{"id":23159,"date":"2014-09-12T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-12T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/?p=23159"},"modified":"2014-09-13T01:16:15","modified_gmt":"2014-09-12T17:16:15","slug":"what-merdeka-means-as-we-grow-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/?p=23159","title":{"rendered":"What &#8216;Merdeka&#8217; means as we grow up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>By <\/strong><\/em><strong>Hamka Rosli<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This year we are celebrating our countrys 57th anniversary of our Independence. \u00c2\u00a0Year by year there have been various programmes to ignite the spirit of <em>Merdeka<\/em> to the country and to the people of Malaysia.<\/p>\n<p>The word <em>Merdeka<\/em> had already been familiarized to us since our kindergarten days. At that time we barely knew what <em>Merdeka<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0meant. Of course we were young but at that age we had our own interpretation of <em>Merdeka<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Small kids love to relate the Independence day with patriotic songs. When <em>Merdeka<\/em> day is getting near, they know that it is the time again where they have to sing the <em>Merdeka<\/em> songs like <em>Jalur Gemilang, Tanggal 31<\/em> and other patriotic songs.<\/p>\n<p>As we grew up, in teenage years, the meaning of <i>Merdeka<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0changed to what we call as temporary freedom. It is all about how we are free from the books and teachers after final exam. Besides learning about the history of <em>Merdeka<\/em> in school, some of us love to participate in the activities or programmes in conjunction with <em>Merdeka\u00c2\u00a0<\/em>day such as choir competition, essay writing, poster drawing and some other fun activities too.<\/p>\n<p>Now when we become adults, we look at the meaning of <em>Merdeka<\/em> in\u00c2\u00a0more abstract way. We understand that <em>Merdeka<\/em> means everything to this nation. We start to appreciate the devotion of previous generation and being thankful for the freedom that we now enjoy.<\/p>\n<p>Even though the way we celebrate <em>Merdeka<\/em> is\u00c2\u00a0not as vibrant as when we were kids, we believe that the Independence spirit should be felt inside our heart and our soul.<\/p>\n<p>Happy Independence Day to all. <em>Merdeka<\/em>! \u00c2\u00a0<em>Merdeka<\/em>! \u00c2\u00a0<em>Merdeka<\/em>!<\/p>\n<pre>Photo taken from Yahoo!<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Hamka Rosli This year we are celebrating our countrys 57th anniversary of our Independence. \u00c2\u00a0Year by year there have been various programmes to ignite&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"nelio_content":{"isAutoShareEnabled":true,"autoShareEndMode":"never","automationSources":{"useCustomSentences":false,"customSentences":[]},"followers":[],"suggestedReferences":[],"efiUrl":"","efiAlt":"","highlights":[],"permalinkQueryArgs":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23159"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23159"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25740,"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23159\/revisions\/25740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}