Bitearsweet

I never thought I'd ever have to go through something like this first-hand... I mean I've faced things like racism before and being stereotyped, but discrimination because of religion??? How ridiculous. Especially from people of my own culture. Seriously, it hurts even more and makes me even more baffled when it's something like that. We've been taught how we're all equal since we're young, regardless of colour, culture, or gender, but I don't think people ever think about religion. I seen some pretty mean and stupid things people have done to target against other religions and I'm sure a lot of people think about the Middle East on this topic as opposed to home. Our neighbour in our old neighbourhood once gave us what was pretty much a hate video against our religion so that we would convert. Yes you guessed it, same culture and ethnicity as me! And I thought that was bad! This weekend I was volunteering for the Lunar New Years Extravaganza and found out that all the people from our temple that was asked to volunteer got dropped except for 3 of us. Why? Because at the last minute some of the organizers thought it would be good to use people from their church and thus dropped our volunteers. Excuse me??? Then when we showed up, whatever jobs we were assigned to do kept getting taken away from us when the time came for us to do it, and in the end everything turned out to be a mess with things like wrong appreciation awards given to the wrong people. What really took the cake was how we were embarrassed when we went to go get food, after we were told to. We were told to put our food back cos we were not VIP and whoever told us to get food was wrong. So embarrassingly, we put our plates down on the table in front of all the VIP of the grand opening ceremony before we walked away. They already didn't have food for us to eat when we were told to go get lunch, and this time meant no food either. It's a good thing that the aunty who asked us to volunteer (and successfully kept the 3 of us as volunteers) had a strong head and fought for us... plus I knew one of the organizers personally. They told us to go back to get the food and after a bit of coaxing from 3 of the organizers and one of them personally handing us our plates at the food line, we uncomfortably got our food.

I actually don't have any ill-feelings against those people, but it really saddens me to think that someone would treat someone else so poorly because of the differences in religion. It's as stupid as, if not more, than being racist! I'm comfortable with my religion and I know you're comfortable with yours, that's why you have your faith, but do not and I repeat do NOT tell me I'm wrong, bad or less superior just because I'm Buddhist. I've been Buddhist my entire life and I've turned out just fine. I have the same morals as you do, I don't cause harm to anyone, so what gives you the right to treat me like a criminal or an outcast? I definitely have to tip my hat to the aunty cos she's such a strong person. I love her philosophy of "you can believe in whatever religion you want, but do not go overboard with it and piss me off" and believe me... you do NOT want to piss her off cos she will come at you like a ton of bricks!