how i spent the better part of an hour

my english homework this weekend is to devise a representation of what it means to be Australian. trying to concoct a coherent anything has been something of a challenge.

i just don't have enough of an affinity with the country to be able to spit out something that could accurately represent the meaning of being aussie. it's quite sad. i tried, i really did. but i ended up with something that...... well, it's the only way i know how to express it, but i don't think it's quite what my teacher is looking for.


What It Means To Be Australian

I am not an Australian; neither by birth, nor by nationality.

I am a Malaysian, born and raised for most of my life in Sarawak - the largest and most culturally diverse state in the whole of Malaysia.

We are 124 thousand square kilometres of tree, river and carnivorous plants which don't stop at the insects, but have been known to treat themselves to the occasional small mammal.

We have vast, untouched rainforests, a cave that can house ten jumbo jets, nose-to-tail, and the world's largest flower, which actually smells like rotting flesh [but this is a fact never advertised in the glossy tourist brochures].

We share our land with 28 ethnic groups - each with their own language, culture, and cuisine - living in harmony in a country that is defined not by our Gross Domestic Product, but by the people who make it what it is.

Sarawak is known as the land of the hornbills, though the only hornbills i have ever seen are the ones made of wood, which serve to distract drivers as they navigate the roundabout in the old part of town. Even so, we are proud to have that name, despite the fact that one in three children do not even know what a hornbill is.

The people of Sarawak love their food. Food is our reason for existing; it's the reason we get up every morning. The local food is fast, cheap, sensational for your tastebuds and damning to your cholesterol.

In terms of development, we are probably not the first. The opening of a Starbucks in one of our humble cities was the most exciting to happen for a while. There are people from other parts of the country who think we still live in trees, and we tell them that we even have elevators to get up there.

Sarawakians love Sarawak, but we are not so stupid that we cannot see its faults. We will complain about the litter while chucking an empty packet of chips out the car window. We will curse the heat one day and glower at the rain the next. But we will defend this place fiercely, and shamelessly proclaim it to be the best in the world.

Because we are proud of our place of birth; we have a loyalty that is so deeply rooted that we don't care how stupid we look when we say it will be the next Big Apple. Most of us move away, but we will go back to visit year after year after year because it has something that no other place does.

It's home.

And that is what i think it means to be Australian.