan Telawi, Sri Hartamas,Bukit Bintang and other high-end hangout spots. The lot  who havent got a clue that Mawi actually exist.The overly  girlish, overly stylish and overly social.Often speaking loudly, they announced to people ten feet square around them how, better, how classy they are from us, their imagined third world monkeys.( Seriously, we even have schools distinguished by this style of speaking of their pupils,-pun intended)

Its not a matter of pronouncing certain words. Hell, we do that all the time. I was mispronouncing ‘genre’ for more than 17 years untill a teacher set me straight. (I pronounced it as jen -ray rather than john-rah, by the way).

Its a matter of trying, desperately, to show off how flaired one is by demonstrating how worldly one is, and failing miserably at that.Pathetic, isnt it?

" I overheard this at an immigration department,"

Boy1=  I love to eat fas-jis-tas

Boy2=. Yeah. fas-jis-tas are delicious "

For the record, its fajistas(fah-ee-tah).Admit now, you must have at least one experience with people talking about their sophisticated,ridiculously expensive dining experience.And they just turn up eveywhere,foie -gras, tapas, escargot and god knows how many names of japanese drinks and Spanish dishes spewing from their mouths which i doubt not every one of them are quite easy on our palate. But what the hell, i want to be exotic. Taste be damned.(quicknote — foie gras is liver, escargot is snails, literally)

" Two years ago i was to meet a celebrity in Putrajaya, and here’s how the convesation went..

Me= So, where are you staying?

Celebrity =Oh, we re staying at the Mario Hotel, Putrajaya

Me= Mario hotel? Never heard of it.

Celebrity= Oh, its quite famous, five stars and all that

Me= Right. Be there in half an hour

" Okay,so i asked a taxi driver to this Mario Hotel of his. Long story short, the driver couldnt find it, and there goes my 40 bucks.I called up my contact and eventually , we find the place and….drumroll—it was JW Marriott Hotel. Not Mario."

Hm. The writers story made me wonder, perhaps the guy he was liasing with thought that it was a French-Italian hotel or something and decided to pronounce it " correctly".People want to SOUND good no matter what the consequences, sometimes forgetting where they are.

Just the other day, i watched an interview on Hitz.Tv with a quite known TV presenter whom may had stayed abroad for a few years.And she’s an Asian, mind you.

Host: "So, what do you do for fun?"

TV Presenter: "Oh,i go out with my Asian friends and we have Asian food."

Hello? Hows that for irony.

P/s : All the anti-westernization posturing adopted, the writer hopes she’s not alone in this.

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