“Your cousins are moving where?”
That’s been the reaction of most of my friends to the news that my aunt, uncle and cousins will be moving, next week, from Singapore to Salt Lake City (Utah, not Kolkata).
“Are they Mormon?!”
No. :) They decided to move to the U.S. because my older cousin will be starting college at Duke this fall and to Salt Lake City specifically because it’s where the company for which my uncle works in Singapore is headquartered.
And I have to say, I’m excited. I’ll miss having an excuse to regularly visit Singapore, with all its attendant delights: spotless streets, effortless public transit, friends from school, readily-available kaya toast, my cousins’ apartment so conveniently located steps from Orchard Road in downtown Singapore... and, of course, that feeling—which immediately returns as soon as I step out of Changi Airport into the stifling humidity and hear the unmistakable lilt of Singaporean-accented English all around me—of returning to the same culture as the one in which I grew up.
Salt Lake City will be different: it’s smaller, and, in many respects, less cosmopolitan than Singapore. I’m quite excited, though, that it’s where my cousins and their family will be moving, is for two reasons. First, I’ll finally—after ten years of living in this country—have family within these borders whom I can visit and stay with over Thanksgiving and the holidays (since my sister usually comes and visits me, she doesn’t count :). This is excellent: no longer will I need to worry about booking holiday tickets to Asia months in advance if I don’t want to be stuck in cold Seattle over the holidays. Booking holiday flights to Salt Lake City will be much easier, not to mention cheaper.
The second reason is that for the last 18 years, ever since my family left Malaysia, my cousins and I have lived in different countries—actually, on different continents. For as long as they’ve been alive, I’ve always thought of them as the people I see once or twice a year, over our summer or winter breaks, and only after an exhausting plane trip on their part or mine. I’ve watched them grow up, but in snapshots: on each subsequent visit they are always a little taller, smarter and wiser, and a little changed. Those countless games of Risk, Settlers and Mario Kart, the ridiculous things we laugh about, must necessarily be enjoyed in compressed windows of time that only come every few months, and that, for the rest of the year, are only memories.
I think I’ve gotten a lot out of living abroad for most of my childhood, but I do wonder what it would have been like to have grown up with the constant presence of the bulk of my extended family, as opposed to seeing them just once or twice a year. I think that’s one of the things I’ve missed out on, and while I think that was a fair tradeoff for the firsthand experience of different countries and cultures that I gained and for the knowledge that the world is an incredibly diverse place... I still wonder.
And that’s the main reason why I’m so excited that my cousins and their family are moving from a city that’s an ocean, nine time zones, 18 hours and $1,200 (if you’re lucky!) away to one that’s much closer—in space, time and the ability to extemporaneously visit if I want to, rather than needing to plan and budget for months beforehand. In fact, I’ve already booked my flight to Salt Lake City for the weekend after next, and I can’t wait.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Sunday, April 29, 2007
“Quando você quer uma coisa...”
“No!” I groaned, slapping my forehead as my teammates looked at me in shock. It was world affairs trivia night, the MC was reading off the answers, and we’d just learnt that I had provided the wrong answer to the following question: “In Brazil, what are the letters on hot and cold water taps?”
I had confused the Portuguese words for hot, quente, and heat, calor, in giving an answer that I thought, we all thought, we had nailed. After all, I lived in Brazil for six years, and what simpler question about a country and a language could there be than what are the letters inscribed on the water taps in any bathroom? That was several days ago, but I’m still a little upset at myself for having said “C and F” instead of the correct “Q and F.” My Portuguese is rusty, I know, but not that rusty.
Or is it? It’s been nearly a decade since I lived in Brazil, nearly five years since I last visited. That’s five years since I’ve been surrounded by the sound of spoken Portuguese, a language—and I never fully appreciated this when I lived there—that's more mellifluous than English. Since I’ve had good churrasco, or Brazilian barbecue, or a cafezinho, the delectably sweet black espresso in a demitasse cup that’s the customary end to a meal at any restaurant in the country. Since I’ve seen futebol followed with religious fervor in a land where banks close early when the national team plays key games.
A few weeks ago, I read Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist in its native Portuguese. I selected the book because friends had recommended it, the language because I was curious how much I still remembered. The first 20 or so pages were rough going; I found myself reaching for my bilingual dictionary every couple of sentences, sometimes multiple times in one sentence. By the end of the book, though, I found I was able to read paragraphs on end without needing to consult a definition. I was gratified that I’d been able to make it through the whole book without throwing in the towel—and that my Portuguese wasn’t quite as rusty as I’d feared.
“Quando você quer uma coisa, todo o Universo conspira para que possa consegui-la.”
And so it is that even though I love travel, and even though over the last few years I’ve tried to visit one or two new countries a year, this year there are no new countries I plan to visit.* Much as I relished traveling to Dubai and India last year, or Italy and Vietnam in years past, this year the country at the top of my to-visit list isn’t a new one, nor is it on that list because of an alluring write-up in the New York Times or breathless testimonies from friends who have visited. Rather, Brazil is a country to which, this year, I find that I have started feeling like I owe it to myself to return.
*I'll admit that if I had $16K to spare, I'd love to take this tour. Cruising around East Asia while discussing world affairs with George H.W. Bush and William Perry, who spearheaded American policy towards China and North Korea (and, really, towards the rest of the world) in their time, sounds like it would be an amazing experience.
I had confused the Portuguese words for hot, quente, and heat, calor, in giving an answer that I thought, we all thought, we had nailed. After all, I lived in Brazil for six years, and what simpler question about a country and a language could there be than what are the letters inscribed on the water taps in any bathroom? That was several days ago, but I’m still a little upset at myself for having said “C and F” instead of the correct “Q and F.” My Portuguese is rusty, I know, but not that rusty.
Or is it? It’s been nearly a decade since I lived in Brazil, nearly five years since I last visited. That’s five years since I’ve been surrounded by the sound of spoken Portuguese, a language—and I never fully appreciated this when I lived there—that's more mellifluous than English. Since I’ve had good churrasco, or Brazilian barbecue, or a cafezinho, the delectably sweet black espresso in a demitasse cup that’s the customary end to a meal at any restaurant in the country. Since I’ve seen futebol followed with religious fervor in a land where banks close early when the national team plays key games.
A few weeks ago, I read Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist in its native Portuguese. I selected the book because friends had recommended it, the language because I was curious how much I still remembered. The first 20 or so pages were rough going; I found myself reaching for my bilingual dictionary every couple of sentences, sometimes multiple times in one sentence. By the end of the book, though, I found I was able to read paragraphs on end without needing to consult a definition. I was gratified that I’d been able to make it through the whole book without throwing in the towel—and that my Portuguese wasn’t quite as rusty as I’d feared.
“Quando você quer uma coisa, todo o Universo conspira para que possa consegui-la.”
And so it is that even though I love travel, and even though over the last few years I’ve tried to visit one or two new countries a year, this year there are no new countries I plan to visit.* Much as I relished traveling to Dubai and India last year, or Italy and Vietnam in years past, this year the country at the top of my to-visit list isn’t a new one, nor is it on that list because of an alluring write-up in the New York Times or breathless testimonies from friends who have visited. Rather, Brazil is a country to which, this year, I find that I have started feeling like I owe it to myself to return.
*I'll admit that if I had $16K to spare, I'd love to take this tour. Cruising around East Asia while discussing world affairs with George H.W. Bush and William Perry, who spearheaded American policy towards China and North Korea (and, really, towards the rest of the world) in their time, sounds like it would be an amazing experience.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Some things change, but some things never change
It’s been so long—18 years, to be precise—since I last lived in Malaysia, but ever since we moved away, I’ve tried to return home once, sometimes twice, a year. And so, like those time-lapse videos of a construction project rapidly taking shape, where the split-second delay from frame to frame represents one day in real time, my impressions of Malaysia over the last 18 years have been snapshots of a country in transition. Every year I return to a country that is slightly, but perceptibly, more developed and modern than the one I left the year before: a new skyscraper has gone up, a new shopping mall has opened, where the year before there was none. And every now and then, when I stop and fully consider the sum impact of these incremental changes, it hits me—how different is the Malaysia into which I’ve stepped compared to the one I left when I was six years old.
I think one anecdote from my recent trip home over the holidays captures this well. I went one day to the neighborhood Starbucks to check e-mail on my laptop (Starbucks in Malaysia, unlike in the U.S., offers free Wi-Fi access). As I looked around for a seat, I noticed the café was completely full: there literally wasn’t a single available table. I also noticed that the majority of people sitting at these tables had laptop lids open, and the majority of these laptop lids sported glowing apples. The whole tableau—the earth-toned Starbucks interior, replete with wooden chairs, checkerboard tables and green-aproned, black-shirted baristas, and the fully-occupied tables at which espresso-sipping computer junkies sat pecking away at a fleet of MacBooks—would have been completely in place here in Seattle. Except the location was Kuala Lumpur, a city where Starbucks is only a few years old, and where the concept of using laptops in cafes was foreign just a couple of years ago—I distinctly remember not seeing any in Starbucks on my prior visit.
How things change. And how some things, thankfully, never change. Just across the street from the Bangsar Village Starbucks is Devi’s Corner, a neighborhood kopitiam, or coffee shop. You could say that kopitiams are the original Malaysian coffeehouse, satisfying the national penchant for sweet caffeinated drinks long before Starbucks arrived on Malaysia’s shores. You can nip into Devi’s and have coffee and breakfast or lunch for literally an order of magnitude less than the equivalent cost at the Starbucks across the street. Devi’s, as a kopitiam, is a traditional Malaysian institution—so you might expect that it would be a losing business proposition in Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur’s hip nightlife district. But no: on the same day I went to Starbucks and noticed it was full, Devi’s was full as well, and you could see several would-be customers prowling among the open tables, ready to claim the first one that opened up.
This dichotomy of the modern and the traditional is one for which I’m thankful. Bangsar, and the rest of Kuala Lumpur, have become much more modern since I left Malaysia: a solidly middle-class commercial district when I was growing up, Bangsar Park today is populated with bars, glitzy restaurants and two Starbucks, and expensive European cars are a dime a dozen. Yet, while there are places like Starbucks where the scene is such that you could be forgiven for thinking you’re in the U.S., the rest of Bangsar—and, for that matter, the rest of Kuala Lumpur—simply isn’t like that. There is still a tremendous local flavor, which Devi’s exemplifies, in the kopitiams and the hawker centers that continue to dot the neighborhood of my childhood. Their ongoing popularity reassures me, whenever I go back, that as much as Malaysia may have changed, as much as it may have embraced the creature comforts of Western life, it is still, in a very real sense, the same country as the one in which I grew up—and it is still home.
I think one anecdote from my recent trip home over the holidays captures this well. I went one day to the neighborhood Starbucks to check e-mail on my laptop (Starbucks in Malaysia, unlike in the U.S., offers free Wi-Fi access). As I looked around for a seat, I noticed the café was completely full: there literally wasn’t a single available table. I also noticed that the majority of people sitting at these tables had laptop lids open, and the majority of these laptop lids sported glowing apples. The whole tableau—the earth-toned Starbucks interior, replete with wooden chairs, checkerboard tables and green-aproned, black-shirted baristas, and the fully-occupied tables at which espresso-sipping computer junkies sat pecking away at a fleet of MacBooks—would have been completely in place here in Seattle. Except the location was Kuala Lumpur, a city where Starbucks is only a few years old, and where the concept of using laptops in cafes was foreign just a couple of years ago—I distinctly remember not seeing any in Starbucks on my prior visit.
How things change. And how some things, thankfully, never change. Just across the street from the Bangsar Village Starbucks is Devi’s Corner, a neighborhood kopitiam, or coffee shop. You could say that kopitiams are the original Malaysian coffeehouse, satisfying the national penchant for sweet caffeinated drinks long before Starbucks arrived on Malaysia’s shores. You can nip into Devi’s and have coffee and breakfast or lunch for literally an order of magnitude less than the equivalent cost at the Starbucks across the street. Devi’s, as a kopitiam, is a traditional Malaysian institution—so you might expect that it would be a losing business proposition in Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur’s hip nightlife district. But no: on the same day I went to Starbucks and noticed it was full, Devi’s was full as well, and you could see several would-be customers prowling among the open tables, ready to claim the first one that opened up.
This dichotomy of the modern and the traditional is one for which I’m thankful. Bangsar, and the rest of Kuala Lumpur, have become much more modern since I left Malaysia: a solidly middle-class commercial district when I was growing up, Bangsar Park today is populated with bars, glitzy restaurants and two Starbucks, and expensive European cars are a dime a dozen. Yet, while there are places like Starbucks where the scene is such that you could be forgiven for thinking you’re in the U.S., the rest of Bangsar—and, for that matter, the rest of Kuala Lumpur—simply isn’t like that. There is still a tremendous local flavor, which Devi’s exemplifies, in the kopitiams and the hawker centers that continue to dot the neighborhood of my childhood. Their ongoing popularity reassures me, whenever I go back, that as much as Malaysia may have changed, as much as it may have embraced the creature comforts of Western life, it is still, in a very real sense, the same country as the one in which I grew up—and it is still home.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
The art of fighting your friends for the check
“How can? Cannot!” I exclaimed, sticking out my arm to block my Singaporean friend’s charge to the cash register.
“Can, lah!” She countered, performing a neat spin that put her out of arm’s reach and into position to continue her beeline to the cashier.
Such are the tactics of the time-honored Asian ritual of fighting with your friends to pick up the check. Growing up in Malaysia, I often witnessed my parents engaging in this when we went out to dinner with family friends. As soon as the waiter materialized with the bill, multiple adults would lunge for it, and a heated argument would ensue as each side attempted to persuade the other that they should be permitted to pick up the check this time. Someone would eventually back down, of course, but not before extracting a solemn promise that the next meal would be on them.
As a kid, I never quite saw the point of all this drama, especially the more elaborate tactics my parents and their friends sometimes employed: for instance, pretending to go to the bathroom when they were actually going to settle the bill, or furiously attempting to cajole the waiter into accepting their credit card instead of the other person’s. Why push so hard, I wondered, when the consequence of defeat, a free meal, made losing a seemingly lossless proposition?
Today, of course, I’ve come around to realizing that there are good reasons to treat others to dinner—and, until recently, I thought I’d become pretty good at the art of fighting your friends for the check. I have a few friends here with whom, when we eat out, the custom is for one person to pay instead of splitting the bill down the middle. These friends are all relatively reasonable: when the check arrives, there tends to be some bickering about who pays this time, but usually, whomever is more insistent and presents a plausible excuse, such as “But you paid last time,” prevails. The argument ends without anyone raising their voices and whomever was treated simply remembers to pick up the check next time.
How different things are in Singapore, where this game is elevated to a new level of competitiveness, as I discovered when visiting family there over the holidays.
Exhibit I. I met up for cake and coffee last month with a Singaporean friend from college. When the bill came, I fully expected to pay it, especially as my friend had been kind enough to pick me up from the MRT station. However, she had other intentions, and quickly reached over and grabbed the bill. I protested, but she would have none of it, and got up to pay. I stood up too and attempted to block her, but, sporting an aggressiveness I never knew she possessed, she neatly spun around while simultaneously reaching her arm out to block me. We both ended up half-running to the cashier and handing our credit cards to him at the same time. A heated argument ensued as each of us attempted to cajole the cashier into returning the other person’s credit card:
“She picked me up from the MRT station! You can’t let her pay the bill!”
“Come on, hor, he’s a visitor to Singapore! Give him his credit card back!”
Eventually, my friend prevailed, and I pocketed my credit card in defeat—but I’m definitely paying the bill when we next meet.
Exhibit II. Later, my family and I got together with another Singaporean friend and his folks. The last two times we had met, he had picked up the check, so it was imperative that I did so this time. Midway through lunch, I excused myself and went to the cashier to arrange for the meal to be charged to my credit card, then returned to the table with an air of satisfaction—until a couple of minutes later, our waitress handed my credit card to me, whispering, “We didn’t charge your credit card. This lunch has already been paid for—we’ve charged it to someone else’s credit card.”
I was incensed: we had agreed over e-mail that I would pay for lunch this time, so this was unacceptable, and I told my friend as much in as many words. I think he was a little taken aback by how forcefully I made the point. Eventually, after telling him to “Just accept this gracefully,” I persuaded him to give me his credit card, then got the waitstaff to reverse the charge on his card and charge mine instead. Our accounts are more settled now—though I still do owe him another dinner....
Lessons. If you’re ever in Malaysia or Singapore and intend to pay for someone else’s meal, you need to have a clear plan for how to achieve this, as we Southeast Asians are masters at the game of picking up the check and aren’t above resorting to subterfuge to win. Also, as a friend recently suggested, when you’re arguing with someone over a bill, a good line to get the other person to back down is, “Just accept this gracefully.” It worked for me. :)
“Can, lah!” She countered, performing a neat spin that put her out of arm’s reach and into position to continue her beeline to the cashier.
Such are the tactics of the time-honored Asian ritual of fighting with your friends to pick up the check. Growing up in Malaysia, I often witnessed my parents engaging in this when we went out to dinner with family friends. As soon as the waiter materialized with the bill, multiple adults would lunge for it, and a heated argument would ensue as each side attempted to persuade the other that they should be permitted to pick up the check this time. Someone would eventually back down, of course, but not before extracting a solemn promise that the next meal would be on them.
As a kid, I never quite saw the point of all this drama, especially the more elaborate tactics my parents and their friends sometimes employed: for instance, pretending to go to the bathroom when they were actually going to settle the bill, or furiously attempting to cajole the waiter into accepting their credit card instead of the other person’s. Why push so hard, I wondered, when the consequence of defeat, a free meal, made losing a seemingly lossless proposition?
Today, of course, I’ve come around to realizing that there are good reasons to treat others to dinner—and, until recently, I thought I’d become pretty good at the art of fighting your friends for the check. I have a few friends here with whom, when we eat out, the custom is for one person to pay instead of splitting the bill down the middle. These friends are all relatively reasonable: when the check arrives, there tends to be some bickering about who pays this time, but usually, whomever is more insistent and presents a plausible excuse, such as “But you paid last time,” prevails. The argument ends without anyone raising their voices and whomever was treated simply remembers to pick up the check next time.
How different things are in Singapore, where this game is elevated to a new level of competitiveness, as I discovered when visiting family there over the holidays.
Exhibit I. I met up for cake and coffee last month with a Singaporean friend from college. When the bill came, I fully expected to pay it, especially as my friend had been kind enough to pick me up from the MRT station. However, she had other intentions, and quickly reached over and grabbed the bill. I protested, but she would have none of it, and got up to pay. I stood up too and attempted to block her, but, sporting an aggressiveness I never knew she possessed, she neatly spun around while simultaneously reaching her arm out to block me. We both ended up half-running to the cashier and handing our credit cards to him at the same time. A heated argument ensued as each of us attempted to cajole the cashier into returning the other person’s credit card:
“She picked me up from the MRT station! You can’t let her pay the bill!”
“Come on, hor, he’s a visitor to Singapore! Give him his credit card back!”
Eventually, my friend prevailed, and I pocketed my credit card in defeat—but I’m definitely paying the bill when we next meet.
Exhibit II. Later, my family and I got together with another Singaporean friend and his folks. The last two times we had met, he had picked up the check, so it was imperative that I did so this time. Midway through lunch, I excused myself and went to the cashier to arrange for the meal to be charged to my credit card, then returned to the table with an air of satisfaction—until a couple of minutes later, our waitress handed my credit card to me, whispering, “We didn’t charge your credit card. This lunch has already been paid for—we’ve charged it to someone else’s credit card.”
I was incensed: we had agreed over e-mail that I would pay for lunch this time, so this was unacceptable, and I told my friend as much in as many words. I think he was a little taken aback by how forcefully I made the point. Eventually, after telling him to “Just accept this gracefully,” I persuaded him to give me his credit card, then got the waitstaff to reverse the charge on his card and charge mine instead. Our accounts are more settled now—though I still do owe him another dinner....
Lessons. If you’re ever in Malaysia or Singapore and intend to pay for someone else’s meal, you need to have a clear plan for how to achieve this, as we Southeast Asians are masters at the game of picking up the check and aren’t above resorting to subterfuge to win. Also, as a friend recently suggested, when you’re arguing with someone over a bill, a good line to get the other person to back down is, “Just accept this gracefully.” It worked for me. :)
Monday, December 18, 2006
A bit of adventure?
A recent IM conversation with a friend took an unexpected turn, as you can see in this snippet (italics mine):
Me: How are you?
Friend: I'm good. Just finished finals and am flying home tomorrow for three weeks... then flying to Afghanistan to do some fieldwork.
Me (thinking): ?!?!
Me (typing): Are you serious?! Which part?
Friend: Just Kabul. And I'm going with two guys, so I should be fine. (She's female)
Me: Are you going in the care of any NGOs, or traveling independently?
Friend: Traveling independently, but we have Karzai's cousin's protection.
Me: That's good... I've read that the security situation around Kabul is deteriorating, so be careful!
Friend: I'll be careful. Plus, you know me, a bit of adventure now and then is basically warranted. :)
For me, a "bit" of adventure would be visiting a new city, "some" adventure would be riding a roller coaster, and a "lot" of adventure would be going sailing when there are whitecaps on the water. But traveling to Afghanistan, independently, without the protection of a NGO, to do fieldwork in Kabul? This notion registers so completely, ridiculously off the charts of my adventurism scale that I can't even find the words to express it.
Dear friend, if you consider fieldwork in Afghanistan a "bit" of adventure, I shudder to think what a "lot" of adventure must mean to you. Please stay safe--as I'm sure you will--and I can't wait to hear about your trip!
Me: How are you?
Friend: I'm good. Just finished finals and am flying home tomorrow for three weeks... then flying to Afghanistan to do some fieldwork.
Me (thinking): ?!?!
Me (typing): Are you serious?! Which part?
Friend: Just Kabul. And I'm going with two guys, so I should be fine. (She's female)
Me: Are you going in the care of any NGOs, or traveling independently?
Friend: Traveling independently, but we have Karzai's cousin's protection.
Me: That's good... I've read that the security situation around Kabul is deteriorating, so be careful!
Friend: I'll be careful. Plus, you know me, a bit of adventure now and then is basically warranted. :)
For me, a "bit" of adventure would be visiting a new city, "some" adventure would be riding a roller coaster, and a "lot" of adventure would be going sailing when there are whitecaps on the water. But traveling to Afghanistan, independently, without the protection of a NGO, to do fieldwork in Kabul? This notion registers so completely, ridiculously off the charts of my adventurism scale that I can't even find the words to express it.
Dear friend, if you consider fieldwork in Afghanistan a "bit" of adventure, I shudder to think what a "lot" of adventure must mean to you. Please stay safe--as I'm sure you will--and I can't wait to hear about your trip!
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