Conversations with teenagers in Malaysia

Lately, we’ve been having various conversations with my teenagers. About everything. It has been very educational and surprising in many ways.

Conversation with my girls on boyfriends (age: 13-15 years old)

Question: When did you girls have your first boyfriend?

Answers: 9 years old. 11 years old. Two of them never had one. To quote them “it’s too early to have boyfriends. They take up so much time and they are so boring. Now we should focus on school. Later, in university we can have boyfriends”

Q: How does it work? Does the boy come and ask if you want to be his girlfriend?

A: Yes, sometimes yes. But for me, the friends of the boy came and asked me if I wanted to be his girlfriend. Then he sent me a letter with the question “Do you want to be my girlfriend?” and “Yes/No”…This got giggles from the other girls and a “Uaaa…that’s so romantic!!” remark 🙂

Q: So what do you do with your boyfriend? Do you hold hands?

A: Teacher NOOOO!!! Cannot! We walk home together from school, we chat (online), we talk if we have a problem.

Q: Do your parents know about your boyfriends.

A: Opinions were mixed, but I was impressed that a majority of the parents actually knew about it.

When two boys showed up for class, we had to switch the conversation as all the girls became super shy. So we started talking about marriage, and all that nice stuff.

Q : How do you want your husband/ wife to be? Handsome, rich, smart?

A from the girls: Handsome of course, teacher!! Average rich…if he has too much money, then he would be arrogant. And he needs to be hard working and kind. (one girl who is taller also mentioned that he needs to be taller than she is :))

A from the boys: She cannot have free hair. Q: But why Eizwan? A: I just find it more beautiful with hijab teacher. And she needs to understand me. And be loyal. And she should know how to cook because I don’t know how. Q: Does she need to be a housewife? A: Whatever she wants teacher. If she wants to work I can help her find work.

Q: When do you want to get married?

A were mixed. Most of them said 23 – 24, the boys said 27-28 (they first need to get a job to provide), and only one girl said 28 – 30. She said she wants to go study abroad and then get a job and then get married.

Q: How many children do you want to have?

The average answer was 4 – 5. Only one girl (the one that also wants to get married later) said she’s ok with 2.

Q: When did you start wearing the hijab?

The answers were mainly around 11-12 years old. One girl however: “I don’t wear the hijab all the time actually. I still have free hair. I am not ready to wear it all the time. You need to really be ready for it, as otherwise it is a sin. It is very difficult to wear it all the time, so you need to be sure you can do it and want to do it. SO I just wear it at school and in this class because everyone else is wearing it.” Q: How do your parents feel about it? A: “My mother is ok. My father doesn’t like it though. All my cousins already are wearing the hijab so he would like me to wear it too.”

Q: Why do you need to wear it all the time?

A: Otherwise we would look sexy teacher, and that is a sin.

Q: But what do you mean when you say sexy?

A: Well, if you show skin or hair, then you are sexy.

Q (me and Laura were at this point after 6h of teaching in non-conditioned rooms, wearing long pants and loose t-shirts): So, because you can see part of our arms, that means that me and teacher Laura are sexy?

A: Well, yes, a bit teacher.

Q: But I don’t understand. I’ve seen many women wearing hijab and long clothes that are still sexy. We believe that sexy is more a manner of attitude…if you want to be sexy, you can be sexy no matter what you wear.

A: Hmmm…I don’t know teacher…maybe….(insert pensive eyes)

A from the boys: The thing is teacher, if you wear hijab then you are beautiful. If you have free hair and show skin then you are sexy. And you should be like that only at home, with your husband

Q: Ok. But then why are you not sexy when you are wearing a sleeveless T-shirt? In Europe we would call a man sexy if he wears that and has muscles.

A: Hmmm…I don’t know teacher….no…maybe….(insert pensive eyes)

TO BE CONTINUED…

 

 

 

 

 

Motivation’s a bitch!

These past few weeks I’ve had some difficulty writing. Here or anywhere. Which is weird because as a friend of mine says, I write  like I talk. And we all know I very rarely have difficulties talking.

I think the challenge has lied mainly in not having enough time to process everything that is happening around me. As usual, Malaysia remains full of surprises. Things change over night, interesting people come by at completely random and unexpected moments and blow you and your ideas away, feelings and emotions just happen and you feel as if you don’t really know even how to identify them. Not to mention think about what they mean, what they were caused by, etc.

I have however decided to go against this writing block I’m facing and to do so by focusing on just one topic that has been on my mind a lot. Namely motivation. And let me tell you something: Motivation’s a bitch!

Now, you might argue: Really Ana? You and your HR master had not figured that one out yet? Only now realised it? And I can say that of course, I knew that already! It’s just that I had never before been in a situation in which motivation would be so fully determinant of your success (and by that I just mean life satisfaction in general). Nor in a situation in which motivation would be so difficult to obtain and to preserve and would rely almost completely on your own inner workings.

Let me try to explain. If I would get demotivated in my previous life, there would be mechanisms I would use to get back on track. There would be going running, going dancing, hiding in a cafe with a nice book for hours, going cycling, calling up people with uplifting potential, the bottle of wine drunk while watching the favourite soapy movie. And if all that would not work, that would not be the end of the world. I would just hide in front of my computer for for 2 days at the office, try to avoid main interactions, sulk for a while, and somehow the inner resorts would come back to life.

Here however, all of the above is impossible. Exercising requires serious motivation (it’s bloody hot all the time and logistics is horrible), there is no alcohol around, and you don’t really have that many people to call on (you are in a foreign country after all and the time difference is just horrible). Moreover (and here is the worst part of it), everyone and everything depends on your motivation! You cannot hide away – you need to go to class! You cannot go demotivated to class – your students will feel you in a moment and become gloomy, bored or angry themselves. Which will basically set the whole scene and day for disaster…time will pass with the speed of a snail and all you will want to do is sleep forever! If in other jobs, there would be people around to share from their energy or motivation, I have the feeling that when teaching it’s really you who sets the tone. You get obviously a lot from your students but you need to be open for it…and sometimes you just are not.

Furthermore, you live in your community! Which means that at all times you need to be the positive teacher you are in class- everyone wants to talk to you and everyone wants to know everything about you. Which basically means that the only option viable is to lock yourself in the house with decent supplies of food and do whatever it is you need to in order to get back on track.

I guess what I’m saying is that I’ve never in my life monitored my motivation level so regularly, nor have I actively planned for increase in my motivation level. Because I know that if I start down on the Monday, the whole week will be true hell.

I also never ever lived so much “one day at a time” as I do now. Because anything can happen! And it’s not about the lack of planning. It’s just that emotions fluctuate so much and people react sometimes in such weird ways, that you really need to just get through the day. It’s a funny type of life…if I think of when I started it all feels like it flew away. But also that it went by quite slowly somehow.

But anyways, being forced by circumstances, I have developed new “motivation lifter mechanisms”. Among them:

• Insanity! Am in day 21, dying every time I do it but I must say it works!
• Good and healthy food! food here is amazing but so oily and unhealthy that you can get really carried away – focus is needed to stay eating healthy and I am proud to say that I think I am eating less sugar here than I ate even in Europe;
• Being very actively in touch with people – if you don’t reach out you will go mad. People in your community cannot really be your friends, rather your students, so you really need to keep in touch with some people with similar interests and levels. If in Europe I was quite sensitive not to intrude, here I have no shame…”Can you please be my friend?” 🙂
• Regular outings from my community, accompanied by good coffee and good wine. It can get quite comfortable in the community because the people are nice and things are made easy for you somehow. But you just need to get out! See other things, remind yourself of what you used to do before this. I just think it’s essential for remaining true to who you are.
• Make sure to make time for myself. There’s always a multitude of things to do…you just need to be careful to have some time for you also.

So yeah, in case you haven’t noticed, this job is heavier and more revealing than expected. But it’s ok. It’s actually all starting to make sense lately.

 

Chinese New Year

Two weeks ago (yes, about the same time as my Sabah debacle), the whole Chinese population celebrated their New Year. Seeing that after the Malay, the Chinese are Malaysia’s majority population and seeing that I had suffered an unexpected and not necessarily pleasant change of plans, what is one to do but to go and celebrate Chinese New Year in a Chinese community?!

Said and done! My good friend Joie told me to come over in her center in Johor (South of MAlaysia). She basically does the same thing as I do, only in a place called Sungai Sulog – this is literally a village made up only of one street! But it is 15min away from a reasonably sized city called Batu Pahat. Also, although she has some MAlay students, the majority of her students are Chinese. And they are also very willing to impart their culture with the silly matsallehs that don’t know much about anything.

Our party consisted of four (sorry for the language, I’m reading Jane Austen again) – Joie, Sarah (her Italian volunteer), Kayla (an American whose blond hair and blue eyes basically makes her the main attraction around here:)) and myself. And we were truly treated royaly!

We had 3 days that basically consisted of us being moved around from house to house, event to event, tradition to tradition. And in each of these places there would be tons and tons of food and of photo taking (seriously, celebrities had nothing compared to us in those days!).
From the highlights of our celebrations:
– we got to wear pretty red dresses all the time, cause everyone must wear red for good luck!
– we made money! Unlike what I’ve seen in other cultures, the Chinese New Year celebration seems to be a lot about prosperity, abundance and having a good living. All the rituals go on about it. And single people receive tiny (and quite pretty) red envelopes with money in them. So this is actually the first trip ever that I ended with more money than when I left!
– The Chinese eat a lot!! Like think Romanian dimensions for Christmas! Only that they do that for 15 days…that’s how much the CNY celebrations last!
– on this day, the Chinese do not think at all about fire safety! Everyone lights up fireworks at 12 o’clock, but they are of truly impressive size and duration and they are lit exactly above neighbourhood houses and such. One firework even went into someone’s house and we were all panicking, but everyone around was just laughing…
– Chinese kids are very cute!
– I learned to play mah jong and I really liked it! It’s way smarter and more interesting than what the internet version lets you to believe 🙂
– we saw lots of posh houses! Some of Joie’s students were quite well off so it was super interesting to see this part of Malaysia also. It is very well known here that the Chinese are dominating in terms of economic activities and the weekend definitely reflected that 🙂
– we karaoked twice! You just cannot get out of it!
– we saw these cool rituals like the lion dance and the dragon dance. Loved the music and the rhythm and the whole atmosphere of the celebration!
– we had good wine and French cheese! What more is there to say?:)

Overall, it was a super super nice weekend. Though at some point it did get a bit tiring – our hosts however were never tired of taking us to yet another event! We even went to one of the Mister’s secondary school reunion! 41 years reunion that is!! We ate there some more too(in case anyone was wondering:))
At one point however I did stop enjoying the popularity. At times it felt we were paraded around for being white…I know it might sound stupid but that was not such a nice feeling anymore. Though I am sure everyone meant well. But so you see the extent of the photo shoots happening, here is the evidence:)

Ana & the system

So, last weekend has been probably one of the most testing ones since I’ve been in Malaysia. And I owe that all to the beautiful Immigration Office in Malaysia! A glorious institution, whose officers do not know their own rules and that made me fly all the way to Sabah, only to be stopped by immigration, sleep in the airport and then go back to KL the next day.

To start in the beginning – my visa was expiring the 5^th February. SOLS (my organisation here) had applied for an extension 3 weeks in advance. I had planned to go to Sabah and climb on Mount Kinabalu on those dates (with a friend that could only make it on those dates). So I asked whether extensions are generally problematic. I received the “no, it always goes smoothly with extensions” answer. So I went and planned away – was supposed to fly to Sabah on the 4^thin the afternoon, climb on 5^th and 6^th and come back on the 9^th to KL.

Obviously, the extension had not come through by last Monday. So I called SOLS and they said not to worry! There is a pass you can get for a 2 week visa pass while they are processing my extension request. And that this can be obtained one day before my visa expires, hence 4^thFebruary. Needless to say that at 8am on Thursday I was at the Immigration Office in Putrajaya. After the appropriate waiting Where a nice lady explained to me that my extension was actually approved in the system, just that the stamp on my passport will be done next week. But that I can definitely travel to Sabah – that it counts as a visa run, so I would anyways get a 90day tourist visa when I come back to KL. To my amazed question of “But it’s the same country! How it can be?”, the lady went on a “Yes, but there’s different regulations for East Malaysia. No worry. They anyways can see in the system that your visa extension was approved”.

So there I was, fairly relieved on my way to Sabah. The flight was smooth and I was super excited to arrive when…they stopped me at Immigration. Apparently they did not agree with the KL people…I could only stay in Sabah only until 5^th February, when my visa was expiring. My desperate “but it’s in the system” thing met with “we have a different system, we cannot see that”. And with a complete refusal to let me in more than one day.

Now, I will spare you my anger, frustration and also desperation! I don’t generally panic easily but I really kind of lost it then. It all came together and collapsed at that moment! The fact that their own people completely misinformed me and let me fly all the way to Sabah just to go back! The fact that I did not know what to do – to go on visa runs from Sabah was super expensive (it’s not really a world wide flying hub!!), and to go to KL seemed pointless and a complete waste of my holiday time! I literally just wallowed in that airport for about 2 hours until I finally could pull myself together and think constructively of what to do. I ended up with the latter option since it was the most money efficient one, and I booked myself on the first flight back to KL in the morning.

I had not spent a night in an airport in a long time so this was like a blast from the past…the cold (in super hot countries the aircon in places such as the airport is turned on to an insane level!), the sleep or lack thereof, the lack of any decent food, the stares that go with it. But I had my sleeping bag and two books so all in all, it all went by in a fairly reasonable manner.

So here I am the next day, back in KL and going straight to the Immigration Office, where a guy from SOLS was waiting for me. And where again, the unbelievable happened. Another lady told me that still my visa was approved but that the stamp in my office will come only a week later. Until then, I need to carry around a letter of approval (which she gave to me), in case I want to travel or there’s random police checks. To my “but why didn’t the lady yesterday tell me this?” and “what is the procedure to file complaints here?”, the lady just stared at me blankly and could not understand why I was so amazed (and annoyed at the situation). The SOLS person then proceeded to tell me confidentially that I should file my complaint only after I get the visa!!!!!!!

I am generally of the opinion that things happen for a reason. And despite all of the above, I did end up spending a lovely weekend in rather different circumstances (more of this to follow). But I still cannot yet grasp the full logic of why I could not climb that mountain! Ah well…I will get to it at some other point I guess!

Late reflections

A good friend of mine sent me a message saying that after reading the post on my incursion on the jungle, she was actually curious about my reflections following that. And now that I had a bit of time to ponder, I thought I’d share them.

* I had no such “their life is so beautiful and simple and how it’s supposed to be” moments. I am realistic enough at this point to see the good and bad in any life style and not to idealize things. Especially in this case, as the orang asli have a pretty unhealthy life style anyways – life expectancy among them is about 57 years!!! Don’t get me wrong, food wise they’re by far the healthiest I’ve seen in Malaysia – they basically rely mostly on vegetables taken from the jungle. Meat is reduced to a minimum and the unhealthy things I’ve seen were all biscuits of stuff that they buy. But unfortunately they take from the jungle also some less healthy habits. They all (and by all I mean ALL, even small children aged 4 or 5!!) chew on this thing that is called pinang. It looks a bit like this in its tree form, and inside it looks like this. They put it inside a leaf together with some white powdery thing (did not yet figure out what that is) and they chew it like tobacco in the old days. Now, the thing is, that pinang thing together with the powdery thing have some sort of chemical reaction and the result is basically a light drug…you really get a bit high. Your mouth is full of red (that’s the colour that comes from chewing it) and it’s quite bad for the teeth, as well as for the rest of your health. It’s also obviously quite addictive. Funnily enough, they actually believe that the thing keeps them young!! It’s a bit difficult to understand how they can believe this as all of them look much older than they actually are. Apart from the kids. The kids are seriously adorable!

* The whole experience made me feel how special Malaysia truly is. I will be honest, I love the nature in Malaysia but I can’t say I am in love with the country per se – I am not a big fan of its life style and I don’t like that feeling of everyone staring at me and considering me “special” just because I am white. So I definitely cannot see myself living here for a long time. At the same time though, I realised that in 6 months here I learned a lot of stuff about more cultures and types of people than I ever imagined! I actually understand much better now Muslims and Indians. And this visit brought me close to the life of indigenous tribes also. Obviously, I am not pretending in depth understanding but at least I get some reference points, some dimensions of perception if you will. I am still working on the Chinese part but even the fact that I mainly meet this group in tango, salsa and hiking activities, says a lot 🙂

* The spirits world conversation came up again. Only this time it came much closer to me and made me sort of make up my mind on it. I was never neither super brave nor super afraid of spirits or ghosts. I was brought up in a religious environment so stories of people possessed by the devil were quite a common occurrence in my life. I even saw such people in Romanian monasteries – difficult to believe anyone could fake such behaviors. But what I saw in this village was different. The fear was everywhere – absolutely everyone had things around their neck and hands to protect them from evil spirits. The shaman was highly respected and from what I understood had a busy schedule of healings and other ceremonies. And what was amazing was that our questions of “but why are you actually doing that? Why like this and not in another way? What does this mean?” were met with blank stares. What kind of explanations do we need? The ritual is being done because it has always been done like this and it has always had power over the spirits. So questions are completely useless and unnecessary. The following day was even better – we actually turned back from the jungle because of a strong wind that made the trees make loud sounds and bend a bit. All the locals became super super scared as it was obvious the spirits were around us.

We obviously had the conversation among ourselves (the foreigners) on whether we believe in ghosts. Aleks told us that the first 2 months he could not sleep very well in his center and he was telling this to his community. That obviously took him to the shaman (after asking him if he had pee-ed in the jungle – apparently that’s a very bad thing to do!). The shaman performed a ritual and gave him a talisman to wear around his neck. He has never had troubles sleeping since.

Tina (Slovenian friend) on the other hand, could not sleep well the first night we were there. When I asked her why, she went on “couldn’t you hear all the spirits?”. I must confess I did not.

So they sentenced me to a “you really don’t believe in this at all?”- to which point I could not say NO, but I realised that what I always believe is that it is the fear that makes them (whatever them is) exist. Whenever I have thoughts that provoke fear, I tend to believe that it is actually myself creating the fear, and that if I can just control the fear than whatever that is will be non-existent. I guess this means that I internalise it rather than externalising it. I guess that means I don’t really believe in them, though I’ve heard many weird stories so am not sure what I would do if any odd things were to happen to me.

* I had this very clear moment when I realised I will actually miss this a lot. It happened in the first night, before I fell asleep – I realised I will miss this feeling. Lying on mattresses on the floor in a building in the middle of nowhere together with people that feel now very close, though in the beginning you would have never said you could built such relationships again. Wonderful. It felt a lot like summers at my grandma’s (and that is by far the greatest compliment any experience can receive!:))

* I am remembering and thinking about my grandmother a lot lately. Talking about her too. Funnily enough, always in the present tense. I wonder what that means.

Role Models

Somewhat randomly I decided to do an activity on role models with my teenager and adult classes. This basically meant that I asked them to think about who their role model is and to make a short presentation on who that person is, what they did, and why they admire them so much. The results took me a bit by surprise.

It’s actually amazing how much you can say by a culture just by this small exercise. And no, I don’t mean this in a stereotyping kind of way. I just mean that people exposed to certain values and behaviours, will obviously display some sort of similar pattern. It goes for ROmania, the Netherlands and obviously Malaysia also.

The first class I did the exercise with was pretty straightforward and did not produce many surprises. It was my teenager class (13 to 16 year olds) – the more mature ones chose as role models their mothers or fathers (which was quite surprising considering that at that age you should be mostly fighting with your parents:)). The boys went mostly for football players – it was funny how they chose…they all went for captains of local teams and kept telling me that they chose them because they are “brave” :). For the girls it was quite diverse, with a predominance of singers. And yes, I did get one Taylor Swift too!

My main surprinse was my adult class. For two reasons:
– firstly, it got super emotional! Most people here chose relatives – parents or even siblings. Some of them talked about close family who had past away. One girl almost cried sharing about her mother. Another one was super emotional while telling us why she “adored her father”
– secondly, two of my adults told me they have as a role model the former Prime Minister of Malaysia. In all honesty, he does deserve some credit. He was a PM for a looooooong time, and during this period Malaysia did become richer and more stable, he built quite a lot of the impressive infrastructure that they have and he even basically had the idea of building Putrajaya (the city where I live and teach now, that was constructed about 20 years ago:)). Obviously, he also has the great merit of brainwashing an entire population, of prolonging a set of privileges given to Malays that were supposed to be abolished like 30 years ago and of basically creating quite some division among the main ethnicities of the country. For more detailed information on him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahathir_Mohamad. In any case, I doubt many people in Europe would ever choose politicians as role models. So it was truly surprising to hear it from my students.

The third class I did the exercise with is also a teenager class, but they all go to religious school. I guess I should not have been surprised by the fact that 3 of the kids actually chose religion related figures as role models – prophet Muhammad, one of the prophet’s friends, and a famous Malaysian ulama. An ulama is basically someone who is recognized as a scholar and a great authority in religious education. So he holds sort of “lectures” where he teaches about the Quran. One of my favourite students actually chose this ulama, and then told me he wants to become an ulama, hence the choice. I found it quite endearing.
Side Note: I know and I can see on the kids that religious school makes them in a way a bit close minded and reluctant to certain things that I would find normal. But at the same time I am always moved by how much they value things like “being kind, being generous, sharing what you have, being hard working”. I am not sure how many 14 year olds in Europe would mention these as main things that are important for them.
Going back to the role model part, quite a few of the students gave parents and siblings as examples. One girl gave me as a role model – which was truly touching and a bit embarrassing. I didn’t really know how to react or what to do with myself then. And I also had one student who chose Gandhi. This was a very pleasant surprise, especially as the education system here doesn’t really encourage knowledge about affairs external to Malaysia. SO the fact that someone actually knew about Gandhi was definitely a great plus. It also gave me an idea for my next project with the teenagers: Great Leaders 🙂

In the jungle, the mighty jungle….

Did you ever have one of those days that start off with you waking up in your nice clean bed in an air-con-ed room and that end up with you going to bed on a mattress in the only house made from concrete and having electricity in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere?

Well, with a bit of ups and downs, that basically sums up my Saturday!

This Monday we had a public holiday (due to a big Indian celebration), which basically meant LONG WEEKEND!!! YEEEYYYY!!! So there was the whole “what should I do, where should I go” dilemma.  And after some thought and consideration, I decided not to go witness the indian festival together with most of my other friends here (part of me regrets it but truth be told, I was seriously not in the mood for the crowdiness and hectic-ness that went along with it) and instead decided to visit one of the other CDOs. His name is Aleks (Serbian), he does the same job as I do, only that in a tiny orang asli (this is the aboriginal people here) village in the middle of the jungle. I managed to corrupt my volunteer and another friend also, so we all went to visit the jungle!

I must say that Saturday was a nice special day anyways. It’s like all the stars were aligning to make things good and enjoyable. In the morning we went to an event in our community – we were supposed to be there only until 10am, but we ended up staying until 1.30pm. There was breakfast and lunch, there was lots of nice conversation, there was sitting in the kitchen with the women, helping with cooking and finding out all the gossip, there was playing of games – we actually got introduced to their national games!! I actually won one of them by pure luck (it’s a lot like pool so I sucked at it massively!

As luck would have it, we also found out that one of my students (remember Diana from one of my previous posts?:)) was going to her homevillage in the afternoon. And the said homevillage was really close to where Aleks lives. So guess what? ROAD TRIIIIIPPPP!!! With Diana and her sister. And that was sooo fun! We started off with one of the hugest (and yummyest) mochas I have ever had…and here is the evidence! 🙂

After 3h of driving we kind of felt we were approaching Aleks’ village. We had turned from the main road to a tiny tiny tiny (and by that I mean seriously narrow road – still excellently paved though), on which we were the only car and we occasionally met motorcycles from time to time. There was no light (it was getting darker and darker by that point) and nothing outside except jungle! Huge palm trees, weird plants and us on the road 🙂 And who knows what other living creatures in the wild 🙂 Needless to say we were asking ourselves if that was indeed the right way. But it was! And we soon started seeing traces of life…wooden huts and some people who when asked about “teacher”, pointed happily towards the only illuminated house in the village. And there were Aleks and Tina waiting for us 🙂

And the evening was just starting! Aleks told us that we are super lucky – someone in the next village is sick, so we will get to see a live shaman led healing ritual!! Yeyy! (obviously we felt very sorry that someone was sick). So we all went on motorbikes (no, I did not drive one, I just hold on very very tight!!:)) to the nearby village. Where it all happened – the shaman did his thing which consisted of word mumbling, things being put on him and then him putting things on the sick person, more word mumbling, and various ritual type things being done. What was really funny was that while all this was happening, the guy who was sick was at the same time watching TV!!! Which was glorious because these people are seriously poor! There was nothing in that house but they had a flat screen TV!! (this village is a bit more well off than that of Aleks and they do have electricity there).

Anyways, moving past that – we then got fed with the best omelette in the world! (I actually thought we will all eat but they actually made dinner specially for us!!).

And then we proceeded to part 2! Which consisted of people playing some bamboo poles on wood – it made beautiful rythmic music and we got to do it too! Normally, they play that for 2 evenings from about 10pm until 3am. To chase away the evil ghosts that might come for the sick person again. We lasted only until 12.20pm. Those poles are seriously heavy! But the whole experience was truly amazing – you keep playing those things and you go into a sort of trance like state – all the sounds getting mumbled together, the chanting gets inside you and everything gets completely fuzzy and mixed up. At one point I stopped playing and had my eyes closed and they thought I was asleep. Apparently that is super bad for the sick person, so they started chanting even louder and pushing me to wake up!

The next day followed in the same atmosphere…they came in the morning and took us to one of their huts where we had some amazing breakfast. A huuuge banana (they actually call it horn banana), and some rather weird and unheard of vegetables, together with petai beans. IT was soooo delicious! Again, they fed us first and made us take tons of food. And then they just shared what was left (among the 15 of them!!). I felt sooo bad for taking their food but Aleks said they would feel offended if we give it back to them. In addition to this, the cutest kids in the world were part of the group which made things even nicer! (which by the way had probably never seen a camera before cause they were amazed that they could see themselves on the screen and kept asking f that was a mirror I had with me :))

We then walked through the jungle and to the field, where we got to another hut 🙂 We basically spend the whole day around there – playing with the kids, walking through the jungle, talking, eating more amazing food that they just picked up on our trails. IT was incredible! We would be walking through the jungle and our host would suddenly stop, go to a plant and say “makan” – meaning that it was good to eat 🙂 And later we had that for dinner! Lovely!

There was also the moment when strong wind came and all the trees started winding and making noise! All the locals we were with stopped, and started looking very worried and afraid. Aleks translated that “the forest does not want us here”…so we turned back. In all fairness, ghosts and spirits are a huge part of their culture. Everyone is wearing talismans and it is something that cannot be doubted. It can only be accepted, feared and learnt to deal with.

The Sunday evening was less exciting than the previous night. But still amazing. The kids and adults got used to Aleks holding a movie night, basically every night. These kids (and most of the adults for that matter) had actually never seen a computer before so the fact that Aleks is projecting movies on the big wall is something amazing! They all gathered and we watched The Jungle Book. And it was really amazing. The kids I teach are in quite a modern community – so they’ve seen tons of cartoons and they’re very difficult to surprise or amuse. But these kids were enjoying the cartoon so so so much! Laughing at every joke and funny song, and cheering along with the movie. It was so nice to see! And the adults too! They were a bit annoyed in the beginning that we were watching a cartoon but they got so caught into it! It was so nice to see! 🙂

This jungle trip was nice for so many reasons! And many reflections have been brought on by this experience – maybe I will at some point give an account of these also, not just of the happenings per se.
But I guess the thing that struck me the most was that the moment I arrived there I had a feeling of peace and relaxing that I only get at my grandmother’s place. The same warmth and atmosphere of good, of calm and of “life is simple and beautiful”. And I am just so so thankful to have found that here.

Also, the villagers told us we were the first white women to visit their village. Ever. 

Weekend happenings

This weekend I decided to take a different path than on other weekends and be active in different ways. So 
on Saturday I met up with some people for coffee and then enjoyed an afternoon in the mall (so Malaysian of me lah!) and on Sunday I went hiking with a MeetUp group (if you know nothing about MeetUp, here is all the info you need: http://www.meetup.com/). What follows are some events and reflections from this weekend.

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I never thought I would say this but I had one my best burgers ever yesterday in the MidValley mall. IT was huge, the meat was glorious and the fries were made out of proper potatoes. Happiness is at times so simple!

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Whenever I go in malls I wonder in the library. Mainly because the concept of nice small bookshops is basically non-existent in Malaysia, so that’s the only way to see, touch and feel books (so far I managed to find only one nice small bookshop in Penang – on my last visit though there it was closed L ).

Malaysian bookstores never cease to amaze me. Even the sections they have are quite telling over the general reading behaviour of the nation (mind you, there is not much of reading behaviour anyways but still). For example, in most bookstores the largest section would be Fiction. Here however, the Young Adult section is always the most sizeable, taking up at least one third of the exhibit space. I would love to say that you can find in it every appropriate teenage read from classics to contemporary, but unfortunately it’s either soapy romance or Twilight type fantasy stuff. Sad. The next section that amused me was Women Fiction. I doubt I’ve seen it phrased like this in other parts of the world J This was basically your run of the mill Sophie Kinsella and so on books (that by the way, I have enjoyed tremendously from time to time). I just love the fact that it just seems so unrealistic that a man would ever enjoy such a book (though they’re probably right on this one).

One quite annoying fact about Malaysia is that books are expensive (basically, same as European prices if not even more at times). With the exception of classics – you know, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Scott F Fitzgerald etc. Those are dirt cheap – However, for the whole duration of my staying there (which was about an hour I guess), myself and one other lady were the sole visitors of the section. Sad again. However, I got inspired and decided to buy as presents for my teenagers some of these classic books. I tried to pick for each something that fits their character and interests – I just hope that now or later they would read them!!! 

Last but not least, the fact that produces most sadness to me in libraries here is that the Malaysian literature part is so tiny. Seriously…2 shelves. You have the Asian Fiction part that is huge (mainly occupied by Chinese, Indian and Japanese in all fairness) and then the Malaysian titles are soooo little. I find it really sad that the country does not have a culture neither of writing, nor of reading. I am assuming that the former is because of the conditions also – I wouldn’t go as far as saying that censorship is in place, but you’re not going to find very strong outright criticism to current conditions either. So far, I managed to find 2 books that are quite outliers in terms of being more incisive and talking about current issues (both written by young contemporary authors), but overall there’s not much to choose from. One of the books that looked interesting on this occasion (a collection of newspaper articles written by a young dude) turned out to contain in each of its chapters a “and this is why Islam is the best religion on earth” caption.

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Sports equipment here is cheap and good quality. Dangerous.

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I finished reading “The Godfather”. I can now agree with Tom Hanks (“You’ve got mail”) – that book has all the answers you need in life. My goal is to now have a “The Godfather” movie marathon.

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This morning I went hiking with an online MeetUp group – they organise hikes every week (sometimes even twice a week). I kept wanting to go but schedules did not work out. This Sunday was the day though! It’s really nice cause people carpool also, so I could actually get a ride out (logistics is normally a serious problem here).

Hiking in Malaysia is a more difficult issue than in other parts of the world. Mainly because it’s so hot and humid. So you need to hike early in the morning to ensure you do not die of heat on the trail. MY alarm clock was set at 5.15 this morning. What with driving and waiting for everyone to  gather (we were in the end a group of about 35 people), we started hiking around 7:45 – 8. At 11:20 we were back at the car.

The whole experience was super nice. The trail was moderately hard – at times quite steep and slippery, nothing extreme but enough to give the feeling of a bit of a challenge. The people were very nice – lots of locals (mainly Chinese – I reached the conclusion that the Chinese are anyways the ones doing most extra stuff in Malaysia) and lots of foreigners also (who mostly live here and work in everything from the UN, to oil & gas companies, to sales, to asset fund management. And meJ). It was a large group but everyone was hiking in their own pace so you could choose what rhythm was most convenient for you.

What I love about Malaysian hiking is that sooner or later there’s bound to be a waterfall. Which means that when you feel super wet and sweaty and basically disgusting, salvation arrives! You go under it, get a shower with a massage (generally the current is strong enough) and you get reborn with energy. Which is what happened today also. It wasn’t the tallest waterfall but it was awesome – the bathing and the splashing and the pure enjoyment! Absolutely LO-VE-LY!!!

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Have a lovely week y’all! 🙂

When you feel you want to go running somewhere…not sure where…

Last evening I talked to my mother who is having pretty serious health checks done. Symptoms are not unheard of but it could either be nothing or it could be something very serious. As always with these things I guess.
This morning I woke up to find out about the Jakarta events and the police rising security levels in Malaysia also.
Both events have not created nice feelings in my stomach…