8/13/2019 Holidays Choral Speaking

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Holidays

Good morning to the panel of honourable adjudicators, teachers, and friends. On this finemorning, I would like to

talk about Malaysian Holidays.

Our country of Malaysia is the home of people of different cultures and ethnic groups. Themajority of Malaysians

are Malays. Besides Malays, there are Chinese, Indians, and so on.We live here, Malaysia, peacefully without wars

amongst ourselves.

There had been some disturbing talk some time ago about the necessity to do somethingabout Malaysia having

too many holidays. I say disturbing because who has heard of having too many holidays? Weve got along all

these years celebrating every festival that ison the calendar and still managing to keep up with the work that has

to be done.

To students, a public holiday means having fun and relaxing. We students will get tired of school if holidays didnt

exist. Spending our time on a holiday also means we could spendsome time with our family. A five-day school

week gives us less time to hang around with our families. During the weekends, our time is usually spent in

shopping malls with either our family or buddies.

On Hari Raya, Malay kids would be elated to have duit raya. My past years of going aroundthe village have

passed, leaving good memories such as being chased by a goat with mycousins. When I turned ten, I felt awkward

being around little kids while collecting the duitraya. This year I spent my time at my grandparents house with

my siblings and my12years+ cousins. I felt bored, having the urge to go back home and listen to head-

bangingmusic. These days, teens as well as preteens dont have the spirit of a get-together. To me,its dj vu

every year.

Even though the spirit of togetherness is being overshadowed by the stress of a teenagerslife, we still somehow

find a way to make holidays with our families interesting. For example;we try not to talk back on our parents

opinion to go to an island somewhere in Borneo.While were there, we have fun snorkelling and appreciating the

wonders of the marineworld. And I thought I was going to swim with the lionfish!

Holidays should be spent with reasonable activities. Some parents send us to camps duringthe school holidays. We

dread of going to camps. I had the experience when I was 11. Isigned you up to a camp in Rawang. Its a four day

study camp, said my dad. I was like, What?! Im so not going there! I was full with anger and fury. My diary read

I cant believethis is happening! - Well, who likes to go to camps when their parents say so? I saw this pollin the

internet and it said 73% of people rather stay at home without TV than go to camp. Soits true that students dont

like being forced away to camps during the holidays.

The Chinese celebrate a lot of festivals. There is a list of the celebrations, but Im going totalk about two only. Im

not sure what they celebrate on the Moon cake festival, but what Iknow is that there are loads of moon cakes.

Yum! The most obvious and marking the firstday of the New Year of the Chinese calendar, is Chinese New Year.Lion dance andparades are held, full of excitement.

The quietest of all the festivals known to my brain, Deepavali. Im not the whiz of the detailsof the festivals in this

country. The kalam is a decoration they make out coloured rice. Theother thing that I know is they eat murukku. A

delicious, country treat.