HolidaysGood 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’? We’ve 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 didn’t 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 grandparent’s 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 don’t have the spirit of a get-together. To me,it’s déjà vu every year.Even though the spirit of togetherness is being overshadowed by the stress of a teenager’slife, we still somehow find a way to make holidays with our families interesting. For example;we try not to talk back on our parent’s opinion to go to an island somewhere in Borneo.While we’re there, we have fun snorkelling...