Archive for the 'Malaysia' Category

Photo: No Spitting sign, Mumbai - from flickr.com, by Paul Keller

The Times, London (20 June 2006) reports on a survey done by Readers Digest magazine on the state of politeness around the world. The findings are unexpected.

They surveyed 35 cities and used three tests. 1. The researchers dropped papers in the street to see if anyone would come and help. 2. They counted the number of times shop assistants said “thank you” and 3. They counted how often someone would hold the door open.

New York comes out as the world’s most polite city.

Near the very bottom at no. 33 is Kuala Lumpur and at no. 30 is Singapore. The rudest city in the world is Mumbai.

The Times article says:

“Courtesy is not big in Asia, either. Every city on that continent tested, with the exception of Hong Kong, finished in the bottom ten. None of the three tests scored more than 40 per cent in any Asian city.”

London comes somewhere in the middle at no. 15, jointly with Paris. Now we can no longer complain about the Parisians being rude to us when we go over there!

I am stunned by the results of the survey. Asia has always prided itself in being polite and Malaysians in particular have always enjoyed thinking of ourselves as more gentle and polite than Singaporeans, in keeping with the friendly rivalry between the two countries. And here we are, Asian cities in general and KL in particular, at or near the bottom of the politeness list!

Perhaps we can try and comfort ourselves by saying it was a test carried out by a Western publication and reported in a Western newspaper. Personally, I think that’s a bit of a cop-out, like saying I didn’t pass the exam because the examiners set difficult questions.

I’d like to hear what you think. Are Asians really that rude? Should the researchers have used different measures of politeness? If so, what counts as general politeness in public places in Asia? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

After the laughs we had last week over the wannabe idols’ auditions, the winner is truly sensational! Wow, Malaysians can be proud of a true star - Jacyln Victor.

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To find out more about Jaclyn’s subsequent career after winning Malaysian Idol, click here - http://www.malaysianidol.com.my/12_jac.asp

Following from the ad for Malaysian Idol I posted last week, here is a clip of the auditions…

The Malaysian Idol official website is at http://www.malaysianidol.com.my/

Next week: The Winner….

[In a Malaysian accent]: We also got superstars-one in Malaysia, you know. You got to see Malaysian Idol-lah. This ad for the show is so funny, I got to share it with you, man.

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Next week - a clip from the show itself!

The Malaysian Idol official website is at http://www.malaysianidol.com.my/

A quirky musical film has been banned in Malaysia. The Last Communist by Malaysian filmmaker Amir Muhammed tells the story of Chin Peng, a key Communist leader during the period in post-war Malaya known as "the Emergency". It was initially passed by the Board of Censors but after some concerned reporting from the Malay-language newspaper Berita Harian, the government decided to ban the film because of fears that it glorifies Chin Peng and Communism.

There has been a lot of outcry and open debate in the press and on Malaysian blogs about this decision. The older generation of Malaysians lived through a traumatic time in Malaysian history and understandably, have residual fears of the destabilizing influence of Communist ideology. The younger generation feel that they can make up their own minds about what to think and want the opportunity to see the movie and decide for themselves.

I haven’t seen the movie but will be queuing up for tickets when it is screened at the London Film Festival in Oct/ Nov later this year.

Personally, I don’t think the older generation have anything to worry about. From what I’ve read, the film is an off beat documentary with musical interludes, which include a girl singing about the importance of the identity card and not a rousing polemic to rise up and revolt.

Anyway, Communism is a hard-line angry political ideology of want and Malaysians are generally warm, friendly and well off. There are opportunities to improve one’s lot through work and perseverance. The economy is stable and Malaysia is at a stage of development where they can afford to have migrant workers do the less desirable jobs. Many people are - enterprisingly - driving across the causeway to catch the film and I hear that cinemas there have extended the runs of the film to keep up with demand. These don’t sound to me like people who will be rioting in the streets demanding the redistribution of property just because of a semi-musical documentary.

Useful links:

The Star, a Malaysian daily paper at http://www.thestar.com.my - go to the Archives section and search "last communist"

The director, Amir Muhammed’s blog at http://lastcommunist.blogspot.com/.

The Official Site for the film where you can watch the trailer at http://www.redfilms.com.my/lelakikomunis.htm.

In my post At Home in the World, I wrote about my great-great-grandfather on my mother’s side, the Runaway Boy who became the first ancestor that we can remember.

THE GRAVE

When I was a child, I remember being told that his grave was in an ancient Chinese cemtery up on a hill in the jungle outside Taiping,
Malaysia. He had died in Malaya, never seeing China, his homeland, since he ran away from the bandits who had captured him. Only a few men in the family knew how to find the grave in the jungle. No women could go and visit the grave because the jungle was too dangerous - and certainly I would not be alloed to go as a little girl. The location was handed down to my second cousins, however, father to son, man to boy.

THE RAID

One night, a hundred and fifty years ago, in Southern China, bandits raided my great-great-grandfather’s village. He was a boy and somehow, escaped the carnage. Some versions of the story in my family say the chief bandit felt pity for him and took him away with the bandit gant. Another version says that the gang rounded up the boys of the village to be their boot boys or to sell as slaves.

THE BANDITS

The boy spends many years with the bandits until he becomes a grown man. Some say the bandit chief took him as a son and groomed him to be his successor. Others say the boy never forgot the night of the raid and the murder of his family - he silently vowed vengeance and bided his time. Yet another sotry goes that the boy had been a prince and one day, somehow, he discovers his true identity while part of the bandit gang.

ESCAPE

In any event, when he was a grown man, he ran away from the bandit gant and made his way to a port on the coast. There, he boarded a junk to Malaya, paying his passage as an indentured labourer. One story says that he made his escape on his eighteenth birthday. Another says he killed the bandit chief to honour his vow of vengeance - even though he had come to love the chief as his father. And, well, the prince version is just to silly to even continue… Whatever the trigger, at any rate, he had to escape the country for fear of his life or to forever forget the tragedies of his past.

THE LEGACY

When I look at the generations of the family that came after this boy, the descendants of this bandit heir apparent, I do not see fighting men or thieves or murderers or soulds tortured by dark memories. My family are all responsible, sensible, law-abiding and well, rather boring citizens.

When I was twelve, I interviewed my grandfather, the grandson of the Runaway Boy, and he told the story into my tape recorder. His version is straightforward, without the glamourous embellishment. My grandfather died the next year and the tape is our only recording of his voice. I had had the intention at that time to write a book about the family. There is a handwritten exercise book with my childish version of the story, full of pawing horses and flames and screaming villagers. There is also another version, written in my twenties, that I abandoned just before writing The Flame Tree - fifteen years had passed and this version was still full of thundering horses hooves and a boy scooped up while running to hide in the fields.

The manuscript is still unfinished after thirty years. People tell me I should finish writing that book - Chinese family sagas have been all the rage; here’s my chance to launch my Wild Swans out into the world. But I think I like the myth - or the many myths - too much to bring myself to write the definitive story. The myths make us dark and glamourous - the lawyers and accountants and doctors and teachers that this boy’s DNA came to create. It’s cool to know, in my modern, city-bound life that if armageddon came I have inside me the genes to swash and buckle my way to survival and escape, bandit-style…

At any rate, whatever truth or otherwise lurks in those myths, they do tell us one true thing about my great-great-grandfather - whether he had really been a bandit or a prince or a murderer, he was certainly a heck of a storyteller.

pic courtesy of peter.macdonald @ flickr; no derivations permitted

Bibliobibuli at http://thebookaholic.blogspot.com/ is Sharon Bakar’s blog on everything to do with books and creative writing. She is a British writer who has lived in Malaysia for 20 years and feels at home there - sort of like a counterpart to me (I’ve been in the UK for 30 years and feel at home over here). She blogs on books she has read - and seems to go through one every couple of days! - and on creative writing: as a creative writing teacher, she has many useful and interesting tips etc. Her blog also reports on what’s happening in the creative writing/ arty scene in Kuala Lumpur.

“>The Day Without An Immigrant earlier this month made me think about how migration has shaped my family.

Our family history can be traced back the furthest on my mother’s side. It goes back four generations to China, when - so the story goes - a young man ran away from bandits and took a junk to Malaya, paying his way be becoming an indentured labourer. Over the years in the thick tropical heat, he worked off his debt and made a life and home in his new country.

My Grandma grew up in pre-revolution China, the eldest daughter of a Presbyterian minister. She used to tell us stories of playing in the rice fields with her cousins and helping her mother to make broth on cold winter nights. Her father was sent as a missionary to Singapore and so, that branch of the family arrived in the Malay archipelago.

My Grandfather, the grandson of the runaway boy, met Grandma when they were studying to be doctors at Singapore University in the 1930s.

Looking back over the generations on both sides of my family, it seems they thrived in Malaya and came to call it home. Grandfather was involved in politics and helped to shape the nation of Malaysia after independence from the British in the 1960s. From copies of his speeches I found recently, I know that he saw Malaysia as his home and felt passionately about its future.

Then in the 1970s, there was a general wave of migration from Malaysia to the Anglo-Saxon countries (UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) by young professionals and their families. These "Western" countries were looking for doctors and engineers and many of my uncles and aunts fit the bill and they saw new and exciting opportunities. My parets are now the only ones of their siblings still based in Malaysia where my father continues to enjoy his work and lifestyle there.

So when we all meet up, my uncles and aunts and cousins and my siblings and me, it is like an international convention. Among us are Brits, Malaysians, Americans, Canadians and Australians - oh, and Dutch. My uncles and aunts have settled comfortably in their new countries but still retain a strong emotioal bond to the country where they were born. For my cousins and siblings and me, however, we are westernised in our values, thinking and outlook and consider our new countries to be home. Yet, Malaysia is in our blood as we are in each other’s blood and although we may be British or Australian or Canadian or American by law, I think we still have Malaysia inside us.

I will be writing more about the individual immigrant stories in my family in future posts.

In Malaysia a few weeks ago, a heterosexual Chinese couple was found guilty of indecency for kissing in public. In Jakarta, Indonesia, it was ruled that people related to each other could kiss in public but only for five minutes. AsiaNews reports on these two cases in ‘How to Measure a Kiss’ (05 May 2006).

Marina Mahathir, daughter of former Malaysian Prime Minister, in her opinion piece ‘Show of Affection’ in AsiaNews (05 May 2006) wondered if the authorities would go round public parks with stopwatches. She concludes her article:

You have to wonder about the people who think these laws are a good idea. Do they have so little love and affection in their lives that they have to make the lives of others miserable? While some people may say that these sorts of physical displays need not be done in public, surely most of us are intelligent enough to tell the difference between affection and lewdness. Nobody is having sex in public; if they were, there are already laws against it.

But then maybe that’s the plan: first we start with public affection. Next we go after private affection. Love will be banned entirely in this country.

The link to AsiaNews is http://www.asianewsnet.net/epaper.php. The above items do not seem to have individual post links so you may need to search the archive is you can’t immediately see them in the navigation bar.

• The Evening Standard, a daily paper in London, reported on a list, just published, of the world’s best restaurants. The top 50 show a strong European and American bias, with a couple of entries from antipodean Australia and South Africa. There was only one entry each for Asia (India) and South America (Brazil). Among them are the fanciest restaurants that you see talked about in the society pages of the style and fashion magazines like Vogue etc.

• What? No mention of Malaysia where food is a passion for all of us? I have to ask, what do these fancy restaurant critics know!

• Now, let me tell you about the best restaurants on my list - where you get great food, never mind whether the surroundings are fancy or not or whether you get the top vintage of wine served with your meal. I’m talking about real food for real people who love real food.

• There are great places to eat in London but the ones I pine for, needless to say, are all in KL, Malaysia - except one.

• First of all, there used to be Imperial Room on the edge of Chinatown down a dark, narrow alleyway. They served the best dish in the whole world - eels stewed in thick dark soy sauce and garlic. My grandparents used to take us to its previous incarnation at a fancier location in the 1960s where Ah Lan was the head waitress. Then she took it over and ran it with her husband in its last location. Everyone in my extended family loved the food here and even though many of us now live in England, America, Australia and Canada, every time we went home to KL, we had to go to Ah Lan to eat eels. Tragically, Imperial Room isn’t there any more and I have been depressed ever since.

• Then, there’s Hakka Restaurant near my old school, Bukit Bintang Girls School, which does the best stewed belly pork with salted greens. You can sit outside in the open air and if it rains, they roll out the sliding roof. Again, plain surroundings with the emphasis on the food and being with your family.

• And Sakura on Imbi Road, which does a great laksa - whether lemak or Penang. Their chicken rice is also pretty good. Now, Sakura is a bit fancy because it has aircon and smoked glass in the front. But a little luxury now and then doesn’t necessarily spell disaster for the quality of the food!

• Near Sakura there’s a coffee shop that does amazing fried kway teow. I have no idea what the name is - but it’s on a corner and I know it when I see it. They only do kway teow at lunch time, it’s always crowded and the parking is hideous but we will always set off mid-morning and do whatever it takes to make sure we get there and get a table!

• As for places to eat in Taiping, my family’s home town, well, I could go on forever. But I will only mention one place today - my second cousin Meng-Huat and his wife Wee-Lee took us there one evening. It’s a small hut, really, under a big tree somewhere outside town near Air Kuning. It does the most delicious fresh seafood I have ever tasted. The fish and shellfish splash around in big tubs of water and you choose the one you want. Within minutes, it’s on your plate fried in ginger and spring onion and chilli.

• If you have an off-beat restaurant on your list that you’d like to tell me - and the other readers - about, why not add a comment to this post? It can be anywhere in the world - the only criteria is that it must not be the kind of place that turns up in guidebooks or official lists and it has absolutely got to serve great food!