While we were laying in bed at night, Karen suddenly let out a scream and jumped up yelling, "Ipis!", Out of the corner of my eye, I saw some black thing the size of a silver dollar fly into the air, then more clearly recognized it to be a large brown cockroach which scampered under the bed. Karen had felt something against her ear and realized what it was after she flicked it. (ipis is "cockroach" in Karen's native tongue, Pilipino).

Our Malaysian language skills (or lack of) were not increased by our short visit to Kota Bharu, but we did learn the Malaysian sign language for "no." Malaysians twist their hand back and forth at the wrist as if opening a door. Karen also noticed some similarities and not-so-similarities with Pilipino: anak means "child" in both Malay and Pilipino, lima means "five" in both languages, as does itik (duck), bola (ball), payung or payong (umbrella), and tali (rope); but suso in Malay means "milk", but in Pilipino it means "breast"!

Excerpts from an article in the Malaysia's New Straits Times (November 11, 1995):

KUALA LUMPUR-Anti-social activity and delinquency among youths in the country are the indirect result of rapid industrialization and globalization, Universiti Malaya's (UM) research and development deputy director Associate Professor Dr. Yaakob Harun said today.

"According to studies conducted by UM last year, a total of 9,895 girls aged 21 years and below ran away from home. In 1993, 675 youths were admitted to reform school.

"We also found out that 89 percent of parents used negative words like bodoh [stupid], bangsat [vulgar word for "idiots"], celaka [bad luck], and kurang ajar [bad mannered] on their children."

...

"The family institution has undergone a lot of changes in its structure and organisation due to rapid development in the country.

"Families in urban areas undergo a lot of stress. The entry of women into the workforce, which was previously monopolised by men, is also a contributing factor towards the change in family structure," he said at a national seminar on Family Values Towards the Development of the Country here.

He said according to research conducted in the United States, the relationship between a husband and wife would deteriorate if the focused predominantly on their careers.

"Some couples will feel that they need more freedom and in order to free themselves from the shackles of marriage, they will commit adultery.

"This will give rise to a conflict within the family which in turn will bring about other negative elements like bohsia [women who have free sex], bohjan [men who have free, or casual sex], child abuse and homosexuality."

He said the winds from the West were blowing in this direction.

'Debu-Debu Kasih' poster censored in Kota Baru

Kota Baru-The screening of Debu-Debu Kasih is being subjected to censorship in and outside a cinema here. Its female lead depicted in a poster has been covered with a blank piece of paper.

The latest Malay romance flick, with Sham of the rock group Visa and Aida Aris in the starring roles, is currently showing at the Odeon cinema here.

The female lead, Aida, is featured embracing Sham and clad in a wet, clinging T-shirt in the movie's poster.

The censorship directive, it is believed, came from the Kota Baru Municipal Council.

It is believed that the poster has breached its conditions for approval of advertising billboards which came into force in 1993.

I had a long conversation with a Malaysian woman whose ancestors had immigrated to Malaya four or five generations earlier. She was married to a man who was similarly ethnic Chinese. She felt that relations between ethnic Chinese and Bumiputras was good (Bumiputra is a name for ethnic groups who are considered "sons of the land"- a literal translation of Bumiputra though some argue that this tends to favor ethnic Malays more than other ethnic groups). When I asked her about racial violence in the past against ethnic Chinese, she said that it was really isolated to Kuala Lumpur and not really indicative of Malaysia, and a Bumiputra woman who was listening agreed.

When asked, she said that she was Malaysian, and also said she was certainly Chinese as well. She said she didn't speak Chinese though her parents did and added that her husband and her speak in English to the children at home. I'm not sure why she said she didn't speak a particular Chinese dialect because I heard her speaking in a Chinese dialect of some kind to an ethnic Chinese visitor. I could only conclude that she meant she didn't speak Mandarin, or the official language of China also known as putong hua. Her children were being sent to a school, partially supported by the Malaysian government, where they could learn Chinese. When I asked her if they were thought about Chinese culture she responded with a "no." When I asked her why she was having them learn Chinese, she explained to me that she thought it was good not because they were ethnic Chinese, but to learn a language that was important for business. She had done business in China and felt that it was difficult, and apparently a little embarrassing, conducting business because she couldn't speak Chinese.

In contrast to a less experienced, an unmarried young Chinese shop worker I spoke with in Hong Kong, this Chinese Malaysian woman said that she believed there was no such thing as a "boss" in a marriage. She seemed to contradict this though when she said that she believed Western men marry Asian women because they are more docile than outspoken Western women. She admitted that she was outspoken herself, and when I pressed her to find out who won disagreements on issues both her and her husband felt were important she dodged the question while her employee who was observing quietly laughed. She believed that women and men were clearly different arguing that men were more decisive, physically stronger and consequently more adept at jobs requiring more physical strength. Women, she believed, were more careful with money matters, and in general more detail oriented though less decisive. In striking contrast to the Hong Kong woman's idea of who was boss in a "Chinese" marriage, she said that Chinese - without specifying Malaysian Chinese - find it quite acceptable for a man to have two wives. She made this comment after discussing the permanence of marriage and asking me about adultery in America. I said that I thought divorce in America was entirely too common and that I believed that adultery in America was far less significant than it is in East Asia. One of the countries I pointed out as an example was Japan where I said that I believed it was fairly common for salarymen to have extramarital affairs. She argued that she didn't believe temporary, "paid for" extramarital affairs such as in a Japanese scenario was as much a threat as long term extramarital affairs where a mistress would be secretly set-up in a paid for- residence, or in the Chinese Malaysian case where second wives were considered acceptable (but I'm not sure by whom!).

When taking photos in East Asian countries, and in the Tiger Countries of South Korea and Malaysia in particular, I've noticed that the older men typically wear more traditional attire while the younger men - with a few exceptions in Malaysia - tend to wear the international dress code (Western) for teenage boys: t-shirts with American sport team names or messages in English, and athletic shoes. As they get older they wear collared shirts and sometimes dress shoes. For businessmen, the de rigeur is American-British style business suits with ties though the Philippines seems to be the last hold-out in this area where pineapple-fabric barong tagalogs are worn (and more suitable to Southeast Asian climates). The only exception to this general rule that we observed occurred in Seoul, South Korea where a couple of bridegrooms wore the traditional hanbok for their wedding pictures inside the ever popular sites for these sort of photos, old palace grounds.

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