“Merdeka! Merdeka! Merdeka! OK, thank you very much for listening to me screaming like some lunatic just now. Gotta go now, chaos!”

I am certainly confident that this would be the speech of the prime minister 50 years later.

Well, you can’t really blame him/her/it you know? Everyone’s there waiting just for the fireworks. If he/she/it were to drag in more speeches and ‘merdeka’s, everyone will start to throw stones at him/her/it. The logic behind this is simple: People nowadays are just not that into the Merdeka celebration as it used to be.

Don't believe what I've said? Here’s an experiment that you can conduct on your own. Ask a teenager what is the real meaning of Merdeka, and see how they would reply. If you could find a teenager that answers “Merdeka is a special day for us to celebrate the independence of Malaya (not Malaysia) from the Britain”, you had either encountered a teenager who had just completed his/her moral assignment, or you had encountered a teenager that has a naggy old grandpa. But most of the time, you will be back-questioned, “why ask such silly question???”

If you are still not satisfied, here’s another experiment that you can conduct. Get a box of Jalur Gemilang (and in case you don’t know, Jalur Gemilang is our national flag’s official name), those kind that you can stick onto the roof of your car. Then, distribute it to some college student who’s driving their own luxury cars to college. If you can spot ANY of them sticking the flag onto their car, you can definitely make a conclusion that you’re in a deep sleep and you’re dreaming. FIND AN ALARM CLOCK AND WAKE UP ALREADY!!!

Some of them will clarify that they couldn’t afford to stick the flag on their car as it will damage the car’s painting, and that their parents will scold them if they saw a flag on their car. “Ah Boy ah, why put a flag on your car??? It looks so stupid and so patriotic! Later if let our neighbour Aunty Suzie sees, then I’ll die la. She will tell everyone in pasar later. Faster take the flag off!”

Why celebrates Merdeka? People are just too lackadaisical about the struggle that our ancestors faced before, the struggle to achieve independence; the struggle of our past leaders to take the risk of boarding an old ship to London, and Malaya Airway (say what?) back from negotiations for independence. Hey! That’s a big risk you know! Some screws might got loosen and the plane might crash! But our ex-ex-ex-ex-ex prime minister chooses to take the risk for the sake of our country! That should be a valid reason for us to celebrate Merdeka!

Another reason for us to celebrate Merdeka is because it is a public holiday. The government had always (and will always) set the 31st of August as a public holiday. We should at least show some appreciation by giving us our support in any Merdeka related events. But we won’t want to take part in Jalur Gemilang colouring contests organized by some nutritious drink manufacturing company, so we can at least stand at the dataran merdeka to make some noise, heats up the environment and have free fireworks show.

So next time we heard someone saying: “Just because I’m too shy to say it, doesn’t mean that I don’t love my country, ok? I still know how to sing negara aku and I know who is Lee Chong Wei! He’s the one who went up to the space to promote the delicious batik to some extraterrestrial! ”, we know that we are still in the hype of celebrating Merdeka.