(24 September 1998) A Malaysian Journal: Jackie / vol. 06 Home & Wet-market Merlihat Malaysia (Observing Malaysia) [ (C) Copyright 1998, J. Snell, San Jose State University & Universiti ] [Putra Malaysia ] [ This is a continuing series of notes about our experiences living and ] [ working in Malaysia, during Jackie's 10-month Fullbright Fellowship to ] [ the Universiti Putra Malaysia, just outside Kuala Lumpur. ] [ Copies may be freely distributed, but must retain this preamble. ] [ Anyone wishing to be added to the distribution list, or removed from ] [ it, should send me a note. /Jackie ] Dear Friends, Well, I owe you a more personal note after that last lecture on batik. Maybe I have been a professor too long. Some of you have sent questions about the more personal side, e.g. what is our apartment like and our neighbors, what is my work. I am enjoying our apartment quite a bit now, but it took us some time to make it homey. The rooms have a nice open feel, now that we have put "aircon" in the living room and don't stay cooped up in the bedrooms, which were air-conditioned when we arrived. I only realized the irony of that statement after I wrote it. Now that we have closed-up the whole house it feels quite open. With all the windows and 1 whole wall opened up, it felt stuffy. Well, remember it is 95 degrees and 95% humidity. For those of you who, understandably, skipped vol. 5, I will repeat that Malaysians like to use every color. Our whole apartment has white walls (thank god), with pink woodwork. I guess they think foreigners have lots of stuff, 'cause the bottom half of all outside walls is cabinets - painted pink. The top half is window. The windows have matching curtains all around, living & bedrooms, which are kind of a chevron design of pink, brown, blue, and yellow. In the living room we have a large and a small RED naugahyde couch and matching easy-chair. Not burgundy, not dark, but stop-light, or even red-orange red. In the middle of those are a BRIGHT blue rug with a coffee table that has a marbled green/black/gold finish. The only original lighting was fluorescent in the ceiling. About a month after arriving I discovered there is an IKEA across town. I have covered all the red naugahyde with off white sheets and rugs, and added some table and floor lamps. The dining room is open to the living room, has wooden table and chairs with upholstered every-color seats, neither objectionable nor interesting. Both rooms are pleasant to sit in now. I also got 2 large marble pastry boards at IKEA for the kitchen counter. We still don't cook, but we also don't worry, anymore, about cleaning the grout in the kitchen tile, which never seems to LOOK clean, no matter what you do. Dave more than me, feels like we're "camping out at home". There are some aspects of camping for sure. We don't have water to the bathroom sink. We are no longer having a water shortage, but I complained about the toilet leaking, so they just turned the water to the toilet off. We have a big red plastic barrel of water that we keep in the bathroom. We have 2 small plastic pails that we use to fill the (western-style) toilet to flush, and I keep one on the side of the sink for hand-washing. We do have shower water, even hot water. We also have water (everyday now, knock on wood ) in the kitchen. Dave found us a fancy double filter, and we have two large tea kettles for boiling the water. I wash dishes in it without boiling though. We usually, but not always, ask for our drinks w/o ice in restaurants, mainly because we were warned to, and not because it seems dangerous. If I'm with locals, I won't make a fuss about it, no matter what it is (at least so far!). I have even eaten the shaved ice a few times, with locals, and it is very tempting in this weather, but we have seen some pretty rusty ice-shavers. One guy was chopping ice on a very dirty sidewalk, I don't want to think about where the ice went after it was chopped, but it has made us a little more consistent in remembering to ask for no ice "tak ais". Water is a recurring theme in Malaysia. I've hardly ever seen a toilet that doesn't leak when you flush it, maybe only in 5 star hotels. Of course, with water running all over the floor, they don't flush very well. When I was in Indonesia w/ my mother she said her drill was "open the (stall) door, flush, run." Of course, Malays don't use toilet paper (except to dry their hands after washing them). They use squat toilets, and there is a short hose beside each toilet for hosing yourself down. The women's restroom in our office has 3 squat-stalls, and one western-style - also with a hose. I'm almost the only person who uses the western one, but after someone else uses it there is water everywhere. I don't understand how their clothes aren't wet all the time. Many toilet seats in this country are broken, because the Malays stand on them to use a western toilet like a local one. The Malay custom for bathing is to have a large tank of water from which you dip water with a hand pail and pour over yourself. We have a drain in the floor of both the bathroom and the kitchen. Locals expect water to be everywhere, and think foreigners are nuts trying to keep the floor dry. Muslims must ritually wash each part of their body in a certain order before each prayer. Even during the drought we had torrential downpours, only sometimes went a week without rain. While I was in Singapore I saw an employee hand watering the plants in front of an expensive office building, even though we had one of their torrential downpours just that morning! People who are used to monsoons have a different relationship to water than we desert-dwellers in CA. Noraina, a local friend, has offered to teach me to cook some of the interesting things in the local wet-market, so cooking will become interesting, eventually. The wet market is interesting to look at, but I'm pretty intimidated about cooking from there. Locals are impressed that we are as knowledgeable about Chinese and Indian foods as we are, but boy is there a lot of stuff in the markets that I don't have a clue what to do with! Mostly these are found in the pasar malam - night market - but I will try to catch it as it is just opening so I can get some photos in the daylight to bring back. The piles of chilies are the most beautiful, but there are many unidentifiable green-leafy things, some are herbs, some are vegetables. Noraina identified some of them for me on a previous trip: one is "lahksa herb" (spicy traditional soup), one is a fern that looks a bit like the one that Canadians serve as a sautéed vegie, but Noraina said "NO NO, slice it up for a salad". They have many things that are either beans or nuts, I can't tell, but I must find out how they are used. There is one famous bean called "pantai" (pant-eye') that few foreigners like. It is large, and comes in a VERY large pod, about 3 feet long, that spirals around. Often the pods hang on a rack to sell. Stephannie, who was taken on the durian weekend and ate durian for breakfast lunch and dinner, draws the line at pantai. I found some already shelled in the supermarket, all wrapped in saran wrap, so I thought I should at least try it. It has a very pungent smell. I never did cook it, I never even opened it. Just the smell it gave the whole refrigerator -through the saran wrap- was an experience. When I was in a wet-market in Thailand, many years ago, there were thick waxy leaves that I thought "how could you eat that?" Somehow I managed to get the explanation that you are not supposed to, they are offerings to the monks. So now I am a little cautious in assuming that items in the wet market are even edible. Of course there are some things familiar to us - tomatoes, carrots, green bell peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, zucchini. They even have pumpkins, but they are neither as round nor as orange as ours. They sell 3 kinds of limes. One of them is used for "lime juice" (lime-aide) available at all restaurants. We order it often, but of course, it is probably mixed with plain tap water. In the fancier restaurants it is served straight, no sugar, with a pitcher of simple-syrup beside it so you sweeten it to your own taste. Other places you get something different every time, sometimes stronger or weaker, sweet or sour. The market also sells several kinds of ginger - I made soup with "blue ginger" once, the ginger wasn't blue, I suspect the blue refers to the flower - and always fresh turmeric root. There are no pig's heads hanging in the market, which I found the most surprising thing in Mexico, because of course, Muslims don't eat pork. I haven't been to the Chinese market yet. There are large hunks of beef hanging - I don't know where a piece of meat that big could be hiding in a boney steer. There is no respect for meat around here. As Dave mentioned, they cook it to inedible stages (Vinegar-lah). The spicing is always interesting, but often, at the cafeteria, I can't chew it at all, I can't even separate a bite-size piece. There is one dish that they stew the meat first and then they fry it. Fish is cheaper than either beef or chicken, and there is lots of it. Of course, it is cooked until it is resembles dried fish. There are a couple of rows of fish-sellers at the wet market, and the fish looks remarkably fresh, especially considering no refrigeration. Some of the fish is live. There are little crabs that look temptingly like Chesapeake Bay blue crabs, I'll definitely have to try, lots of different sized shrimp and prawns, which they use pounded in chili sauce as well as a dish, and "sotong" - squid - is ubiquitous. -------------------- Jackie Snell June 1998 - March 1999: jaq@admin.upm.edu.my University Business Centre O: +60(3)948-5649 4th Floor Admin. Bldg. F: +60(3)943-2513 Universiti Putra Malaysia 43400 Serdang, Selangor H: +60(3)945-7239 Malaysia Dave's hand-phone: +60(19)329-9445 after April 1, 1999: snell_j@cob.sjsu.edu Marketing Dept., San Jose State University +1 408 924 3484 One Washington Square fax: +1 408 924 3445 San Jose, CA 95192-0069 USA www.cob.sjsu.edu/facstaff/snell_j =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Dave Crocker Tel: +1(408)246 8253 675 Spruce Drive Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA Brandenburg Consulting Tel: +60(19)3299 445 Post Office Box 296, U.P.M. Fax: +1(408)246 8253 Serdang, Selangor 43400 MALAYSIA