Friday 20 February 2015

Family (Part 2): Education is my Culture!

Today is 20 February 2015, still in Chinese New Year Season.

While many families wearing red, feel happy to visit other family member, I feel nothing. I don't feel excited at all.


Yes, I born amongst Chinese family, but I born in Indonesia and never leave the country ever since (except for 7 months in 2012). I speak Bahasa, even Sundanese, I don't speak Chinese, and I don't recall that I celebrate Chinese New Year since I was a kid.

I tried to recall, did I even celebrate any festive season when I was a kid..


Did I celebrate Christmas?
No, I never have anything called Xmas dinner nor have Xmas tree on the living room.

Did I celebrate Idul Fitri?
No, I never bake any cake or going to fam's house to ask for any forgiveness.

Did I celebrate Chinese New Year?
No, obviously I never wear any red stuff or eat any famous moon cakes or receive thing called Ang Pao.

Did I celebrate New Year Eve?
Kinda, I remembered bought paper trumpet . That's it.

So it seems I do not celebrate any festive season, I often feel hard to relate to any cultures.
They say family build your culture of festive season, in my case, I don't think so.
The only culture that I really had since I was a kid is working hard and survival mode, if you do good at school you will become better person.

I Googled things, and I found this about my predecessor:


Taken from: http://history-of-culture.blogspot.com/2011/10/entry-of-chinese-people-tionghoa.html


So I accidentally happen to know that my Grandpa of my Grandpa (Lauw O Teng) is actually one of the founder for one of the very first school in Indonesia, which triggered other people in Indonesia at that time to build other school.

I am super proud of the fact.
I have been living for more than 20 years with weird feeling for not having any rooted culture
I finally can say, the culture we trust in the family is education, and not the other.

I ponder the fact, and I totally can relate with this "new culture I found"
I ask myself the question "If I have everything in the world already, what I wanna do?" - my answer is I'd like to go to medicine school, to neuroscience and philosophy school - not to work or have any career but to learn for the rest of my life.
I also would like to be a writer so that I can share the knowledge I have with world.
(this blog is actually one of my way to practice my writing skill)

So, to close the paragraphs, when you meet me somewhere, don't call me Chinese! call me an educated person :p

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