Love Week at Mindvalley, My Trip to Ipoh, and other revelations.

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!!