PETALING JAYA, Sept. 17 -- Happy belated Malaysia Day. I hope you were able to stay safe from the haze, show off your allegiance to the country by bidding for special car plates, or at the very least, hand over your hard-earned money to corporations pretending to care about Malaysian history by incorporating it into a promotional campaign.

No, no, I get it - the drink is only RM6.30. It's very clever.

In some ways, this article risks being guilty of the same contrived approach: a nasi lemak story any other time of year is unremarkable; a nasi lemak story one day removed from the two most patriotic - publicly anyway - weeks in the national calendar is just a little too convenient.

But I've been thinking about what it means to be Malaysi...