(6 December 1998) A Malaysian Journal: Jackie / vol. 10: MBA Class and Bahasa Malaysia [ (C) Copyright 1998, D. Crocker, Brandenburg Consulting ] [ A series of notes on living and working in Malaysia, during Jackie's ] [ Fulbright Fellowship to Universiti Putra Malaysia, near Kuala Lumpur. ] [ Copies may be freely distributed, but must retain this preamble. ] [ To (un)subscribe, send me a note. /Dave ] Merlihat Malaysia (Observing Malaysia) vol. 10: MBA Class and Bahasa Malaysia Dear Friends, I had a fun class on Friday evening. I woke up yesterday writing a Merlihat in my head, but had to be off to a half-day conference on Intellectual Property at a nearby university, so didn't get to do it while it was fresh. Since Dave and I got a private tutor for Bahasa, when I sit down to do something like this, I usually feel like I should be studying Bahasa. I am really feeling my age in studying a language. It just doesn't stick very well! I am getting so I can occasionally read written sentences, but my ear just can't hear it. Bahasa MY is like French in that they leave off a lot of sounds in spoken language, it isn't consistent like French though. It is exactly like French in that the last consonant usually is left off, in Bahasa it is a glottal stop. Beyond that, though, the most frequent words just get a syllable dropped, and you never see it written that way. "Tak ni" is written tidak ini (not this). Everyone always exclaims "Bahasa is easy! There are no tenses." It is true that they don't have verb tenses like we have, but they have root words that take both suffixes and prefixes. I'm at the point now where I can often pick out the root in the middle of the word, but not always. A prefix sometimes supplants the first letter, so knowing the prefixes doesn't always take you directly to the word in the dictionary. Nouns can be verbified and verbs can be nounified. Those all have rules that can be learned, except for which prefixes to use when verbifying. Nobody can tell us when to use "me(x)" and its variations vs. "ber(x)", and some words use both, with different meanings! Our first teacher gave us a couple of explanations, none of which stood up under questioning. Our current tutor says it's just best to learn them. Back to marketing class. I am assigned to the MSMS (Malaysian School of Management Science) which is UPM's program designed for working professionals to get an MBA. They also have an MBA program during the day for full time students. Since the financial downturn, most of the students that had been going school abroad have returned home to finish school. UPM has more than tripled its enrollment. Classes are scheduled 7 days/wk, from morning through evening. The MSMS program, only, is scheduled on trimesters, with 3 equal terms per year, and shorter breaks. So my teaching terms bear no relation to other Fulbrighter schedules, or my colleagues in the Business Centre. This is a bit disappointing, as the other MY classes have long breaks and the other Fulbrighters have made lots of trips around the country during their breaks. I will get my chance, though, because I won't be teaching a course next term, it goes longer than my fellowship. This semester I have Friday class from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Friday is not the weekend, because we work half days on Sat. It is a light day, though, because, though Muslims must pray 5 times/day everyday, Friday afternoon is the only time the men have to go the mosque to pray. The women go shopping during this time, I think we have the better deal. Indians and Chinese take long lunches and these restaurants are all busy. Last trimester I was teaching marketing research, which is the easiest course for me to teach. This trimester they assigned me a basic marketing course, which I have never taught before, thus I have to spend more time preparing lectures. (For my colleagues at COB: I'm using Kotler "Marketing Mgmt: An Asian Perspective"). I figured I'd kill several birds w/one stone by giving projects from my work at the University Business Centre. They had to sign a nondisclosure agreement with their researcher before I would let them take the midterm. MBA's usually get excited about doing something "real"; it gives several situations for class discussion, which is, I think, more educational than the necessarily very general concepts in the text; and if I can get some good class discussion going I don't have to spend as much time preparing lecture. In addition, the researchers don't have a clue about doing business, and in the best of all worlds, having this extra man-power (human-power? People-power sounds like something political) is educational for the researcher whose project the students are working on, and their term papers will be good groundwork for UBC. A few of the students had a hard time grasping the idea that it is ok, and they can still get an A on their paper, even if the research can't be commercialized. They are screening new product ideas for the Universiti. Of course, "real" projects have many drawbacks: some of the projects are much harder than others, either inherently, or because the researcher is harder to work with. Also, Asian students, even in San Jose, have a reputation for being less comfortable with class discussion. To a large extent they have turned it into more formal presentations than I had in mind. I have 2 Malay young women that in particular I couldn't get to talk. They explained that they don't feel confident of their English, so I gave them a little pep talk during the break last week. Basically I told them they really should practice on their fellow students because in business they will have to use English, at least some of the time, and that they could come to my office I'd help them. This week, one gave a highly prepared small talk on her project, and I was quite surprised at how well she did with English. Her voice was a little soft (a problem I still experience to a small degree), but the only problem I had understanding her was she consistently said "forest" instead of "foreign". The other student even loosened up, with a little teasing from her classmates, and didn't just read. I have to be forgiving, as my Bahasa at this stage is almost entirely a matter of similar sounding, but wrong words. One day a few weeks ago I had the poor waiter at an Indian restaurant quite concerned for several minutes as I kept pointing at the food and saying "angry" instead of "red" (simple substitution of an a for an e). I guess he thought I was unhappy with the food until (luckily I had a dictionary w/me) I looked it up and managed to get some more red chutney. I have to be very careful not to substitute melawat (visit) by meliwat (sodomy). The chapter/lecture topic Fri was Marketing Strategy, or Marketing as warfare, as I call it (Sun Tsu, etc.) . One of the students works for Colgate Palmolive -MY. Before he would tell his stories he asked whether anybody works for Proctor & Gamble or Unilever and made us promise his info wouldn't leave the room. I'm pretty confident that most of the info is actually publicly available - but the following is slightly edited. He said they don't use any of the textbook strategies - they have one strategy: kill the competition. One of the examples I used in class was Cocorex. I had a bottle of Cocorex bleach sitting in my bathroom here for about 3 months before I noticed it wasn't Clorox. The label looks identical. I have used copyright or trademark infringements in Asia a couple of times to get laughs in class. Ismail (not his real name) explained that C-P owns both Cocorex and Clorox in MY. They bought Cocorex first, but no matter how hard they tried they couldn't budge Clorox's 80% mkt. share, so they bought Clorox. Another student asked whether they don't also own Zaitun. It is the brand favored by Malays as being halal (kosher). He explained that they don't actually own it, but they have a working relationship whereby the products are manufactured by C - P. I couldn't possible have given examples myself that explained brand equity to my students as dramatically as this. It was wonderful. Before coming to MY I knew that Muslims had rules similar to Jewish kosher rules, but I had no idea how strict. As I explained in my last newsletter, alcohol cannot be applied even externally. They not only cannot eat pork, but are very concerned not to come in contact with pork fat. They will eat at Chinese seafood restaurants, but not ordinary Chinese restaurants because of the fear that pork fat will be used to cook something, or even that they don't want the same pans used to cook their food that have been used for pork. There is a restaurant here named the "No Pork Chinese Restaurant". One lecturer confessed to me that she was making a trip the States, but she was very worried that her hosts wouldn't understand her dietary restrictions and even if she ordered a "safe" food it might be cooked with pork fat. I gave her some reassurances and some tips about what to tell her hosts. A colleague at the Business Centre explained to me that the Brits used this to keep the Muslims in India from rebelling by putting pig fat on the bullets. I think these kinds of stories that I hear are often not strictly true, but are very culturally revealing. Cosmetics and soaps must be made from vegetable oil, because they are afraid any animal fat might be contaminated with pig fat, or the animal not slaughtered in the halal manner. Lux is the biggest selling soap here, but in general the European/American brands have a difficult time being accepted by the more traditional groups. I'm sure the idea that Colgate is manufacturing Zaitun was quite discomfiting to some of my students. Though class only starts at 6:30, I must give the break at 7:30 because that is prayer time. The program provides tea and a little food (free) to the students during break. Usually I am involved discussing whatever with students in the class room, but one student in particular makes a point of inviting me to join them in makan (food) every once in awhile. This week, uncharacteristically I asked what they had and he said "donuts - PA nana". I asked him to repeat it and another student said "banana" and I said "Oh, banana". He thought this was very funny and kept saying "banaaaana" over and over. Soon I will do a Merlihat on Manglish. At first I had trouble understanding the local English, but now boleh (can), mostly. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Jackie Snell 6/ 98 - 3/ 99: jaq@admin.upm.edu.my University Business Centre Off: +60(3)9485-649 4th Floor Admin. Bldg. Fax: +60(3)9433-513 Universiti Putra Malaysia Mobile: +60(19)9457-239 43400 Serdang, Selangor MALAYSIA Dave's Mobile: +60(19)3299-445 Marketing Department After 3/99: snell_j@cob.sjsu.edu San Jose State University Off: +1(408)924 3484 One Washington Square Fax: +1(408)924 3445 San Jose, CA 95192-0069 USA =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Dave Crocker Tel: +60 (19) 3299 445 Post Office Box 296, U.P.M. Serdang, Selangor 43400 MALAYSIA Brandenburg Consulting Tel: +1 (408) 246 8253 Fax: +1(408)273 6464 675 Spruce Dr., Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA