I’m feeling like I’ve become more and more settled in Kuala Lumpur
and this has caused me to think about some things...
One day, I was walking to
work, happily ignoring the calls and whistles and ‘hellos’ and ‘good mornings’
that are often called out to me on the way to work – I don't get called at because I’m dressed
like a *slooot* but, because I am dressed in a way that makes me so obviously
foreign.
The typical professional woman working in Kuala Lumpur is dressed in a
long, flowing gown/mumu type thing or loose clothing and a head scarf.... (this
is a Muslim nation after all). Meanwhile, I’m wearing a skirt that hits slightly
above the knee, or skinny jeans which are a little more shape-hugging than the
aforementioned outfit. Therefore, I stand out, along with many other foreign
(and not so foreign) girls working at Mindvalley.
So as I was walking to work, I realized that I had taken to
walking around with a scowl on my face in order to ward off the people who
thought it would be kinda cool to say “hellooooo”. In my heart, I was kinda sad
with myself because I’m usually the person walking around Montreal with a smile
on my face for no apparent reason (ironically, this leads to the same effect as
the scowl in Malaysia – where people avoid me because they think I’m a little
looney... seriously. One time, my chiropractor was like: I’m about to
manipulate your spine and you are smiling. What is wrong with you?) but here I
was, starting my day with a frown!
This led me to think about all the things I’ve had to change about
myself, in ways that I do not like, in order to adapt to living here. For
example, I’ve had to give up recycling because no recycling facility exists! It
kills me just a little bit inside, every time I have to throw a cardboard box
into the garbage because there is no recycling at my building or at my work
place :’( Right now, a pang of guilt goes through my body, but I can slowly
feel this level of guilt diminishing...NOT GOOD.
The third thing I’ve had to change is my politeness factor. It has
been greatly reduced. Being Canadian, I’m just inherently over-polite. I am the
totally classic case where when someone bumps into me on the sidewalk, I say
sorry to them. Now in KL, by adding extra words like “please” and “thank you”
to a request, I seriously confuse the people who work at places like my cell
phone company (Maxis) or the local Mamak.
Case in point – the tea tarek that the Mamak gave me had too much
sugar and I needed to ask them to remake it with less sugar. So I said: Hi
there, thanks, I ordered this teh tarek but if you don’t mind, could you make
it with less sugar? It’s a little too sweet for me to drink. Thanks.
In response, I get a super confused look from the server because
I’ve used so many works that they don’t know what I’m asking for. But, then I
said to the waiter: Too sweet . Less sugar. Change. – they know EXACTLY what to
do! Basically, being polite takes a lot of words and people here speak with the
fewest words possible. Therefore, being polite slows down communication
considerably so you just gotta say what you WANT, straight up. I was also sent
this video by a friend about Malaysian English. Maybe it will give you some
insight into what I face every day when it comes to speaking with my cab driver
or when it comes to bargaining at a stall so that I can pass as a local. Let me
just say that I’m not doing so well right now......
Now, I want to tell you about something lovely! Last week
(well, 2 weeks ago now) at Mindvalley was our version of Valentine’s day.
Mindvalley’s way of celebrating love was by creating a week where we did nice
things for people for no apparent reason. Everyone pulled a name out of a hat
and that became their human that they would do nice things for. As secret
angels, we were asked to leave cute things on our human’s desks or find
different ways to show them love for an entire work week.
I pulled the name of the biggest, facial-hairiest guy in our
office who is basically our resident hacker. His name is Gareth and I knew
nothing about him except for that he was a techie who sat in the corner of the
office and made sure all the servers for our websites were up and running.
But, as the days went on, I learned so much about Gareth
from everyone else at Mindvalley, which I probably would have never learnt
about him had I not pulled his name out of the hat. Gareth is a tech CELEBRITY
in Malaysia. They call him Shaoling Tiger and he has over six thousand followers
on twitter. Gareth is British, but not really, because he knows more about
Malaysian and Chinese food and where to get the best stuff to eat, over any
other Malaysian. Gareth is actually currently living in Malaysia because he
fell in love with a girl from here and married her! Basically – this Gareth was
one PRETTY INTERESTING CHARACTER.
So, I did things for Gareth like made him this tumblr:
http://ilovegareth.tumblr.com.
I spread flowers and hearts all over his desk (I have a strong feeling that he
didn’t appreciate have teenie little hearts everywhere but OH WELL IT WAS A NICE
GESTURE), I bought him a razor and provided a beard menu and demanded that he
shave his beard in a cool way. And at the end of love week, I got nominated as
one of the most creative secret angels for my tumblr :)
The person that had me was a pretty great secret angel too.
He/she left me cute gifts every day – one of them was a SELF-PORTRAIT taken
from my facebook profile picture... now that is skillz. I was treated to cheese
cake (the yummiest) and at the end of the week, an adorable teddy bear who now
sits on my desk. Thanks secret angel!
Now that was love week at Mindvalley!
Let’s talk about my short 2 day trip to Ipoh with Michelle
Ngai (that’s right, she makes a repeat appearance!) Michelle is currently
working in Alor Star which is about 2.5 Hrs north of Ipoh while I have been
working in Kuala Lumpur, 2.5 hrs south of Ipoh. So we decided to go to Ipoh
which is known for its limestone cave formations and its really soft noodles
and nutritious beansprouts! Now, most people never think to take a trip to
Ipoh. It’s a pretty small town and there is no beach, but Michelle had heard
that there is the opportunity to go spelunking in Ipoh so we said HAY. Let’s do
it!
We met up at the Ipoh bus station on Friday night. My bus
came in a little earlier so I sat down, stuck in some headphones and tried to
chill out.
I gotta say - I was a
little nervous being there by myself late at night...not knowing how much
longer Michelle would be and also not knowing where the hotel was that we were
staying at that night. But – Michelle finally arrived and we found our hotel
with ease. The receptionist was friendly, but she had no idea what we were
asking for when we tried to find out how far away the limestone caves were and
if we could get a taxi for the next morning. (We were being too polite!)
Finally we said – Taxi. 8:30 am. Bye.
And so that night we debated over which level of spelunking
we wanted to take on. There were 4 levels, levels 3 and 4 involved climbing
through small holes, swimming in cave rivers and sliding down walls. We were
pretty sure we wanted to do level 3, mostly because we had only brought flip flops
with us... People on tripadvisor suggested sturdy slippers so I thought we
were going to be okay.
We finally got to the caves the next morning and found out
we would be joining a group of 60 girls from a local university who were part
of an “extreme sports” club. Michelle and I looked at these girls in their
intense water pants, rubber shoes, water proof bags, ALL carrying flashlights
and we thought.... erm.....
They must be over-prepared. We’ll be okay. At the last minute, we thought we might
switch to level 4 since the group was much smaller but after asking a few
people about whether our footwear was appropriate, we decided against it. And
THANK GOD. Because we were so not prepared for what we were about to
experience.
First of all.... it’s
impossible to walk or swim in rivers while wearing slippers because they will
float away. And, if you don’t have a flash light, you will not find them in the
complete darkness. Luckily, we had the FRIENDLIEST 60 girls with us who were so
kind as to swim out to help us find our flip flops and make sure we had enough
light to find our way, and to help us with the strange walls we had to slide
down and hold our hands to keep us steady as we climbed through holes, and
walked and swam around the rocky cave rivers in the dark. Their kindness and
their interest in these two random Canadian girls really touched my heart and I
felt really lucky to have joined them!
The caves were incredible. I felt like I was on the set of
an Indiana Jones movie the entire time. I felt like I was going through some
strange ride at Disney land but, no, this was a real limestone cave with real
stalactites and stalagmites and rivers and bat poop that I was swimming in. It
is incredible how large the caves are and how clear and clean the water is
within the caves! It was a really cool experience getting to swim around the
limestone and see a cave from the inside! 2.5 hrs later we emerged into
daylight with new friends and a sigh of relief that we didn’t do the 3.5 hr
trip because I think I would have most definitely lost both flip flops and
twisted an ankle or SOMETHING.
We got back to our hotel, napped, and then went out for
dinner with Michelle’s PhD collaborator and got a lovely night tour of the
quaint town of Ipoh. The next day, we were meeting up with my Dad’s friend from
university named Cecilia. She wanted to take Michelle and I to breakfast so at
9 30 am we piled in her car and went for dim sum! I met her husband, Vern, and
her grandson, Sam. We got to the restaurant and I asked Cecilia –
S: So how long has it been since you’ve seen my Dad?
And she said C: “I’ve never met him”. Inside my head I was like... :-O. What?
And then I reasoned “Ohh, you mean you haven’t met him since
you graduated from University?” and Cecilia said “no, I’ve never met him
before.”
S:“So HOW DO YOU KNOW EACH OTHER?”
C: “He added me on Facebook”.
Inside my head now I was like -____________ -. My dad is one
of those ppl that randomly adds people on facebook. And now this lady is nice
enough to take me out to breakfast. So I inquired further:
S: What? But how did he find you on facebook?
This is when I learned that my dad was the president of the
“international club” at his university in the Philippians, and Cecilia joined
this group a few years later. Today, they have a facebook group that they are
all a part of where they organize their reunions and share stories and photos.
(SO THIS is what my dad’s generation does on facebook....).
Anyway – Cecilia and Vern were the LOVELIEST people. They
took Michelle and I to breakfast, and then all around the lovely, laid back
town of Ipoh. We went to the weekly Sunday antique market where Cecilia and
Vern knew EVERYONE THERE. They helped us bargain and I found the nicest bag
which I paid 10 RM for ($3.33 USD), and a BALL ROOM TYPE DRESS for 7 RM! (This
is $2.33). I was so excited!!!
Such great finds at this market – old antiques, the newest
and oldest electronics I’ve ever seen. Wanna know where your old stereo system
went to die? We’ll it’s in Ipoh being sold at the flea market. The oldest fans
I have ever seen, cell phone chargers of every kind – you need it, you name it,
they GOT IT! So we had a really fun afternoon antiquing in Ipoh (Michelle
also managed to find the nicest antique watch in the entire market.
Unfortunately the price was a little too high L
but it did prove that she has good taste!)
After this, Cecilia and Vern took us
for Ipoh’s famous chicken and beansprouts. The beansprouts in Ipoh are famous
for being THICK and healthy because the limestone water has lots of good
minerals that get into the sprouts.
We had the yummiest meal and then went to go see some more
limestone caves, a beautiful national park with BEAUTIFUL limestone formations
and then finally went to their home where we relaxed until Michelle and I got
on our separate buses and parted ways.
Again – I felt so lucky to have met such a wonderful family.
The people who live in Malaysia are just proving themselves, over and over
again, to be incredibly hospitable, friendly and generous. You rarely see this
level of hospitality towards total strangers in North America!
Now... some weird stuff did happen on this trip. Like – the
receptionist started texting me. I had to give my phone number when I checked
in but then, it strangely turned into this:
Then I thought that would be the end of it after I checked
out but the next day when I was already back in KL....
We also got into a minor (ok major) argument with our taxi
driver due to a GREAT DEAL OF MISCOMMUNICATION so that was very interesting and
you can ask me about that story and I can elaborate ONE ON ONE.
But overall, it was a GREAT weekend trip and I had a
wonderful time!
Okay long blog post but I felt like I was really behind and
I had so much to tell you! Bye bye!!
