Desperately Seeking Sari

   The international ladies' group I now belong to is going to have a "Deepavali" dinner party at a local Indian restaurant.  Deepavali is a major Indian festival season called "The festival of Lights." One web site synopsis explains it like this:

Deepavali or Divali or the festival of lights is observed by Hindus in recognition of the triumph of good over evil in the seventh month of the Hindu calendar. 

    The “Ladies Who Lunch” immediately began planning an expedition to Little India to buy saris to wear to the party.  I like the idea but  I’m also cheap.  So, what to do?

            I decide to go around the corner to a charity jumble (rummage) sale to see if I can find a sari. “You have to come early to beat the crowd,” I’d been told, so I throw yesterday's duds onto my unwashed body and head out.  Lo and behold, there is a sari  amongst the other jumbled-up stuff.  However it’s clutched firmly in the hands of a lady who has lovingly folded it.  (Always a bad sign--I know this after years of hitting flea markets myself.)  Nevertheless, I trail a discreet distance behind her, hoping she’ll set it down and let me snatch it up, but of course she doesn’t.  She’s clutching that sari to her chest like it was priceless, which to me it is!  

            Time for drastic action!  I take her aside, make meaningful eye contact and explain why I just have to have this garment. I press RM5 into her hand, but money isn’t the issue.  Nor is my sob story about why I have to have this particular sari.  I want this one, I explain earnestly, because I’m going to a Deepavali party and I don’t have a single sari in my closet to wear.  Fancy that!  (Being a paragon of cross-cultural sensitivity, I don’t add that, because it’s red and green with gold trim, I’m thinkin’ I can use it as a Xmas table cover.)

   Then she takes me even farther aside and says, “I know you!You’re the lady who comes to New Bob Realty on a motorbike.  Last time, I was cleaning the ground floor.  You smiled at me.”  Well, I smile at almost everybody (I’m American!).  But this helps my new friend Theresa and me establish the all-important human contact that makes this kind of negotiation both fun and profitable.

    Next, her niece is called over to provide translation for what is already a perfectly understandable conversation.  (Moral support was more like it.)  This gal is turned out impeccably, right down to her light-blue eye shadow and silver bindi that matches her earrings and sandals.  (This is at 7:00 on a Saturday morning, mind you!)   Suddenly, I’m very aware of not having even brushed my teeth before I dashed out.  With her arrival, all the “husbands-in-waiting” start paying very close attention to the goings-on!

            Teresa’s now hooked into this human drama.  She explains that the sari has to be dry cleaned.  OK, fine.  The niece is now offering to find me a Punjabi suit that would actually fit me.  “Yes, I can find one in your size!”  I tell them I don’t want one that is precious to anyone because I might drag the sleeve through the curry at the party (and I truly might, accidentally!)  Finally, we agree that I need the sari more than Theresa does, even though I have only the vaguest idea how to wear it.

    So, now I have my sari for the party and I'm no longer desperate.  All I lack now is the knowledge of how to drape it and the courage to actually wear it.  But there's time yet to get both.  Wish me luck!

         

  

Li'l Bitty Critters!

Aedes Mosquito

  You expect to find insects when you choose to live on a tropical island near the equator.  I'd been on the lookout for cockroaches, which were quite prevalent when I lived on Guam.  But I haven't seen even one of them here in our abode, for which I'm very grateful!  However, mosquitoes are all over the place.  I think we have a couple of pet mosquitoes that have taken up permanent residence in our "unit."  (That's "condo talk," by the way.  You don't live in an "apartment" here--you have a "unit."  So, despite having screens on every window but one, we have a pair of pet mosquitoes.  One, Willard, lives in the kitchen.  The other, Fred, cruises past my computer screen on a nightly basis.  But--hah!  No longer--I just crushed the life outa the li'l sucker!  Bye-bye, Fred, and good riddance!

    Normally, I don't try too hard to kill these speedy little skeeters.  They don't bother me much, since my thin-skinned husband seems to attract all of them and they never so much as touch me.  However, recently here in our well-maintained, clean condo complex we've had an abnormally large number of cases of dengue fever!  Five, to date, and all of them landed in the hospital.  I gather that you don't die from this tropical, mosquito-transmitted illness, but it isn't pleasant at all.   It's accompanied by a 104 or 105-degree fever, and Wikipedia cheerfully announces that it "rarely causes death and symptoms usually subside within a week."  Now, isn't THAT nice to know!?!

    Anyway, when I barreled out of here the other morning, there was a rather grim-looking group of uniformed local officials with clipboards moving around.  I asked the gate guard who they were and he said they were health officials, come to investigate why our complex has more cases of dengue fever than others.  Hmmm. . . .and we're planning on making this our semi-permanent home?  Might have to re-think that one!

    Meanwhile, a friend of ours encountered another nasty little insect and spent over a week recovering.  The li'l guy is called a rove beetle, and it looks small and innocent, wouldn't you agree?  But he's a really bad-*** character, this one.  If he stings you, he leaves some irritant behind that you can spread to other parts of your body simply by touching it.  Our friend must have been bitten while she was sleeping, 'cuz her back had a big red welt on it.  But she then must have rubbed her eye in her sleep, because it also became all swollen up and painful.  It took about a week for it to go down again!  I hear that this insect is the bane of the existence of high-rise condo dwellers because he moves around by being carried on wind currents, which they have a lot of up there on the high floors of fancy condos.  

    So, you just can't escape!  Live up high and the rove beetles get you.  Live down low (like us) and it's the dengue fever-bearing mosquitoes.  And if they don't get you, the crazy Penang drivers just might.


P.S. Early this morning, a bat stumbled onto our bedroom balcony.  Hubby bravely chased it away.  But it did cross my mind that if he were to take up residence there (the bat, NOT the hubby), perhaps we wouldn't have to worry so much about the smaller nasty critters that bite! 

      

My Taste, Their Taste

NOT our bedroom!

       Coming from Japan after spending so many years there, I must've absorbed a lot of the Japanese sense of design. I really do love their "wabi-sabi" approach to things--ceramics, furnishings, clothing, etc.  Here in Malaysia, it's been hard for me to decorate our new home with that sensibility.  The prevailing decor style here is something I've personally decided to call "Singapore modern."  It involves lots of metal, hard plastic, sparkle, and very uncomfortable chairs!  The bedroom suite pictured here is a rendering of this style in a furniture showroom.  I don't hate it, but I wouldn't want to live with it.  It's too hard and harsh for my taste, and Hubby's, too.  

NOT our bedding!

    Bedding, in particular, has been problematical.  They have LOTS of bedding here in Penang, and it's always on sale, up to 70% or 80% off sometimes.  Here in Penang is where I came to realize that high thread count sheets are well worth the money.  (So is high-quality toilet paper, for that matter.)   So, lots of the bedding sold here feels nice but, oh my, some of it looks . . . . .well, let's just say that it isn't suited to my taste at all.   


    It's so relentlessly cheerful and bright, like this orange ensemble here, which must be for a kid's room.  It surely would shock you into wakefulness in the morning, wouldn't it?  Or keep you awake at night.

Our bedding

      There was, however, one set of tasteful bedding in our local "departmental store."  Guess who got it?  We did!  And here it is.  (The one with leaves on it, in case there's any doubt.)  
It's the best we could do here in Malaysia and we do love it.

 Cinderella's furnishings after marrying the Prince

       








     The other day a new furniture store opened up in the nearby mall.  (By the way, within two weeks of opening, they were having their first "clearance sale.")  This over-the-top blue-and-silver plush stuff they have in their show window typifies the decor style that many Malaysians favor.  


          I ask you, who could possibly choose to live with furniture like this?  Cinderella or one of the other Disney princesses, perhaps?  Certainly not me!


     

Bicultural? Tricultural?

Just a tiny part of my fabric stash

     We've just returned from a few days back in Japan.  It was more for business than pleasure -- Hubby had to do a visa run and I had banking to do.  Then, of course there was Japanese fabric management!  I own a ton of it, lovingly collected over two dozen years.  It's all in bins, stacked up and (mostly) labelled by type.  Folks often ask me what I intend to do with it, and I ask myself the same question from time to time.  Dunno what I'll do with it. But then, does Jay Leno know what he's going to do with all those extremely expensive classic cars and motorbikes he collects?  (Do I sound a bit defensive here?)  One thing I do know is that I can't bring it over here to Penang--not unless we someday get a place with lots of indoor, temperature-controlled storage.  Even in bins like these, my lovely Japanese fabrics wouldn't last a month in Malaysia's hot and humid climate.  Well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Just FYI, this is NOT my hubby!

         While Hubby was at his Saturday morning meeting in Tokyo, I succumbed to the "call of the antiques" and went to a temple fair.  (I didn't buy much, honest!) There I saw a fellow who'd worked much harder on his "look" than I ever do.  Here he is, dressed in his retro Meiji Period look.  (The Meiji Era, from 1868 to 1912, was Japan's version of the Industrial Revolution.)  This lad clearly scouts the flea markets and antique fairs to find just the right garments and accessories to make him look like he lived 100 years ago.  But how can anybody be as slim as that?


     Anyway, back to biculturalism. I've heard that if you can drop into and out of each culture smoothly and without hesitation, then you can consider yourself to be truly bicultural.  Language ability helps, but it's more about feeling comfortable in whichever culture you find yourself.  This trip made us both think we've  accomplished that. 'Course we do still compare Japanese and Malaysian cultures, which really isn't fair to do, since each surely has its good points and bad.

        One thing we did appreciate greatly about Japan is how smooth-running it is.  All things run like clockwork and there's precision and dependability in everything that happens.  That's great and we love it.  On the other hand, Malaysia represents cheerful, happy-go-lucky chaos.  Nothing seems to work as it should, but hey, nobody really cares too much.  Both have their place, of course.

 Pets aren't allowed in our condo, but maybe this...?

    At Narita Airport, I saw yet another example of how precise and particular everything is in Japan, as evidenced by this child's hand-crafted toy.  Would a Japanese teacher ever say, "Here are some milk cartons.  Let's make animals!"  Oh, no!  The teacher would spend hours and hours of her own time, cutting up the cartons just so, covering them with brown paper, cutting out little black circles to make the eyes, etc.  And then she'd say, "Today, children, we're going to make doggies.  Here are all the things you'll need to make yours."  And at the end of the day, every kid would have a carefully-crafted milk carton dog--perfect in every detail. And all of them would be the same.  


    So, which way is better?  Nobody can say.    Just cultural difference, lah!

Life in La-La Land

    There's no need to read the fine print--it's basically the same for most wine-tasting parties and dinners.  And boy, are there a lot of them!  I'm beginning to think that it's wine, cheese, horses and more wine that makes the local expat society go 'round. Oh, and with a good bit of beer thrown in for good measure. I've never seen so much wine tasting, selling, sampling, ordering, etc.!  Muslims don't drink alcohol--at least they're not supposed to--but the expatriates around here sure make up for it! 


      Here in La-La Land, people pay to have things done.  "I'll have my driver drop it at your condo guardhouse."  "I have my massage gal come in twice a week for two-hour sessions."  "Don't worry about reusing that glass--we'll have the maid wash them."   Expats seem to "have" many aspects of their lives handled by other people.  (And I'm one of them, I guess, since I "have" our lovely cleaning gal do the household chores that I can't stand, and I won't go into what those are!)   That's all well and good.  If they can afford it and they want it, go for it, I say.  If they can't do those things for themselves or don't want to, fine and dandy.  


     But then what happens is they (and their spouses) wind up having nothing much to do all day because they "have" all the normal stuff done for them.  If both persons in the marriage are retired, they often REALLY don't know how to put distance between themselves.  So then they have to seek things to fill up the hours they used to spend doing the things that they now "have done."  Maybe that's where the wine, cheese and horse-race betting come in.  Who knows. . . ?


    Another interesting aspect of life here in Penang--at least among the expats--is how they come and go like the tides of the ocean.  Many are retired and on the MM2H program, so they're free to travel and presumably well-off enough to afford it.  Also, they often have grandchildren or other emotional attachments "back home" in whatever country they came from.  

Me, heading off to a Scrabble afternoon in La-La Land

      Whatever the reason, the ebb and flow of people in and out of here is amazing by my middle-class American standards.  At any one time, half of the people at the Scrabble table, for example, will announce "Sorry--I'll be 'off-station' next week.  Carry on without me and see you just after Christmas."  How very colonial, this being "off-station"!  Kind of puts you in mind of pith helmets and sedan chairs, doesn't it?


   Well, I myself am going to be "off-station" for a few days, but this saga will resume when I get back next week.  Tah-tah and cheerio!


    

Better late than never, I guess.

     See this newspaper right here--this RM 1.20-a-day newspaper, The Star?  (US 40 cents,  26 Japanese yen per day.)  How could it have reduced me to a snarling, threatening, foaming-at-the-mouth person?  I'm usually so nice!   (Honestly, I am!)  But by the time this only-in-Malaysia saga was resolved, I'd turned into a harridan whom I didn't even recognize.  Like everything else in this country, it all got resolved eventually and satisfactorily.  But oh, the process itself was painful!


     I've always had a daily newspaper delivered to my door.  Not only do I like knowing what's going on locally and globally, but I  would often use clippings from the paper as teaching material  back in Japan.  There the paper came like clockwork, except on the rather frequent "newspaper holidays,'' which were designed to give delivery personnel a day off.  However, that poor Japanese national English newspaper was suffering from the same problems that now afflict print journalism all over the world--dwindling sales and readership.

   Our daily paper got smaller and smaller year after year.  Regular features disappeared and the paper began to be delivered a day late out where I lived. The sports news had always been a day late, so that became two days late.  By that time, it couldn't be called a "newspaper," but rather, an "oldspaper."  But still, it came, and it came on time, which is to say at 5:15 every morning, even when the snow was up to THERE! 


   So,  we moved to Penang and I checked out the various papers, glorying in the fact that I actually had a choice of three.  What a thrill!   Greatly excited, on June 24, in the midst of a subscription campaign, I went out and signed up for a year of having the paper delivered.  I was told it would start coming on July 1st.  Of course it didn't.  I waited a while, then phoned and asked where my paper was.  "Oh!  Didn't you get the letter?"  "No, sorry.  What letter?"   "The letter telling you that delivery would start on August 1, not July 1."  Hmm. . . . .  OK.   I'm a relatively patient person, so I wait until August 1st, and still no paper.  I go away on a trip and return in mid-August.  Still no paper!  I wait some more.  Finally, at the end of August, I call again to enquire about why I'm not getting my paper.  By this time, I've been sent a year's worth of vouchers to pay my delivery person -- except that I DON'T HAVE ONE.   (And it took one entire work week to convince the courier service to deliver the vouchers, by the way.) 


    More phone calls.  I'm told it's my fault for not having called earlier and more often.  I'm asked who my vendor is.  My answer was, "I don't know.  I don't have one."  I'm told to return the voucher for August, which makes me happy because now at least I don't have to pay for a month's worth of papers that I didn't receive.  I try to do that, but the fellow never comes to pick it up, as we agreed.  (He still hasn't, for all I know.)   However, he does promise me that the paper will start coming on Sept. 1.  


    So, I watch the doorstep like a hawk on The Big Day.  But oh, never mind!   It's the end-of-Ramadan holidays, so "no paper, lah."  I wait a few more days, gathering my strength for the battle ahead -- finding the business office, waving my envelope full of receipts and vouchers, demanding my money back.  (And mind you, I'm not the type of person who demands anything!)    I decided to draw the line in the sand on Monday, Sept. 5th.


       So, what happens this morning, Sept. 4 -- 73 days after I handed over my cash to start the subscription?   The paper comes -- an hour earlier than promised.  Only in Malaysia!