Potting around Kuala Lumpur
I couldn’t resist the pun in the title considering how many I have been hurled at me over the last few weeks!
After leaving the paradise island of Tioman, I headed back to Kuala Lumpur and got settled into life in the Trekker Lodge again. When a girl moved into my room she said she had heard about the girl who was here for her 3rd time. Yes, that’s me. This time I am here with a new mission. I’d been thinking of things to do with my students in India (where I’ll be teaching in the summer) and the principal of the school agreed pottery could be fun and educational. I’ve now enrolled in a local class and have 3 crazy weeks of commuting and building mugs.
On day two of my course I was allowed join a class. The first day I had struggled for 4 hours to make something that looked like a cup. If it had looked a little less square it would have made a fine cup. There’s two parts to this course, hand building and wheel throwing. Wheel throwing is incredibly difficult so I was glad that in my first group class I only had to use my hands.
I rolled up next to a local girl called Zoe. She seems to have been doing this for a while. Our main task was to pull a bit of clay off the big pile in the centre, roll it into a sausage, and place it on the base. The plan was to have a mug when enough ‘sausages’ were placed on top of each other in a circular fashion.
Zoe seemed to be excited to have a new buddy to play with. I’ve found the local women here extrememly shy, have to really work at them to get them to say anything. Luckily Zoe was not and the conversation flowed. Her first question was:
“How old are you?”
“I’m 22, you?”
“I’m 6”
I was afraid she was going to say something like that, she really isn’t very tall at all. So for two hours I had a 6 year old tell me my sausages were uneven and my mug was going to suck. She looked at me very seriously at one stage and said:
“Your clay is getting dry, it happens if you roll it too much.”
And she hopped off her high stool and got me some new clay. It’s just like Play-do I used to work with in primary school. Except then I didn’t have people 14 years my junior showing me the ropes.
I went back to working on my mug while the rest of my classmates talked about all the masterpieces they’d made before. Zoe has a great portfolio, having made an elephant, turtle and a hippo. The kid who couldn’t stop coughing told her that was nothing, he had taken a bowl and turned it into a tank. This got a few gasps from the rest; as a slightly older kid pointed out, coughing boy is only 4. No one seemed to see a need to ask me if I’d ever made anything cool, my work spoke for itself…..
The teacher came over and showed me how to make a really good sausage. I got some looks from the kid across from me for needing teacher’s help. When she was done I leaned over, grabbed her sausage and started to work that into my creation. She came running back at me saying “You’re just like Zoe” and took away her good sausage and handed me a fresh clump of clay so I could make my own. The rest of the class seemed fairly amused that this over sized white kid was cheating like a 6 year old.
By the end of the class I had become a bit of a local attraction. The classes take place in a shop in a big shopping centre. When I went to spin the wheel a crowd stopped to watch me do my thing. I threw the clay in the centre quite dramatically and began to twist and turn it. When it came time to actually make something out of it, I pulled the clay upwards, and it flopped back down. Crowd wasn’t so impressed. They gave me some sympathetic looks and moved on.
I missed out on the after class fun. The rest of the crew started a game of chase running in between the pottery. First time on this trip that I’ve felt a little too old to take part in something.
I now have 3 weeks to become a master at this. Come June I will hopefully be a teacher at this! I’ll let you know if I manage to create something worth sending home to mom.
Just found out I’ve been featured in a web-site’s
Top 100 Blogs. I’m the second one in the ‘solo’ section. Whoop! Also, this gang made me Blog of the Week a few weeks ago. I said I’d give them a shout out. Thanks! I’m now in the top 20 in the Bloggers Choice Awards. Have until the end of the year to make up the 200 or so votes the leaders have over me. Any help is appreciated!
Tags: Malaysia, Pottery
cybersusst
excellent story. You should get some photos!
Thanks! I have photos, but I stupidly left my laptop in Malaysia before uploading them. I’ll have them up soon.
C