(1 October 1998) A Malaysian Journal: Boring excitement [ (C) Copyright 1998, D. Crocker, Brandenburg Consulting ] [ This is a continuing series of notes about our experiences living and ] [ working in Malaysia, during Jackie's 10-month Fulbright 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. /Dave ] Jackie has discovered how to make it rain, here. No, she doesn't wash the car. Why bother, given how messed up it looks? Instead, she just brings out the air pot. We have two containers for drinkable water. We fill them from the double-filter at the kitchen sink and then boil them. One pot is a large electric kettle. Jackie prefers this because it is quicker to use than the air pot, which requires lots of pressing before much water comes out. "Air" is Bahasa for "water", so the real pronunciation is "ahh-ear" but we pronounce it as if English. Anyhow, the pot is of a type popular in tea cultures, since it boils the water and keeps it hot, always ready for the next cup of tea. Unfortunately it is convenient for dispensing one cup and a pain for filling an entire coffee pot in the morning. So the thing has fallen into disfavor with us and Jackie files it away in the utility room when the water supply is plentiful. However she brings it back out when the rains have been absent for too long, in case our water is shut off. She claims that bringing the pot out is working well at causing it to rain again... In other words, the current political crisis is proving to be remote, for us. Daily life remains relatively mundane, although it's clear most people are holding their breath. Still, "remote" means 20 miles away, rather than 10,000, so, I decided that it would not be reasonable to ignore the extraordinary events taking place here. This is a first cut at providing real-time comments about my own experience of those events. Don't expect political commentary; I'm not qualified. These are just observations. I need to stress that we are remaining far from ground zero and are not under the flight path. So we are not in any way involved. Entirely predictably, there are rumors of email being read. In fact we heard a second-hand story of someone sending politically complaining email to some of his friends and having the head of his department give him a warning not to do it again. We do not know whether the department head was sent a copy directly, was contacted by one of the message's other recipients or was contacted by some sort of monitoring service. Having once installed an organization's email-monitoring mechanism -- it's legal in the U.S., folks -- I'm reasonably clear about what is technically easy, difficult, or virtually impossible. For a country this size, it would be enormously difficult to monitor all the email, and I think it highly improbable that this is being done. Rumors notwithstanding, the general approach to doing work here would not lead one to expect anything that thorough... It has been 25 years since we've had to worry about such things, although the possibility of mass-level monitoring here is a little more real (and extensive) than it was in the U.S. during the Viet Nam war. Still I would worry more about such issues in truly repressed societies; Malaysia simply doesn't qualify. More importantly, we aren't interesting to the relevant folks. We have no expertise and no information -- although it's clear that an occasional person we chat with feels that THEY do have inside information. We discount this, since those with the real scoop would not be talking to us. >From a few days' sampling, I think CNN Online is doing a reasonable job, although a neighbor said she thought the LOCAL TV coverage last night was better! I was astonished to see how poor the Washington Post's coverage was. I arrived back in Malaysia, from the U.K., early on Saturday morning. The next night, Jackie gave me a choice between two dance performances. One was "classical" Chinese dancing and the other "classical" Malaysian dancing. I use the quotation marks because we had previously gone to see some classical Kalantanese dancing -- Kalantan is the place Jackie visited last week, on the east coast of the peninsula, up next to Thailand -- and Jackie assured me that it was highly interpreted. It was mostly quite good, but even I suspected it was not "pure". That event was in the same venue now offering the Sunday night Chinese event. It's a wine bar in a hotel near Shah Alam, southwest of KL -- when you ask what wines they have you are told "red" and "white" and no more detail is forthcoming. Sigh. The hotel has the wonderful buffet I have mentioned previously, with the desserts that were good enough to interest Jackie, an unusual accomplishment for a buffet. Anyhow, I was feeling particularly lax in my efforts at getting educated about things Malaysian, so I tended to vote for the other event, to be held on Jalan (road) Raja Laut. It's a major north/south artery on the west side of KL's main area. In fact, it is right near Merdeka (Freedom) square. That was where the major demonstration of two weeks ago was held. Remember that Jackie was somewhat nearby at the time but didn't know anything about it. Well, the Malaysian event's venue is much closer to Merdeka, but things seemed calm so we decided to go there. We drove into KL, got onto an expressway and soon discovered that the exits near Merkeka Square -- and to Jln. Raja Laut -- were blocked off. We saw one small caravan of troops exit to a side street, but otherwise saw no other signs of anything interesting. Traffic and pedestrians all seemed entirely normal. Traffic is always a serious pain in KL and the blockages made it worse, so we had some time to discuss the situation. Jackie said it was likely our event was cancelled as a side-effect of closing the exits. As the possibilities and implications of this sank in, we decided that we really were as seriously lacking in exposure to Chinese performance as we were to Malaysian. So we did the logical equivalent of hanging a U-turn -- the physical reality was a 10-mile circle since going back over the fully-congested road looked impossible and seemed, shall we say, unwise -- and headed for Shah Alam. We've discovered that it IS possible to spend serious money for food in KL, but you have to work at it. That night we had 15 minutes before the performance to get dinner at the hotel and the excellent, expensive buffet seemed entirely inappropriate, so we had some quick sushi. It cost twice as much as the buffet would have. On the other hand, the next night we had a nice meal for 1 USD per person, so both ends of the range I've previously discussed have to be adjusted. The performance of Chinese dance was mostly delightful, though I suspect it, too, benefited from considerable modern interpretation. The most strange and unsatisfying dance was introduced with a commentary about the subject's interesting life. We then watched the back of the dancer as he sat and smoked slowly, occasionally turning for a moment and then returning to his repose. Nice evening, especially since I was coming down with a cold and knew I was looking at a few days of congested misery. (I was right.) However the next day the news on TV, here, reported that 26 people had been arrested on Jln. Raja Laut... It appears that we only barely avoided rather more direct education in Malaysian culture than we wanted. I've searched a range of on-line newspaper reports and they are generally consistent, indicating that 10,000-15,000 people assembled peacefully at Merdeka and were then disbanded by the police. Several articles took special note of the very broad range of groups participating in this event, suggesting a coalition which must be taken quite seriously. As always, Malaysia's lack of history in taking such actions is noted, though it is often reported as being due to swift and strong action taken against it, by the government. I am more struck by comments a couple of months ago about the sense of loyalty Malaysians have. A senior manager we know was having very serious difficulties with his boss, who runs the organization. The boss is extremely charismatic and great for generating "vision" but he has an attention span measured in milliseconds and often winds up undermining good things he initiates. We discussed courses of action with the senior manager, mostly involving confronting his boss or trying to work around him and we were told very politely, but very firmly, that Malaysian culture does not permit such things. Loyalty is too ingrained. So the occurrence of repeated demonstrations by a broad coalition of groups seems very significant, indeed. The TV news report that cited the arrests was prefaced by a reminder of laws against illegal assembly and of the duty of citizens to obey the law. After citing the arrests they then explained that Merdeka Square was to be closed for one week for "repairs" such as resurfacing due to the heavy use it got during the Commonwealth games. They even interviewed the relevant parks official assuring us that there was no reason other than doing repair work. The newspapers, here, are not characterized as censored, although the press is described as "controlled" or "restricted". In one of the books I read earlier, it was stated more as a matter of well understood expectations, with various repercussions if the writers and editors do not do the right thing. I've no idea whether the intensity of the current situation includes more proactive assistance in producing proper reporting. What IS noticeable is that the reporting does tend to mention all the relevant events and statements, including from those not in favor. The relevant statements might be buried late into the story, on a back page and below the fold, but they are there. The same is holding true for TV reporting. The government second-in-command who was removed from his position and is now being charged with personal and official misbehavior was formally charged on Tuesday. The paper, here, reported that he claimed to have been beaten by the police, as did the TV news, last night. They showed the prime minister promising to investigate the claims, but he also noted that the injuries might have been self inflicted. I've seen reports from elsewhere that a physician appointed by the court concluded that the injuries came from a beating. As a meta-point this is encouraging since we often hear comments questioning the possibility of a "fair" trial. The personal misconduct charges against the 'former' official were substantiated by two other officials who recently pleaded guilty to their part in the illegal sexual activities. However yesterday they said the confessions were coerced and that they are now claiming the activities did not occur. We've heard that all the computers -- 113 of them! -- in our university's Modern Languages department were suddenly removed "for maintenance" and that their dean has cautioned against political discussion. However Jackie's office has no such tensions or directives. Our guess is that the dean is taking some personal initiative, however unwisely and counter-productively. Daily activities continue pretty much as usual. The local shopping centers are roughly as active as ever and I don't see any signs of tension. Shop keepers are quite aggressive about trying to solicit your business as we walk by. Traffic is as much fun as always. TV programming seems the same. Jackie has stocked some extra food in case we feel like staying in for awhile, but this sort of action seems surreal and it still does not feel as if things will get that dramatic. d/ =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 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