May 26, 2006
playing batu tujuh
today, since the family i'm staying with has relatives coming to visit, i move out of the kampung and into a hostel near the downtown. at first i was sort of guiltily looking forward to this, since it will mean a lot more freedom, in terms of general etiquette rules (in the kampung, for instance, it's not polite to stay out during the call to prayer, a rule that isn't necessarily followed when people are in town), and also since while i am staying with a family they feel responsible for my safety, so i have to be extra careful not to be out late or do anything they might think is dangerous. and for a foreign girl this is a pretty extensive list and maybe not always based on any real danger. here's one example: if i am out traveling anywhere alone, i have been warned that i should never ask any men or Chinese people (Penang is i think 60% Chinese by the way) for directions
of course, though, in the past few days as it gets closer and closer to the time i have to leave i've started to feel like maybe i'm finally getting the hang of things here, and am getting a little less shy and even maybe making some friends in the neighborhood. so although if i'm staying in a hostel i might be able to stay out later and wear short sleeves, i won't have anyone to "makan sirih" with (this is a leaf that people chew wrapped around a pinang nut mixed with lime and some sort of tree sap i think that turns your mouth bright red when you chew it all mixed together--it isn't really popular in Malaysia anymore except at weddings and stuff like that, but last night i got to "makan sirih" with the grandmother in the family i'm staying with) or be able to play "batu tujuh" (a game like jacks that i learned the other day from one of the kids in the neighborhood)
Posted by diparker at 02:44 AM | Comments (2)
May 24, 2006
MYTEAM and the MTUC
a personal victory:
i went to the beach the other day, and although on this particular outing i didn't practice speaking Malay as much as maybe i'd hoped to, i did spend a few minutes talking to some guys selling fruit and sodas by the side of the road after asking them for directions. they asked me where i was staying (this may sound stalker-ish to an American but it is a typical small-talk question here)
"Jalan Perak" i say
"oh, Jalan Perak, where? in a hotel?"
"with a family"
"oh, Jalan Perak, with a family. Malay or Chinese?"
this apparently narrowed things down quite a bit, either because there are only a few Malay neighborhoods on Jalan Perak, or because all, or at least most, Malay neighborhoods (as opposed to Chinese neighborhoods) are considered "kampungs" because as soon as i said "Malay" he looked sort of surprised and said "oh, so you're staying in a kampung?!"
"yeah, a kampung," i say
"so, do you shower like this (holds his hand over his head), or like this (motions like he is splashing water on himself with a bucket)?"
"like this" i say, also motioning like i'm splashing water on myself, at which point he claps his hands together, he and his friends laugh, and i maybe earn a few cool points
staying with the family has is pro's and con's. the pro's include learning basic day-to-day things like how to work Malay showers, how to eat with my hands, and being introduced to the reality TV show "MYTEAM", about a bunch of amateur soccer players from all over the country who are being coached to play against the national professional team. last week the last few players got cut. it was pretty intense. this week they got to go to the UK to play a scrimmage against Manchester United (they tied kosong-kosong, or zero-zero). i also have access to certain information such as to were all the good food-themed (as opposed to touristy-souvenir themed) night markets are, or where the best place is to buy buah pala (pickled nutmeg) to bring back for my friends in KL.
as far as the con's, staying with a family has actually made it a little bit harder to make friends. they get nervous if i am out late alone, and they'd also get nervous if i was to "jalan-jalan" with someone they didn't know, so i have a pretty strict curfew. its also sort of been hard for me to do much formal research, since, like i said before, they have a maid for Indonesia, so although i told them that i'm doing research on migrant workers, i don't think it would be appropriate for me to go around asking the Indonesian people i've met in the kampung (many who are working as maids) how they feel about working here. although i'm not sure i'd feel right about doing that regardless, since, like i said before, the transition from just talking to someone like a friend to asking them really personal questions for research is huge, and i haven't figured out a good way to deal with that yet
i did finally get to meet with someone, not from the NGO i originally contacted here, but from the Penang branch of the Malaysian Trade Union Congress. he talked to me for over an hour about the situation migrant workers were facing in Penang, gave me specific examples of cases he had worked with recently, and gave me a broad overview of some of the ways the demographics have changed in the last 30 years. in some ways it wasn't that different from the meeting with the NGO in KL, but i felt a lot better about this meeting and found myself trusting what this guy said a lot more than i did the woman from the NGO. i'm not sure why exactly, maybe its just because i have more experience talking to people from unions in the US than i do NGO's. or maybe it's a class issue. i know that someone working in a union office isn't exactly on the same playing field as someone making maybe 400RM a month working as a live-in maid, but at least he didn't have to pause in the middle of a conversation on domestic worker abuse, like the woman from the NGO did, to say "i mean, of course i have a domestic at home, but we give her time off, and take her to church if she wants to go"
Posted by diparker at 02:06 AM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2006
avoiding the australian tourists
so earlier this week i said goodbye to all the friends i made in KL and took the bus to Penang. when i got here i already had a family to stay with since my friend As and her family (who i stayed with for my last weekend in KL) were so concerned about me coming to Penang alone that they called all the relatives they knew in Penang until they found a "keluarga angkat" (adopted family) for me to stay with here, which is good since there are a lot more tourists here, so staying in a hostel wouldn't have been ideal, especially for practicing language. now i'm staying at a house in Georgetown (downtown Penang) with As's cousin's mother, grandmother, their 13-year-old nephew/grandson, and their maid from Indonesia. i feel sort of guilty about staying here, since people in America aren't normally this generous, but everyone has told me not to worry about it, all i have to do is be nice, maybe take them out to dinner, and make sure everyone knows that they can stay with me or my family if they come to America
i miss my friends in KL and its hard to have to adjust to a new city as soon as i started to get used to things in KL, but i think its good that i came instead of staying in KL. for one thing, i'm speaking a lot more Malay. with my 20-something year-old friends i had gotten into the habit of speaking "rojak", so although there were a few Malay words or phrases that i would use all the time, it would always be mixed with English. but with my family here i speak pretty much only Malay
i'm still worried about my research, though. there is a factory right next to my neighborhood, but i'm worried about starting anything until i've talked to an NGO over here, which is easier said than done. i had to wait almost two weeks for the NGO in KL to get back to me. they gave me references in Penang, but they didn't give me any solid advice for my research, and i'm not possitive that any of the contacts they gave me will be able to help me that much either, so i could easily spend all my time here just waiting to find someone to give me the advice i need. and although before i came i wasn't that worried about just going out and talking to people on my own, i really feel weird about that now. for instance, although i'm pretty sure that the maid in the family i'm staying with would be willing to talk to me about my project and maybe introduce me to other people she knows who are here from Indonesia, at this point i really don't feel like i should do that, especially since i'm already making life harder for her just by being an extra person in the house
at any rate, if things really don't go well here in terms of my research i have a standing invitation from the NGO in KL if i want to spend a week or so just hanging around their office and seeing what they do. i could probably learn a lot that way, although it would definitely be a different kind of project
i don't have time right now, but i promise to make my next post more interesting and tell a little bit more about the things i've seen (or eaten) so far
Posted by diparker at 05:12 AM | Comments (0)
May 11, 2006
getting ready for my big karaoke debut
monday i go to Penang, but i'm moving out of my hostel tonight so that i can stay with my friend As and her family for the long weekend (tomorrow is a public holiday here to celebrate Buddha's birthday)
this should better facilitate trips to places like night markets, however this also means of course that the chances of me embarrassing myself or insulting someone by doing something wrong are increasing exponentially this weekend
anyway, for the moment i'm a little bit anxious, but by next week i should have some good stories from my last few days in KL, which i'm getting to love more and more every day and will be sad to leave
Posted by diparker at 02:44 AM | Comments (0)
May 08, 2006
eating rojak, speaking rojak
i'm still in KL, and compared with my last entry i think maybe i'm starting to get the hang of things now, although i say that with a grain of salt, since, just like with language, the more i think i'm getting used to life here the more i realize how much more i still have to learn
example: for most of the weekend i got to "jalan-jalan" ("hang out", literally "walk-walk") with some friends i made at this little cafe (or "kedai") near the Petronas Towers where i go to practice language sometimes. they are really excited to teach me about Malay culture, and have shown me more hospitality then i deserve (when i told them this, they told me they were "proud that i was learning their language." the irony i guess is that they said that in English, which of course they can speak infinately better than i can speak Malay)
anyway, they invited me to a wedding, so the night before i had to go to one of their houses to borrow some traditional cloths. before trying on the cloths my friend asked me if i wanted to have a shower (literally if i wanted "to bathe")
i had never been invited to shower at someones house like that before, so of course i was panicing from the beginning and not quite sure what i was supposed to do, and then once i was in the bathroom i couldn't figure out how to use the shower. so after standing there for a while trying to figure out what to do i eventually just used the big, uh, sort of tall tub of water with a scoop in it that they have in most bathrooms here, to scoop out some water to wash my face and hands (panicing more and more every second)
then i had to go out and admit to her that i couldn't get the shower to work, at which point she looks kind of concerned and then laughs at me and motions like she is scooping water over herself and tells me that the shower head doesn't work
humiliation like this is standard, but i guess its the price i have to pay if i want to learn anything while i am here. and i have been really lucky. the rest of the night when i wasn't trying to figure out foreign bathrooms i got to eat the supposedly most famous nasi lemak (rice cooked in coconut milk and served with chili sauce and sometimes with other things on the side) in Kampung Baru (an old Malay neighborhood right in the center of the city, which apparently the government keeps trying to develop but hasn't been able to because there are huge protests whenever they try), then went to a night market where i got to eat rojak buah (diffent kinds of fruits mixed together and covered in this sweet and kind of spicy soy sauce), "speak rojak" (slang for mixing english and Malay), and drink tons and tons of nescafe and iced tea until two in the morning when the night market started getting a little less "happening," although had it not been raining it would have probably been busy and crowded until 4am
the next day the wedding was beautiful and again i was fed constantly, and for the second time here i ate with my hands which was awkward at first, and again i was embarrased on constantly afraid that i would do something wrong, although once you get used to it eating with your hands is much nicer than with a spoon and fork
so making friends here isn't as hard as i thought it would be i guess, although i'm not sure how to make the transition between making friends and doing research. the first friends i made here are actually from Indonesia, three women who work at the kedai where i like to go to. they have also been incredibly friendly and showed me so much hospitality that i don't really deserve as soon as they found out that i could speak Indonesian (no matter how terribly). i haven't been invited to any of their houses yet but whenever i got to their restaurant they won't let me pay for my drinks and if they aren't too busy will speak with me in Indonesian (which must take incredible patience on their part since they don't speak Enlish so we can't "speak rojak"), and when they are busy they will introduce me to some of the regular customers there so that i can practice Malay. after work i've even gotten to "jalan-jalan" with one of the women who works there who is about my age and some of her friends
before i came i didn't really prepare any formal interview questions or anything because i thought that if i just made friends with people then questions for my research project would just sort of naturally come to me. the problem with that is that as soon as i made friends the idea of research seemed wrong. i was too embarrassed to even tell them at first the real reason i was here at first, and although i would like more than anything to just spend the rest of the time here hanging out in their cafe, the last thing i want to do is involve them in my research. and when i did start feeling guilty and told them a little bit about why i was really here, even though i tried to make it clear that i wasn't going to use them for my project, it was horrible and humiliating and i was afraid i had ruined the friendship. at any rate i'm sure they don't trust or respect me as much as they did before
i had thought that the most difficult thing about getting people to trust me would be separating myself from their employers, or from people who look down on them the same way a lot of migrant workers are looked down on here. i thought that once i could make people feel like i was on their side the most difficult part would be over. but what makes this kind of research difficult has nothing to do with sides, its humiliating in and of itself. before i came everyone warned me about using a tape recorder, about how you have to tell people whenever you are recording and that i should be prepared for people to act differently when you turned a recorder on. but no one ever warned me about how hard it would be to explain to people that you wanted to use them for a research project in the first place. i should have known it wouldn't be easy, but i still have no idea how to go about it. my faculty advisor here keeps suggesting places for me to go to find Indonesian migrant workers to interview but i haven't followed up on any of her advice. its not finding people that's difficult
anyway, i'm staying in KL for one more week and maybe i'm sort of wasting my time since i still haven't started any research yet besides at the library over here, but i think that for now i'm doing the right thing, and maybe i'll be able to figure out how to start my project by the time i get to Penang
Posted by diparker at 12:38 AM | Comments (1)
May 01, 2006
labor day weekend
so i've been here a few days now, and i guess maybe i'm starting to get my footing here. its labor day weekend so i haven't been able to meet with anyone yet or start any serious work on my project, but i think spending the last few days just learning how to get around was useful anyway.
the first thing that struck me when i got here was how difficult doing almost anything seemed. little things like ordering lunch, taking the bus or buying a cell phone felt like huge projects. i'm not sure why i didn't quite expect this, since i've been to foreign countries and big cities before, but i think traveling alone makes a bigger difference than i thought it would. i also think, though, that traveling alone has forced me to get comfortable with things here a lot faster than i might have otherwise, and even after just a few days i already feel a lot more confident.
the same thing goes with language. i feel like i've been sort of cripplingly shy since i've gotten here, which again i'm not sure why i didn't expect, since i can be awfully shy even in ann arbor. but while i still feel like i have a long way to go before i'll be confident enough to do the things i'll need to for my research, talking to people has also gotten easier a lot faster than i thought it would.
anyway, hopefully i'll have something more interesting to write about in a few days.
Posted by diparker at 02:29 AM | Comments (0)