An Attack of Politeness

You can imagine my shock the other day when I went into my local petrol station to buy a loaf of bread on the way home. Instead of the usual indifference and stony silence from the staff, I was greeted, as soon as I had got through the door, with a friendly smile from the cashier and a "selamat datang sir!" ('welcome sir' in Malay).

More or less stunned into embarrassed silence by this sudden assault of unusual chattiness, I proceeded to pick up my loaf of bread, and was met with a warm smile from one of the girls who operates the pumps. As far as I can recall, this is the first time I had heard her voice. And all this corporate pallyness didn't end there! When I went to pay for my items, the cashiers, BOTH OF THEM, greeted me and thanked me in Malay like they were my long lost friends!

What's going on?, I thought to myself, climbing back into my Aston Martin and checking the perimeter for Quantum agents. Then it dawned on me. The staff have obviously been on a team building course! Or most likely they have been to a Customer Service training workshop, where they have been taught to smile and say nice things to people and make it look realistic.

These are the sort of courses where people are taught the right things to say to people to make them feel good and want to come back to the shop or hotel or whatever. Courses like this also teach staff how to produce that ubiquitous Stevie Wonder smile you see everywhere in hotels and bank advertisements - all teeth but no emotion in the eyes!

Not that I have anything against politeness, oh god no. A little more politeness in this world would make things a whole lot finer and dandier, in my humble opinion. But what freaks me out is this sort of manufactured obsequiousness that pops up like mushrooms whenever corporate entities feel the need to "focus on the customer".

It operates on so many levels, from the bland, emotionless canned discourse encountered in fast food outlets to the sometimes irritating chattiness of the staff in popular coffee outlets. I love going to my favourite airport coffee outlet but I can't help feeling that all those personal questions they keep asking you is part of a script learned by heart at the training school. You know, Step 1: ASK HOW THE CUSTOMER IS, Step 2: ASK ABOUT HIS DAY etc...

In the words of the song, you are left to ask yourself: "where is the love"? Do they actually mean all this politeness and is there anything behind it all apart from a cybernetic drive to squeeze extra profit out of you? The answer to both questions is of course NO. Yet we live with it, because they are after all 'only doing their jobs'.

And of course, an attack of insincere politeness is much more preferable to an attack of sincere impoliteness!

Home Alone

I'm experiencing the Home Alone syndrome at the moment. You see it's like this. My dear wife has gone back to see her mother - it's not what you think, honestly!! Everything is fine and dandy in the Madder household, so back, back my cuties!!

My dear wife had some business to deal with in her home state of Sabah, so she went back there for a week or so, leaving me to wallow at home like a kitten. The reason why I'm not following is simple - I've run out of annual holiday. So it's me, the house, my books and a stack of DVDs!!

I believe that every relationship needs to have a bit of breathing space from time to time. Especially when, like me, you are a TV widower. Yes, I actually don't get the chance to watch much TV when my wife is around because, bless her cotton socks, she likes to watch all these Indonesian TV dramas which I wrote about last year in these pages. Me, on the other hand, I like occasionally to watch movies and the BBC news, which I think is reasonable for an intellectual like me.

So, you can imagine, I have been busy filling my evenings with several movies that I either missed when they were out in the cinema, or missed because I couldn't watch them on TV! So, what have I been watching?

Last night I finally saw Scorcese's excellent The Departed, which is a kind of Godfather with Irish accents. Matt Damon and Leo Di Caprio are excellent, and were not too overshadowed by the veteran Jack Nicholson who was his usual menacing and witty self. If eyebrows were weapons, Nicholson would have an arms limitation treaty just for him!

I also caught up with some very well-done superhero movies namely The Incredible Hulk (latest version), Iron Man and Hancock. It's good to see cartoon characters translated to the screen in an intelligent, witty, story-driven way without overt moralising or skimping on the action. Very enjoyable. Looking out for sequels....

Tonight will be V for Vendetta, another movie based on a comic, and finally next week, I will watch Kubrick's 2001 a Space Odyssey, which I saw God knows how long ago, but I think it's one of those films you need to revisit several times in your life, you know, like re-reading Lord of the Rings (which I have read three times by the way).

So on top of doing the washing, going to work, cleaning the dishes, eating, and sleeping, I should think my home alone period will be over before I know it, and I will soon be re-united with my little sweetie.

And our household will once again boom to the sounds of Indonesian voices screaming and shouting at one another, and I will retreat to my home office where I will surf the BBC website on the internet instead!

Opposites attract, they say...

What's in a Name?

Hey, guess what? We’ve got an infamous world dictator working at my university!

That’s right!

Mr. Hitler works in our administration office and is responsible, among other things, for helping me to renew my immigration visa every two years. Despite his name, he is in fact a wonderfully peaceful and pleasant man and always smiles at me when he sees me. And he definitely does not have a moustache, nor does he strut around the campus with his arm pointing skywards and trying to invade Poland!

In fact, I am spoilt for choice if I want to speak to a historical figure in my university. For instance, there is a lecturer called Stalin working in our place. Unlike his infamous Russian namesake, he definitely lacks a moustache and is apparently not inclined to butcher millions of his people or purge his intellectuals. As far as I know, anyway...

And why stick to the Twentieth Century when you can go back to Ancient Rome! In my place of work, I have two colleagues named after great Romans. We have a Nero, and a Caesar. Unbelievable! History come to life here in tropical Borneo!!

It would appear that here in Sarawak at least, there is a tendency among some families to name their sons after famous figures from history, sport, entertainment or politics. Now, I’m not against naming children after heroes such as John Wayne, Superman, Clint Eastwood or even Churchill or Roosevelt. But naming your kids after the bad guys?

I mean, what were these parents thinking when their little bundles of joy popped into the world, kicking and screaming and waiting to be given a name, only to be given the names of two of the most murderous bloodletters in the history of humanity, Hitler and Stalin!

As Larkin said in his poem ‘This Be The Verse’: “They f*** you up, your mum and dad. They do not mean to, but they do...”

Of course, I suspect that this kind of gratuitous misnaming could only happen over here, where perhaps Hitler and Stalin had a somewhat minimal impact historically and culturally, but you never know.

What I do know is that if someone goes into a bar in the UK and says their name is Hitler, they wouldn’t get out of there alive, unless the bar is full of skinheads, in which case they might buy you a pint. And if you go into a bar in Warsaw claiming to be called Stalin, they might set fire to your moustache!

So, given this penchant for interesting and iconic names, here is a list of Prof. Madder’s top 10 predictions for the most likely unlikely names to be given to babies born this year:

1. Subprime

2. James Bond

3. Beijing Olympics

4. George Bush

5. Obama

6. Iron Man

7. Harry Potter

8. Credit Crunch

9. Britney

10. Hitler (?!)

Madder's Back...an' Lovin' It!

Just back from a well-deserved bout of writer's block, I thought I had better put something on my blog before it gets taken away by the people who provide the blog service. So here goes...

I have just come back from an eight-day stint at our mother campus across the South China Sea, to attend a debating competition. This was a lot of fun and a good rest, because although the event was organised in the usual haphazard way, all went very well for our students, and we all had a very positive experience which I may write about in my next posting. I also got to do some book hunting in KL....

But I hardly had the chance to cool my heels back in Kuching when I had a forced encounter with one of those banes of modern corporate life, the Team Building Course. This course was organised by my department. Compulsory attendance, no backing out unless you have a bad knee or are otherwise engaged. Unfortunately, the minor gout in my left big toe wasn't giving me any trouble, so I had no reason to get out of this one.

Now, call me a boring old fart, a killjoy, or any other similar epithet, but surely Team Building courses should be ranked alongside karaoke as among the top 10 Time Wasting and Undignified Activities of All Time!

Why? Well, basically because I personally don't have trouble working in a team. I work well with almost everyone I come into contact with, and my track record proves it. I don't need some overpaid consultants (sorry, 'Trainers') to show me how to 'mould synergies to attain common goals' or to 'maximise group strengths' or to 'turn the me into we'. I mean for God's sake! I'm a bloody university professor not a car salesman! What is this?!?!

I suppose it could have been much much worse. I mercifully managed to miss the first session of the course yesterday morning as I had my twice-yearly appointment with the Malaysian Immigration Service, to renew my work permit. I also managed to put my toe on the first rung of the long, high ladder towards Permanent Resident status.

So, eventually, I made my way to the venue, which was a training school belonging to the Malaysian Customs department, and I must admit I was feeling fairly positive despite the prospect of spending another night and day away from home.

When the first session started after lunch, however, any good feeling or hope I had leeched away fast, because it was explained to me that the whole session was being conducted in Malay, which I have difficulty following, especially at conversational speed. I am much better at reading the language, but then again I always was a passive old so and so!

So from the very start, the team building workshop completely failed in its purpose from my point of view by linguistically excluding me from the whole shebang! So you can imagine me sitting in the corner, trying and failing not to look REALLY MISERABLE AND PISSED OFF because after all, I do have to go back to work with all these people on Monday and I genuinely like them, and so the last thing I wanted to do was to spoil everyone's fun just because I wasn't having any! But it was sooooo hard!!!

The last straw in any hope I may have had of a good time came in the late afternoon, when we were all broken up into groups and had to come up with a group name, a group colour, a group animal and a group war cry. Something like the warlike Maori Hakka was intended, but we ended up stomping round the car park with everyone pretending to be snakes or something like that.

Except by that time, I had gone inside to cower from the spectacle (and the afternoon heat) in sheer embarrassment. It seemed such a pity that a bunch of highly trained knowledge creators and educators were being reduced to making animal noises and prancing around the car park like primary school kids.

Am I boring?

Am I dead from the neck up?

Am I out of touch with my Inner Child?

Or am I just a ridiculous old fool who shouldn't be here in the first place and should just go home?

Maybe, but what I did know at that point was that I was seriously out of touch with the situation I was finding myself in, and that was not a nice feeling to have, especially when I had started the day with such hope.

There is nothing worse than a good dose of alienation to really make your day. This depressing sense of disconnectedness was now washing over me like tears. I suddenly felt so very alone, and sad, and I suppose guilty too because really and truthfully it wasn't the situation that was stupid or silly, because everyone else seemed to be enjoying themselves. The stupid and silly one was me, and of course that made it worse!

Perhaps if I wasn't so out of shape and grey haired, or if my language skills were a bit stronger, I would have been out there, running around making animal noises to my heart's content. I would be the king of the jungle! But I couldn't do things like this, just cannot bring myself to do them at any time, so I have to make up for it by doing the things I am good at, which is writing, doing research and basically being a boring old professor. However, being stuck in a team building camp for two days going nuts completely cuts me off from doing the very things that make me happy, and which give me a sense of fulfillment.

So this wonderful and happy frame of mind kept me miserable throughout today's activities too. There was singing, group hugging, photo taking, group puzzles and games, and I just couldn't connect to any of it. The only solace I could claim was in the cool, air conditioned confines of the room I stayed in last night. At least I could go there and drown my dissatisfaction in tears, a book and sleep.

When the torture finally ended this afternoon, to the tune of one of Stevie Wonder's least pleasing ballads about friendship and all that, I staggered to have something to eat, furtively said goodbye to my colleagues, and I took myself and my bag to the car and made my exit as fast as I could.

Why am I writing this? Because I want to say that, no matter how well intentioned they may be, team building courses only work if EVERYBODY in the group is singing from the same hymn sheet, and if everyone is fully included. In my case, although I get on with everyone in my department and am known as a happy and friendly person, I am deep down a very serious intellectual with a strong orientation towards research and scholarship. I am also from a different culture to everyone else, which was a definite disadvantage during this workshop.

It's like this. I just don't do group games and huggathons and dressing up in women's clothing and doing animal noises in front of my colleagues. I find it deeply undignified and unprofessional. I feel embarrassed, especially if I have to do it as part of some organised programme. However, if I do want to play around and be silly and sing songs, I will do it in the privacy of my own home, with my family, because if they laugh at me, it will not affect my career, and I won't feel bad about myself.

So, this particular team building course succeeded only in building teams that I wasn't a part of. I myself was left out in the cold, as usual...

Ho hum.... No Christmas cards for me this year...

Off the Leash...

Well, I finally decided to forgive the Starbucks at the Spring for past insults, so I bit the bullet (or biscuit as the case may be) and paid them a visit yesterday.

It is very rare that I am let off the leash on a Saturday afternoon like this without the family being with me, but this was a very special Saturday. It started off really well. The wife and her friend went off to the kampung to see some sick friends, and I went up to the campus ostensibly to attend a presentation to be given by an overseas visitor.

I went to the auditorium just before the appointed time (2 pm), because I am punctual like that. The place was empty, so I didn't have to fight for a seat. Sitting down, I started to revel in this unexpected opportunity to appreciate in fine detail the exquisite wood carving of the auditorium seats, and the elegantly tantalising array of light switches tastefully arranged on the wall near the entrance.

So, while enjoying all this architectural detail, I simply sat there and waited for someone to turn up.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Until, at about 2.30, I received a call from one of the organisers informing me that the presentation was cancelled and that she had already called me at mid-day to let me know.

Funny how my mobile phone's call log did not record this fact, but there you go. If it had, I WOULD NOT HAVE BLOODY WELL WASTED MY TIME COMING ALL THE WAY TO WORK ON A SATURDAY AFTERNOON!!

But I am one of those people who tries as hard as possible, when misfortune befalls them, to extract something positive out of the negative. So I decided to make my way to Starbucks, in the Spring, for a well-deserved coffee-fix.

Now this place was diametrically opposite to the auditorium where I had earlier been humiliated. It was packed to the walls and buzzing with clumps of trendy, shiny-haired young people with trendy bright young faces, clothes and limbs, all yapping VERY LOUDLY and sipping coffee and surfing the net on their lappies. There were hardly any seats but luckily, spotting two of my work colleagues, I managed to sit near to them.

We were sitting right next to the window, which is never my favourite place to sit because you feel like a goldfish. All these people are sliding past outside and none of them can resist the temptation to look in at you while you are drinking your coffee. Which must be nice if you are young and fit and handsome like nearly everyone else in that coffee shop seemed to be.

You can imagine what it must be like to be on TV. The camera is pointing straight at you, and every zit, every blemish, every loose nose hair and every fold of flesh is exposed for the whole universe to see. And of course, you are totally unable to resist the temptation to look outwards at the passers-by, and evaluate them. My colleague kept evaluating the womens' shoes. Me, being a family man, kept as quiet as I could...

I then came to realise one of the main differences between the Spring Starbucks and the Airport branch. And that is the noise level. At the airport, the background sonic ambiance consists of pleasant aural contours of gentle music combined with airport announcements and the polite buzz of conversation among mostly well-heeled business travellers and foreign tourists. It's all so very civilised.

But the Spring branch is like a zoo in comparison - here the ambiance is shot through with loud chatter and, yesterday, strident sounds of babies screaming from the group of young parents behind us, turning the place instantly into a family restaurant, rather than the trendy, cool coffee joint that Starbucks usually is.

I think next time I go there, I will make sure I invest in an iPod, or some other device for blocking out the sound. I definitely would not have been able to read a book there, as I would have in the airport branch.

But despite all that, the afternoon hadn't turn out so badly after all. After finishing my coffee and shouting goodbye to my colleagues, I went for my chicken cornish at Secret Recipe, then went on an extended trawl through the miniature MPH upstairs, scouting out future purchases. And then home, to wait for my wife to return from her day.

And unlike the situation at work, I didn't have to wait all that long for Annie to come back. She never lets me down. So it was a rather satisfying day off the leash after all!!

By the way, I would like to finish with an apology to my reader (s) for my long absences from this blog. These days, it seems, the most interesting topics to write about are forbidden ones, and the most forbidding topics are the most interesting!

But don't despair, Prof. Madder will not desert his readership just yet!!

Raya Riders, Mat Rempits and the Angels

For those of you who don't know much about Malaysia, this time of year is the season of Hari Raya Aidilfitri, the celebration of the end of the Holy fasting month of Ramadan. The Hari Raya has the same immense power of social focus as that of Christmas back in the UK. You can be sure that during the Raya period, everyone in Malaysia, especially the Muslim majority, will be busy doing the same things - preparing and eating food, watching special programmes on TV, wearing colourful traditional clothes, and of course visiting each others' houses.

These house visits, or Open Houses as they are usually called, start right from the first day of the Raya, and can last throughout the following Muslim month of Syawal, In practice, though, most open house visits, at least in my part of town, tend to happen in the few days following the first day of the Raya, which this year fell on the 1st October.

The Open House seems to be a uniquely Malaysian phenomenon - almost all of the major religious festivals now have them - Chinese New Year, Christmas and Deepavali, and the Open House concept is intended as a social, religious and even political leveller. Everyone goes to each other's houses during these times regardless of their social or cultural background.

Even the Prime Minister of Malaysia holds a huge open house, but I guess there are too many people who want to see him for it to be held in his actual house, so the PM holds his at a major Kuala Lumpur hall. And the Chief Minister of Sarawak even holds his Raya Open House in the local sports stadium.

But the rest of us hoi polloi are content to hold our open houses in, well, our own houses! Yesterday, my wife and I went on the first round of Raya visits, and tomorrow is the day of our own open house.

Now I am going to be a little bit naughty here and, rather than give you a blow by blow account of the Raya Open House, I am going to save that bit to another posting and rather describe a typical Raya phenomenon which in many ways epitomises the spirit of the Hari Raya as it is practiced in many of Malaysia's Muslim areas.

Now, as you can imagine, if everyone is visiting each other for the Raya, they have to get themselves around somehow! Many people of course drive their cars, like us, and a lot of people take buses, if they can.

But, those who don't have access to such modern luxuries as cars and buses must fall back on that other staple of South East Asian transportation: the motorbike. And, during the Raya, the roads, especially the rural ones, are festooned and clogged by a veritable mobile army: the Raya Riders!

The Raya Riders are mostly young men and women who get on their motorbikes to visit their friends and families during the Raya Open House season. You will see them, usually riding in clumps of ten or twenty, or waiting at the side of the road for more to join their convoys, all dressed in brightly coloured traditional costumes that definitely break the traffic laws, but somehow look so right at this time of year. Imagine riding a motorbike in heels, or simple rubber slippers! Very dangerous, you might be thinking. Yes, but very Raya!

In the rural areas, in the kampungs where the roads are often so narrow you can only get a motorbike though anyway, the Raya Riders are in their element - sliding between the paddy fields with happy smiles on their faces, calling to each other on their mobiles, the colourfully-dressed girls with long flowing black hair poking out from behind their helmets (if they are wearing helmets at all that is!), and the boys with their Malay songkoks (hats) plastered down precariously atop their wind-blown faces, and definitely no helmets!

Often there are two or three to a bike but in the kampungs, the rules are waived, it seems, because the cops are nowhere to be seen - they are visiting their relatives' houses in the next village probably, and in many cases they are riding their bikes too!

This afternoon, on the way home from work, I passed a posse of the Raya Riders going towards town, all young, gaily coloured people and this time wearing their crash helmets like good boys and girls, because it was the main road. There was a happy innocence about them, like the bicycle rides I used to go on when I was a little boy.

How different this was from the last time I passed a gang of young people on bikes, when I went to see my son in KL recently. On that occasion, we were driving along the motorway at 2.30 in the morning when we were suddenly surrounded on both sides by 40 or 50 of Malaysia's very own Hells Angels, the Mat Rempit.

The Mat Rempit are a particularly Malaysian expression of male motorbike madness, and are very much the opposite of the Raya Riders, although they share some of the same characteristics (and members, I'm sure) in that they ride motorbikes, they are Malaysian, and often break the rules.

The Mat Rempits who zoomed past us in KL that morning were doing all the usual crazy Mat Rempit things, like weaving from right to left like stunt riders, zooming along doing wheelies like Evel Keneivel, and even hanging onto the handlebars and letting their legs flail outwards behind them!

But for some reason, the Mat Rempits, and especially their more peaceful seasonal counterparts the Raya Riders, just don't hack it in the Evil Biker Attitude stakes compared to the Hells Angels back home. I mean come on, folks, how can a young Malay rich kid doing handlebar stands on his souped up moped, or a Raya Rider going along kampung roads without a helmet hope to compete with the serious, mean-looking, hard-staring black leather-clad, bearded and tattooed Angels on their grumbling steel horses?

I mean, it's like Datuk Siti Nurhaliza recording an album with Metallica!

Selamat Hari Raya, Maaf Zahir dan Batin to all my Malaysian readers (both of them), and may all riders ride safely, whatever your flavour!

Stegosaurus Never Tasted So Good

In uncertain times like these, you need something to take your mind off all the "petrol pricesAnwarStockCollapseAfghanistanIraqObama" going on around us. You need something to remind you just how good life really is, despite all the pain and misery. And I have found that thing, that island of solace and rightness that I can take refuge on and smile again.

I am of course talking about the excellent chicken Cornish pasties sold by Secret Recipe (see above).

I mean, where else can RM 7.50 bring you such unutterable joy and satisfaction? Even a cinema ticket these days costs more. Just look at the sublime golden yellow crustiness of this absolutely divine creation from the bakeries of the Secret Recipe chain! Notice that distinctive stegosaurus-like ridge atop that temptingly bulging crust beneath which lies untold riches!

Ah, I salivate about it as I write!

I remember when I first laid eyes on these amazing pies. It was when I took my family to the Secret Recipe in the Spring shopping mall, just after it opened. I nearly had a heart attack when I spotted the chicken Cornish, because I had never seen a Cornish pasty as big as that before! Back in the UK, where of course the Cornish pasty was born, the ridge-topped version of the pie is half that size, usually. And the filling is traditionally made from potato, minced lamb or beef, and carrot or swede.

Incidentally, there is another version of the Cornish pasty, or 'tiddly-oggie' as it is known colloquially. This version is flat, semi-circular, with a crimped ridge running round the leading edge. The story goes that the original Cornish pasties were invented to feed the Cornish tin miners in Cornwall, that South-Western bit of England that looks like a foot. Because the miners had no hand-washing facilities underground, the little ridge round the edge of the pie could be easily grasped by dirty fingers and presumably thrown away when the rest of the pie was eaten.

But here in Malaysia, I have only ever seen the 'stegosaurus' type of Cornish pasty on sale. So far, I have been disappointed, because most bakeries sell the 'beef Cornish' which is not only small and easily falls apart, but is usually filled with very spicy and unpleasantly chewy minced beef.

But I was born again when I first encountered the giant Secret Recipe chicken Cornish. The real secret of these delicacies' hold over my palate is in the filling, which comes in two flavours, original and spicy. I personally prefer the original flavour, which is a real discovery. When you break open the crust, you are assailed by a pungent, rich, meaty aroma emanating from a golden mass of succulent chicken strips, carrot, celery and raisins, in a tangy thick sauce which is unthinkably good. Especially when heated up.

And the spicy version is made of a hot curry flavoured chicken and vegetable mixture, which assails the tongue and overcomes the senses like a wind from the East. However, I find that sometimes it assails the senses a bit too much, and I need to quench the fire!

During this Holy Month of Ramadan, I have sometimes broken my fast with a chicken Cornish, because it is a meal in itself, and so filling. Just think, all that unthinkable goodness packed into a small hand-sized package. I bet those hardworking Cornish tin miners really looked forward to their tiddly-oggie every time they went underground!

Well, I can tell you folks, I definitely look forward to my next fix of this amazing creation. In fact I will probably be having one tomorrow morning at Zohor time before commencing my fast!

Ah, for a life of the senses!!!

K-K-Kuala Lumpur!!

Kuala Lumpur is another planet, all right. Whenever I go there I feel I am in a place where the rules change drastically. Especially when it comes to driving. When my wife and I went over the South China Sea last week to visit our son in KL we immediately knew, minutes after being picked up in our boy’s white MyVi, that things are done very differently over there.

The first sign of trouble came as soon as we hit the expressway. It became apparent straight away that everything is done in hyper-fast motion on KL’s roads. Now I’m no coward when it comes to speed – but over here in Kuching it’s impossible to drive safely at a speed greater than 100 KPH simply because the roads are too bumpy and not wide enough. But in KL – ah that’s a different story.

For instance, it seems that the way to go is to drive as fast as possible, as close as possible to the rear bumper of the car in front. You should have heard the screams of panic coming from my dear wife in the back seat: “Sunny slow down! Stop stop stop!! Adoiiiiiiiii! Careful the bike! Careful the taxi!! Don’t go too fast bahhhhh!” I must admit, even I was gripping the floor of Sunny’s car with toes that cut into the metal floor like the talons of a bird of prey.

It was arguably even more scary when Sunny took the car round a sharp bend. Doing 90! My face must have left a permanent imprint in the glass of the passenger side window as my body was shoved by centrifugal force outwards towards doom. My right hand nearly forced the safety handle out of its mounting. And that was with a seat belt!

But all my son could say is “don’t worry mum, don’t worry dad, no problem” as he took one hand off the wheel and narrowly avoided a taxi before coming to a racing halt at the first toll booth.

Once we neared the silver towers and concrete canyons of central KL, I also noticed that my son’s digital fuel gauge was blinking urgently, something which I rarely allow to happen when I am driving back home. I suggested he look for a petrol station and pronto. This scared, hungry and overweight orang puteh didn’t feel like pushing a Myvi for miles and miles along KL’s murderous motorways in search of a petrol station thank you very much!!

But before we could get to our quarry we had to endure that most ubiquitous and compulsory of Kuala Lumpur driving experiences: The Jam. Now traffic jams are natural features of cities all over the world – you should see London! But in Kuala Lumpur, jams are something special. For one thing, they are pronounced ‘jem’ by locals, not that that makes them any more comical. Furthermore, they can and do happen absolutely everywhere. They can hold you up for hours and hours. And they are frequently caused by stupid things like rain, broken down trucks on the side of the road, people stopping to look at accidents and, in the case of our ‘jem’, the police conducting a check, presumably for road tax dodgers.

After an hour or two in a KL traffic jam, I really understand why most Malaysian drivers prefer driving automatics over manuals. I personally am a lifelong manual driver, as I believe that driving an auto is like driving a go-kart or a milk float. There is no real skill in it – you just put your foot down and the car does the rest. James Bond, for one, definitely would prefer the power and control one has over a manual car but I bet James Bond has never dealt with KL traffic jams.

You see, in jams like those, if you have to keep changing gear with your left foot on the clutch, your left foot will very soon turn to jelly and need amputating. Anyway, automatics allow the car to move off quicker and more smoothly than a manual. Maybe I should think of converting my car to automatic transmission when Kuching’s short jams become as bad as those in KL....

Finally, one very dangerous thing about KL jams is the frightening way that all drivers have of constantly changing lane. You really have to be on your toes, and allow absolutely no space in front of you whatsoever, because if you do, if you allow a micromillimetre of space in front of your bumper, some bike or car or truck will barge in front of you. I remember one hair raising experience, just after we filled up the car with petrol, when we were in a jam not far from the Petronas Twin Towers. There was a stream of cars to the left of us, a humongous car transporter filled with colourful Honda Jazzes to the right and even more cars and bikes in front, all jockeying for position like Formula One drivers and honking their horns like each honk brought them money.

Suddenly, a van came out of absolutely nowhere on our left and loomed up right next to me, trying to push his way through in front of us, even though the way was clearly blocked. I swear that if there had been one more coat of paint on our car, he would have hit us! You can imagine the language that slipped out of our normally civil and polite mouths as this crazy lunatic tried to kill us. Luckily, he fell back and we didn’t see him again...

So the long and the short of it is, KL is one hell of a ride, with an emphasis on the hell part! You need eyes in the front, back, sides and top of your head and nerves of steel as well as a well-tuned automatic transmission. But I must say, our son proved himself a very capable driver in such conditions and I would gladly ride with him again, though maybe next time I will bring a crash helmet!

Travel Broadens the Mind...

Travel Broadens the Mind, they say. Well, it certainly does something, especially if you've had rather too much of it...

The last seven days or so have been, to put it mildly, rather hectic, and as a result, I have come down with my annual flu a couple of months early. Never mind...

It all started on 23rd August last week when my university was the host of the annual Yayasan Sarawak World-Style Debate tournament. For those of you reading this in a cybercafe in downtown Manhattan, or wherever, Yayasan Sarawak is a public body dedicated to funding and developing all kinds of educational activities for young people in the Malaysian state of Sarawak. And every year, since 2003, Yayasan Sarawak has been kindly helping to organise a debate competition, which involves university and college teams from all over the state.

This year, it was my university's turn to host the event, and as one of the main organisers, I was quite busy with the debate for a couple of days or so. Then, in what must have been one of my least finest hours in terms of scheduling, I had to fly off to Kota Kinabalu, just before the preliminary rounds came to a close.

So there was me, jetting off to KK in my business class seat feeling like a traitor instead of the globe-trotting flying professor that I really was. You see, debates produce a certain camaraderie. You really get involved with the action and come to care very much about the students who take part. You desperately want to know who is winning, and who is not. So as soon as I got to KK, and reached my hotel, I was furiously SMSing my colleagues back in Kuching to find out how everything was going! My body was in a suite in my favourite KK hotel the Promenade, yet my mind was still in Kuching! And I felt like I was letting the side down for not being there.

When the little letters started appearing on my mobile phone screen, they told of far off wonders in another land, a place I really wished I was in. I found out about our university team getting into the finals like it was news of the discovery of another planet with intelligent life. Yet I couldn't share in the celebrations and the inevitable partying because, the next day, I had to give a seminar on research methodology to a group of lecturers.

Not that Kota Kinabalu is a bad place - far from it. In previous posts I have sung its praises but this time the calm beauty of the place largely passed me by as my stay was so short. Is this what those globe-trotting business types feel like when they are going from meeting to meeting in different cities?

Anyway, after flying back to Kuching it was off to Kuala Lumpur the next day with the wife, to attend my son's graduation. That was quite a trek - I think I'll dedicate my next posting to it - but the long and the short of it was that I spent three days in KL sweating, being driven around, going to bed late and waking up early, going to bed in cramped conditions, and sweating.

And then, back to Kuching last Tuesday, and a taxi straight from the airport to attend the final of the debate. Our team did not win, by the way, which was a bit sad. And by the time I got home that evening, my nerves were shot to pieces and I sunk into an early and welcoming bed.

So no wonder the nose started to run, my body to shake and I felt like I had been run over several times by a truck. I don't know, is it because I'm getting old, or is it my chronic obesity? Or is it because I don't drink enough orange juice? All I can say is, thank God that Monday is the start of the holy month of Ramadan aka my annual diet. Maybe, just maybe this time I will lose some weight during the fasting month and keep it off.

Some hope...

She's Got It Good.

All this depression and silliness on my part has distracted me from updating my army of readers about my dear wife. Most of you will know that just over a year ago my wife Annie was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer. At the time, we were all pretty scared, and I must admit that I was more frightened by the thought of losing my wife to cancer than she was herself!

Last August, Annie went into the Sarawak General Hospital here in Kuching to have a left-breast mastectomy, a small but brutal price to pay for your life, I suppose. After that, my wife went through four painful and sickening doses of chemotherapy which caused her hair to fall out, and finished back in December last year. And to add incident to injury, just as the hair started to appear again like a faint tattoo on her scalp, there were 25 blasts of radiotherapy, spread out over five weeks from February to March this year.

All of this made Annie as sick as a parrot, yet like the little fighter that she is, she got through it with prayer, fortitude and a few hugs and kisses from yours truly.

In April she had an ultrasound and chest X-ray to see if all the cutting, poisoning and zapping had been successful. And you know what? No evidence of cancer tumours or any metastasis (spreading) so far. Just a rather fatty liver!

Now, in August 2008, more than one year after the first treatment began, Annie is doing great. Her hair is now a bushy, curly black mass on her head, and she is back at work teaching on light duty at her school. She still gets very tired, and her system is not completely free of the effects of the chemo - these can persist for years afterwards.

But we are hopeful, and thankful to God, and to all the dedicated hospital staff at the SGH, to Dr. Beena and her magnificent crew in the oncology and radiology department. You are all heroes. Thank you so much for letting me keep my dear wife...

Here is a picture of Annie taken in the garden of my parents' place in Spain, back in June this year:

Not bad for a cancer patient, eh? Remember, breast cancer is not the death sentence it used to be. You can get through it with a positive attitude, good diet and above all the love and support of others. I even know of the sister of a colleague who had stage 4 breast cancer, just about the worst it could possibly be, and I heard that she also responded well to the treatment.

So take heart, folks!

If You Can't Change the World...

As I get older, I become increasingly aware of that painful and humiliating truth that they don’t teach you in school or university, and which your parents certainly don’t warn you about. And it is this: NO MATTER WHAT YOU TRY TO DO, YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO CHANGE THE WORLD.

This truth recently soaked into me like the black ink of a permanent tattoo, when I finally understood the sheer futility of any attempts by myself to teach my students how to improve their English. When I first came to Malaysia, I was full of enthusiasm and positivity and all of those prized classical virtues that are supposed to make teaching and learning a noble activity. I came here with my little bit of knowledge and genuinely tried to help my students to become better communicators in the English language.

I corrected their grammar and pronunciation errors. I spoke to them like adults, not children so that they might gain confidence. I advised them never to read from the script and always to maintain eye contact with the audience when giving presentations. I told them that the only way to really improve their English was to practice, and to read regularly. I even told my students not to call me Sir, like in school, but to address me as Professor or Doctor, like in university.

I also told them how important it is to be punctual for class, to attend all classes and not to keep getting up and leaving the class without permission. Useful skills for the workplace, I would have thought. Yet I have never seen any need for harsh, schoolmasterly discipline, as I feel I am a university teacher with a brain, not a school teacher with a cane. An imparter of knowledge, a man of letters, a scholar, etc etc etc.

But...

No matter what I do or say, it seems that my dear students still make the same mistakes in writing and speaking that I have taught them not to make, they still read slavishly from the script when doing a presentation, and most of them don’t practice speaking English because they will be made fun of by their friends, or they lack self-confidence.

Most of them still say ‘hello Sir’ when they pass me in the corridor, and so many of them seem unable to arrive for class on time, and still mysteriously start to miss classes after the seventh or eighth week of semester, and still have that irritating habit of getting up half way through the class without so much as a by-your-leave.

So I can only conclude that virtually everything I say to my students falls on deaf ears, or at best is mis-interpreted. I am wondering if anything I do in my classes is making a blind bit of difference.

So what can I do? What can I do?

There is a wonderful pop song I heard many years ago from the 1990s group The The. I believe the lyrics have an urgency and a poignancy that cannot be ignored by a man facing what I am facing. One line is particularly pertinent:

If you can’t change the world, change yourself....

Wow! What a concept... You know, that actually might work, if I put my mind to it. Let’s see – stop getting upset and depressed about all the things I can’t change and instead focus my energies on changing all the things about myself that cause me heartaches. Where have I heard that before...?

So, that means I will have to do something about my weight problem. Stop eating chocolate and ice-cream in industrial quantities. Do more exercise. Smile at people more often. Go back to the Toastmasters. Trim my beard. Learn how to become a better teacher.... And, yes, maybe even write my blog more often!

And if that doesn’t work, what then? Well, the next line in the song provides the answer:

And if you can’t change yourself, then, change the world!!

Nothing Wrong With Me...

When I meet Malaysians for the first time, one of the first questions I tend to get asked, apart from “what football team do you follow?” is: “Do You Have Any Children”?

This is a somewhat awkward question for me because, for various reasons, I have not yet been blessed with children. However, I have a trump card, in the form of my devilishly handsome stepson, who is named Sanul, or Sunny. So I simply proclaim to my new acquaintances, very proudly, “I have one son. His name is Sunny. He has just graduated from International Islamic University!” So there!

Nevertheless, I have met some locals, especially men, for whom this answer is just not good enough. Some men I have encountered think it of almost mystical strangeness that a man should have anything less than 10 children. Some will bring their sights down to three or four, maybe five. But only one? That’s not right. That’s not natural!

So, on more than one occasion in the coffee shop, mosque or formal function at work, when I tell a male stranger who asks that I have a son, and only one son, I have been treated as if there is something wrong with me. Very politely of course! I have, more times than I can mention, been recommended, with an absolutely straight face, to purchase various natural herbs and drinks and lotions that will put fire in my belly, oil in my loins, and bullets in my rifle. And equally politely, I always nod my head and smile, trying not to show my total embarrassment and sheer anger at having strangers raise the subject of my “masculine health” in this way.

Frankly, it’s nobody’s bloody business whether or not I have one child, no child or twenty! As things stand, I am perfectly happy being a stepfather to my son Sunny. When I married Annie ten years ago, I was aware that she was previously married, and had a son who was then about 13. I didn’t care. I accepted him, and he accepted me. He called me Dad, and I wept for joy, because I felt such unexpected honour at being called Dad by a young man I had hardly met.

Perhaps the main reason why I accepted my stepson is because I in turn am also a stepson. My mother met my stepfather when I was seven. At first, my stepfather didn’t like me very much, and thought I was soft and stupid. But I showed him just how damned soft and stupid I was by getting four degrees, one of them with a Doctor title. Now, of course, my stepfather and I get on like old friends, especially since I met Annie, who insisted I call my stepfather Dad, instead of just John.

So you see, I didn’t want to do to Sunny what my stepfather did to me at first. To me, Sunny is my son, though he looks nothing at all like me and is tall and slim and handsome and dark, unlike me.

So the moral of this little tale is simple. You should love your children, even if they are not formed of your own flesh and blood. You should cherish them, and treat them as your own, regardless of their biological origin. Ultimately, parenthood is about love, and caring and guidance. It is a social and psychological bond which is just as strong as blood. Your children can be of the same blood as you, but if the bond of love and care is absent, then what is there left?

In my case, my real father, despite being of my blood, is just a faded photograph and a name to me. Even the photograph shows him standing a long way from the camera, a tall, slim man with dark hair and an indistinct face. I never had any loving social bond with him, of any kind. He never looked after me, shaped me, saw me through my early years, guided me through university, or bought me a pint in the pub when I turned eighteen!

So I feel some sense of satisfaction now that I have managed to be there for my own “ready-made son”. I have at least helped him through school and university, often sorted him out financially (Oh! The Pain!!) and next month, Annie and I will be going to his graduation in Kuala Lumpur.

And it’ll be Mum, Dad and Son, together against the world. And nobody is going to convince me that there is anything wrong with me again!!

How Fragile We Are...

The Malaysian state of Sabah is one of the most beautiful and diverse places in Malaysia. It has miles of sandy beaches surrounded by crystal clear blue seas, it boasts the greatest mountain in South East Asia, and is home to some breathtaking animal and plant life. There are orang-utans. There are giant flowers. There are pygmy elephants.

Sadly, I didn’t get to appreciate much of this splendour during my most recent trip to Sabah last week. The reason is that I went to Sabah not to enjoy myself, but to receive yet another painful lesson in just how fragile we human beings are, and how pathetic are our attempts to plan the future. I went to Sabah to attend a funeral.

Barely more than a week after returning from our Spanish odyssey, Annie and I received very bad news from the Malaysian Peninsular. My wife’s eldest brother and his wife called saying that their daughter Dina was seriously ill in the Intensive Care Unit, with suspected dengue fever. Over the next couple of days, the news got more urgent, and more grim, until on Monday morning we received the sad news that Dina had succumbed in the night. She was 29, and only married hardly more than a year.

This sparked a rapidly arranged trip to Tawau, and emergency leave to be applied for on the fly. The dead girl’s body was being flown home to be buried alongside other members of Annie’s extended family, including Dina’s younger sister Cynthia, who had passed away in similar circumstances less than two years ago.

As per Islamic tradition, we had to be present at the funeral, which takes seven days, each day marked by family gatherings and kenduri (prayers followed by a communal feast) in the evenings. We were there for only five days, as we had to get back for work. It was a very emotionally charged time, especially for my wife, who loves her family so much, despite those frequent disagreements between siblings that an only child like me can merely stand back and marvel at.

The images of two people remain in my mind a week after the events. Firstly, there is the father of the dead girl, Annie’s eldest brother Mohammad Hassan (Kak Mad), a retired plantation personnel manager. Kak Mad was obviously fighting hard to retain self control despite his loss, sitting next to me talking politics and oil palm profits with a perpetual cigarette in one hand, mobile phone in another. In situations like this, I don’t really know what to do, or say, so I find it is best to listen, and not to be patronising by saying stupid things like “don’t worry, she is happy where she is now” etc.

However, after one of the kenduris, Kak Mad commented that God must have loved his dead daughters more than he did. What do you say when someone says this sort of thing? All I could do was to console him with Oscar Wilde’s famous aphorism that “those whom the gods love, grow young”. I hope that helped...

Secondly, I felt most for the young husband, who has just been bereaved of his wife. His name was Din, and he was a good-looking young Malay in his twenties or early thirties, wearing t-shirt and sarong, trying and mostly failing to stop himself from weeping. His countenance was constantly vacillating from a pleasant smile to the waxiness of anguished loss. All I can say is that if it were my fate to stand in his place, I don’t think I would have been able to stand and smile and play with the little kids as much as he did. He was a hero, a worthy champion for a lost maiden.

All this death and its consequences made me ruminate on the fragility and ultimate pointlessness of human existence, yet the absolute value of the life we have. It made me grateful that my dear wife is still with me and is getting better after her year of cancer, and it made me think hard about my own health issues, and about the simple, blank and unarguable fact that some day, all of us will cease to be. It might be something as small as a dengue mosquito, as fast as a speeding truck, or as big as a tsunami, but whatever form death takes, it will come.

I will end by quoting from the Holy Qur’an, Ya Sin, the verse which is normally read aloud at Muslim funerals:

“Verily, when He intends a thing, His command is ‘be’ and it is! So glory to Him in Whose hands is the dominion of all things: and to Him will ye be all brought back”.

The Power of Rumour

When I first came to Malaysia I remember being shocked to the core by a news story I read in the now-defunct Sarawak Tribune. The story reported a police case in which someone had been spreading rumours through SMS (Short Message Service). The police threatened to arrest the culprit, and charge them under Malaysia’s Internal Security Act (ISA) which allows for detention without trial for at least two years!

I remember thinking then, in my naive Western Liberal fashion: goreblimey luvaduck gawd bless the Queen Mum, how can you be arrested just for spreading rumours? Surely rumours are just rumours, right? Well, as I have discovered since my time in Malaysia, rumours are not just rumours. They can be very dangerous weapons.

The other night, just twenty four hours after returning from Spain, I received an SMS from one of my colleagues informing me that all petrol stations in Malaysia were going on strike for five days starting from the next day. Something to do with the recent rise in petrol prices.

Of course I smelled a rat straight away. For one thing, how can the petrol stations go on strike – they are surely making money hand over fist with the petrol price rises? And in any case, as anyone who reads this blog will know, I can sense a blatant scam from 20,000 miles away, so it was obvious to me that the whole thing was a setup to fleece bucketloads of cash from frightened motorists.

But She Who Must Be Obeyed – aka the wife – sent my son and I out on separate missions to top up our two cars’ tanks JUST IN CASE. And indeed, the Petronas stations we both went to were jammed with panicking motorists rushing to fill up before the Deadline of Doom arrived.

And of course, just as I suspected, the next day saw every single petrol station I passed working perfectly normally – no strike, no closed pumps, but I’m sure every station had a planet-sized skipful of cash hidden away at the back waiting to be taken to the bank.

And why were we taken in by this scam? Because of the power of rumour.

A few days later, the Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Musa Hassan, announced that those responsible for starting the rumour about the petrol strike will, if caught, be prosecuted under the Internal Security Act. History repeating itself...

And you know what? This time I wasn’t shocked or indignant at such a strong statement by the police. I agreed with it entirely. That’s because, in the few years I have lived here, I have come to realise how damaging rumours can be – even to the extent of making thousands of people waste their evenings by queueing up at the petrol station for no reason.

I have come to appreciate that in Malaysian culture, and indeed in Islamic teachings, rumour-mongering is not only a social crime, it is a sin. Muslims call it ‘fitnah’, and it is considered as bad, if not worse, than murder to Muslims.

Add to this the high ownership of mobile phones with SMS capability, and the fact that information, and the means to verify it, are often in short supply, and you have a powder keg waiting to go off.

I worked it out – all you need to do to cause real trouble is to send an SMS to one friend saying something dangerous like “X is having an affair with Y” or “there will be a tsunami tomorrow morning”. That friend sends the message to five friends and each of them send it to five friends and so on and so on until you have hundreds if not thousands of chattering or panicking people who receive the rumour within a short span of time. What started off as a simple statement, probably sent in jest, can expand exponentially until it becomes something much greater, uglier and more frightening.

As Adolf Hitler is supposed to have said: “when a lie becomes big enough, it becomes the truth”. And Hitler didn’t even have SMS!!