This is just not funny. Not at all. No. Not even slightly. How could anyone do this?

I am simply appalled and sick to the stomach.

“Daddy, who am I?” My youngest daughter asked, tentatively, puzzled and confused.

“I mean, am I Australian, or Malaysian, or… Ch-Chinese?”

I said, “Why, honey?”

“Well, the other day at school, the teacher asked all the Chinese kids in the class to go forward for a meeting. I didn’t go forward because I thought I was Australian, and you and Mom were Malaysian, but not Chinese.”

I wasn’t sure why the Chinese students were called out for a meeting. Perhaps the school wanted to survey the Chinese students to see if any were interested in attending special Chinese language classes, but the real problem was my daughter’s confusion.

I spent some time explaining to her that she is ethnically Chinese, that her parents were born in Malaysia, and grew up with Malaysian nationality. However I assured my daughter that indeed her parents are Chinese ethnically and that all her grandparents were also Chinese, as are their parents and grand-parents. So we are true-blue Chinese (I was going to say true yellow, but that might not be appropriate, even if it is coming from me). As for my daughter, I explained to her, because she and her siblings were all born in Australia, she was definitely true-blue Australian as well as 100% Chinese!

This uneasiness about our heritage seems to run in the family. A few years ago, when my oldest daughter was just eight years old, she had a similar conversation with me. She was sitting next to me as I was reading. She had this contemplative look on her young face.

“Daddy, I have a question.”

I put my book down. “Yes, honey, what is it?”

“Grandma and Grandpa… they are real Chinese people right?”

“Yes, dear, they are.”

She nodded slowly, still visibly thinking hard, she pointed to her chest, “And, me…. I am a real Australian, right?”

“Oh, yes, you sure are!”

She nodded again…. “Now, I don’t know about you and Mom.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, sometimes, you are Australian, and sometimes you are Chinese.”

I couldn’t help but break out in a huge smile on my face. “Yes!” I chuckled, “you are right! Mom and Dad are confused people!”

Christian Carnival #54 is Up! This time, it is hosted by Niel Uchitel at Digitus, Finger & Co. There are quite a few excellent posts submitted.

For each post, Niel has put in a paragraph of his own commentary. He has done well.

A couple of the pieces I read that I’d like to highlight are: Making out with Jesus (I agree, cool title!) by Joe Missionary, who wondered if the expressions of romantic love portrayed by a proliferation of worship songs truly express the relationship between the Lord and His church. Personally, I think this is just one more expression of the current culture’s obsession with self-love and self-centered religion.

Another piece that I though is worth mentioning is Dory’s post at Wittenberg Gate, Broken Leaders and Second Chances. In this post, Dory responded to a challenge to her earlier post regarding the unsuitability of Newt Gingrich to be the next Republican Presidential candidate because of his moral failure. I posted a comment wondering if applying Biblical qualifications for leadership to governmental leaders is a category mistake.

My own post to this Carnival is Fundamentalism and Fanaticism in Any Religion is Dangerous which was also featured by La Shawn Barber as part of her Ten Christian Bloggers weekly profiles and round-up.

Whatever the (Big) Ten Christians Blogs are doing, they are doing something right (at least from my myopic perspective)! La Shawn Barber linked one of my posts today, and I am beginning to get some traffic from there. Those of you who are regular (all 10 of you! hehe, honestly, I don’t know how many of you are regular readers) over here might remember my giddy brouhaha about my Large Mammal status (it made me check my gut in the mirror a couple of times, at least) on the TTLB Ecosystem.

Though many sites are linking to me by virtue of the fact that I am on the Blogdom of God and the Church Directory, it may be a fact that not many people are even aware of my blog’s existence. So, today, when I checked my stats, it was gratifying to see not one, not two, but several referrals from Ms Barber. Thanks, sister! Not only am I getting traffic, I am also getting people who are willing to engage me in conversation. This is so cool. By the way, if you have come by here because of a link from another site, please post a comment and say, “Hi!” I’d love to hear from you.

I must say, I am not really sure how many of my readers are regular readers. I know I just recently gained a “regular” in Cindy Swanson, whose posts, when I first stumbled upon her site, resonated with me as she shared about her grief experience. Recently she left a comment over here to say that she has just discovered how to use Bloglines, she will be a more regular reader now! And, so have I (discovered Bloglines)! Recently I decided to go through my links of various Blog “accessories” and discovered how to use, for instance, Bloglines and finally found out how to activate my BlogStreet account as well! I have now added my Bloglines subs to the left. There are a few sites I read that I am not able to subscribe to, but that’s ok for now. So I am now enjoying my Blogline account and found that I need not hop from blog to blog to read, but can just scroll through the updated blogs on my Blogline account and find posts of interest! Also, I find it easy to add to my subscription with just a right click with my Firefox extension! That’s so cool!

Another thing I have done is also finally got Richard Hall of Connexions to add me to the Un-Right Christians Blogroll and Aggregator. I applied sometime ago after searching for a niche group to belong to and feeling a little more acutely the “in-the-outer-ness”- something about my identity crisis and the need to belong, you know, but initially, there were problems with my XML Feed apparently. Richard did some feed magic and presto, now I am part of a group of more or less like-minded sojourner-bloggers!

And I think that is the cool thing about the blogosphere. It allows you to enter into this whole new world of people all having different views and opinions and yet we can still share camaderie and fellowship with one another. We can shoot the breeze together in the imaginary bar. You just have to BYO beer, nuts or whatever else you do when you chinwag away with your pals. The beauty is you can do it with a laptop, in your pajamas, and watching Alias all at the same time!