A Malaysian Life

          This topic has been on my mind for so long that it was just begging me to be let out. The problem with this topic is that it’s highly sensitive and has been known to cause temper eruptions, long and loud arguments as well as verbal abuse from those who disagrees with what I’m about to say. But hey, if Dina Zaman (author of ‘I Am Muslim’) can talk about it in her column in The Star, then why should I keep quiet?

          A sudden search for The Star’s contact numbers brought me to the online column of Dina Zaman, ‘A Writer’s Life’, who, just a day before my search, wrote an interesting column titled ‘Today’s Men Not Like Our Fathers’ (http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/5/22/focus/21309067&sec=focus). Now, before I continue, I would like to give fair warning to ALL Malay men out there to keep an open mind and think before you start lambasting either me or Dina Zaman. If you can’t handle it, then please, PLEASE, stop reading.

          Ok, so back to the column, Dina Zaman was musing over the question ‘Why are the men of today not like our fathers?’ Many people she knows are either divorced or are in the proceedings of divorce, and she brought up numerous relationship and marriage cases where the wives are crying acts of infidelity, laziness, irresponsibility and abuse by their husbands.

          The first case she brought up was of a girl she met on a flight who asked for her advice. “…her husband now uses condoms with her because he’s been sleeping around, and because he didn’t know where the girls have been and because he loves her, the wife, he’s protecting her. From disease.” And Dina’s first response to that in her column was, “Wow. Is that love or what?”

          Call me stupid or naive but if you love your wife, won’t you NOT sleep around with other women in the first place?

          Another case that I really must bring up from the column is one I have heard soooo many times and one that I myself have been guilty of: staying in an abusive relationship.

          “I see an old friend for tea. She looks like a walking aubergine. Brinjal to you. Her husband beats her up for the heck of it and to discipline her. I ask her, why did she marry him?

          She tells me: “Dina, I’m like you. Our fathers were diplomats. We had non-Malay boyfriends. But at the end of the day, semoden-moden kita ni (no matter how modern we are), we think of God. So I married him because of bangsa dan ugama (race and religion). I married a Malay man because I thought of akhirat (Judgment Day).”

          She weeps and tells me: “Fat lot of good that did me.””

          Alot of people I know are either married or are in the stages of getting married, and I am very much happy for them and wish them loads of joy. Me? Years ago, I would have looked forward to the idea of being married to someone I love, but now, with a combination of personal experiences and stories, I’m scared shitless!! And in my defence, I am not the only one!!! Even Dina herself is having second thoughts of remarrying, saying, “Marriage is for the brave.”

          The thing about this divorce and marriage problem is the classic ‘he says, she says’, or ‘the blame game’. Husband blames wife for negligence, nagging, etc, so he decides to find someone who ‘treats him as he should be treated’. Wife blames husband for ignorance, infidelity, etc, so she too decides to find someone else, or, worse, get a divorce. Thank the heavens if the couple doesn’t have a child or else where will the child stand?

          Couples of today don’t really attempt to work out their problems. Marriage was suppose to be forever. Do you even remember the vow “Till death do us part” (for the Western marriages lah)? Well, neither of you are dead yet. When something goes wrong with the marriage, they always do one of these choices: (a) divorce, or (b) sleep around or marry another. I am ashamed to say that even the men in my family are guilty of those acts and their father (my grandfather) was akin to Dina’s father, who is a successful, practicing Muslim and who is loyal and un-abusive to his family.

          Where have the Malay men of yesteryear disappear to? What has happened to their honour? How far have they strayed from the Malay culture and Islam? Would they ever return?

         To Dina’s musing question ‘Why are they not like our fathers?”, well, I’m sorry to tell you, Dina, that my father and my father’s father are not like your father so perhaps my expectations for Malay men are considerably lower than yours.

          Yes, yes, yes, I hear you. “Don’t always pick on the men. Why don’t you pick on your own gender?” Yes, I do agree that both Malay men and women have changed drastically since our forefathers’ time, but my topic today is on men. Don’t even get me started on the stories of husband-snatchers, one of whom is my very own step-mother.

Whenever the new year comes around, everyone starts making resolutions, e.g. “Next year, I resolve to eat more veggies”, “This new year, I will try to aim for the urinal while peeing” or “For 2***, I am going to smoke less weed and more pot”, and so on and so forth. Well, I, for one, refuse to set any resolutions for 2008 ‘coz it’s a well-known fact that they will only last, what, a week (?) at most. So for 2008, I am going to ‘let go’ of stuff instead of ‘making up’ stuff, with ’stuff’ referring to emotional baggage.

One baggage in particular has been bugging me ever since it reared its ugly head in May 2007 alllllll the way until now, and I seriously need to throw this baggage off for the upcoming new year.

A female ‘friend’ of mine gave me an ultimatum, “Either you choose me or your boyfriend.” Now, in my humble opinion, this is possibly THE most selfish thing you can ask someone but perhaps to you, this is like “So what?” Well, let me explain. Whenever I hear a question like this, it’s like a psychopath asking its victim to choose between losing both eyes or both hands. It’s like a beloved child having to choose between her mom and dad. Or like you being forced to choose to live with either Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees (the hockey mask guy for those who dunno). It’s an unnecessary stressful question, which by right no one should ask you aside from God Himself.

I still get ticked off when I think about it. Both are equally important to me; one is my friend and the other is my boyfriend. Now, if the situation persists on me making a choice, this is my priority; 1st is my family, 2nd comes friends and lastly, my boyfriend. When I am married, my husband will then come second. However, the question/decision will be asked/made by me and me alone.

Back to the question. So what choice did I make? I chose to limit my contact with said ‘friend’. Why? That is how I am when come face to face with this kind of person. I will automatically not choose the person who asked such a question because I now see that my ‘friend’ has placed a limit on me, a bar. A real true friend would not hinder or place obstacles in one’s path. A true blue friend will help and guide you over the many stones and fences in life, or if unable to, will offer a listening ear. In my view, this friend is trying to make me do things I do not want to, and if I don’t do what she wants, she will severe our friendship.

We are no longer children in our early days of pre-school, whereby the most dreaded sentence is “If you friend her, I don’t friend you.” We are adults learning how to negotiate, to adapt, to give and take, bla bla bla. If you don’t like it, move on. Just like the many consumers who may not like MacD’s moving on to Burger King or the many investors who may bypass Malaysia and go for Singapore instead. It’s no big deal, it’s life.

So ever since my ‘friend’ discovered that I still retain my relationship with my boyfriend, she has no longer contacted me in any way. And surprisingly, I find it to be a relief, like a huge burden is off my shoulder. She has moved on and so will I… once this stupid haunting question is out of my brain, hopefully in time for New Year. Wooohooo!!!!

It all began like every typical story.

Girl meets boy. Boy is single(?). Girl likes boy and think he’s nice. Then God knows why, girl tries to matchmake boy with single cousin. But then girl ends up ‘liking’ boy. Unfortunately, girl is attached. And sadly, boy is not interested. Sigh.

I never had this problem before but I notice that it’s getting a little bit too frequent for my taste, yehhh!!! (>o<) Maybe I need a new brain or a less emotional heart. (^v^) Now instead of trying to find a way to intro him to my cousin, I end up trying to avoid him. Shrug, go figure.

There is this one sentence that I read (from a manga, of all things) that stuck in my head for quite some time, and now, I finally understand what it means. The sentence, or more like the scene, goes, “She instinctively felt the attention she was getting from the perm-girl without actually being conscious of it herself.”

You know how sometimes you feel yourself attracted to a person, even though you’ve known them for some time and never had an inkling of getting together or closer to them? Well, in this manga ‘Antique Bakery’, the character was commenting on how this girl was attracted to a particular ‘outcast’ girl in school. But inactuality, it was the outcast who had her eye on the girl all this time, making the girl _subliminally focused_ on the outcast. Intuition and instinct was what made the girl increasingly aware of the outcast’s existence, even though they’ve passed by the hall thousands of times and she never thought twice about the outcast.

Well, now, I finally managed to put a finger to that particular feeling that’s been bugging me these past months. For some unknown reason to me, I became attracted to and started noticing more of this person, even though I’ve talked to and hung out with this person many, many, many times. It never cross my mind on having whatever relationship with this one; whether this person was there or not, it didn’t use to matter to me.

But now it does.

And the reason behind this attraction? This person related some stuff to me, which answered alot of questions that were bothering me all this while, and also shed some light on this sudden, out-of-the-blue attraction. All this time, this person was focusing on me, making me instinctively turn to the given attention. Well, at least now I know what’s with all the gazes and stares, and weird comments.

Oh, what if it was me giving this person attention which makes this one focused on me, and I’m being all ‘perasan’ thinking this person likes me when it’s the other way around? I have no bloody clue and you have to figure it out yourself, ahahahha!!

Kubala khan tugi thiuer nguuung ghoss ghurr wook ghapoi jund caakl premoytenk huqtooobghi froocjlop mnyu hur ie y ———————–

Understand anything written up there?

When my collegemates and I went off to Australia, we met up with a girl from Mauritius (hope I spelt that right). Unlike us, she didn’t come with a batch of friends and classmates so she was pretty much alone. We hung out quite a lot. Language wasn’t a barrier as we all speak English. Of course, being Malaysians, we always have the tendency of mixing our English with bits of Malay, which is fine occassionally.

However, there was a guy who kept talking in pure Malay and at times, my dear friends forgot that our Mauritian friend didn’t understand and couldn’t follow our conversations. My friend and I had to keep translating for her. Translating for her is not a problem, but ever wonder how she feels? Alone among people she thought were friends, alone because some of us never thought about the one solitary figure in the group who doesn’t understand our language.

Remember those words at the beginning? That’s what I hear most of the time; words I don’t understand which eventually lead to a buzzing sound in my ears until I tune them out. Loneliness in a group, that’s how I feel most of the time.

With some of my friends, although we are of different races, we tend to favour the English Language. I remember the collegemates I hung out with; we were a mix group from Indonesia, Phillipines, and of course, Malaysia. Majority of us speak Chinese and yet we still converse in English to make sure all of us understand. Even with some of my ex-colleagues, majority Indians or Malays, we still spoke English.

But there are some who, perhaps, don’t remember that I don’t understand their language. I remember once, I was the only Malay in a group of friends. I regret to say that throughout the entire time, I didn’t understand a single word that came out from their mouths. I don’t understand the conversation, I don’t understand the game they were playing, nothing. I was basically an outcast. Sad to say, that wasn’t the first time nor was it the last time.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get any support from him. He didn’t understand and till today, he still doesn’t understand how I feel. What hurts the most is when he said, “You’re just one person”. I have friends who have partners of a different race and I sometimes wonder if they have the same language barrier like me when they hang out with their partner’s friends.

I guess unless you’ve been in the same shoes, you wouldn’t understand. Actually, you most probably won’t even realize that you are speaking a language someone right in front of you don’t understand.

I envy my brother. Although he is often the only Malay among his group of friends, they respect him enough to speak in a common language. Same with my mom. Her friends respect her enough to ensure that when they’re together, they eat at halal places or refrain from eating non-halal food. The same amount of respect is also given to vegetarians, Buddhists who don’t eat beef, and so on and so forth.

Does that mean I am not deserving enough of respect from my friends? At times, it feels as though I am only a burden to them, being the odd one out. Just a nuisance. This has been going on for so long that my head and heart aches everytime I go out, and the problem is…I can’t even tell him. When I did tell him, he denies it and is just unable to understand. Maybe my family is right, maybe this is just not meant to be.

It is always nice to re-establish friendships that you once thought were lost. Of course, it’s nice to re-establish them if the friendships weren’t shattered by backstabbing, rumours, jealousy, and the like. I guess I should be thankful, no, scratch that, I am thankful that I had the chance to become reacquainted with some friends that I thought I would not see again.

Seriously, I thought I was doomed to be ‘friendless’ for the rest of my life. It doesn’t help your self-esteem after going through two boycotts and one best-friend-turned-backstabber (okay, I might be exaggerating on the backstabbing part but I don’t know what other words to use). You tend to think that there’s something seriously wrong with you when so many people just reject your presence from their life. But it’s nice to know that there are still some people out there, aside from my family, who sincerely wants my company.

I admit sometimes I feel scared, cautious actually, of those who re-established their friendships with me. I tend to think, ‘What do they want from me now?’ or ‘What are they planning?’ A defense mechanism to avoid getting hurt again, I guess. It takes a while to acknowledge and accept the fact that they want to be friends with me without any strings attached. I sound like an old scrooge, ahahhahah!!!

But I am happy. Just one phone call from an old friend was enough to keep me in a happy mood throughout the night. Just a short night out with an old friend was enough to remind me what I had been missing. Just an SMS from an old friend was enough to tell me that I do have friends who accept me as I am.