Very Good Malaysians

A CNY review

My dad asked me what I did in college, so I gave him a quick summary. And then I added the usual addendum about being in Malaysia because I am lazy. I don't like Malaysians, I don't hate Malaysians ... I just haven't been kicked out of Malaysia yet, and I don't have to do much to hang around here.

Malaysia is good for very little. Pretty much the only thing that Malaysians are very good at is being Malaysian. Otherwise you don't generally look for globally very good things in Malaysia - that's just not what we do here.

Dad also asked me about my relationships with the various women I've brought to family reunions over the years, and I also summarised that as "social partners, sometimes intimate, but not always, without formal commitments such as marriage". He started asking me something about my view on marriage but then got distracted and changed the subject.

A partner then asked me, of all the people I'd dated, who the best fit was. Generally, I say I haven't met people with very close intellectual interests, so I just date people who I think are cute, who don't hate me. Sure, going to more educated or nerdy or privileged communities might raise the hit rate a bit, but overall dating /partnership isn't a high priority.

That's generally been my approach to taking jobs, also. To put it all into context, I'd pretty much done all the things I considered important by the time I finished college. So mostly the second-half of my life-to-date has been a matter of chasing down secondary priorities. The last two years have been mostly focused on housekeeping debt, and studying macroeconomics and physical conditioning.

Maybe I should lock down some new "top priorities", but otherwise life has been good, and I have expected it to end abruptly at any time, though that has probably been an unreasonable point of view. Albeit it is a simple, and safe one.