Steamy Night in Kuching

Wasn't my last posting depressing?! I thought so too, so I accepted an invitation last night to another Malaysian culinary institution, the steamboat restaurant.

My department was organising an evening out for our Language Club and Debate Club students at a little place called Heritage Garden Steamboat Restaurant. Now, for those of you who are not in any way knowledgeable about things Eastern, Steamboat restaurants are very common ways of enjoying the culinary bounties of nature here in Malaysia. The way it works is that you have a big table, usually round, with a gas burner in the middle and a large pot full of steaming hot soup on it.

Arranged around the sides of the pot are small griddles for frying bits of food on. You go and select as much fish, seafood, meat, raw veggies, fish balls etc. as you can fit on a plate, and, with the encouragement of your friends and family, as well as the help of chopsticks and large ladles, you proceed to cook your own delicious morsels! No need for snotty waiters who get your order wrong, and no need to wait for hours for your food! You simply prepare it right in front of you!

And here are some images to show you how it's done:





The Heritage Garden is situated in a cosy outdoor garden under a roof with lots of plants and wood carvings on display. There are plenty of tables and the atmosphere is smoky, steamy and steeped in food and jollity.

This being the tropics, the mosquitoes were also at the feast, so I suffered mercilessly from dozens of tormenting bites from these disgusting little pests. They really enjoyed my sweet, warm British blood. Well at least the UK is managing to export one thing to Malaysia!

But, even though I was being eaten alive, I stuffed myself silly - eating far too much including some ice cream! When will I ever learn? Probably when they cart me off to the cardiac unit I expect. Ah well...

One thing I did learn, though, is just what it means to say that Malaysians love food. Our party consisted of about 20 students as well as three of us lecturers. They were all joyfully placing bits of food on the grill plates and popping various morsels in the cooking pot and later taking them out, to devour them with loud conversation in high-speed Malay and English. And it all started again, once they finished.

Several of my students kept asking me if I had had enough - even though my stomach bag was about to burst! It seemed perfectly natural to them to take as much food as they could, without worrying about the consequences. And they are all SO thin!!

In the end, I had to make my excuses and leave this culinary revelry. I must say, it strengthened my faith in young Malaysians, who all seem to be born to enjoy themselves without doing silly things like getting drunk, puking up, shouting rude songs at each other or getting off with each other.

All the kind of things I used to do when I was their age! It's a good thing that the past is, definitely, a foreign country to which there is no visa!

The Dull Ache of Desperation

The past is like an old girlfriend who no longer wants to know you.

But how many of us remember this simple yet awful fact of life? How many of us desperately need to live in the past, dreaming about how things were, and fooling themselves into thinking they can re-live the good old days?

Ah, we are all of us prisoners of the past!

One of the ways this particular prisoner likes to torture himself is to visit the websites of all of the universities he studied at, just to see who is still there among the staff, and to see how much the happy places of his youth have changed. One regular site is that of my favourite alma mater, Lancaster University in the UK, where I did my PhD. Although I have four university degrees from four different institutions, I am particularly proud of Lancaster. I spent ten very happy years of my life, on and off, working and studying at that wonderful place of learning perched on a windswept hill in North West England, near the sea. It is the place where I made and lost some of the best friends of my life, and it is where I met my wife.

So I always like to look at the Lancaster University web site, especially the pages for my old department, just to see who is still teaching there and who is new. The photos on the pages for those old survivors who still teach in the Linguistics and Modern English Language Department are much older and greyer now of course, and many are now professors, or senior lecturers. Others have moved on, retired, or come in since I left there in 2000.

It always seems that I am the only one who has stayed the same, that is, until I look at myself in the mirror! But when I click on those web pages, I see the past, I step back into it for a while, and recall the places as I remember them, and it’s as if time never passed on…

Yet I know that if I were to step back onto Alexandra Square, in the middle of the Lancaster campus, right now, there would be hardly anyone who would recognize me. And I wonder if I would recognize the campus at all. I had a dream a couple of years ago. Somehow, I had teleported onto the Lancaster campus. It was night time, and the place was totally unfamiliar, crowded with young faces I didn’t know, and unfamiliar buildings rose humiliatingly on all sides. I tried to ask directions, but nobody understood what I was saying, and I could not form proper words in English. I was lost, in a place that was both familiar, yet totally alien. I no longer belonged there, my time had passed. Then I woke up in the present, my nostalgic dream a fast-fading memory.

You see, nostalgia is like an addictive drug. It hooks you, draws you in, makes you want to linger just one more time in the warm glow of the past. But eventually, it destroys you. Because you see, that old girlfriend you once adored and walked hand in hand with on the beaches of the good old days, she has moved on. She has changed, grown up, met someone else, married and had kids. You wouldn’t recognize her now, plump and weighed down with childbirth and mortgages, a harder set on her face, the odd line here and there and the inevitable graying hair.

So, for many of us, this need for the spurious comforts of the past is a particularly sad kind of desperation, a dull ache that never fades, and yet, there we go once again, clicking onto our past, kidding ourselves that we can go back to it once again.

I’ll close with the words of one of my favourite poems:

“Everything Changes. We plant trees for those born after. Poisons poured into the oceans can never be poured out again….”

The Ramadan Bazaar

People may argue and fight with one another until the cows come home, but there is one thing that brings everyone together here in Malaysia. And that's food! It seems that Malaysians specialise in the happy art of culinary diplomacy.

This is very important in a country where there are over 60 different ethnic groups, such as Malays, Chinese, Indians, Ibans, Bidayuhs, Kadazandusuns and others, and a wide plethora of cultures and religions, all sharing this 50 year-old nation (or is it 44? can't remember!). As well as living together more-or-less harmoniously, each group has its own cuisine, its own unique way to tickle the palate and satisfy the seemingly bottomless appetites of Malaysians and foreigners alike.

So, now it's the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, and we see once again that uniquely Malaysian culinary phenomenon - the Ramadan Bazaar. These Bazaars, officially sanctioned and licensed, spring up in large public places to serve those who want to buy food to break the fast with.

The way it works is that people go to the bazaar a few hours before breaking the fast - around 6 40 in the evening in Kuching. They can choose from a stunning array of culinary delights at reasonable prices, sold at market stalls lined up under tents with sellers shouting their wares like costermongers.

It's also important to remember that it's not just the Malays and other Muslims who go to the Ramadan Bazaar. Other races who are not Muslims also frequent them. Everyone enjoys the Ramadan Bazaar, regardless of religion.

The atmosphere is crowded, noisy and hot, and the flies, which must think they've arrived in Fly Heaven, are always being manically whisked away from the food by stallholders with plastic bags on sticks. Your head swims from a combination of the heat, residual hunger, and the overpowering choice of tempting morsels in front of you (none of which you can eat of course until 6. 40!)

The fare on offer at the Ramadan bazaars includes fish skewered and smoked on sticks, satay, little sweet and savoury cakes and pastries (known as kueh) and of course the staple Muslim foods in Malaysia such as roti canai (flat bread filled with meats or eggs) and nasi briyani (a type of curried chicken rice).

And we must not forget two of the most heart-attackingly delicious drinks you will ever have in Malaysia - Air Bandung (pink, milky and sweet, made with grenadine and served chilled) and of course Air Tebu (or sugarcane juice to the rest of us!).

Ah, for a life of the senses!! Why don't I show you some pictures, to whet your appetite:


Left: Ramadan Bazaar, Tabuan Jaya. Right: The Roti Canai Man


Left: Selling lots of stuff with Chili in it! Right: Kueh Stall


Left: Various sweet things to try.. Right: Sugar cane, before it gets juiced


Left: For chili-loving penguins.. Right: Satay sticks


Above: More Roti Canai..

So you can appreciate my love for Ramadan. On the one hand it's a great opportunity to clear out your system and go on a diet, on the other hand, you can enjoy scrumptious and cheap food when your fasting is over.

I tell you, if the Ramadan Bazaars didn't exist, they'd have to invent them!

Son of the White Man's Curse

So, I suppose you are all dying to hear what transpired after I hit the Toyota Hilux last week? Well, even if you are not dying to know, just merely a little bit sick to know, I will fill you in anyway.

Basically, I decided to break the White Man's Curse. How did I do it? Well, let me elaborate...

As you will recall, I slammed (well, more like gently nudged) into the back of a Toyota Hilux pickup while going downhill on a wet road. Not good. Here in Malaysia, the person hitting you from behind is deemed to be at fault, even though the person in front slams to a halt on a whim.

The guy I hit was a fairly pleasant middle aged contractor who claimed that his car was brand new (yeah right!) that the new bumper (which I had barely dented) would cost RM 2,800 (approx. USD 800) to replace. Knowing that this is an outrageously inflated sum, I immediately smelled that potent odour of Bulls**t mixed with the White Man's Curse!

After I swapped phone numbers with the man and went about my business, I made discrete inquiries via a friend of a friend who has intimate contact with the local motor business. I found out what I suspected, which was that the bumper in question could easily be obtained for less than half the price being asked by my "victim".

So, I activated Plan B, which was to claim on the insurance. It means losing my NCB (No claims bonus) and a small fine paid to the traffic police for causing the horrific accident in the first place, plus forests of paperwork and police reports, but it saved me the humiliation of being ripped off. So it is possible - just - to beat the White Man's Curse.

For your information, here are some photos of the horrific damage done to my own car by the gut-wrenching collision between my Matrix and the Hilux. Try not to laugh too much OK?



You should have seen the other guy!!

A Month Like No Other

Well, here we are again, in the Muslim Holy Month of Ramadan. And would you believe it, Prof. Madder has now been fasting for four days! And lovin’ it!

It wasn’t always this way, alas. When I first started to fast, sometime in the year 2000, I contemplated the start of the fasting month with the same enthusiasm as someone who was about to face the firing squad. After climbing naked up a mountain face covered in broken glass.

It wasn’t easy for a convert like me, who has always loved his food whenever and wherever he wants it, to take on the challenge of spending the whole day without a drop of drink, or a morsel of food, from sun-up to sun-down. And that in a country with a hot, humid tropical climate which sucks the moisture out of you like a sponge.

But that’s what I did. Oh, and I also gave up the demon drink too, after a lifetime of enthusiastic alcoholic jollity. Haven’t touched a drop for almost ten years now.

It is much easier to fast, and indeed to give up alcohol, when you are surrounded by people who are also doing the same thing. When I knew that I was going to live in Malaysia, the decision for me to stop taking the odd whiskey was easy, and when everyone else is fasting, you feel guilty if you sneak an illicit slice of bread or a forbidden sip of water. So you don’t do it.

My wife’s family were instrumental in helping me to learn to get used to fasting, supporting me and encouraging me all the time. My first couple of fasting months were largely spent at my wife’s family home in Tawau, Sabah, and I would frequently lie down on the bed to let me drown my hunger and thirst in the oblivion of sleep.

But in recent years, I have had to experience my fasting while going to work. Luckily, since 2002, I have worked at a public university, where the culture is largely Malay Muslim, so about 70 percent of my students and fellow lecturers are also fasting, and consequently there is a feeling of camaraderie. Even those non-Muslims who do not fast will steadfastly support and tolerate those who do.

Let me dispel some misconceptions about the fasting month that my fellow “cursed” white men might still harbour since 911. The reason why Muslims fast is not because some turbaned and bearded cleric orders them to do so at the point of a sword. It is not a forced activity. There is a line in the Quran that clearly states “let there be no compulsion in religion”.

Instead, fasting is one of the essential pillars of faith for Muslims, and it is intended to remind believers of the plight of those not as fortunate as themselves. People fast because they genuinely wish to do so, and it is a holy requirement. The Muslim month of Ramadan is also the month in which the Holy Quran was first revealed to the Prophet Mohammed. So it’s a very special time for Muslims, quite literally a month like no other.

And when the fasting period is over, we have the festival of Eid-il-fitri, known in Malaysia as Hari Raya Puasa (fasting festival day in Malay). That’s when Muslims celebrate the end of the fasting period with family gatherings, prayers, open house parties and, you’ve guessed it, food!

Doubters and detractors might ask “OK, so how can you be helping the poor if you can eat as much as you like after you break your fast? The poor don’t have that choice, surely?” Well, yes. But in my experience, whenever I break my fast at about 6. 40 in the evening, I can’t eat very much, because my stomach has contracted during the day. In fact, Muslims are not encouraged to eat or drink too much when they break their fast, in case they get ill!

Of course, fasting is not a piece of cake (pardon the pun!). For me, the hardest part about fasting is the fact that I have to wake up at four in the morning then force food down my neck, into a stomach that is still sleeping. Normally, I can never eat anything until at least 8 in the morning, without throwing up. But over the years, it has got slowly and steadily easier, especially if I don’t eat heavy or spicy food. Also, I have discovered that good old fashioned water – Adam’s Ale – is better to drink before fasting than other drinks such as coffee or tea, which can make you puke. So I drink as many glasses of water as I can before I have to stop for the day.

Other side-effects of fasting, which I still suffer from but endure, include a general weariness and headache that usually hits me sometime around three in the afternoon. This feeling of tiredness sometimes makes me lose focus, and work slowly, although I categorically deny that it had any effect on my minor car accident last week! That happened before I started fasting anyway!!

The tiredness felt while fasting can in any case be reduced and removed entirely, especially if I have had a good sleep the night before and have had plenty of water. They say human beings can go for days without food, but cannot last very long without water. So, for those of you who may be fasting for the first time, make sure you fill your tanks well at the start of the day!

Although the journey has not always been smooth, my fasting experience has been increasingly easier and better over the years thanks to the love and support of my wife and friends. And of course the Almighty. Also, I look upon the fasting month as my annual diet – something I really need at the moment! It’s a period of spiritual and physical cleansing, and at the end of it, you feel good to be alive.

So here’s to October 13^th, which is the expected time of the Eid festival in Malaysia. To my Muslim friends, colleagues and students, Selamat Berpuasa (happy fasting)!

White Man's Curse Strikes Again

Looks like I spoke too soon. This morning, on my way to work, the White Man's Curse came up and smacked me full in the face like a jealous lover. Or rather, it hit me in the front bumper of my car.

A little bit of advice for my readers: don't drive downhill in a traffic queue on a wet road when your head is full of worries about wife, work and just about everything else. I was driving in said downhill wet road situation when the Toyota Hilux pickup in front of me suddenly decided to screech to a halt.

Which I also did, but the wet road took my tyres further than I intended, and I ploughed into the back of the Toyota. The driver was polite about it, and I was sheepishly apologetic, but it looks like I will have to pay a hefty sum for the damage (in Malaysia, the person who hits you from behind is deemed to be at fault!).

Isn't it a good thing that I am a loaded White Man!!?

You Say "Pidato"!

I am ashamed to say that one of the many things I didn't do at university was to get involved in debating and public speaking. I just didn't believe at the time that I needed to improve my ability to communicate in the spoken form. After all, I knew my own language, didn't I?!

Also, I have always been more comfortable with the written form than the spoken word - even though all my Malaysian colleagues love to hear my wonderful British accent whenever I open my mouth! Writing has for me been a pleasure almost as fulfilling as eating a Magnum ice-cream. I believe, probably misguidedly, that if I am destined for greatness on this Earth, it will be through the written word.

But enough shameless self-aggrandisement!

What I would like to write about today is the spoken word. In particular, the practice of debating and public speaking, with which I have become intimately involved since I first started working in Malaysia.

Over here, debating, and public speaking (Pidato in Malay), are essential elements of the school and university extra-curricular schedule for most students. There are many government-sponsored competitions at school and university level, and the best speakers often go on to participate in major national and international competitions.

This means that if you teach in an institution of learning here in Malaysia, and in particular if you are a native speaker of English, you will be asked at some point to get involved.

Not that I'm complaining. I have had a great time since I started to judge debating contests, or public speaking competitions. It's a lot of fun, although you do have to have your eyes and ears wide open. You really gain an appreciation of the strengths, and more often the shortcomings, of students who are effectively trying to communicate in a second language.

Back home, debating and public speaking are, I would say, thought of as somewhat snobby activities for the Oxbridge students. When I was at university, it seemed that only the law students got involved in these activities, or those who fancied themselves as future politicians. Public speaking and debating seemed to me then to be a luxury, rather than a necessity, in my own education.

But here in Malaysia, we must remember that this is a developing country. The ability to communicate effectively, whether in Malay or in English, are not luxuries. They are necessities. There are plenty of complaints about the lack of communicative ability of Malaysia's university graduates, many of whom have found it hard to get graduate level jobs because of a lack of spoken communicative ability. It has become a national, social and political problem in this country.

So that's why I, in my humble station as the token native speaker, am happy to offer my services to those who need judges or coaches to help students to improve their speaking ability. To this end, I have become fairly active both in the university and outside it. For instance, I am a member of the Toastmasters Club at my university (currently its President!), as well as having judged countless debates and public speaking tournaments all over Malaysia in the five years I have worked in my current university. And I am also the advisor for our own debate club.

Toastmasters is an organisation that all people who need to communicate should join, to help them to gain confidence, leadership skills and speaking competence. Debating is a skill that requires students to use their general knowledge to argue and counter argue on important topics. It tests the students' knowledge, language skills and confidence, and trains them to develop a nimble intellect. The same goes for public speaking, where you often have to talk on a topic not of your choosing - a very marketable skill in the workplace.

Today, I was asked to be a judge at the Pidato Kemerdekaan (Independence Public Speaking) contest at a neighbouring university. I was greatly impressed with the quality of the speakers in the English section (my Malay isn't good enough to judge the Malay section sadly!).

But I wonder, how many students there are out there in this country who cannot for some reason find the courage to stand up and improve their speaking ability? For every excellent Pidato speaker, there must be a hundred who prefer to suffer in silence.

This is the season where Malaysia remembers its struggle for Independence, in 1957. That struggle was not won primarily through warfare, unlike Indonesia. Malaysia's independence was won because of the communicative and argumentative skills of Malaysia's founding fathers, particularly Tunku Abdul Rahman, who gently worked on the British administration, using oratory and logic, until he eventually persuaded them to let go.

And there are many other examples of how freedom has been won, advocated, and reinforced by the spoken words uttered by brilliant speakers. Martin Luther King. John F Kennedy. Winston Churchill. Abraham Lincoln. Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohammad. Mohandas K Gandhi. Nelson Mandela. The list could go on...

So as an English language professor in a country like Malaysia, I feel somewhat proud to think that my little bit of effort might one day produce a future prime minister, or at least someone who has the confidence to speak up and be counted.

Our communicative abilities are founded in confidence. Confidence is like a little bird trapped in a cage inside us, and the bars of the cage are made of fear, self-doubt, the mockery of others, and excuses. All we have to do is to open the door of the cage, and let the bird go free!

White Man's Curse

Back in the 19th Century, they used to talk of the White Man’s Burden, the belief that the European Colonialists were performing a noble but burdensome mission by conquering and subjugating their mostly dark-skinned subjects. Thankfully, these ideas no longer apply in the post-colonial reality of South East Asia, where instead, the burden of rule long ago passed back to the formerly subjugated peoples.

What I have discovered, though, is that, for those Whites who have made their homes in South East Asian countries, or who have come here on holiday, the former burden of rule has now become a different phenomenon entirely. This phenomenon is what I call, with no racism intended, the “White Man’s Curse”.

On the surface of it, it is hard to see how White people, or Orang Putehs, could possibly be cursed. Because of the previous status of Whites in countries like Malaysia, most people like me who live and work here generally get a lot more respect than other members of the population. In many aspects, we are the Shining Ones. We are more likely to be smiled at by beautiful women (and indeed men!), to be treated with consideration in movie theatres, government offices, banks, hotels and in everyday social situations.

People want to know us, ask us where we come from, how long we have lived in Malaysia, do we like the country, do we eat durians, etc etc. I don’t mind these friendly interrogations, for which I have developed a standard patter over the years.

So in most cases, as a White person in Malaysia, I am accorded a certain amount of kudos. This kudos is further reinforced by the fact I have the title ‘Dr.’ in front of my name, and by the fact that I am an Associate Professor in a university. Ranks and titles are important to Malaysians and it is useful to know when to use them both as weapons and as shields.

This of course constitutes a positive kind of “interpersonal apartheid” which would be considered incredibly pretentious and snobbish back in the egalitarian UK. But it has its advantages, which I am not ashamed to say I have enjoyed from time to time.

For instance, I have never been given any trouble by the police when they have stopped me at road blocks. Many people would be asked to get out of the car, show their license, perhaps conduct some business. But the last time the cops stopped me at a roadblock, the Corporal saw my British driving license, my white skin, and my official university parking sticker and waved me on politely.

Also, on the couple of occasions when I have fallen foul of Sarawak’s awkward immigration laws, I have been treated with patience and respect by the Sarawak Immigration Department, asked to pay my fine with a smile and allowed to go on my way without being clapped in handcuffs and made to wait in a lockup.

In fact, I can count on the fingers of one hand the occasions when someone has been rude to me, and even in those cases, some of them were unintentional.

However….

Despite the fact that I have been treated well and given considerable respect in this country, I am not immune from the White Man’s Curse. And that curse is that I will never be able to get discounted prices in any commercial situation I enter into.

For instance, back in Serikin, last weekend, at the market. When we arrived, my wife Annie, niece Inday and sister-in-law Doris deployed our well-rehearsed Anti White Man’s Curse Procedure, which is this: we split up. Annie, Inday and Doris went one way, I went the other. And the simple reason is that if I accompanied them in their hunt for bargains, they wouldn’t get any bargains! All the market traders would see that they were with a White Man, an Orang Puteh, a Buleh (Indonesian for White Man) and that can only mean one thing – they are filthy rich!!

And the discounts would melt away like morning mist.

I personally have always been really bad at bargaining, which is a serious handicap at market places and many shopping centres in Malaysia. I always feel a bit dirty begging some stranger to allow me to pay less money for something I know for a fact was bought from his suppliers at a knockdown price. That’s why I only managed to get five dollars off the price of my Boss bag at Serikin. My wife was amused when I told her that I managed to bargain the man down to RM 90 when, she assured me, I should have asked for RM 60!!

But you see, I am cursed, like all White Men, and indeed White Women. And that is why, whenever we have bought things like electronic goods, cars, furniture, even inquired about house prices, the one to do the talking is my wife. She doesn’t carry the curse, you see, she is immune.

You might ask me if I feel insulted by having the White Man’s Curse? Sure, I do. But as they say in America, it cuts both ways. Being immune to discounted prices for goods and services kind of reinforces your status as a man of substance, among people who believe, quite wrongly, that all Orang Putehs are loaded. So for that reason, and that reason alone, I tolerate my curse and bear it like HIV.

After all, it’s not as if I have much choice, to be honest!

Serikin Market

What better way to celebrate the Merdeka season than to go to the market and hunt some bargains?

This is another of Malaysia's great institutions - the open-air flea market. And here in Sarawak, there is one place where bargain hunters flock to - and that's a small kampung called Serikin. Serikin is situated almost on the border with Indonesian Kalimantan, and every weekend the narrow, sandy streets are lined with traders - mostly from across the border - selling all kinds of stuff. And the bargains are amazing because the stuff mostly comes from Indonesia, and the traders have an enormous margin due to the exchange rate, so you can haggle right down to the bone, especially if you're not a foreigner!

Let some pictures do the talking instead of Prof. Madder:





You can, as you can see from the pictures, get almost anything under the sun, from locally produced fabrics, clothes, jewelery and craft goods to pretty good (fake) branded goods such as Rolex watches, Versace bags and Lancome perfumes. I came away with a "Boss" leather bag for RM 90 (about USD 25 - and I was ripped off, my wife told me later). The wife snagged a dainty "Louis Vuitton" back pack for RM 30 (about USD 8.50). Also, we got loads of clothes including Islamic headscarves (tudung) for my wife, niece and her mum Doris.

Here are some more images:



I hasten to add that the dog was not for sale!!

So I urge you, fair readers, to visit Serikin if you are ever in Kuching on holiday or otherwise. It's about an hour's drive outside the town along the winding and often foggy road to Bau town from Kota Sentosa, just past the airport.

Prof. Madder's advice - get there early! Be there before 7. 30 in the morning because parking is very limited. Bring your passport if you are a foreigner because there is a police checkpoint a couple of miles from the market and they occasionally ask for identification, this being border country. The Serikin market is on the Malaysian side, I hasten to add.

Happy hunting!!