Posts (page 2)

When I was a kid the term banana was used to describe a chinese person living in Britain that was culturally westernised - the banana being a metaphor for the chinese person who was yellow on the outside but white on the inside!
Today while watching a children's programme featuring a chinese american family, the character mentioned this, and realised that his family were not chinese enough, as they had fully embraced being American since moving to the US while he was a child.
This made me think about my own family. As a kid i think we enjoyed the best of both worlds. Our parents introduced us to chinese culture and practices from a young age so that I did not feel there was an identity crisis, I would (and still do) consider myself to be very Chinese. I then turn to my own children who are half Chinese, cannot speak the language and know very little about the culture except Chinese New Year (which they learn about in school). Will they have an identity crisis? Hope not.

There were certain things my parents prevented us from doing as it was not Chinese for us to do so, things that normal teenagers would take for granted. I am glad really looking back on my childhood, that my parents didnt let us get too westernised as me and my siblings have great memories of all the chinese things we used to do (learning Chinese at Sunday School, eating out at Chinese restaurants, learning to speak Chinese by watching Chinese dramas on video, Chinese New Year celebrations and for my brothers visits to Hong Kong).

Although I do not know a lot of Chinese youth, I noticed that they are more Westernised and less likely to be able to speak Cantonese, as their parents work hard to provide them with the luxuries of the world, they are neglected and a barrier is placed between them (suppose it's the same for families of all different cultures)

Anyway back to Bananas, I like them before they go too spotty and black, but not too ripe. Dont put them in the fridge and apart from the potassium I read in a book once, that they have little nutritional value. You can get banana plastic holders to put your bananas in so they dont get battered and bruised in your lunchbox (genius idea) and when I was a kid they had a programme I used to watch called Banana Splits (youtube what would we do without you??)

I was lucky enough to attend a citizenship ceremony last week. My sister in law (originally from Pakistan) was given a British Nationality and was awarded a certificate and invited to attend a ceremony. There were 30 other nervous foreigners all waiting anxiously in the waiting room for the ceremony to begin. Each person was given a card with a number on it, they were then called into a reception room where they took their seats with their designated numbers on them. Each were given a card to read from which they were made to read in unison. They must all promise to swear allegiance to Her Majesty the Queen and her country. This was after we were given a speech about how great this country is and how multi-cultural our city is and the benefits of living in the United Kingdom.

You could tell that half the people attending were not really concerned much about these issues, the reasons why they want to live in the UK vary from one person to another. I do agree that if any such person does not abide by the law of the country they should leave, as they have literally taken an oath that they will not do anything to harm the country in any way shape or form.

Immigration rules are much tighter than they were 10 or 15 years ago, which is a good thing. However, with the UK being part of the EU, there has been an increase in workers coming into the UK from the EU, so although immigration levels are lower than previous years, the figures dont paint the full picture. Although many are successful in their applications, those seeking asylum are quite often refused. My sister in law had to do the citizenship test, which I am sure most Britons would probably fail!

I was just happy for my sister in law that she is now officially British, I told her she has to lose her accent now. Our primary aim was to make her laugh while she was taking her pledge, but she knew what we were up to and turned her back against us whilst she pretended to read it!!

We all then stood up for the national anthem.

I am losing my memory, rapidly. Help! I was in the supermarket the other day and rang my sister in law to ask her if she needed anything, she said coke and crisps, i then spoke to her for another minute before putting the phone down, and when I did, I could not for the life of me remember what else she wanted with the coke!! I had to text her back and ask her, it was so embarassing.

I dont understand, I am very good at the memory games on all them brain training games!! I need to improve my memory as it is essential for studying and everyday living.

Memorisation tips anyone??

This wasnt even my original post, I wanted to post something a few days ago, but now I cant remember what it was so i typed this instead, AHHHHHH!!

its that time of the year again when chinese people in my local area get together and celebrate chinese new year, as a child I used to love this time of the year, as i get money and we as a family would go and eat then watch chinese lion dancing and firecrackers in Chinatown.

Nowadays its packed with tourists making it very difficult to see anything, so I dont bother going to Chinatown during the celebrations.

I was born in the Year of the Tiger, like one of my sons, that probably explains why I have a soft spot for tigers.

Although first and foremost I am a Muslim,I am extremely proud of being Chinese, we have a lot of history and culture (just ignore the human rights abuses in China for one moment), we have tacky chinese dramas and music like everyone else and a lovely colourful language (which unfortunately my children haven;t picked up) as well as weird little nuances that make a person distinctly "Chinese"

Since becoming a Muslim, one of the things I do miss is eating out at Chinese restaurants as most of the food is off the menu, there are a few halal restaurants that do serve Chinese food, but they are not authentic! I dont miss eating the pork though, no matter how many times people try and tell me it tastes nice, I was never a fan of spare ribs, I was more a Chicken person anyway!

My nephew went to visit Chinatown with his school and when he came back I told him I was chinese, he didnt believe me, he said I look like a Muslim, when I tell my kids I am Chinese, my son said im not yellow im an orange colour!
They had a Chinese New Year assembly at my son's school last week, I couldnt go because I was at Uni, but my son told me they made a red dragon out of paper and that he would be holding it up and swaying it back and forth with his classmates. He didnt enjoy the experience as he wanted to hold the dragon's head, so he (as i was told) spent the time holding the dragon with a miserable look on his face.

I remember the story of the 3 little pigs when i was a child, i even bought the story for my daughter as she was learning to read. I was flicking through my local paper yesterday and came across this news story (which incidentally if you google, it appears in the australian news!!)

Piggy story: basically a re-working of the classic story didnt make it on to the shortlist of a government award because it may offend Muslims.

I would laugh out loud if it didn't anger me so much! MUSLIMS are not allowed to eat pork THAT'S IT!! We are allowed to wear clothes with pigs on it (my neice has Disney piglet pajamas!!), at Muslim schools we keep the Pig from the farm set we give to children, we watched the Simpson Movie and laughed at the Spider Pig  joke (my daughter has a Harry Plopper t-shirt with shock horror a PIG on it)!!!!!!!!

There are some ignorant Muslims out there, who cant even say the word pig they have to spell it out like it's some sort of swear word -GET A LIFE - we just can't eat PIG we can say the bloody damn word!!

The media have sensationalised this story and turned it into yet another Islamopobic attack by making out that the Muslim community would be offended by this book, well we are not. The judges only said they would not recommend this book to Muslims, it did not give it as the sole reason for not shortlisting the book, so I do blame the media for picking up on this silly story as well as the publishers of the CD for sour grapes!

Rememvber the old nursery rhymes we used to sing at school? They have all been changed or completey reworked due to political correctness- instead of BAA BAA BLACK SHEEP, we have BAA BAA KIND SHEEP we dont have Jack and Jill and Goosey Goosey Gander anymore!

Incidentally, while we are on the subject of Islamaphobic articles, if you do an archive search of news related items on "Muslims" on any news website, you will find the number of articles featuring Muslims has steadily increased since 2001 - a coincidence? On my local news website in 2000 only 1 article contained the word Muslim, by 2005 this had increased to 79 and in 2008 there are already 5!

The Government in the UK in the area where I live and nationally are to tackle Muslim extemism by funding "assertiveness course, leadership courses and english lessons" for Muslim women, in the hope that should members of their family show fundamental or extremist tendencies they can have the confidence to shop them to the police!!

see full article: here and here:

This is ridiculous as it sounds, Islam already empowers women. What makes this government think that Muslim women would need to go onto these empowerment, comnfidence building courses? With the need for people to pass citixenship tests to qualify to stay in this country, the majority of women will already be able to speak English. As for those who cannot speak English well they can easily enrol on ESOL language classes at their local college.

It seems to me they are singling out the Muslim community as needing help, with an allowance from an allocated £70 million fund (which could be better spent on the health service), the government risks alienating the rest of the surrounding communities as the criteria to enrol on these course will be Muslim and woman.

Are Non-Muslim women not in need of assertiveness courses or extra training to get jobs? I am sure they would benefit from the same? This is the same attitude of the council in Bradford who offered driver training courses for the Muslim youth to prevent them from getting into extremist groups, this alienated the non-Muslim youth as it singled out the Muslims for special treatment.This can only cause racial tension in the long run.

Organisations will be bidding for funding opportunities to run these courses, as a long running member of a voluntary organisation working with the ethnic minority in my area, I know full well that many groups exploit the women, and are only interested in funding opportunities, they will run these so called courses and tick the right boxes, but it is doubtful whether they will actually empower women and make an impact on  their lives.

Imagine your son committed a heinous crime and you knew about it, how many of you would shop him to the police?? What makes the government think that by going on these courses, the mother would then have the confidence to shop her son to the authorities if she suspected him of committing or plotting to committ a terrorist act?

What does the government consider to be "extremist ideology"? Nowadays if you openly display proudly your religious beliefs (walking down the street with a mosque hat, beard and islamic dreess) people are frightened of you, if you practice your Islam does not mean you hold extremist views. The next step would be to have religious police, like they have in some countries, which tell you which part of Islam you can and cannot practice.

One final point about Muslim women, the government has held many consultations with them in the past, and the majority of their views they have completey ignored. As a Muslim woman, the Government have failed to acknowledge that many of the Muslim women born and raised in this country are not uneducated and lacking in confidence, their upbringing in Islam has led them to become educated confident women who manage to raise a family as well as having careers as doctors, solicitors, teachers, dentists, pharmacists and scientists (to name a few). These wonderful women that I know all do this without compromosing their religion. They are the women whose voices the government chooses to ignore. If the government was to consult the Muslim community, then maybe that would be a step in the right direction to tackling extremism rather that running courses and asking the Imams to spy on their community.

Last week I appeared on my local satellite TV channel - channel M (M is for Manchester, how original!!). I was an unwilling participant in an interview at my local mosque to discuss how "Manchester Muslims celebrate the New Year)!. The original interviewee was the imam, but he wasn't confident that his English would be understood, so he nominated me to do it. The only reason I did it, was because I knew nobody I know would be watching this channel. The slot was for the breakfast show, Thursday 10th January (which is the beginning of the Islamic New Year the 1st of Muharram - depending on where you live, the 1st of Muharram was a Wednesday but that's a different story).

I told my interviewer (a lovely lady called Nina), that Muslims do not do anything special for New Year, although some people will wish one another a Happy New Year (not recommended, but not disliked by the majority), we don't in general use it as an excuse for a Knees up, but should use it for a time of contemplation and reflection. Muharram is considered to be one of the sacred months of the Islamic calendar, and it is recommended to fast on the 10th of Muharram to commemorate the Prophet Moses (Musa) freeing his people from the tyrant Pharoah, and also fast the previous or preceding day if possible. Of course, I couldnt explain this in the short time slot i was given for the interview. So instead, i explained some of the features of the mosque, and gave her a mini tour. I muffled up my lines 5 or 6 times due to nerves, but Nina and her crew said I did quite well!

I watched it on TV the next day with my two sons (my daughter couldn't be bothered to get up even though it was on at 8am!). The first thing I noticed about myself was my strong Mancunian accent! The second thing I noticed was how small my eyes were!! I was too embarassed to watch myself on TV but the kids enjoyed it, and it was edited in a nice way and showed Islam in a positive light, so I was pleased with the end result!

Nina has kindly offered to put it on DVD for me but I am not too bothered if i dont get to see it again.

My parents have both had very small (blink and u will miss them )cameos in television shows, they are more entertainers lol, I prefer to appear on news and current affairs shows!

Since the clip lasted about 2 minutes, according to Andy Warhol, I still have 13 minutes of fame left!

What do you do with the cards and letters you receive?  Do you keep them all, just keep the photos, throw them away? 
Inspired by jacolily.

It depends on who the cards are from. I have kept a few cards that have been made by my children, as they are lovely to look back on as they grow up, I know my mum has a card that my brother made her it must be at least 20years old!!

Letters are more special, handwritten before email was ever conceived! I dont have many handwritten letters, I try not to clutter my life with sentimental stuff, when i moved house i had to declutter due to the size of my house being very small:)

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