My Brisbane trip

OK, since everyone is asking me what I did in Brisbane, here's a summary.

1) Beach (man made, just looking at it)
2) Sun
3) Movie World
4) Beach (real beach, just looking at it)
5) Sun

It was 28 degrees on most days. Good if compared to Melbourne, not good if you are walking up the hills. Brisbane is full of hills. Bad for driving a manual rented car too and we probably did a 100 three point turns and U-turns.

The city wasn't much, although it had a 'beach' and laidback feel to it. Heck, even the city had a man made beach. It's probably the sun and architecture. Gold Coast had more excitement. We went to Movie World and Surfers Paradise where the real beach is. Rented a car and drove around, which was kinda fun. Highlights were screaming on the Superman roller coaster, picnic by Surfers Paradise beach, meeting my bro who was there, and being around friends who graciously took us around the quaint shops and restaurants. Oh! And some woman in Surfers Paradise grabbed my arms and made me dance in the public square to the music of a busker who impersonates Elvis, while my dear friends stood close by and laughed. Look, they could at least have taken a photo if they didnt want to help me escape, but NO, they just stood and laughed.

We didn't go swimming or surfing or watch dolphins. Not even close. I didnt even touch seawater. What we did do was walk around, eat food, wave at Bugs Bunny and Batman, and watched planets in some space adventure thing. Oh well.

I am a racist

I was just thinking. If you are proud of your country and dedicate yourself to it's cause, you are a nationalist. If you are proud of your femininity and fight for women's rights, you are a feminist.

So what if I'm proud of my race and purpose to further its cause? Am I a racist?

No. It seems that you are a racist if you are prejudiced against other races. But aren't we all inherently racist in some sense? Ok, Malaysians and Singaporeans will *understand* me if I throw out some stereotypes like Chinese=cunning and $$$ minded, Malays= lazy, Indians=somewhere-out-there, marginalized (for Msia, at least). I don't mean to offend people, but look: nearly everyone, from our grandmothers' generation to our generation, think that way. Heck, even Mahathir thinks that way.

So ok, I might be kinda racist when I'm in Malaysia. But perhaps when I'm here in Melbourne, I might be either an Asianist or a White-ist, depending on context. I'm Asianist when some white person asks me "Oh! You can speak English?" (me: yes, perhaps even better than you) or when some guy yells "Go back to China, you #$@%!" but I can be White-ist when I hear a fellow Asian speaking such broken English/Manglish/Singlish/whatever in tutorials that I want to hide in embarassment.

Well, 'racism' is the in thing now for the Aussie media. Everyone is talking about what it means to be Australian and immigrants should get lost if they don't like the 'liberal' values. Here's an interesting website: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,18362839-421,00.html

Face it. You're some '-ist' too.