Look. Now observe.

Malaysia has always been championed as a multiracial melting pot. With Malays, Chinese and Indians living with each other, we experience each other's cultures and learn and tolerate each other's beliefs.

With the tagline, "Im Malaysian before Im Malay/Chinese/Indian", its easy to believe for people looking from the outside that Malaysia is a tight knot group of different races.

Just look at any mamak stall. A Malay-Indian establishment that is popular with Indians, Malays and Chinese of every age and social status. We've seen artists, businessmen, football fans, families sit and eat joyfully at these mamak stalls. It seems all really rosy, doesn't it?

But take a really good look at the people of each table.

The chinese are sitting with the chinese. The indians are laughing and jesting, among indians. Malays enjoying their teh tarik, with their fellow malays.

See the obvious?

We're still pretty much a segregated community, aren't we? We'd like to think that although we get along with each other, the bulk of our time is spent with friends of the same race.

I'm not being racist, neither am I trying to drive a wedge between the races, but this is the observation I got over lunch. As my eyes scanned each table, the phenomenon was true. Each table was occupied by a single race, be it Chinese, Malay or Indian. There was not one table that had a Malay, a Chinese and an Indian that sat together, laughing and joking as is portrayed in most 1Malaysia ads.

Why are we pulling the wool over our own eyes?

Its a simple reason, why this is happening. We come from different cultures. We each have different beliefs. From these cultures, come different languages, and because there are so many different languages, its making communication between races not difficult, but still inconvenient.

As I tried to listen in on the tables around me, the Malays conversed in malay, as they do normally. The Chinese conversed in chinese and the Indians conversed in Tamil.

Where's the common denominator that can bring all these races together? Where was English?

Thankfully, the future looks substantially brighter. When I was in school, we had no problem communicating with each other. Malays, Chinese, Indians, everyone was friends with everyone, and the trend repeats itself over the levels of education. It encouraging to see that these are the people that will make up society in the future. perhaps one which is a true 1Malaysia, rather than only in ad campaigns.

These are grey times, but as they say, it is always darkest before dawn.