Gong Xi Fa Chi - Happy Chinese New Year!

At Christmas time in the States, the malls fill with Santa Clause. In Malaysia, for Chinese New Year the malls fill with...

Lucky Money Cat! Wearing a jade necklace with beads as big as your head!  This is a photo of the main courtyard at one of the malls nearby, and as we walked through this weekend they had a number of forms of entertainment on the stage: martial arts demonstrations, groups of people singing Chinese songs, children playing games and at one point as we walked by this main stage I heard a group singing and realized that although the words were in Chinese,  the tune was Jingle Bells. Toto...The Mall has advertised this event as "The Celebration of Paws-perity". In some of the side corridors of the mall are smaller versions of Lucky Money Cat and almost every one had someone standing in front of him, having their picture taken. And they were locals.

Chinese New Year actually begins on February 14th this year, with the celebration lasting 15 days so as time goes by I hope to learn more about it and perhaps have our own celebration. I will keep you posted. In the meantime our crazy neighbors down the street have already started in with the fireworks. It could be a long three weeks!

Last night we went to the wedding reception for one of Heinz's co-workers. It is apparently a universal custom in this day and age to have professional portraits of the happy couple done to accompany the engagement announcement and Heinz shared with me the one that was circulated at their office. One expects there to be a scenic background or location but we just had to chuckle over the choice in this one. Appreantly, he had admitted to Heinz, the couple like sheep so they had a number of them photoshopped into the background, which was a green field. And I have to say it looked like they had used the same sheep over and over, just reversed in some cases.

Another of Heinz's coworkers had explained some of the customs and had shared with him the story of a friend of his who had had to pay the "bride price", which is often based on the salary of the groom. Apparently the father of his fiance had done a calculation of all the money he had spent on his daughter up to that point and presented the groom with the bill. Apparently the friend had great earning potential so the father had no qualms about presenting quite a hefty bill as the Bride price. My understanding is that the groom paid. No word on how the marriage is doing today.

Regarding the actual wedding, the groom and his new bride have apparently followed the traditional process with the elaborate rituals of the tea ceremonies, where they must serve tea to both sets of parents in turn, followed by visitations to many of the relatives on both sides of the family. According to Heinz this coworker has had to take a lot of time off from work to live up to all of these obligations, but that is the norm. Naturally, as these are family oriented ceremonies we were not included but it was very nice of them to extend the invitation to the whole family to attend the main celebration dinner.  We weren't sure what to expect but in many ways the reception was much like any that you might attend in the States, except for the karaoke and the food. The dinner was held in a restaurant to the north of downtown and was quite elaborate, nine courses with the most interesting points naturally being those dishes that arrived at our table with the entire body of the item intact: the 18 inch fish, the duck - placed on the table with the head looking right at me, and less dramatically the prawns. The duck was cut up into pieces but for the fish, everyone simply dug in with their chopsticks. And I have to say that it was actually quite tasty, as long as I could get past the part that my dinner was looking at me. I can hold my own with chopsticks but apparently the waiters felt the need to deliver a knife and fork to the table for me. I'm still not quite sure why my very non-Asian looking husband was not offered the same; perhaps they had watched me juggling Conrad on my lap at one point and Vivi on my lap at another and just decided to have mercy on the poor white woman with the noisy kids.

Throughout the course of the dinner the bride and groom made the rounds of the tables with a bottle of Chivas, making a very boisterous toast with each group.

The toast at the table next to ours.

The bride and a very drunk groom visit our table. Thank goodness I didn't have to drink the Chivas~!

The whitest people at the party

Baby Vivienne in her beautiful silk Chinese dress. And no adventure would be complete without...

the random strangers who wanted their pictures taken with Vivienne. All in all, it was a fun evening.

All I want for Christmas is to go halfway around the world

We’ve been back in KL about a week now and have been plagued by connectivity issues so by the time I get this posted it’s going to seem way out of date, but my computer died again right after my last post and we decided just to take it back to the states and figure out what to do with it there. In the end it made more sense simply to replace it so one of my Christmas presents was a beautiful new laptop! Being the techno-idiot that I am, it is taking me a long time to learn how to maneuver my way around: it has Windows 7. So between that and just the general distractions of being home for the holidays I am now really, really far behind on my blogs! So here I go, trying to catch up…

When we left here in December I was so excited to be heading home, to see Barney, to sleep in my own bed, to see my friends and swim with the team that I wasn’t really even daunted by the prospect of the trip.

6 hours to Seoul were uneventful enough. It’s a beautiful new airport, complete with Subway so we started our assimilation back into American culture with Chicken Bacon Ranch sandwiches and root beer! 14 hours to DC were about what one might expect from a flight of that length, (i.e. miserable) and I will continue to be mystified by how my son seems to get more energetic, the less sleep he has had. How I wish we could trade that quality. One thing I was not prepared for was how completely dehydrated we all got on the flight. My fingertips were cracked and bleeding by the time we made it home and poor Conrad cried about how his lips hurt every time he took a drink of something. Needless to say I will not get on a plane again without an arsenal of hand cream and lip moisturizers!

It’s very interesting to me to see the differences on the same airline between the meals served on flights depending on where they originate. On the flight out of Chicago we had very westernized meals and the infant meal included jars of baby food and bottles of formula. On the flight out of Seoul, the infant meal was hot cereal and fruit juice and each of the 3 meals served to the adults included octopus in some form, mostly on a cold salad. I think the sight of the actual suction cups is the most disturbing for me. The color doesn’t do too much for me either and I am left to wonder: In America they add that red color to those imitation crab legs to make them look like real crab meat; in Asia do they add that purple color into the octopus? I’m not sure which would be more troublesome for me, that the color is real or that the color is fake?

 

We landed in DC to the first real snow storm on the East coast. I kept thinking as I looked at the map, We’re flying close enough to Indiana, can you just open the door and toss us out and save us 5-6 hours of flight time? But we landed in snow and as we waited to board, our layover went from one hour to 2 hours to 3 hours. Finally they announced “Let’s board quickly; small plane, gate check as many items as you can and we’ll get out of here while we’ve got a window for departure.” And this is where the 33 hours of travel and very little sleep caught up with me. “15 minutes to departure” turned into “We’re 6th in line to be de-iced” and then 3 hours on the runway…. And I had gate checked the diaper/food bag. Thank God for small favors that, after bouncing off the walls for the last few hours of the previous flight and in the terminal, Conrad crashed and Vivi, who had boarded with a full belly and a clean diaper, also slept but the longer we sat there I knew it would just be a matter of time before she needed a new diaper and her next bottle. The Attendant was really very sweet about it. She gave me a plastic trash bag and when the time came for a new diaper I tore holes in the corners and stuck Viv’s legs through, lining it with paper towels to try and absorb whatever might need to be absorbed. Just call me MacGuyver. She never did get hungry but in case she did the Attendant had given me some oatmeal that they kept around for the Captain. It was thankfully enough to get us into the Terminal in Indy, and reunited with our bags. If I had not been a. so angry with myself for dropping the ball and putting my poor daughter in that position, and b. so bone-weary tired and desperate to get home and to a bed, I could have seen the humor in it and taken a picture so that we could all get a good laugh about it. And quite honestly I’m still not really laughing about it, wasn’t even sure I could own up to being such a thoughtless traveler in a blog but hey, as the list says “Bad decisions make for good stories”. And maybe our experience will help someone else to remember: no matter how tired you are, no matter how “small” the plane is or how desperate you are to get away quickly, never, ever, EVER check the diaper bag. I mean, come on, what was I THINKING???

But we made it home, 36 hours door to door, and found the house and Barney in better condition than I have kept them these last few years since the kids arrived (maybe Heinz’s Aunt and Uncle would move in with us for good). And Bethli had prepared a wonderful meal for us so I breathed a big sigh: my wish had come true, halfway around the world, I was home for Christmas.

Melacca: Lime Juice and Pig's Organ Porridge

Now that my computer is back and up and running I can try to catch up some on what we've been up to and where we've gone lately. A few weeks ago we loaded up the car and headed down to the Straits to visit the town of Melacca on the recommendation of one of Heinz's coworkers. A UNESCO world heritage site, it's a very interesting city, not very big but very ecclectic as over the centuries it has been subjected to the rule of the Dutch, the British, the Portugese, the Chinese and of course the Malay. (A further idiosyncracy of Malaysian life: many words/names are spelled numerous different ways depending on usage of the English name, the Malaysian name, the phonetic name; it's silly. We tried to count the number of different ways we saw Melacca spelled -Melaka, Malaca, Malaqa- but we lost count.) We didn't have very good weather and as travelling with 2 little ones can really be a challenge, we didn't get to see as much as we might have liked but we did have some interesting experiences. Our hotel, a recommendation from the same coworker, was beautiful and the service was excellent. Our room was really neat: a 2-story suite. The traditional houses of the city are built very narrow and very deep so they use lightwells and courtyards to bring light into the interior parts of the buildings. The courtyards in the hotel were beautifully landscaped with palm trees, plants, beautiful places to sit and lots of little ponds and pots full of koi fish. Conrad loved looking for all the fish. There was a "History Room" in the hotel with pictures and artifacts from both the restoration of the hotel and the history of the city. In it was a section dedicated to the second world war, outlining how Malaysia fell to Japanese troops. I know it was certainly no laughing matter at the time but the way in which the irony of it was presented struck us as toungue in cheek and we found it comical. I included pictures of it in our trip photos:

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0IZtXDVq0ZMXwg

We spent some time walking through the Jonker Street market. It was raining, crowded and very humid so we decided to stop into a nearby coffee house to get a drink. I decided to try something on the menu (there were not many choices for cold drinks) called "Lime juice". Sounds simple enough, right? It came in the bottle and was nice and cold but it was a dark purplish color, which I found strange for something made of lime, and upon reading the label I discovered it was "lime juice with licorice". Now we Tortorelli girls love our licorice, no family gathering is complete without a nice supply of Good and Plenties, but this strange combination was beyond even my licorice-loving abilities. It was very thick and had something like tea leaves floating in it and I couldn't get past the smell. Meanwhile my husband was loving his white coffee. The historic downtown area isn't very big but as it was raining we decided to do some sightseeing by trishaw. It's naturally not an uncommon mode of transport in that part of the country but it is so funny how they trick out their carriages with flowers, flashing lights and flags and music systems. One is gaudier than the next! But it was certainly a fun way to get around and a nice way to quickly see some of the sights on a rainy evening. The next day was dry so we headed out to the Eye of Malaysia so that Conrad could get his "Ferris wheel" ride. He was thrilled. We drove around a bit after that and ended up getting stuck in traffic, caught in a newer part of town with modern shopping malls and hotels. It seemed that everyone was out for shopping on a Sunday. We did find a "food court", the outdoor eateries where the locals set up their stalls. We had to park at the nearby mall and walk over which I thought was ironic. The stalls were set up with menu boards behind them and I panicked initially because the first ones that we saw were all in Chinese characters with pictures but I don't really trust the pictures. Eventually we did find a few with english translations, which included a vendor selling something called "Pigs' Organ Porridge" complete with a picture of a bowl of what looked to me like gruel with pigs' intestines on top. We settled for beef noodle bowls and as we sat there eating it occurred to me that it looked like all the visitors (western-looking people) were here sampling the local fare while all the locals were inside the air-conditioned mall probably eating at KFC and McDonald's!  

We didn't get to see the Fort or the Stadthuys, and we missed out on a few historic churches that I would have liked to have seen but all in all it was a nice trip and I would definitely recommend the city as a destination trip.

In the meantime...

My computer died last week and I think my head might explode as I wait for it to be fixed and come back to me...but the good news is that so far the information is all intact, I haven't lost anything and they think they can fix it. They just need to call us back and tell us when it will be ready. So for the moment I am using Heinz's work laptop and don't have a whole lot of time to do what I want to do. But I do have some pics that I want to share in the meantime.

At the mall near our house, we can rent this car for a half an hour for 10 ringitt, about $2.90. Could a little boy want anything more?

Today we went to the Butterfly Park. At the bottom right of this picture, next to the bananas, you will see what looks like a dead leaf. If you look closely, you will see that the leaf has legs....

It is an awesome park, I highly recommend it if you are ever in town. A few butterflies did land on us, but we never did get good pics of that to share.

Not a fan of my shoes, so I think I will chew them right off.

They did not actually have a specimen of this bug but the picture cracked us up. Thought it might give you all a laugh too.

Sunrise, fog and skyline, from our balcony.

So hopefully I will have my own computer back within the week and then I can get back into my notes and post some of the other blogs that I have outlined. I just hope the silly thing is ready before we head home in 3 weeks! I cannot believe we are that close to our break. Hugs to you all!

Happy Halloween Everyone!!!

love, Vivienne and Conrad

Should I brave a Malaysian Salon?

The other day I said to my husband that if we had moved here on a more permanent basis I would chop off all of my hair. It is just too hot and humid here to deal with it. That being said I have not had my hair cut since before Viv was born. It desperately needs cutting and I have toyed with the idea of going to a salon here and taking a chance. Well, there is one on the ground floor of our building and last night Heinz and I were looking at their sign.

Code 6, is their name and they advertise "We are specialize in:" (followed by the usual list of services, no further grammatical misadventures). At the bottom of the sign it states "with appointment no disappointment". Okay, I can't argue with that but what really caught my eye and really tweaked that "Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore" surreality was this: they have the awards they have won listed on their sign, not so strange, but their awards for 2007 gave me pause. Code Six was the Malaysia Hair Association's Overall Senior Grand Champion, no problem with that although it does make them sound like a show horse at the fair, but they were also the 2007 "Fantasy Open Fire Theme Winner".



I don't even know where to go with that. Although I know you are probably also conjuring images of flaming heads... So I googled it. And it gets better. I found this:

The Malaysian Hairdressing Association offers the following among their Competition Categories:
Fantasy Professional - Animal Kingdom (Open)
Fantasy Hairstyle on a female / male model
The expanse of fire theme will allow contestants to draw imagination conclusions on their idea of the mysterious cosmic fire and translate it into their hairstyling.


"mysterious cosmic fire". Maybe some things just don't translate between languages, even if they can be translated into hairstyles. I think I will wait until I get home to get my hair cut...

So my question to you today is this: does the phrase “gelatinous fish balls” entice you to the table? Yeah, me neither. I see that description on menus and on items in the frozen food section, and even in the fresh fish section and I have to say that it goes on my “list of things I will likely not be trying while I am here,” along with the sugar coated dried cuttlefish that I have seen in the bulk food section of my favorite grocery store. I used to think of myself as a fairly adventurous eater. These days I feel like one of those meat and potato people. (Staci and James read: “meat, bread and cheese”!) I guess I’m a little disappointed in the food that I’ve had. And a little wary – I do see tripe on the menus… One thing is that they use the whole chicken. Which means there are lots and lots of bones; even the little spine-looking tiny ones. I have gotten a dish that appeared to have about 8 ounces of chicken on it, only to have ended up with about 2 ounces, once I picked out all of the bones (using my spoon and fork to tear my food apart; that is the common practice: one is rarely provided with a knife). It calls to mind that old Wendy’s commercial: parts is parts. Last Friday we decided to get something to eat from a vendor who sets up his cart out front of our building every night. Heinz had to make a phone call so I strapped Vivi in the chest pack, put Conrad in the stroller and headed down to check it out by myself. We thought it was a Satay vendor because everything he sells is on skewers. Well, I walked up to it and realized that I did not recognize a single thing on the truck. It was an interesting set-up and if someone else had not come along and given me the opportunity to watch how it’s done, I never would have figured it out. (And the vendor, on his cell phone the entire time, didn't seem inclined to help me out) On each of the 3 sides of the truck/cart is a boiling pot of water and one chooses their items and cooks them one’s self. Basically the guy only takes your money, a fee per skewer. There appeared to be an awful lot of raw fish on sticks, lots of different colored filets (and probably not enough ice for my Western sensibility on a hot night…) things that looked like the “parts” mentioned earlier, what I would have described as chicken innards, and what I would imagine a gelatinous fish ball to be if put on a skewer. I asked the guy for chicken and he showed me a few mini hot dogs on sticks. I felt like a complete rube: a truck piled high with food, probably 50 different choices and all I felt comfortable going home with was these mini hot dogs! Oh well, maybe if I had a local with me who could indoctrinate me, I might be more daring at the end of a long week. But I truly would not have guessed that there could be so much food in one place that I would look at and think “I have never seen that before. At least not in its raw state.” But as a whole I’ve been disappointed by the flavors. There are so many Indian, Thai and Ethiopian dishes that are so flavorful, the combinations of spices so awesome, making me think “I could eat this until I explode, it’s that good”, and I guess I naively hoped that I would find that here. Not yet, but I’ll keep trying. In the meantime, we did find a milk that Conrad will drink (thanks to the Aussie cows). And the choice of chocolate cookies is dizzying….

Fun cultural fact #?: the Malay word for water is literally “air”, although it is pronounced ay-ear. I just find that bizarre. For all of the English words that they use directly and all of the words that they use and spell phonetically, (“wayarless” for wireless, “epal” for apple) could they not have used a less confusing word for such a critical item? Although I do have to constantly be grateful for the scope of English used. It can make my everyday life so much easier.

The rainy season seems to have arrived. It rains for at least an hour every afternoon. The other day the kids and I went to KFC for lunch (it has an outdoor play structure, need I say more?) and it started raining before I could gather us up to head back home. That was not fun! I just need to get better about carrying an umbrella everywhere I go so I don’t get stranded places, I guess.

This weekend we are planning a trip back down onto the coast to visit Melaka, a town on the straits, recommended by one of Heinz’s co-workers. It looks very interesting and I’m pretty excited about it. Weekend before last we went to Port Dickson, another town on the straits and stayed at a resort that has the water chalets on stilts. For those of you who have not yet seen the pics, here is a link if you are interested (FYI there are pictures in addition to the ones on Facebook):

http://share.shutterfly.com/share/received/welcome.sfly?fid=b22ae54aab8782c2&sid=0IZtXDVq0ZMXpA

We had a really nice time, it was a lovely resort, and I had some very interesting exchanges with people regarding the kids. As I have mentioned, people seem really taken with Vivi, especially. We had a cold drink at the restaurant the first afternoon and the maitre d’ came over to talk to me, asking how old she was. I said 6 ½ months and he said “I have a little boy, same age but she’s…umm… a lot bigger than he is.” So are you telling me my kid’s fat? The next morning we were at breakfast and he was there again and she started to fuss while sitting in the stroller so he comes over and says very emphatically “She is tired”. I said, picking her up, “actually I think she’s just bored and wants to see what’s going on around her” so he says “Oh” and reaches over, takes her out of my arms (without even the “May I?” nod I might have expected) and walks around the restaurant with her, trying to hand her off to a few of the waitresses. It was very bizarre. Later we were out by the pool and I changed her diaper on one of the lounge chairs and a few young girls stopped by to ooh and ahh at her and they said “oh, she’s so cute! But she’s so fat!” as they rubbed her tummy. And now you ARE telling me straight out! One says to me, as Vivi is laying there in her diaper and it is about 88 degrees in the shade, “isn’t she cold?” I can imagine the “Are you nuts?” face I must have made. Then her mother, or an older woman that she was with, came over, did the May I nod and when I said alright (how can one not?) she picks Viv up and walks over to her group of people and the women there were all passing her around. They just stood there, talking amongst themselves, handing her to each other. We had ordered lunch and at that point the waiter came over to tell us our table was ready and I had to go over to them and take her back and they kind of looked at me as if to say “You’re interrupting.” It’s very bizarre to me but I felt the need to apologize to them and explain to them we were moving into the restaurant. I guess boundaries and their observance, or non-observance as it may be, is the stuff that cultural clashes are made of. I did have a few creepy exchanges with strangers regarding Conrad when we were fairly newly arrived. One time we were going into the little pharmacy/convenience store downstairs and he and I were sort of tripping over each other as we tried to get in the door with the stroller (anyone in a wheelchair in this country is just screwed: every shop or restaurant entrance is up a step, not to mention the horrible condition of the sidewalks) and this woman who had been sitting at outdoor seating for one of the nearby restaurants swooped in, is the only way I can describe it, and grabbed Conrad’s arms and started pulling on him saying “You come play with me. You come play with me while your Mom shops.” It really rattled Conrad and I think you can imagine what it did to me! I keep telling myself that she probably just thought she was being helpful, she could see that I really had my hands full, but in what culture do strangers actually take children away from their parents like that? It completely creeped me out! But then on the flip side we have the young guy in the elevator who flirts with Viv and says how pretty she is, and the waiter who chucks her cheeks every time he comes to check on us. She has 3 teeth and is cruising with the commando crawl. It’s hard to believe but we are at the halfway point of our first segment here: 5 weeks down, 5 to go. We’re actually feeling pressured to get in all of the travelling and sight seeing we want to do! I wonder if the second segment will seem to go as quickly?

We hope you are all well and that you all have a safe and Happy Halloween. One of the malls near where we live has some festivities and I think I might check them out for the kids. It’s Viv’s first Halloween and she has the cutest shirt from her Grammy; how can we not go?

Now that I’ve finally got the blog set up I hope you will check back with us regularly. I will probably write more often, and not such long letters!

Be well and keep in touch. There is nothing like an e-mail from a friend when you are far away! Hugs and love~ Jackie