Part 1

            Rituals is an important event in cultures where it is to celebrate the transition of a person. In this blog post, I decided to talk on the important ritual of my culture since I am more familiar to it compared to the ritual that practices in the US. In Malay’s cultures, I think one of the important rituals for us is marriage. In our culture, marriage is a legal contract between a man and a woman. Both the groom and the bride are to consent to the marriage of their own free wills. In every marriage, there will be also a wedding. Due to religion belief which Islam, there are many Islamic element in it. In Traditional Malay wedding, there are two part of the ceremony. The first part is “akad nikah” which is the legal and religious part of the wedding. To compare it with US marriage, this is the part where the vows are said expect, instead of between the bride and groom, it is between the groom and “wali” which is usually the father of the bride. This is like the symbolism where the father passes his daughter to another man care. The second part of the wedding ceremony is we called as “bersanding”. The “Bersanding” or sitting in state ceremony consists of a “pelamin” or raised dais, prepared for the bride and groom, to represent their ‘throne’ as they are treated as ‘king and queen for the day’. During this part, usually food is served and people congrats the bride and the groom. 

Part 2

            In my life, I believed I been through several rituals of transition in my life. One of the significant and memorable rituals of transition is when I got my Malaysian Certificate of Education (SPM) examination’s result. Our school system in Malaysia is a little bit different from here in the US. Instead of high school, we called it secondary school. The final year of our secondary school, we have a huge examination called SPM. It is very important to determine our next step in college life. Fortunately, I managed to get a very excellent result which is all straight A’s. During that time, I was so happy and glad that I able to pull it off. Honestly, I have doubt to get all A’s in my subject. I remember my school held an award ceremony to celebrate all the candidate that got straight A’s. During the ceremony, our principal gift a token of appreciation to our hard work. It is a formal ceremony where all teacher, parent and student attend. It is very special for me since it is my first time to get on the stage to receive an excellent student award. Besides celebrate it at school, my family have our own way to celebrate it. My parent conducts a small party for my big family which included all my sibling, my grandparents, my uncles, my aunts and also my cousins. It was a really fun time and yet also precious since I got to catch up with my whole family. Looking back, those celebration actually give me motivation to achieve more and be the best.

Part 3

            Based on my college experience, I think the transition of coming here to US can be the idea of belonging-liminality-belonging. It is my first time coming here in the US. The culture in my country are really different from the US. Malaysia are more of high-context cultures compare to the US where it is more of low-context cultures. Moreover, the power of speak up and freedom here is really high based on my observation. Therefore, it is really new experience for me. There are three stages in rites of passage: Separation, Liminality and Incorporation. I believe, right now, that I am between Liminality and Incorporation stage. I went through Separation stage when I decide to come here in the US. During my time in college, I try to meet new people and maybe be friend with them. However, making friend is a little bit difficult for me. Being a minority here and English as my second language, making hard for me to make first move. As time goes by, I try to build up my confidence and I able to make a few friends especially at my work place. The implicit message that I learned is that in my culture, males are dominant compare to female. Therefore, I really hard to me to learn to speak up.