New Western Herald blogs report from Malaysia

“Report from Malaysia” is a new series of blogs from Western Herald writers Ranchithaa Anatory and Daing S. Nasir. Below are excerpts from the first two blog posts. Check westernherald.com/?cat=81 this Wednesday for the newest blog post and to read the rest of these blogs.

Capital Punishment for drug trafficking must mean I’m home!

Ranchithaa Anatory

Upon landing at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, the all-too-familiar warning about capital punishment for drug-traffickers in the country got my adrenaline racing. As weird as this may sound, the announcement gets me  all excited every time because Malaysia is one of the few countries that gives a capital punishment to drug traffickers.
Hearing the announcement meant only one thing: I was home!

As soon as I loaded my luggage into the trunk of my mom’s car, I confidently opened the door on the front-right of the car, only to hear my mom say, “Are you sure you want to drive so soon?”

The first thing that I always have to adjust to when I get home, besides the humidity, is driving on the opposite side of the road. I have caught myself driving on the wrong side so many times during my previous breaks that my mom’s nervous grin was totally understandable.

I live in a busy town called Subang Jaya, in the state of Selangor, which is about 25 minutes away from Kuala Lumpur. But today, it will take close to an hour to get from Subang Jaya to Kuala Lumpur because of the impossible traffic. Subang Jaya is the outlet to various highways that spread across Malaysia.

This is most unfortunate for the residents of Subang because it takes them almost five-times longer than it should to get from point A to point B within the town itself. However, I was enjoying the traffic during the drive from the airport simply because of the honking and rude drivers cutting each other off: more signs that I was actually home.

The following morning, I woke up to my mom’s loud alarm clock. It was 6 a.m., Sunday morning. I began to grumble when it suddenly hit me–morning market! If one wished to see true Malaysians, the various races speaking their different languages, the morning market is the ideal place. In Subang, a long stretch of road is closed every Sunday morning for farmers and vendors to sell their goods. My ultimate purpose of tagging behind my mom that early morning was for the amazing variety of breakfasts. The one thing that I miss the most about Malaysia when I’m in the United States is the food. Made up of three main races, the Malay, the Chinese and the Indians, Malaysia is rich and varied not just in tradition and culture but also food– and the array spread out at the morning market is just the tip of the iceberg!

Three main streets and that’s it? Michigan on my mind

Daing S. Nasir

When I moved to Kalamazoo three years ago and was shown around the city, which consisted of West Michigan, West Main, and Westnedge, gave me the shock of my life: three main streets and that’s it? I made a call back home to verify and, yes, daddy indeed told me that “there were only two of those main streets 28 years ago and that Meijer was on the other side of town.”

Maybe having gone through all the episodes of Beverly Hills 90210 and CSI’s had my expectations on the other end of the spectrum of what Kalamazoo was going to be like.
Don’t get me wrong: I love Kalamazoo. I am in love with every aspect of it. Kuala Lumpur, on the other hand, is a metropolis. I was never a city guy. I guess I was born to live in the suburbs. Having lived all over the world, whenever we went back to Malaysia, “home” would be an island at the north of the peninsula that is closely bordered by Thailand: Penang.

But what then do I call my apartment on Lafayette Avenue? My “temporary home?” My “home away from home?” I was born in the United States and have come back to the country in search of who I really am. Traveling around the world has made me understand that having a sense of belonging to a particular identity makes you who you really are. I would love to be a true-Malaysian or a true-American, but I know that I will never fully be either. The hyphenated identity has made me become the person I am today and I celebrate it in ways to help people like and different than me understand; it’s okay to be different.

Short URL: http://www.westernherald.com/?p=6874

Posted by HeraldAdmin on Jul 26 2009. Filed under Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

Cody Kimball
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