Some Southeast Asian Junk

Some Interesting Folks

Today at MACEE, there was an orientation for the outgoing Malaysian Fulbrighters who will be leaving for the US shortly.  So TP came to work with me,  and he and the other current American Fulbrighters gave some advice to the Malaysians.  It was pretty fun actually, we got to meet some of the people and talk to them about what they study and where they are going.

Many of the Fulbrighters are part of the "scholars" program, meaning that they already have PhDs and academic careers here and wish to go do some short term research in the States.  Education seems to be the real hot topic here. There is one woman going to Penn who studies sociolinguistics and how English is taught here as opposed to other countries.  We met another woman who works on multicultural education and will be a Stanford this fall.  She says she is struggling to make sense of the system here, and can't stand the division along ethnic lines that she sees in universities in Malaysia. After ranting for a few minutes, she let slip that she got her PhD at Michigan State, and suddenly her ranting made a lot more sense to us.  We also met a couple who both got grants to Ohio State, he for geography and she for mathematics education.  They are bringing their 5 children along, and from the sound of it, the kids' biggest worry is if they will be allowed to eat school lunches when they go to school in the States.  Seems like a funny thing to worry about to us, but I guess they haven't heard that school food is usually not so good!  The mother went on and on (with us agreeing) about how it sucks that politicians, not educators, make up policies for education.  She said she thought it was a bit better in the states, but we had to tell her that it's the same- things might not be "outlawed", but you sure won't get funding if you're not teaching the right types of things.  The funny thing was that as she was leaving, she was going to get a ride from another scholar who works for the Department of Education.  We thought it was amusing that she was buddy-buddy with him after complaining about the higher-ups two minutes before.

We also learned an interesting fact about the Fulbright program.  The first country to set up a Fulbright exchange program with the US was Burma.  We were both surprised at that fact, and that this was the first time we had heard it.  One of the US Embassy staff who has worked closely with MACEE and Fulbrighters he told us- he is actually departing for Burma to become the second-in-command there shortly, and is hoping to restart the now discontinued program there again.  Also, we learned that the money to fund the scholarships originally came from the sale of leftover WWII ships and planes.  The idea was to use the money to promote understanding between nations so that another world war would never happen.  I think that's probably the coolest use of money I've heard about in a long time.

Royalty and Peerages

One of the most confusing parts of doing research on politics in Malaysia is getting titles correct.  It many ways the system parallels that of Britain, but in many ways it is quite different.  It must be said that we do not understand the system of peerages and hereditary rulership in Britain either, so Malaysia is not alone in being confusing.  However, titles are still all the rage here, and a surprising number of people have a title of some sort.

Hereditary titles are confusing enough.  Malaysia is (on paper) a constitutional monarchy, meaning that the head of state is the King.  However, Malaysia is unique in its kingship.  The King of Malaysia--known as the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, or "he who is most highly raised"--is elected from among the 9 hereditary rulers of the Peninsular Malaysian states for a revolving five-year term.  That means that the King is not the king until he dies, just until one of his peers replaces him. 

That brings us to state-level hereditary Rulers.  There are 13 states in Malaysia.  The two Bornean states, Sabah and Sarawak, do not have a hereditary Ruler.  Two of the formerly-British Straits Settlements, Malacca and Penang, also do not have a hereditary Ruler.  In each of these four states, there is a "head of state" for the state known as the Yang di-Pertuan Negeri, or "he who is raised in the state."  (The other former British Strait Settlement is Singapore.  These three settlements were administered differently under the British.)  Seven of the remaining states have a Sultan (Johor, Kedah, Kelantan, Pahang, Perak, Selangor, and Terengganu).  One state has a Raja (Perlis) and the last one has a Yang di-Pertuan Besar (Negri Sembilan).  The nine hereditary Rulers of states are the folks who rotate in and out of the office of King.  Each Ruler has a family, and all of them have titles.  These are too confusing to get into here.

Then there is the Malaysian equivalent of the peerage.  You get a peerage for, ostensibly, contributing to the development of a state or of the country.  Hence, there are two classes of peerage.  One kind you receive from a Ruler, and the other kind that you receive from the King, whoever that may be at the time.  Both men and women can receive a peerage, but if you are a woman who is married to a man who gets a peerage, you get a different name that signifies that you are married to a peer.  What's more, in both the Ruler class and the King class of peerage, there is an upper and a lower level.  You can get many peerages, and many people have a couple Ruler-level peerages or a couple Ruler-level peerages and a King-level peerage.  In your name, you normally only list your highest level peerage, although some people list both their highest King-level and their highest State-level peerage.

OK, from a Ruler, the lowest level is Dato'.  Some Rulers spell this Datuk.  The wife of a Dato' is a Datin, no matter how her husband's name is spelled.  If the Ruler wishes to really honor you, he can make you a Dato' Seri or a Dato' Paduka.  (Again, there are many spellings.)  The wife of a Dato' Seri is Datin Seri.  There is no limit to the number of titles that a Ruler may grant.

From the king, the lower level is Tan Sri.  The wife of a Tan Sri is called Puan or Puan Sri.  The very highest level is Tun, whose wife carries the title Toh Puan.  Adding to the confusion of titles, there is also a federal-level Datuk title, below the level of Tan Sri.  In theory, there are fixed numbers of each of these titles.

The benefit of having a title, besides the fact that a title makes you sound important, is that some people believe they help out of things like parking tickets and airplane overbookings.  Given the sheer number of Dato', these is probably not really true at the lowest level, but a Tan Sri and certainly a Tun would never deign to wait in line anywhere.

A Vain Attempt to Perfect our Roti Canai

Having Betsy here re-acquainted us with the joys of South Indian-style breads here in Malaysia.  We are pretty sure that her single favorite dish from the entire time we were here was roti canai, the stretched, folded, flaky, flat, fried Indian bread whose recipe we posted here.  We tried it a couple times at several different places, and JM and I  agreed that our existing recipe is almost entirely unsatisfactory.  The problem is the thin flakiness.  No matter how thin you roll out those doughs, they will never have the light and airy quality of real roti canai as thrown by the roti canai man.  It's not even close.  And the multiple-layered quality is what makes roti canai so good.  The outside layers are crisp and brown, and the inside layers are soft and chewy.  We can sort of get the crispy brown outside right, but our inside layers are doughy and raw, not soft and chewy.  Soft and chewy != doughy.

So last night we bought a whole bunch of flour and ghee and spent the evening following some recipes we have seen online to make roti canai the authentic way.  Simply put, the theory is to make a dough, stretch it out incredibly thin, gently fold it a couple times (trapping a bit of air between the layers), and then toss is on the griddle.  We ran into all sort of problems, although we had a nice time.  The most immediate problem is that the dough recipe make a dough that doesn't make sense to someone familiar with Western-style breads and pastas.  To us, the dough seems intolerably wet.  The dough recipe that we followed called for 2 lbs. of flour along with 2 cups of water and about a half cup of ghee and two eggs (along with some other things).  If you mix that together, you get paste, not dough.  You can't even knead it because it just sticks to your hands.  When we made our dough, we didn't even use the whole 2 cups of water.  Even a cup and a half seems wrong.

JM tried another dough recipe that we saw.  This one was simple: 10 oz of flour, half a cup of water, half a cup of ghee.  This simply didn't work.  We could not shape it into anything, even after letting it rest for 3 hours.  We just had to throw it away.

We pressed on with my dough, though.  We used about a cup and a half of water, let it sit for half an hour, divided it into 12 balls, and then let it sit for a half hour more.  At this point, we tried to emulate the workings of the roti canai man.  In a very loose way, the roti canai man works sort of like someone tossing a pizza.  In this case, though, he stretches the dough far thinner, and his dough is very sticky rather than smooth and pliable like a good pizza dough.  So instead of tossing his dough, the roti canai man has to sort of spin it around his hand, gently but firmly, until he has a piece of dough about half again as big as a large pizza, but transluscent.  We couldn't get this motion down without tearing the dough.  We also couldn't figure out how to prevent the dough from collapsing back and sticking to itself instead of staying stretched.  We did manage to get it thin enough to see through, but only in the middle of the dough, and only when we gently stretched it out on the counter.  The corners still were far too thick, and this is fatal for roti canai, because it can't cook right if this is the case.  We furthermore learned that with this dough, you only get one chance.  If you toss it and it tears irreparably, you cannot just kneed it again and start over.  The dough will just tear.

So, we made a whole bunch of gimpy roti canai.  About half our dough attempts were unsalvageable.  About a quarter more ended up black on the outside and raw in the middle.  The remainder were a reasonable approximation, but without nearly the correct inner flakiness.  I (TP) have toyed with the idea of simply asking a roti canai man what his recipe is and how he does it.  I am not particularly optimistic, though.  I'm not sure what language I would use to converse with them, to begin with, as many working class Indians speak only limited Malay and English.  They also think that we are idiots at our favorite roti canai stall because we always order it at around 2 in the afternoon, and everybody knows that you eat roti canai before noon or after 4.

We have found some illustrative pictures online.  Here's a picture of roti canai on the griddle, and this picture shows the dough.  (Roti prata is the name for roti canai in Singapore.)  This series shows roti canai being made: Flattening, stretching, spinning.

A Big Shindig

About a week ago, we got an email from the MACEE people inviting all the Fulbrighters to some kind of event.  We really had no idea what this thing was going to be, but we went last night and it turned out to be the official lauch of the Malaysian American Friendship Alumni Association.  It was in a huge ballroom at a fancy hotel, and was quite an event.  After an entire evening, we still really have no idea what this association is for.  It seems to be an alumni association for Fulbrighters, both American and Malaysian, but then there were the other 25 tables of people there, and we have no idea who they were.  Furthermore, the guest of honor was the head of the American University  Alumni Association here in Malaysia, a separate organization which sounds like kind of the same thing to me.

In addition to having lots of speeches and a professionally produced video about the association (which had no information, just pictures, and probably cost an absolute fortune), there were several "cultural" performances.  Now this was a nice idea, but it could not have been more poorly executed.  There were 35 tables, all round, and a stage at one side of the room.  This meant that at least three quarters of the audience had to turn around or crane their necks to see what was happening, not to mention the fact that the lights were in our eyes so we couldn't actually see the stage most of the time, and that there were several tables which were around a corner and had no view of the stage at all.  The real kicker though was that they insisted on serving dinner in the most intrusive way possible while the poor people were performing.  At 8:45, after all the speeches, they finally got started with dinner, and we were all starving.  Sadly, the  Malaysian traditional dancer couldn't compete with the food, and had to continue dancing for the backs of people's heads.  The performers were all good, and aside from the dancer there was an American modern dance troop touring Malaysia, a well know Malaysian jazz singer, and a Navy band from Hawaii that was concluding a tour of Malaysia.  So it was fun, but really hard to concentrate on them.  As a performer myself, it really really makes me (jm in case you hadn't got that by now) mad when events are organized like this. I mean,  really, it's absurd.  Either have a concert, or have dinner, or have background music.  Putting all three together is a disaster. I can't tell you how annoying it is to be performing to an audience who has something else going on at the same time.

The dinner was good, but poor tp wasn't having the best night.  The appetizer had shrimp in it, so he tried to explain to the waiter he needed one without shrimp, and the guy got confused.  So for the next several courses he got the vegetarian dishes even though he kept trying to tell the waiter that he wanted the real chicken instead of the phony stuff.  It was funny, though, when he busted out the Malaysian to talk with the waiter, and everyone else at the table did a double take and suddenly took notice of us.  The complete look of shock on peoples' faces when they hear their language coming out of a Westerner's mouth still never ceases to amuse me.  The last part of the night involved a certificate ceremony for all the current Fulbrighters.  So tp went up on stage like everyone else, and they called everyone's names, and then they got to the end and he was then only one who hadn't been called and was standing up there without a certificate.  Apparently, someone got confused because he has a Fulbright-Hays award, which is different from a regular Fulbright, and so they forgot about him.  He's been promised a certificate by Tuesday to make up for it.  We're waiting with baited breath.

Where's the Outrage? Oh, There It Is

We have been following the stories in the international press about alleged desecrations of the Qur'an by soldiers in charge of detainees at Guantanamo Base.  What a mess.

We have heard snippets of news about large demonstrations in Jakarta against these alleged incidents.  It seems that thousands of students, activists, and other folks have voiced their disapproval of both the alleged Qur'an desecrations as well as the general treatment of detainees.  Fortunately, there does not seem to have been any violence as has happened in other parts of the Islamic world.  Here's to hoping that SBY, who is currently visiting with President Bush in Washington, has a good head on his shoulders and can figure out the right things to say to calm tensions in Jakarta.  The tensions are bad enough that the US Embassy in Jakarta and the consulate in Surabaya have ceased all services except for emergency visa services for Americans living in the country.  There is, as of yet, no word on there being any trouble in Malaysia, although we dare say people aren't thrilled with the allegations.

As for the allegations themselves, we're pretty sure that we can't add anything of substance that someone else already has not already said in the years since Guantanamo Base began housing enemy combatants. We find the current situation ethically repugnant.  This is exactly what any high school civics student could have imagined might happen when we separated government operations from public oversight.  There is not even a hint of institutionalized public accountability for actions at the base.  These allegations may or may not be true (and our assumption is always innocent until proven guilty), but the stupidest thing about the Bush administration's policies here is that we'll never know.  In house investigations can never be truly free of the suspicion of political pressure, and we don't think that any government in the world deserves the benefit of the doubt.  These enemy combatants require the same assurances of proper treatment that prisoners of war require, and that requires independent monitoring and transparency.   Of course, the administration has naively walked right into this issue, and will not be able to extricate itself to any party's satisfaction without complying to a just system of oversight.  This is obviously unlikely.  So complaints will continue, and credibility will suffer.

The administration's lame attempt to rebut the allegations seems not to have helped.  Having a policy that the Qur'an is to be treated with utmost respect is essential, yet it is trivially the case that the existence of a policy does not ensure compliance with its guidelines.  People around the world are smart enough to figure that out, and the administration comes across as either arrogant or deceitful when dissembling like this.

The American criminal justice system is the envy of the world, and that the US has about the best record of treatment of prisoners of war that you can imagine.  That's what makes us better than our enemies, whomever they may be.

Betsy's Last Day

Betsy's last day has been fun.  We took a final trip out for roti chanai at Betsy's request and did some shopping in the morning, and then spent the middle of the day at the Lake Gardens district of KL.  The Lake Gardens area contains a bunch of neat things, including an orchid park, a hibiscus garden, a butterfly garden, the World's Largest Enclosed Outdoor Aviary, and a deer park featuring local species of deer.  We got to see the flowers and deer, and they were pretty cool.  The deer at the park included the tiny kancil, or mouse deer, which is no bigger than a small dog.

We also got a chance to stroll through a memorial to Tun Abdul Razak, the second PM of Malaysia.  Nothing says Southeast Asia like big memorials to political figures which laud their vision, smarts, and political independence from global economic trends.  Razak gets the sobriquet "Father of Development" (Bapa Pembangunan), just like Soeharto has for Indonesia.  The museum, while interesting from an ironic social science standpoint, was good for our purposes for little other than its wonderful air conditioning.

We capped off our day with a nice dinner at the revolving restaurant Seri Angkasa at the top of the Menara KL, the world's fourth tallest tower.  According to one source, the tower is "a member of             the prestigious World Federation of Great Towers," which seems a little like me being part of the prestigious World Federation of People Whose Initials are TP.  The views from the restaurant were pretty amazing, especially those of the Petronas Towers.  It was quite a good meal, and we had a nice time, but it is sad to think that we have to get back to real life starting tomorrow.

Middle Eastern Food Does Us In

Today Betsy had her first chance to step inside a mosque.  We went to the Masjid Negara, the National Mosque, which JM and I visited several months ago.  As we remembered, the mosque itself is pretty huge, and since it was only constructed about 40 years ago, has a very 20th century institutional architectural feel to it.  Betsy likened its interior to a banquet hall.  Betsy also got to dress up like a smurf, draped in blue fabric and sporting a fancy blue tudung, or headscarf.  JM, since she was wearing long sleeves, only had to wear the tudung.  We got some pictures which we will post in a bit.

After the mosque, we headed to the Islamic Museum and marvelled at the pretty ceramics, textiles, weaponry, architecture, and calligraphy on display there.  We stopped for lunch at the Middle Eastern restaurant in the museum, which has a great reputation.  I had eaten there before, but JM had never had the chance.  We proceeded to stuff ourselves silly on an exquisite semi-buffet lunch.  For $11 a person, you get a buffet containing about 20 traditional little dishes (hummus, fava beans with red peppers, Turkish-style eggplant in olive oil, and on and on) as well as a dozen desserts (baklava, kataifi, semolina cake, dates stuffed with almonds, and on and on).  For a break in the middle, they bring you one of 8 dishes that you can order and which they prepare just for you.  JM and I had fish, Betsy had lamb.  Amazing.  Not to mention that the restaurant itself is beautiful with a modern, elegant air; they didn't mind our cargo pants, though.

That lunch was enough to do us in for most of the rest of the day, but not before we browsed the very excellent gift shop.  JM and I picked up a highly-regarded translation and annotation of the Qur'an by Abdullah Yusuf 'Ali.  It's available online here, but we wanted a book version.  Tomorrow is our opportunity to finish up whatever else there is to see in KL before Betsy heads back stateside.  If anyone has any desires for cheap souvenirs or knock-off versions of name-brand consumer goods, now's your chance to put in a request.

Selamat Hari Wesak 2556!

Today is not the actual Wesak holiday, but it is the official Wesak holiday, seeing that Malaysians don't like to miss a day off from work if possible.  Wesak is a Buddhist holiday that celebrates the birth of Gautama Siddhattha, the Buddha.  (Actually, according to most Chinese Malaysians and Chinese Singaporeans we've spoken to lately, people aren't sure if this day celebrates Siddhattha's birth, death, or enlightenment.  If nothing else, this is at least some important day.  We are pretty sure it's his birth.)

Wesak has not been particularly notable today, save for the fact that the mall was really busy because no one was working.  However, lots of things were closed today, including the Islamic Museum, which we had hoped to tour today.  So, we spent today strolling through Chinatown and doing some souvenir shopping.  I (TP) had a chance to really practice my bargaining skills while shopping for a knock-off Coach handbag for Betsy.  Just as game theory teaches us, there's no more powerful tool in a bargainer's arsenal than his ability to convince a seller that he has other options.  After I vehemently refused an inappropriate first offer from a vendor and walked away, Betsy thought that we would never get the handbag.  Just as JM and I predicted, though, our disgust convinced the seller to yell after us, offering a better price, and so the bargaining continued.  We should also note that the ability to bargain in Malay is helpful.

Tonight we went out for grilled fish, lemon chicken, noodles and veggies at Jalan Alor, a neighborhood famous for its Chinese hawker stalls.  JM and I will probably never get over how delicious a whole fresh fish, grilled over coconut husks, tastes.

Mmmm, Mall

Betsy has had a major introduction to the major role that the Mid-Valley Megamall plays in our lives here in KL.  Before beginning, we should reiterate that malls in Southeast Asia do not have the same connotations that malls in the US do.  Malls here don't just have shops and a food court and maybe a movie theater; they have fancy restaurants, grocery stores, gyms, and whatever else you might need.  So, if we want to go to a movie, we head to the mall.  To shop for groceries, we head to the mall.  When we go to the gym (daily), we head to the mall.  If we want to shop at the latest upscale clothing stores, we head to the mall.  If we want a nice meal at a nice restaurant, we head for the mall.  So, today we went to the gym, had a nice lunch, shopped for some clothes, and picked up some food.  Which necessitated a six hour trip to, yes, the mall.

After that we went out to a night market to sample some local favorites.  One of the most popular is the one in district called Bangsar, which we visited tonight.  In many neighborhoods in KL, one or two times a week the roads close on a main street and dozens of traders descend on the area to sell cheap merchandise and local food.  It's the best way to taste local cuisine, and it's always nice and cheap.  We had sate (Betsy's favorite), sweet grilled corn, more popiah, appam balik (crispy coconut pancakes), roti canai, roti telur, and paper dosa.  Quite a feast.

Right now we are watching a local program called Mentor.  It is sort of like American Idol, with an annoying twist.  Instead of judges picking out good singers and then gradually whittling down the pack to one star, in this version they take terrible singers or singing groups and put them through a crash-course of mentoring from a Malaysian pop star.  After that, they compete.  Let's think: what are the types of things that your mentoring can help a student to do?  Certainly you can teach stage presence, confidence, showmanship, voice projection, a bit of dancing, etc.  What you cannot teach in a couple of days, and this show is making this abundantly clear, is how to sing.  That means that we have been watching some very confident "singers" dressed to the nines and with plenty of pizzazz absolutely butchering some Malaysian pop songs.  It's brutal, but good for a laugh.

Back in KL

It turns out that this is a holiday weekend.  That's nice because Monday is a holiday, but it's difficult because that means that everyone is travelling.  That meant that we were unable to find transportation between Singapore and Malacca, so we had to return to KL instead.  It was a nice trip on the train, made more interesting by the presence of two very cute children in front of us that played hide and seek with me and Betsy for most of the trip.

Singapore was nice, but it's good to be back home where things are familiar and prices are lower.  We hope to spend tomorrow walking around and  exercising.  A couple of days sampling local cuisine can really leave you feeling like a bump on a log.  Betsy has had an opportunity to taste a number of local specialties, including fish head curry, char siew (sweet roasted pork ribs), popiah (sort of like spring rolls), seafood noodles featuring octopus and cuttlefish, a Singapore Sling made with fresh juice at a nice restaurant, and the infamous stinky durian.  Let's just say that Betsy was least taken by the durian.