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Eight Pictures

Friday, July 21st, 2006

Click on the images to see them bigger:

I did no editing at all to this, the sky looked like that. That’s why I took the picture.
Georgetown on Penang Island, Malaysia

Again, I did no editing at all to this picture. My hand, foot and juggle-ball looked like that. That’s why I took the picture. I have a whole series of these, if you would like to see them all in a future post, please vote in the comments. Vote yes or no, after a couple of weeks I will tally the votes, then either post them or not. But if I am taking the teaching course, I may have to wait until that is over, because it is supposed to be very intensive.
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The Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. When you go up, they only let you go to the bridge inbetween the towers, which is still quite high. I never made it up, however, because I never woke up early enough. It is free, but you must get there early as they only allow a finite number of folks up.
The second tallest buildings in the world, depending on who you ask.

A corner in Kota Bharu, Malaysia. Kota Bharu is in the extreem northeast corner of Peninsular Malaysia. Pretty much every single female on the east coast wears some kind of covering like that, but I saw none wearing the full covering, which includes the face.
Twoallbeefpattiesspecialsaucelettucecheesepicklesonionsonasesameseedbun

June (left) and her friend Erika. Erika is not a friend from Thailand. June met her at college in Sarasota, Florida USA. She is from Japan, but lives in NYC. She visited June (and another friend from Japan who lives in Bangkok) for a week, and is now in Tokyo with her family before she starts her new life and career as an Architect in NYC.
June and Erika

June (foreground) and Erika praying to Buddha at the temple at the Grand Palace in Bangkok.
Praying to Buddha

This is an actual snake oil salesman in action in Kota Bharu, Malaysia. Unlike the first two pictures, I did a lot of editing on this one, but you probably figured that out. The orange blob on the table is the jars of the snake oil he was peddling, next to them are some kind of sugar pills he was also pushing. People bought this stuff too. P.T. Barnum was right.
There's a sucker born every minute

I took this one at Ao Nang, in Krabi, Thailand. I wanted to include it in the pictures I posted from there. Remember the one with the monkeys? But I had it on DPChallnge in the framing challege, and it was in the voting stage at the time, so I couldn’t include it. Here it is now.
I saw this exact same picture on one of the sites for a TESL couse in Krabi, but this one is mine.

I wish I took more pictures in Malaysia, because it was a beautiful country, but the electric outlets are different there so I couldn’t charge my camera battery. I especially wish I took more pictures at Pulau Perhentian (Perhentian Island). I took a few, but nothing any good. It was a magnificent island in the northeast corner of peninsular Malaysia. The water was the most clear I have ever seen in my life. But on my first full day on the island, I went exploring. The combination of the sun and the crystal clear water (reflecting the sun) provided a double dose of sun to my body. I wore sunblock and did not get burned, but the next day I had a fever of 101. Too much sun. The next day I relaxed and recovered, then on the following day I left. So I didn’t get a chance to go snorkling, and I was even considering getting a scuba license. It would have been expensive, but it would have been cool. It’s possible I could go back and try again.

Don’t forget to vote on the hand foot juggle-ball photos.

Sacred Flesh

Wednesday, July 19th, 2006

Everybody sing along with me:

It’s a small world after all. It’s a small world after all. It’s a small world after all. It’s a small world after all.

There has been occassion in my life to speak, and not sing, those words (although after I speak them I usually end up singing the tune as well). For instance, when I was working in Florida, one of my customers happened to be the husband of my elementary school art teacher in New Jersey. And he was also the father of a colleague of mine in the same New Jersey town. “Wow what a small world,” I’d said. Then later the whole store went into song and dance. Well, today it has dawned on me that the world is not small at all. It’s huge!

I first started to realize that there was something amiss about this popular song about 9 months ago while sitting in the jet airplane as it traversed this small world at speeds over 500 MPH. Over 20 hours later, I was finally on the other side of the world. Do the math (I’ve never liked that cliche, “do the math,” and this is the first time I’ve ever used it. But it works here, and I hope I never use it again). Also, while high above the earth’s surface, I could see the miles and miles of shear vastness of this marble. Most of it barren nothingness, with seemingly not one cell of a living organism for miles.

But what really convinced me that this is not a small world, is that in the 9 months I’ve been here, I have not bumbed into, or seen from a distance, one person I know (June doesn’t count). I haven’t seen anyone who knows someone I know, or that even looks like anyone I know. I haven’t met anyone from within 300 miles of where I lived in Florida. I’ve met at least one person from NY, which is close to NJ, however. This may have less to do with the world being huge and more to do with me knowing very few people. But I still have a few months to go to bump into that familiar stranger, and vindicate the author of the song.

Anyway, Malaysia, being a muslim country, affords a visitor from America, and most other countries, an opportunity to see something that he has probably never seen before, except on TV, print media, or the internet: Muslim women wearing the full body covering, including the veil over their faces.

The official religion of Malaysia is Islam, but there are a great mix of cultures there. Chinese and Indians make up a large portion of the population, and there are, of course, many muslims. The only places I really saw the women with the full body covering was on Penang Island, and in Kuala Lumpur (KL). I saw none on the eastern coast of penninsular Malaysia. KL, the largest city, and capital, is where I saw most of them. But only about 2%-4% of the women wore the full black covering over their entire bodies.

It’s actually kind of a spooky thing to see if you have never seen it live before, as most Americans probably haven’t. In fact, it did remind me of Halloween, except that her husband, and her children forgot to wear their costumes. Once you’ve seen it a couple of times you get used to it, and it’s no big deal anymore. But you can’t help but think about it.

For instance, I’m sure you’ve had, at least once in your life, a piece of cloth covering your nose and mouth. It makes breathing uncomfortable, doesn’t it? Perhaps their cloth is specially made to facilitate easy breathing. I hope so.

I had always thought that every single skin cell had to be covered, except for the flesh of their eyes, so they can see all the foreigners staring at them. But in Malaysia, their hands and feet (if they are wearing sandles) are not covered. Perhaps this country is not as strict as the middle eastern countries, or in Taliban controlled regions.

Speaking of their eyes, I wonder if blind muslim women are still allowed the slit over their eyes? The only reason the the slit is there is to let them see. And if a kid gets separated from his mother in a crowd, how will he know which one is her? I guess the same way penguins know. Hey, I’m not making jokes here, these are legitimate inquiries. And if one of them commits a crime, that would be one hell of a sketch artist who can render her likeness.

Anyway, one of my goals was to see how they eat. I’d seen them milling around food places so I knew they must eat in public. “What do they do?” I wondered. Do they stick the food underneath the veil and risk sullying it? Do they lift the veil and reveal their mouth and chin for a second at a time? I doubted this. There is no mouth hole in the fabric. Plus I didn’t notice any special private rooms for them to eat (There are special rooms, for instance, in airports for muslims to pray). Or maybe they get take out, and never eat in public.

It took a while, but I finaly saw one eating at a McDonalds in the mall. And later I saw some others eating in the food court. The veils hang down about 6 to 8 inches below their mouths. So they just pull the veils out a little and bring the food underneath and up to their mouths without revealing any sacred flesh. Kind of what I thought. For drinks they must use a straw. I doubt they can eat an ice cream cone.

As a result of my fixation on these Islamic women, I’m now dying to read the book Nine Parts Of Desire, by Geraldine Brooks. The subtitle is The Hidden World of Islamic Women. This book was a big seller when it first came out, and I put it into a many readers’ hands when I worked at Barnes & Noble Bookstore. But I never knew what it was about, or even cared at that point. I just knew what book the customer meant when they said, “Do you have that book . . . the nine . . . something nine . . . parts of something . . . oh, I just know ‘nine’ is in the title?” Incidentally, unrelated to this, earlier I picked up Geraldine Brooks’ first fictional novel, Year Of Wonders. It was pretty good. Her second novel, March, won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. I haven’t read it.

Lately I’ve had a powerful urge to devour books. That’s all I want to do now, read everyting I can get my hands on. If I don’t do the teaching thing (I am coming close to signing up for a course to get the teaching certificate), then I may use my remaining time to read everything I can. While in KL, in the day time I walked around and did some sight-seeing. But in the late afternoon and early evening I went to one of the malls with a large book store in it (Suria Mall, underneath the Petronas Towers, the worlds second tallest buildings, had Kinokuniya Bookstore [A Japanese bookstore offering a large selection of English titles] and Time Square Mall, a gigantic mall with a theme park in it–the main attraction being a large roller coaster–harbored a Borders Bookstore [the second largest American bookstore chain]), and ate dinner then went to the book store and read. I read the entire book, The Google Story, that way. It’s funny, I became the person that we made fun of when I worked at B&N.

KL was pretty cool. It was relatively clean, and safe, and most things were within walking distance. The Petronas Towers are quite an impressive sight. As I mentioned they are the world’s second tallest buildings, according to what criteria is being used. The tallest being a buliding in Taipei, Taiwan. They were especially impressive at night, like a painting in the sky.

What sucked was that I was there during the World Cup football tournament. People in America are going, “What? It ain’t no football season!” It’s soccer, people, a very popular sport in every country but ours. Anyway, with time zones being what they are, the games, played in Germany, took place in the middle of the night in Malaysia. Althought the Malaysian team did not qualify for the tournament, many Malays were still very involved in the games (as were their bookies). A couple of outdoor restaurants near my hostel showed the games on their big screen TV’s, which attracted hundreds of football fans, overflowing outside the restaurants to glimpse the action. As I tried to sleep, a near goal would elicit a tremendously loud, collective gasp, from the fans, startling me from my attempted slumber. I always knew when someone scored a goal.

Speaking of sleeping, here’s a word of advice for any non-muslim planning a visit to any predominently muslim city, or country: Locate where the Mosque is, then try to find accomodations as far away from it as possible.

Reader: “Wow, Mark, you really have something against Muslims, don’t you? First the veiled women, now this.”

Me: “No, I have nothing against Muslims. Most of them are probably very nice people. In fact, the ones I encountered we very nice.

Reader: “Then why are you telling me to stay away from the Mosques? They’re very interesting buildings.”

Me: “Right, they are a joy to look at. Very interesting architecture. But they use these buildings for praying.”

Reader: “That’s what they were built for, praying. What’s wrong with that?”

Me: “Nothing per say. But these Mosques, at least the ones I’m thinking of, are open air buildings. They are not closed like, say, a Catholic Church.”

Reader: “Okay.”

Me: “And Muslims must pray five times a day.”

Reader: “All right, go on.”

Me: “The first prayer starts at 5:30 in the morning.”

Reader: “Oh, so you can faintly hear them from your room while you are sleeping as they quietly whisper their prayers? It’s just loud enough to stir you from your sleep, and disturb your peaceful dream.”

Me: “Close, but there’s more to it. They don’t quietly whisper their prayers. One prayer leader opens up his massive lungs and belts out the prayer to make sure Allah hears him. But as a precaution, just in case Allah’s hearing is not what it used to be, he uses a PA SYSTEM!! And at the Mosque in Batu Ferringghi, on Penang Island, I think they purchased the PA from Pearl Jam after their 1997 world tour, and the prayer leader thinks he’s Eddie Vedder. And they set the volume at eleven! So you don’t faintly hear them whispering their prayers, and get stirred from a peaceful sleep. The whole town–the non-Muslims anyway–gets jarred from their sleep. Bolt Upright Jarred!!”

Reader: “Oh.”

Me: “Bolt . . . Upright . . . Jarred!” I’m sure somewhere one of them must have broached the subject to someone: ‘Hey, I bet you some of the people in the hotels and guesthouses around here might not be Muslim, not to mention the non-Muslim residents. And they are probably trying to sleep at five-thirty in the morning. And our prayers are pretty loud, you know with the powerful system we bought from Pearl Jam, with the five gigantic speakers and all. It’s probably waking them.’ ‘Ahh fuck ’em'”

A rooster doesn’t know any better.