The New World/Mistaken Identity

I love my student days. I love that I could practically – if I so wish – roll out of bed, throw on clothes haphazardly and stagger out of the door to the lecture theatre. No one would blink, no one would bat so much of a mascaraed set of eye lid (because no one could be bothered with mascara or even lippie!), no one would do a double take at how you look, no one would gasp or gape at how you dress or if you have your clothes inside out or backwards frontward or badly creased, in short no one would even comment - or notice for that matter. Similarly, you can get away without brushing your hair (err, I’m sure someone will notice if you don’t brush your teeth but I suppose you can get away if you smoke or have something to drink beforehand).

Like I said, I love it.

Now that I’m back in motherland and working, I have to observe dress code at work (which I can understand as we need to project the right image). Besides, Mummy disliked us looking sloppy and untidy or sporting any tattered clothes.

But you know what. Only the old people dress up nicely. The young ones like us don’t and shouldn’t. Only the young people would have the nerve and can get away with dressing shabbily, looking like they’ve just escaped from a car accident. The trick is not to try too hard. The middle-aged people, they do that (after all, they have their image to maintain). And the elderly people are either over-dressed, too colour-coordinated, and simply just too fuddy-duddy.

Don’t believe me? Check this out then.

Moi? I’m going for the dishevelled chic look, baby ;)

Please don’t dress like this; you’ll be mistaken for a Bangladeshi ;) Source: Rubens Barrichello @rubarrichello who’s in town for F1

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All my life – even after wearing the scarf - I have been mistaken as a Chinese (since forever. I even had some racists called out ‘Chink’ to me), Japanese (!), Korean (yeah, right), Filipino (??), Thai (!!), Cambodian (what the?), even Turkish and Spanish (I’ve never been mistaken for an Indonesian though). When I travel, I have been mistaken as anything – everything and anything but a Malaysian. A girl I met in Singapore told me that the Westerners cannot tell whether one is a Japanese, Chinese or Korean. I suppose it’s just like we cannot distinguish some Caucasians. So no, I don’t take offence (even to the racists because they were just ignorant idiots). It never fails to amuse me though. As Socrates said it: ‘I am not an Athenian or a Greek, I am a citizen of the world.’