Happy New Year from Singapore!

Just wanted to wish all my friends and family around the world a very happy new year. I hope that 2013 is full of wonderful surprises, new friends, experiences and lots and lots of laughter.

I celebrated my new year with both sides of my family. My mom's youngest sister had a party and we danced to the hits of the 70s and 80s (and backstreet boys/westlife/nysnc for Roshni). Hope you had a wonderful evening with loved ones where ever you were and what ever you did!

The Lachmandas ladies minus 4

Mum and her Mum

The cuzzies all grown up and in one place after 10ish years (minus 3 - we miss you reshma, sonia and monica!)

Henna, Nicole and Blossom

From this pic you would think that Blossom hates me but Blossom LOVES ME

d'awwwwww

Anand Weds Heena

Okay so this is the third time that I am writing this blog post because my computer is being totally ridiculous and shutting down/restarting its self without asking me! ANYWAY. In the last week or so I've been doing quite a bit of traveling! It's been great because it gives me something to do while I'm in this odd limbo period where I'm not really sure what I should be doing with myself until I start work. I got my start date confirmed for Mindvalley so I will begin working in mid-January. This is a little frustrating because I really don't like sitting around and anticipating the start of something. It makes me anxious/nervous/unsure so I'd much rather be thrown into something so that I don't really have time to contemplate the intricate details of what I decided to do! This limbo period thingy is exactly what happened before I left for East Africa and was at McGill attending a week of safety sessions and sleeping on my couch in my apartment while my sublet made my room into her own. Not. Fun.

On Dec. 20th, I left with my cousins to go to Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia on the island of Java, for my cousin Heena's wedding. My Dad's sister lives in Surabaya in Indonesia but Heena moved to Jakarta to be with her husband (then boyfriend), Anand (they were dating for 9 years!). The flight from KL to Jakarta is only 1.5 hours but given my luck when it comes to traveling, there were obviously some problems. For example, remember that flight I checked into 2 weeks early? Well wen I tried to print my boarding pass at the Kiosk I was told (electronically) that "Someone may have checked into your flight for you. Please check with them for your boarding pass". THANKS FOR THE INFO, AIR ASIA. So with 15 mins to go before the counter closed, I had to RUSH to talk to an Air Asia rep who was finally able to print me out a boarding pass for a flight that I was probably the first person to check into. Then, for some reason, our 1.5 hr flight was delayed for 1 hr after we already boarded the plane :(.

Crazy traffic on the highway

When we finally reached Jakarta and got into our transportation, the traffic that we hit was ABSOLUTELY UNREAL. I knew that Jakarta had a lot of traffic but this was something like I had never experienced before. On the highway, the cars were "arranged" in utter chaos. People were using the narrow shoulder as a lane to drive on and every time we tried to switch lanes it was like playing a game of chicken to see how far in our car could go. My brother's taxi fully got HIT on the way to the hotel. Sumira, Tasha and I started playing a game where we chose random landmarks and guessed how long it would take to reach them. I kid you not, to move 200 meters it took about 10 mins. Our journey of approximately 30 kilometers took 3.5 hours. To get an idea of how fast we were moving I will describe it in Canadian cities: Let's say we are driving to Barrie, Ontario from Toronto. Barrie is about 100 km away from Toronto and takes about 1 hr to get there under normal circumstances. If we were to travel at the same rate as it took to get from the airport to our hotel in Jakarta, it would take us about 11 hours to get to Barrie because of TRAFFIC.  We finally reached the hotel where I was soon after reunited with my parents and my brother (my mother came out of the taxi totally flabbergasted by the traffic). All my aunt could say to me regarding the traffic was “Welcome to Jakarta J”.

I met with Heena who told me that the first event was a night out at a supper-club that she used to manage. My brother's reaction to this was to lie face-down on the bed and refuse to go because of the traffic. But once we got onto the mini bus, we saw that my cousin's boss had hired us a POLICE ESCORT to the club so that we didn't have to get stuck in traffic. AGAIN - Welcome to Jarkarta!!

There was a massive round-about outside the window of our room and every day we would just watch the traffic build and build to the point where the traffic just came to a standstill and the police had to come in to direct traffic to get it moving again. It was pretty funny.

Morning

Afternoon

The hotel its self was the most historical in Jakarta and had THE BEST BATHROOMS. The toilets were automatic with motion sensors  AND were heated! The bathrooms were big enough that we had our dance practices in there. But what was puzzling about the hotel was that every time it started to pour, the lobby would literally flood. You would think that the hotel would know how to handle the tropical rains of Jakarta, but no. Water came through all the light fixtures one particular day that the streets seriously flooded (all I can say is thank god it happened on Dec 22^nd because it had happened on the 21^st I would have started freaking out).

Okay so enough about the traffic/hotel in Jakarta and more about the wedding.

Before you continue reading press PLAY on this song below (while reading) to get the full Indian wedding experience:

The first night of wedding festivities was tons of fun – we kicked it off with A NUMBER of jagger bombs and all-night dancing. 

Our parents had their own dinner and we were at the “youngsters party”, but my parents and my aunts and uncles being themselves (we are the cool side/party side of the family) found a way to join us after their dinner and danced and drank with us all night!

Maaaaa!

The next night was Heena’s mendhi ceremony where I had the time of my life instragramming photos, after which we danced all night. The mendhi ceremony is where the bride covers her hands and feet in mendhi and leaves it on as long as possible. The darker the stain on her skin after she takes it off, the more her husband loves her.

Something that was kinda strange at the mendhi was that every table set up had a sign on it that said Senior Citizens. I thought it was a mistake but apparently, the custom in Jakarta to eat standing up and set up tables for only the old people to eat at. We sat down at the Senior Citizens table anyways.

The night after was Heena’s Ghari ceremony and truthfully, I am not 100 percent sure what that involves but what I can tell you is that everything that is worn at this ceremony must be collected and burned (that means your underwear, your clothes and any hairs that may even come off in the brush while you are getting your hair done). These things all symbolize your bachelor(ette)hood which is ending. This ceremony also involves honouring the bride’s parents and celebrating the marriage of their daughter and it is a lot of fun!

One of the things you need for this ceremony is 7 married women

The pundit doing his thang

Since the family was finally all together were also got the chance to snap some pics of us all together, which only happens once every 3 or 4 years. And then obviously we danced and drank so more and didn’t go to sleep until 4 am.

All the cousins on the dad's side minus 5 

The final night was the wedding ceremony and reception. Heena looked beautiful in her wedding sari which weighed something like 10 pounds and her dog even made a surprise visit looking very spiffy in his suit.

The reception was carnival themed and it was beautifully decorated with lots of things to do!

This meant enough balloons to keep the young ones entertained while the rest of us took pictures and ate.

My cousin married into the biggest Sindhi family in Jakarta and so there were about 750 guests at her reception and the drinking and dancing went LAAAAATEEEE into the night.

Yes, I changed by outfit.

Another tradition is for the girl's side to steal the shoes from the groom and hide them until he pays us money so that he can have them back. We checked them in to the Luggage area with the concierge. Unfortunately OUR GROOM didn't WANT HIS SHOES BACK so we didn't really have a good bargaining tool.....

All in all it was a really wonderful 4 days where I got to spend tons of time with family all together in one place! Out of my dad’s 8 siblings, 6 of them were present and only 4 of my cousins were missing – that is pretty incredible since my family flew in from London, Toronto, New Jersey, Lagos, Bangalore and Kuala Lumpur to all be together.

Going for a swim

I've also been consistently impressed and amazed at the variety of food that is available in Asian countries. You get the Asian stuff as well as the north american so whatever you are craving it will, without a doubt, be found at your local food court. Below you will see Chirag having baked beans, chicken bacon, and dim sum in one meal, for breakfast.

Jalesh eating an omelette, mashed potatoes and sushi.

Dad doing what he does best (which is posting pictures things he does to facebook)

(Left to Right) My dad, his sister, his sister, his second cousin and her husband and his sister

That thing called PLURALISM....

...........I'm not so sure it exists in Malaysia.... but I'm still figuring that out. Although I sometimes like to think that I am a well traveled person who has experienced living in many areas with different cultures and religions, today I realized that I am NOT. When it comes down to it I've lived my entire life in Canada, a wonderful multicultural society that accepts people from every race, religion and gender.

After living in KL for a mere 1.5 weeks I have experienced, multiple times already, that a religious nation is VERY different from a secular one. I was always one to say that even though Canada maintained a high level of pluralism and multiculturalism, there were still a number of issues confronting the extent to which Canadian society should prioritize an individual's freedom to practice religion over the public interest and quick to suggest areas that Canada could improve on in terms of accommodating different religious beliefs in a public system. But the realization that I had was that even though Canada experiences problems, Canada actually allows for pluralism so so so so sooooo much more than many other places in the world. Today, I have a real appreciation for the pluralism that already exists.

Malaysia is an Islamic state. This means that Muslim law is enforced as part of the LAW. Even as a religion major, I did not fully grasp what this meant until landing here and reading about the current issues in the Malaysian papers. An issue regarding whether Non-Muslim women should be allowed to cut the hair of men (from any religion) was front page news! I.e: We are talking about Muslim law being enforced on people from all religions! Religious law is part of the law law. Eventually,  it was decided that non-Muslim women could cut the hair of anyone as long as it was not a Muslim man. Luckily for me (and Malaysia), religion falls under the jurisdiction of the state and not the country and the party leaders of KL are much more moderate in their interpretation of Islamic law than the state that was debating this issue. This debate is still concerning as this law sets precedence for forming more conservative laws in other states of this nature.


Before arriving in KL, I  understood it as a place where people from a number of different religions lived side by side. For this reason, I thought KL would be super pluralistic and embrace all religions with everyone getting along etc etc. But I was in for a ruuuuuuuuude awakening (although perhaps it is only rude from my Canadian perspective) after I emailed a person regarding a room they posted online. The reply I received stated:

------------------------

Dear Melwani,

First you have to think if living with Muslim is suitable for you as you cannot practice or do any prayer here. If you are hindu (which I am not sure) then living here is not suitable.
Think about this issue first.

--------------------------


My first reaction was to be totally offended! Was this not racism? And that's when I thought: This is so not pluralism. There are essentially pockets of people that exist that openly do not respect others' right to practice their religion. My second reaction was to laugh - I had lived in a very multicultural/multi-religious house-hold my entire university career and this sort of issue would have never ever ever ever ever existed....ever.
My third reaction was to just accept it. It's not like I would want to live in an apartment that takes this kind of attitude anyways.

And now for for some happy things like:
1) The curry puff woman on the side of the road making fresh food.

2) Auggie (Sumira's dog) Having a bath

3) A Gangnam style themed birthday party - yes... I did sketchily take this picture

4) My new hot water bottle named Roy - hes cute right?

And finally - Sumira and Sheena would like to wish you a very *~*Merry Christmas*~* from Malaysia. (Please note just how INSANELY decorated the malls are here.... and that I am wearing shorts :D :D...)

Check out my photography SKILLZ!!

I'm sorry my pics suck and I'm really stretching your interest here by publishing a pic of my hot water bottle. Buuuut, I have yet to take out my real camera because I have frantically been searching for an apartment and cell phone plan and things of that nature. More stories soon!

Calamitous or Comical?

Well, it's 3 days later and I've arrived safe and sound into Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia after a journey that I will remember for a while. The day I left Toronto started off as Celine's birthday...Dec. 7th... and Caroline, Celine and I decided to go out for lunch for birthday celebrations/goodbyes. We made the trip to Yonge and Eg but once we got there things got weird....A woman, who had been standing on the sidewalk, had just been hit by a stolen car and the whole intersection had been closed down. Needless to say, I was immediately overwhelmed with the scene became a little stressed out and quite upset.

We made it to Starbucks, where Caroline treated Celine to a fancy birthday drink and decided to walk onwards to lunch at a really yummy burger place but as we were waiting to order, a man knocked Celine's entire drink off the counter and all over her shoes. Then we found out the grills weren't working and that we would have to wait a half hour. You think I'd be really really upset by all of this but I was keeled over laughing by how bad things had gone so far... probz because I didn't know what else to make of these series of events. Little did I know all of this was foreshadowing my trip.

I got to Pearson airport at 10:30 pm for my 1:30 am flight and I was checking in when Patsy, from Cathay Pacific, informed me that I wouldn't be able to get onto my plane because I only had a one-way ticket into Malaysia. So I produced the letter that was suppose to show that I was going to KL for work and that my visa had been approved but that didn't cut it. She asked for an onward ticket out of Malaysia AND LUCKILY I had one going to Indonesia for my cousin's wedding. "Good", she said, "You can print it out from the Cathay office in case they ask for an onward ticket in Malaysia". Unfortunately it was my Aunty Geeta, in Malaysia, that had booked this ticket for me so we frantically called her and she told us that she didn't have the e-ticket and that in fact, she had deleted it completely off her email but she had a hard copy with our booking reservation number......

"Shit." said my entire family.

We decided she would call her travel agent to get a copy forwarded, although it was a Saturday and this plan could definitely FAIL. In the mean time, I tried to plug my reservation number into an Air Asia app on my phone to see if it produced an e-ticket I could show Patsy. But instead of an e-ticket, I managed to check myself into my flight to Indonesia 2 weeks early (LOL / :-S)

Finally, my aunt emailed me the ticket and we took it to the counter where Pasty informed me that it was missing the TICKET NUMBER, i.e.the crucial part needed to confirm that it was a paid, onward ticket. After examining it for 10 minutes Patsy took me to the Cathay office where EVERY SINGLE computer was locked!!!!!!!!

Enter: Random Cathay woman who unlocked a computer.

Got the ticket on my email. Tried to print it out. Printer ran out of paper. Helped woman who did not know how to load paper, to load paper. Printed ticket and ran back down. Obtained my boarding pass and put bags on the scale. Both were over weight (AND I HAD TRIED SO HARD TO KEEP THEM UNDER WEIGHT). BUT - Patsy let them through (probably because it looked like I was going to cry)......

Went through security. Got taken aside and my bags were searched. Got to my gate where a crying child and his screaming grandmother awaited me. Could things get worse? Got paged at my gate. I was informed that my seat had a broken TV..... JUST WHEN I WAS ABOUT TO COLLAPSE ON THE GROUND IN A FIT OF ANGER and throw a temper tantrum about my life, I was told that they had moved me over a seat and blocked off the broken one next to me, so YES! I had 2 seats to myself  and that's when things changed :) I sat next to the nicest man who had kids that went to Havergal, I got a Hagendas bar for dessert, and my flight was incredibly smooth. I arrived into both locations (HK and KL) ahead of schedule AND Malaysia let me in with barely a glance at my passport. I was greeted by my cousin Tasha and my Aunty Geeta at the train station and after 3 hrs of Toronto stress + 14 hr flight + 3 hr of layover + 3 hr flight, all was well :)

Hong Kong Airport

While sitting on the airplane thinking through every little thing that went wrong, I found myself laughing instead of breaking down into tears....which is a good thing to know about myself ---  Looking back, it all seemed pretty comical and nothing I couldn't handle *muscle flex*.

My first sighting of KL from the Train into Sentral!