Is this normal? I go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning thinking about it. Every answer I come up with feels wrong and everyone else's suggestion never seems to fit.

I grew up among the millions of Malays who were either desperately trying to set themselves apart or blend into the masses. Most of those attempting the first either succeeded in the most superficial way or failed miserably and were relegated to the latter - conformity.

As I progress through The Writer and The World, I had an overwhelming - and frightening - feeling that I am what Naipaul terms as a renoncant: 'an excellent French word that describes the native who renounces his own culture and strives towards the French'.

I had always, growing up, embraced English to set myself apart from my peers. I grew up in a society where Malays proficient in the English language was a valuable commodity and for me - having grown up speaking the language - excelling above the rest was an easy task. Along with the other English proficient students, I was unofficially, and perhaps even subconsciously by some teachers, categorized as one of the 'smart ones'. In retrospect, that was what might have shaped my path. I happily accepted this elevated status given to me by virtue of my facility with the language and fulfilled my role as one of the 'smart ones' with ease.

I believe we are all products of one system or another. For an adolescent such as I was, the school is the overarching, overruling system that determined who I was and what I was to become. In my family, English had always been the spoken language. There was no applause for the correctly expressed thought. In school, the simple achievement of a spelling bee won me slaps on the shoulder and nods of approval from teachers.