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a penguin of very little brain
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| mahathir: crazy pants (+ media coverage) |
[Feb. 27th, 2009|07:43 pm] |
以前我再忘, mahathir gave a speech last week at cambridge, former malay leader in cambridge, where he spoke about all sorts of things, including the current malaysian government: "This government is less racist but that has led to instability and lack of growth." don't worry, it's still your legacy, you horrible old crazy pants.
the article is odd, i realise it's an university press or something but in the article they call him both 'dr bin mohammed' and 'dr mohammed,' which, ah, way to fail at malay nomenclature, seriously. and further in failing at malay nomenclature, calling him the 'former malay leader' really doesn't give the meaning they might hope, what with that title stripping him of his ethnicity. malay and malaysian are not interchangeable. |
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| elizabeth wong, photographed without her consent and still punished |
[Feb. 18th, 2009|08:51 pm] |
There has been a bit of a thing this week, as photos of a naked, sleeping Elizabeth Wong, Bukit Lanjan assemblyman and human rights activist, were circulated via mobile phone, and then picked up by some newspapers. Even as she insists that she is proud of her lifestyle as a single person, and is not ashamed, and these photos are naught but a political attack, she is offering to quit from her position in the party. The resignation has not been accepted and she has gone on leave instead, but it's popularly assumed she'll resign for real after returning from leave.
There is lots of 'she is single, how could she let someone into her room?' going on, particularly from the direction of UMNO. Someone has even congratulated her on quitting. This Star article compares this to bigamy, and quotes UMNO VP as saying that Malaysians are unable to accept someone being photographed nude. She was SLEEPING. I think the more important question is, who is this arsehole who takes photos of someone sleeping and then releases those photos into the world? And, in what way is this her fault?
BBC; comment at the Star; Guan Eng reported by the Star |
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| more than just temporary |
[Sep. 6th, 2008|10:14 pm] |
In other election news, you will remember that Anwar Ibrahim won the Permatang Pauh by-election on August 26th. Before the by-election, Datuk Ahmad Ismail wanted to let everybody know how he felt about Malaysia's multiethnic breakdown. There's always this thing going on, this emphasis on Malaysia's multicultural harmony, but the newspapers are often full of stories about racism, this teacher said that and this person was attacked, and it is no surprise that Ismail thinks this.
Local Chinese leaders say sorry not enough: Ahmad had allegedly called the Chinese pendatang (immigrants) and was also reported to have said that “as the Chinese were only immigrants it was impossible to achieve equal rights amongst races” during a ceramah in Permatang Pauh on Aug 25.
More here: PM to instruct Bkt Bendera chief not to repeat remark |
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| not a hundred percent sure what i did with my shoes |
[Aug. 31st, 2008|10:02 am] |
Back in Australia. I love Penang so much, but particularly given the nature of this visit, I am glad to be back in Perth again.
I bought a lot of books, and last night, having been here for four hours I went to the Symphony and almost fell asleep. Sorry, Dvořák! Blame MAS! (I certainly do) |
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| cultural appropriation: what's left behind when you're done with your fun |
[Aug. 25th, 2008|03:00 pm] |
I saw an auntie on Saturday night. She was attending a work function in the hotel in which we are staying, so she was all dressed up with pretty clothes and painted toe nails and a diamante swastika pendant on a chain around her neck, because she is Buddhist.
The bus I've been catching from the hospital meanders down Dato Keramat and past a building with a swastika carved into its face.
The coffin is draped in a silk covering, the covering patterned with swastikas; I visited a shop selling sparkling, multicoloured swastikas; I drove past cast iron swastikas forming the shapes in fences.
The thing about cultural appropriation is that maybe you think it's fun, or just a symbol, or whatever, but sometimes it leaves a legacy that means this religious symbol is pretty universally equated with white supremacists and hate crimes (and Nazis) in the West. This is interesting, though, because I would suggest that Jesus' cross has also been co-opted by white supremacists, but the image of a crucifix doesn't inspire that visceral, gut reaction. Well, not as much, anyway.
Anyway. Cultural Appropriation: stop stealing other people's stuff. You might think your appropriation is harmless, but have you asked? |
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| [book] evening is the whole day, preeta samarasan |
[Aug. 24th, 2008|05:45 pm] |
Evening is the Whole Day is this sprawling, engaging tale spread across thirty forty fifty years of Malaysia's history. The point of view twists and turns through this Indian family and miscellaneous, numerous others and jumps back and forth through the years, but the twists of the story remain interesting and some other word for engaging. It's written in English, but cruising along there are bits of Tamil (which I can't read) and Bahasa Melayu (which I can read) and it's so ridiculously Malaysian, one minute it's depressing family politics and the next BAM you realise this whole sprawling mess has been a lead up to the 1969 race riots, and you didn't even notice until you were there and the Chinese were having their faces punched in by the Bumiputras.
I love this book. The word play is fun and the turns of phrase are delightful. It's funny and it's depressing and other words I might use: sprawling; engaging; interesting; bitter; despairing; lethargic; like sitting in a wicker chair with the fans spinning lazily overhead, brushing away the late afternoon heat, ignoring the bickering behind you.
An excerpt:
There is, stretching delicate as a bird's head from the thin neck of the Kra Isthmus, a land that makes up half of the country called Malaysia. Where it dips its beak into the South China Sea, Singapore hovers like a bubble escaped from its throat. This bird's head is a springless summerless autumnless winterless land. One day might be a drop wetter or a mite drier than the last, but almost all are hot, damp, bright, bursting with lazy tropical life, conducive to endless tea breaks and mad, jostling, honking rushes to get through town to get home before the afternoon downpour. |
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| tak tahu bercakap |
[Aug. 22nd, 2008|11:32 am] |
Still here in this old town, so formative of my youth; there are people smoking inside buildings and I never catch buses; I eat naught but rice and noodles and yesterday, I suffered cravings for hot potato chips.
Moonfestival is soon, and there are lanterns and mooncakes in all the shops.
I still don't know when I'll be back in Australia. |
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| it's the same room but everything's different |
[Aug. 19th, 2008|08:26 pm] |
penguin and me (yet to share name and gender with me)
Being held captive by the 1pm hingga 2pm, 4.30pm hingga 6.30pm sign indicating visiting hours, I've been doing a lot of eating and homework, and the crosswords from my mum's trashy for-the-plane magazine.
I am eating lots of wok things, nasi and mee etc, which is my preferred way to eat, anyway. I had a curry mee that was made from spaghetti noodles, that was an interesting fusion experience, odd but kind of tasty. My mum was trying to buy a tetrapak of orange juice to bring back to the hotel, but they all contained cow's milk, which is odd but kind of not cool.
ice mango
We're staying in the Traders Hotel which is basically in the centre of town, which is a little bit exciting. The internet is really slow but they have a breakfast noodle station with no wok, so my breakfast noodles got cooked on a flat hot plate this morning. Also the internet this evening is quite slow. But we're ten minutes from the hospital and a two minute walk from a major shopping complex, which means it's pretty useful to us right now.
The hospital has these great hallways which are basically outside, I'm really taken by that. The whole drop everything and leave the country thing was exciting but unfortunate, but I'm taking my joys where I can (and taking photos with toy camera, an IXUS 55).
inner hallway at the pulau pinang hospital
As mentioned, I've been working on my assignments, and today I dropped a whole lot of money on books - I justify this last because they're all region specific books that I have some difficulty getting just off the shelf in Australia. So today I'm reading Evening is the Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan.
It's so humid, yesterday it poured with rain and my mum made fun of me for wearing a long skirt, but today it has been bright and clear, and I do love a good Penang rain, so long as I'm not out in it. Still, I'm glad this is not the monsoon season, the drains are still empty and relatively unstinky.
merdeka flags
More people should be emailing me about the inanity of their lives, where by more people I mean any people. Affection etc to you all. |
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| but it's not the time |
[Jun. 29th, 2008|11:10 am] |
In 1997, Anwar Ibrahim was the deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, and very likely to succeed Mhd Mahatir after the latter's retirement. In 1998, after some conflicts within the party, Ibrahim was accused of the crime of sodomy and corruption, was sacked from his position and jailed. In 2004 he was cleared of the charges, but unable to hold political office again until 2008. In the intervening years, it has been widely accepted that the charges were politically motivated, and earlier this year his political party made enough of a sweep of the national elections that Ibrahim is now the leader of the opposition in Malaysia, and there have been calls for the current PM to resign, evidence of his failure as leader.
Police in Malaysia are currently, as in just this week, investigating Ibrahim on renewed allegations of sodomy.
Leaving aside my feelings on sodomy as a crime (ie, it shouldn't be), the fact that an identical accusation has been leveled at him is so politically stupid, either for him as a politician (if he was actually cracking on to aides) or for his political opponents (for trying the same thing again), that words cannot express my feelings right now. Of course any sexual assault charge (as some papers are touting it) is serious, but given the history of the situation and the current political situation in Malaysia, I'm feeling some (more than usual) prejudice against UMNO right now.
Links: BBC; The Star; Al Jazeera English. |
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| 但我会用自己翅膀 |
[May. 4th, 2008|03:25 pm] |
- If I'm writing in Chinese, turning the capslock on allows me to write in English. I am quite excited by this discovery! It means swapping between English and Mandarin is suddenly much faster and easier.
- A newish blog: Penang - My Everlasting Love, a daily photo blog. Bercinta <333
- I had no idea that Nanyang Technological University looked so awesome. One of the really great things about Singapore is that a lot of the big buildings really do look quite awesome, like all the architects have been given free reign and gone mad in a really cool way.
- This is my new favourite photo blog: One Love Photo, she does a lot of weddings but I love the lighting she uses and some of the ideas she has. She also has some engagement sets, and, as an aside, engagement photos are things that I don't really understand.
- Article: Penguin's wetsuit puts him back in the swim of things.
- Other article: Naked cop surprises NZ car thief.
- The weather is getting cold, and I'm turning more back to curries and cookies and things that heat the kitchen up, misting the windows and warming my toes. I will miss this kitchen when we are gone from here.
- I miss salads, but they just don't feel the same when I'm wearing a heavy jumper.
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| tourist in a familiar land |
[Apr. 17th, 2008|06:58 pm] |
"Ah," said Auntie, when I told her of our plans. "Tourist things."
I have known the reclining buddha since I was young; I have climbed the steps of Kek Lok Si and removed my shoes for the buddhas a hundred times; yet visiting these figures is still tourist things.
The taxi driver took us through the winding streets of Air Itam, halfway across the island. We wove through the terraces, and Davyd lamented that we had worn sneakers, as he had to bow every five minutes to tie his laces again.
I love the bright colours of the temples, the stories that they tell and the information that they give. My father speaks, in a low voice, of the rebuilding of Kwan Yin at Kek Lok Si. Her statue, 120 feet of bronze, was allegedly rebuilt a little shorter, so she would not be taller than the tallest mosque on the island.
At the base of the temple, we encountered beggars, and I remembered why I fear the temple even as I love it.
We visited the reclining buddha at Wat Chaiya Mangkalaram. At 33 metres in length, it is the third largest reclining buddha, and Uncle described it to Davyd as the best buddha in town.
We ventured up Penang Hill, completely unrelated to my pilgrimage. A funicular railway runs from base to peak, and at over 800 metres above sea level it is fun to peer down the hill and into the haze.
I enjoy touristing around places I love, and it was fun to share some of my favourite places with Davyd. It was nerve-wracking, too, that fear that he'd not at least like them.
I've uploaded a handful of photos from Malaysia, including a selection of family portraits, and the food from the second wedding banquet, at my flickr account here. Full photos will hopefully go up soon. You can also find my review of our second wedding banquet here.
extended family portrait
ETA: You can now find all photos from our temple visits here and here. |
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| auntie is a magic word |
[Apr. 16th, 2008|01:12 pm] |
In Chinese dialects there is a distinction between the auntie who is mother's sister, and the auntie who is father's sister, and so on. But everyone just says 'auntie,' even in the middle of a sentence in Mandarin, just creates this gigantic, amorphous mass of scolding, loving aunties.
We sat at a table on the edge of a carpark just off Bukit Timah Road. "What?" a grumpy old man barked. "Waiting for Auntie," I replied, my voice falling into that annoying Penang whine (though I was in Singapore by this time), and he melted away at the magic word.
Auntie is the old lady crossing the street; Auntie is my mother's sister or my father's sister; Auntie is a woman I met when I was six; Auntie gives me ang pau and tells me to eat more; Auntie is not related to me; Auntie is obligation and permission and guilt. |
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| as we turn down the lights |
[Mar. 12th, 2008|10:08 pm] |
The race riots of 1969 were considered to be the fault of the economic and wealth disparity that existed between the poorer Malays and the more wealthy Chinese. This disparity developed for various historical reasons, but most obviously because many Chinese people had come in to Malaysia and set up businesses, which moved the flow of wealth in that direction. The NEP was established in 1971 to compensate for that economic and social disparity, giving ethnic Malays preference in government positions, university placements and government tenders. The NEP involved a redistribution of wealth and ownership from other Malaysians and foreigners to Bumiputras, and was supposed to increase the overall national economy.
Its emphasis was on actual ownership, rather than training, a sort of constant bandaid rather than solution. The NEP officially ended in 1990, but is considered to still live on today in many forms.
Lim Guan Eng was sworn in as Penang's head of state on Tuesday; this morning the very first thing I read was this headline: Penang abandons pro-Malay policy.
I am trying to be reasonable as I write this, not talking about what a shit program NEP was. So this is kind of dry, but inside my head I'm leaping around freaking out (coalition with PAS?! WE'RE RUINED) and incredibly hopeful (NO NEP!) and I'm trying to summarise it so you understand, but every time I think about it I can't stop grinning.
There will be no overnight change; given the control still remaining with the central government, and the continued fear that it will take funding away from Penang, there may never be any real change; but I am hopeful.
Some reading: Slaying an Immortal Tiger (old article on NEP); Malaysia PM: Lessons to be learnt; Penang's leaders abandon pro-Malay policy. If you're interested in this, Mahathir's The Malay Dilemma is very interesting reading. |
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| on your shoulders |
[Mar. 9th, 2008|04:23 pm] |
I am excited; awash in a sea of joy and confusion. UMNO has been the ruling party in Malaysia since Merdeka fifty years ago, and its power has been pretty concrete. There are many reasons why I grew up in Australia and not Malaysia, and UMNO is one of the biggest of them. At yesterday's national election, it won with a simple majority. This sounds like nothing but the government no longer has power to make constitutional changes, and is a sign of dissatisfaction across the country with the loss of four state assemblies, including my beloved tiny island of Penang. I'm afraid and I'm concerned but most of all I'm excited, and I hope.
Links: BBC; ABC; Associated Press; Straits Times. |
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| all because you are |
[May. 14th, 2006|08:34 am] |
Today is the fourteenth of May. I am sure that there is something special about this date, although I do not know what it is. A minute or two with wikipedia would tell us, I have no doubt.
The special thing about yesterday's date is that it is the anniversary of the 1969 race riots in KL.
I completely forgot, until a post made by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) eeb_bee reminded me. She made a post filled with links, and I read them and read them and was sort of disbelieving that I had forgotten the date. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised it made sense, in its own way.
I very rarely talk about what I suppose would be called my Malaysian identity. This is mostly because I don't really have one. There are things that I do because my mother taught me to do them, and sometimes these things are a direct result of her having been born in Malaysia. They are little things, the tiny things that create your habits and your lifestyle. The compulsion I feel to boil the water, then let it cool before I drink it, would be an excellent example.
I speak Malay very poorly (my Chinese is much better), and more important than anything else is the fact that I am not Malaysian in any way that counts. I consider myself Australian above all, and most of the time I consider myself Chinese, and I rarely think about Malaysia. But who am I to deny my composite parts? I love the idea of Malaysia, this country that, much like the one in which I live, was supposed to be this ideal of multicultural identity that all went terribly, horribly wrong somewhere along the way. I love its tall hills and its dirty water and its tacky tourism. I love the way I can buy all my favourite Chinese musicians and all my favourite books translated hilariously into Chinese. I love its monsoon drains and its fruits and its killer monkeys, and the correct pronunciation of orang-utan.
My mother; my extended family; my mother's friends, they are all Chinese. In a country that is only thirty percent ethnic Chinese, every Malaysian national that my mother loves is ethnically Chinese. She is from Pulau Pinang, which is still made up predominantly of ethnic Chinese, so perhaps this is not a surprise. But when last I was there, an aunt told us of a mosque; the tsunami swept over and through it, destroying the Chinese kampung just beyond, but when the waters receeded the mosque was unharmed. The conspiracy theories, and the whispered warnings that I remember from my youth. And when I used to get in trouble as a child, it was sometimes with a glare and a, "don't do that, only Malays eat with their hands," or whatever, and these are the words that I cannot shake from my head, even as an adult. I don't eat with my hands, for whatever reason. And I am not Malaysian, I am Chinese, and that is the way that things are.
I think about those things, sometimes, and then I put them aside, and long briefly for a country that does not want me. But only briefly, because this is my life and I have chosen this life, and I am Australian above all else.
This link, I stole from the above-mentioned post by E, and I place it here because it made me stop, and sit, and I couldn't move on until I had put these words down. Creating identity at the fringe. E's post is locked - if it wasn't, I would just link you to that. Instead I leave you with this: if it were possible, I would take dual citizenship with Malaysia (remaining Australian, of course). Because I am ethnically Chinese, but I would chose Malaysia over China.
PS. Have a non-traumatic familial experience today.
ETA: The post by eeb_bee of which I spoke above is here: Today In History: Chinese-Malay Race Riots |
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| *looks around* |
[Jul. 2nd, 2004|10:18 am] |
well, i'm home.
malaysia was fun, seeing my family and buying hilarious new shoes.
but i'm feeling awfully poor now. i wish that penguins were better at saving money.
have fun at terracon, those who are going. i'll be down on sunday. |
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| One last thing before I go |
[Jun. 25th, 2004|09:32 am] |
Right, leaving in a bit. Well, at one o'clock Saturday morning, so it's still a few hours away, but I've got lots to get through between now and then.
I just had the loveliest chat to an operator for B (I was getting international roam put on my phone, so you will all be able to contact me whilst I am gone). It wasn't a significant or important chat, but it was very light and friendly and absolutely lovely after the dreary couple of operators for other places I've had to talk to this morning. He apparently likes durien (but his housemates banned him from bringing it in), and then he was having a bitch about the cooking of his English housemate. And yeah. I wish I could remember his name. If I could, I would totally email B customer service and say "I had a great phonecall. This operator rocks."
I have an exam this afternoon, which I assume will be fine. It's only a two hour exam for Network Management.
And then to Malaysia. It is currently 26C in Penang, which is a little cool for my liking, but I'm sure I'll survive. My parents and my sister have been there for a few days already (the bastards! not having to do things like sit exams!) and are having a blast, and I can't wait to meet them.
So this is probably it, for a little while. I've finished packing, but I've got to go prepare my body for summer (shaving, waxing etc), and study a little more for my exam. And perhaps eat.
And I'd like to remind you all that it is my birthday shortly after I get back. |
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