I am always proud of my own county, Malaysia, a nation of diversity of races and cultures. Malaysia's Independence Day is coming soon. Hence, son's school has been teaching the children a song on our nation's flag, "Jalur Gemilang" meaning Stripes of Glory, as you can see on our national flag.
Malaysia's Flag
The photo you see above is an artwork given by my son's art teacher at school. The children need to punch alot, alot of those circles from 4 different colored paper; red, white, dark blue and yellow. (I could not find dark blue coloured-paper so had choice but to use this hue of blue with teacher's approval.) Then, you stick those circles on the respective place.
My son loves art but this was taking him too long and we know boys love to jump and run and pretend fighting bad guys, etc. He found himself getting impatient with the repeating punch punch punch punch and then stick stick stick stick.
He started with the colour red and then yellow. After doing it for one hour, he was feeling restless, and just needed to go and do other stuff like playing chess, blocks, or just jumping around the house.
I was actually impressed by his patience as I watched him sticking those circles one by one carefully and tidily.
While sticking the yellow circles at the moon and stars section, he found it challenging due to the pointy area of the moon and stars. Being honest, he asked for my help. Needless to say, I came to his rescue.
We used around 3 hours to complete this piece of art, for all the punching to collect the circles of colours to the sticking. All in all, he was glad to sat through with me and really tried his best to concentrate on the art till the finishing line. And he even asked me to put a thumbs-up at the side of his art while he snapped this photo.
The Meaning of Our Flag
The 14 stripes on our national flag represent the 14 states of Malaysia (Perlis, Kedah, Perak, Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang, Johor, Malacca, Negri Sembilan, Selangor, Penang, Sabah, Sarawak and the Federal Territories of Kuala Lumpur and Labuan).
The blue square represents the harmony of the people as we are of varieties of races and religions and cultures (and of course food heaven!!! =)).
The crescent represents Islam, the country's state religion; the yellow of the star and crescent is the royal colour of the Malay rulers. The 14-point star represent our Federal Star and the 14 denotes the unity of the 14 states.
The next day, when I picked him up at school, he loudly exclaimed to me that teacher praised his art. I asked him whether did he want to do it again maybe for another flag? He speedily responded a big "No!". Haha! I was glad. Or else, I would have to glue to the table and the punch for another 3 hours. 😂
