Eri no Machi 恵莉の町

Kuala Lumpur, Dec 2009

26 Mar 2010 Leave a Comment

by CC in Anne of Green Gables, authors/books, family, friends, L.M. Montgomery, malaysia Tags: friends, malaysia, musings

KL is really…just prodigious.  Every time I’m home, I am reminded of how much I love that I’m from here. My father is right though, there exist the frustrations.However, I’d like to think that we are lucky, in that we are uniquely blessed in our heterogeneity. I don’t think that this feeling that I have is born out of naivety. Instead, I think it comes from the reality of the healthy mix I experienced in school and amongst my schoolmates that has helped me shape my view of Malaysia’s harmony and the potential of our society. And I realize, that as I go further along, it’s something I don’t want to compromise in value.

When you grow up as a Malaysian kid, you learn about every single race – the Malays, the Chinese, the Indians, the Indigenous people and the ‘Lain-lain’ (I fall under the last category). I just read Akki’s blog post: A Tale of Two Countries – Malaysia & France and the Meat They Eat and absolutely loved it. It’s true! Just by participating in each other’s lives that are so culturally diverse from one family to another, we are made to learn everything about each other’s race: how we eat, how we pray, how we celebrate, how we talk, how we dress etc…and just like  how Akki puts it …. it’s almost as if  “we’ve become experts at navigating the minefield of cultural dos and don’ts that would leave others baffled, or worse, offended”.

KL time…It’s nice to see everyone again Things haven’t changed too much; I’d like to think that everyone’s grown a little bit wiser, confident-er, closer and better together. The loudmouths of the group still make the stupidest jokes (all I can think of when I look at the two photos above is ‘dumbwaiter’ …lol). It’s really sweet that all of us still get to catch up at the end of each year. A few of us managed a mini getaway to Mulu, Sarawak. But really, the anomaly and most definitely the highlight of the holiday was talking about Jujurian times with  Lulu and Karina Precious times..!!

Always great to be with the family – my father, my mother, my brother and my puppy. I’ve received love and support my whole life that I’m always enticing the opportunity to give it all back in one grand gesture. But I’ve learned over the past few years that that motive is purely selfish. What you feel or say only matters to you. What you intend to do is almost always secondary. What you indeed do to the people you say you love is the only thing that counts. I feel very fortunate that my parents still include my brother and me in their daily lives (even though we are based overseas); and it becomes our pleasure to reciprocate that favour back at them in sharing our lives. Seriously, I don’t know how people/kids lived away from home without video calls, 3G and cheap flights. (I’m still baffled till this day when I think about how my mom managed settling into KL all those years ago! Mind you that’s KL 30 years ago!)

December me time. A lot of freedom of the mind: I watched Sepet (2004)and Gubra (2006) for the first time (both films were by RIP Yasmin Ahmad.)  I also decided to pick Anne of Green Gables off my bookshelf and managed to quickly get through Avonlea too before my KL time ended. I think I haven’t read those since I was 9 or 10, and I forgot how beloved Anne was in my memory. Another forgotten treasure: the title page was signed ‘from Papa’. Hah, I didn’t remember that at all.. I was so befuddled and had to show it to Mama…she just laughed and gave me a knowing look.   Well, I don’t know whether it’s because I’m struggling to hold on to my childhood, or because I needed a retreat from my ridiculously thick bound copy of science urban journals that took up all semester, but whoa, the nostalgia really seeped in…crying on one page, laughing out loud on the next. Hahaha, sheesh!  *slaps forehead*.