A Level of Superstition

In the States, usually I think superstition is a bit obsolete. Some people use it as an excuse not to make their own decisions. They feel that if they can live by it and therefore they don't have to be accountable for the consequences; because 'they didn't pick.' But here, the Chinese brand of superstition mixed with their Buddhist faith has an entirely different feel. It intrigues me. All of the Chinese men I usually eat lunch with (ranging from ages 30 to 62) are regular lottery players. Even deeming it "investing in the future." But it's nothing like America where ppl play their 'lucky numbers' or numbers that hold some certain significance to them. Here, their favorite numbers to play are those on a license plate of a car that's just been in an accident or broken down somehow. It's supposed to be the best luck. Riding with my boss two days ago we passed a Mercedes which had caught fire, luckily noone was hurt. His first words: "Did you see the license numbers?"

Furthermore, I always wondered when I was younger how seriously the Chinese took the "Year of the ..." zodiac-like symbols I always used to see on the paper place mats at the Chinese restaurants. But they take it quite seriously and some ppl will tell u directly that they think it's best u not spend time around them becuz their years clash too aggressively.

The construction project I'm working on now was delayed 2-3 weeks because they had to find a 'good day' to break ground. There's apparently an entire calendar of days which are good or bad for different kinds of events.

For Chinese New Years (which starts in 3 days officially), there is a dish is a tradition to have at or right around the event. As we had it today, it was explained to me that everyone was to take their chopsticks and mix the dish up in unison to ensure prosperity of the businesses. For calendar new year, there is a ceremonial drink which formally signifies you being one year older.

Also, at the construction site, there is a Buddhist prayer vessel called... well, I don't know how it's spelled, but it is pronounced "dato." It's a common belief that it is essential to satisfying the guardian that protects the site. It is filled with oils and incense, which must be kept burning to continue the good fortune of the site.

These are but a few examples of the heavy involvement of superstition (sometimes manifested through their Buddhist faith). It's an interesting part of the culture that adds to the experience on being truly immersed in another ethnicity's culture. Adds to the experience and it intrigues me.

The Challenge

I knew the day was coming, but I didn't know exactly when. The day I'm speaking of is the day where one of the older gentlemen at one of the parties involved in my project publicly questions my abilities because I'm young and inexperienced. Well, at our site meeting yesterday, the head of our consultant engineering side did just that. Even went so far as to call me "incompetent." Now, I understand in spirit what he's saying. I'm young, I'm not Malaysian (as he point out a few times) and I'm not experienced. It's a big, expensive project and the man doesn't really know me or what I do. So to be real, I understand his concern although I still wish he would've taken it up with me personally first before trying to make things into a public issue. So I have to use it as motivation. The point of coming here is to build the resume getting REAL experience. It's already real and if I've truly caught his attention, it's probably about to get realer very soon. So that means I gotta get my game tight and become better at what I do. Adversity builds character. A man is not judged by how he acts in times of comfort, he is judged by how he responds in times of adversity. There's a lot to being 'great' at my job and it's not gonna happen overnight because you literally have to have seen and know how everything is built efficiently. But I'm committed to working t0 be better at it. So as of today, can't say whether I'll sink or swim, but I'm jumping in the water. Selamat malam...

Slightly Jealous

I constantly remind myself that I'm "living the dream" as most ppl see it. Everyone says "Man, it's gotta be magical spending time overseas fresh outta college at this age. It's the opportunity of a lifetime."And I don't doubt that at all, but I'm not afforded as much an opportunity to treat it like a vacation as others I know. When I was in Singapore staying in a hostel, I met ppl from all over; Vietnam, Russia, UK, Bangladesh, Canada, Norway, even other Americans. Many were just traveling to be traveling. Like they just decided to take some time and see Asia for a few months. In one case, a Canadian couple sold EVERYTHING they owned and just decided to "go with the flow" traveling the world. No set plans, no set limits, just go until the money runs out and figure it out after that. They have such elaborate stories about going off the beaten path, doing things that truly open their eyes culturally and spiritually. Furthermore, I have several peers who are in Asia or abroad also, most of them are teaching English. And the programs they have come over using have a focus more tailored to making sure they have a great global experience. Most have favorable schedules and their job encourage such traveling. And they aren't limited to 12 annual leave days a year like me. I visited a friend of mine yesterday who is in Malaysia teaching English. His company has put him in a plush hotel in downtown KL for a couple weeks of orientation. When he gets where he will be staying, he will be living and working right along the beach. He will only be working 3-4 days a week and about 4 hours a day. As compared to my 10 hour workweeks. They got him a temporary driving permit and he will have a car; be reminded, since I've been here I've been continually been hearing about all these road blocks to why it's so hard for Americans to transfer their licenses over since we drive on the other side of the street. I've heard that I would have to pay crazy amounts of money, I've heard that I would have to take a driving test, I've heard I will have to take a written test in Malay. But somehow my homeboy's company worked it out so he has a temporary driving permit before he even stepped foot off the plane. I'm starting to get the feeling that I'm the only one who's getting a true worker experience rather than being a hydrid worker-tourist. But in the end, I think the experience will be invaluable. I can say that my Malaysian tenure builds my resume more than my companions. Not to mention, once I've stepped so far out of my comfort zone for such a long period of time, what else is there to be scared of if u get a job in a different region of the country or something? I gotta focus on all the positives and benefits and stop thinkin about those things that make me feel differently (although working six days a week is still absolutely terrible).

The American Way and a lack of "substance"

As I'm often surrounded by people from other countries. I take note of the cultural differences that are ever-present. There are some differences that I regret, like the lack of a culture and traditions that are thousands of years old. Even things that are both a gift and a curse - such as a more homogeneous society as far as ethnicity or religion - has some benefits culturally that we miss out on; such as monuments as extraordinary as the Giant Buddha in Hong Kong or the Batu Caves here in KL. But I realize now that one of the biggest differences is a success oriented "dare to dream" mindset. Although I'm relatively inexperienced in my field, I maintain a mindset that I want to continue to improve at what I do. I ask a lot of questions and ask to be involved in more and more because I plan on being the man someday. And when some smart kid straight outta college shows up askin me tough questions the same way I do, I need to be good enough to answer. It seems many other nations have very successful people but they get content much easier. Noone sets out to 'change the world.' Of the many inventions that have truly changed the world or fundamentally changed the way we do certain things, many of them have been invented by Americans. With as little history as we have compared to so many countries, how did we get so ahead of the curve? Da Vinci designed a flying machine in the 1400's. There were no more great minded dreamers in Europe who could figure out how to finish it. It took two young bike salesmen in America over 400 years later to finish the job? With all the minds from different countries that had hands in giving the world the computer, how is it that it took Americans to allow them connect and form the Internet? Better yet, how did two college drop outs in Silicon Valley become the first to make a workable interface systems to operate computers? With foods from European originals being so popular - Hamburgers (named for Hamburg, Germany), Hot dogs/Frankfurters (named for Frankfurt, Germany), pizza (of Italian origin), french fries (self-explanatory), etc - how did fast food of such foods become an American creation? How'd someone like Henry Ford - who invented neither the car or the assembly line - become first to fuse the two into the modern automotive industry? Theater and entertainment go back thousands of years, how did Hollywod end up in America? There are so many others. Even lately, there have been several Internet-based inventions that have fundamentally changed the way we do things. Google has fundamentally changed the way the world shares and finds information; it was started by college students who expanded it from research project of theirs. Facebook has fundamentally changed the way people communicate and find each other; It's founder, Mark Zuckerberg is a programmer who dropped out to run with an idea. Wikipedia has replaces volumes of encyclopedia as the dominant way to research and find collections of information on certain topics;Its founder left a lucrative financial business to make the vision a reality. These are just examples of what I mean. Maybe it's a by-product of a nation of immigrants who went to the "New World" to shake things up. Maybe, we don't have sentimentalities that could hold us back. I'm not sure what it is. But I appreciate it. It almost depresses me to see people with little focus or ambition. I've come to look for it in conversation in general and especially look for it in women that I plan on taking seriously. The combination of intellect, critical thinking, will to stand for beliefs, and ambition are appealing. I've ccome to call this "substance." And I would say I have not met enough women here with adequate substance. I've met college grads with no sense of wanting to do more than just "hold what they have." Even among those still in college, there is often a lack of focus. I meet people who party almost every night and use that as an excuse to miss class; which they consider "boring." And I'm not saying classes aren't boring. I'm saying that this is not the proper mindset of an achiever. Do I think I'm some genius? No. Do I think I am going to be president? Not at all. Do I think I'm going to be Mark Zuckerberg and be a billionaire by my mid-20s? No, but if the opportunity and passion struck me I may go for it. The point is I'm ambitious enough to want to keep moving forward, to do things a cut above what most ppl my age do; like this trip in general. Even if I'm not a billionaire, or hailed as one of the minds that shaped my time, I wanna do something with myself. I wanna be successful. I want to look back and say I achieved something. I want to harness a slice of the American dream...

Going Postal

Ever since going to Hong Kong, I have been trying hard to round up Christmas gifts to send home. So I got to the point where I went to Petaling Street, the discount mall/flea market equivalent here, and picked up my stuff. So I finally get everything organized and ready to send off. I check Fed Ex and DHL and they cost way too much. I’m told the only affordable way will be POS Malaysia, the national postal service; cool. The post office closes at 6 pm, so I have to find a way to get off early just to get to a post office before they’re closed. But I get there, upon talking to the gentleman I find that they have no packing supplies to use. No Styrofoam, no bubble wrap, only one box choice. Now, the man uses the word “sold out” so I’m thinking they’re just slack on re-upping their inventory. But whatever, it’s too late for me to make it back by 6pm. So go to Tesco (Britain’s poor excuse for Wal-Mart) and I buy some Styrofoam and bubble tape and take a supply box that is just sitting on the floor. So I make everything fit fine and am determined to get it done the next day. So the next day after lunch, I have by boss drop me at the post office near work so I can handle this “real quick” and come back to work. Little did I know. SMH. I take a number, sit down for a sec, then look up at the number board. They’re serving customer number 2244, my card says 2272, I’m the 29th person in line. Are you serious? I get mad if I'm the 10th person in line back home. I suck it up, determined to get this done. So about 45 minutes later, I finally get called to the counter, the lady is cooperative finding a rate for me, giving me the proper label and everything. Then she looks at my box and says, “Oh sir, we can’t send it like that.” I look at my regular cardboard box sitting open with everything securely surrounded by bubble wrap and foam. I’m thinking “What do you mean, we can tape this bad boy up and get this done. She says "it has to be fully wrapped like that" and points to a box wrapped in brown paper and taped up securely. They got specific standards to follow, ok whatever, let's get it done. So I ask "so where and how much is ur brown paper and tape?" to which she replies "Oh we don't have those things here. You have to go to the bookstore downstairs for that stuff." Yet again a post office, the expertise center of packing and shipping items, has no appropriate packing supplies despite specific standards of how they want things packed. How does that work? But anyway, I go searching for this bookstore she mentioned. I don't see, it's a big business complex though, so I continue walking around with my open box looking for it. 15 minutes to no avail. So I ask the security guards, who after clarifying that they understand the words "book store" tell me that there is no bookstore in the complex. The long wait bored me more than annoying me, but this news starts to heat me up a little bit. Is the post office chick playing mind games? Trying to run me around in circles or something? What's going on? Eventually, I'm finally directed to a little grocery store that has some Christmas style wrapping paper. I figure "that's just gonna have to work." So I have pay for the paper and get them to wrap it and head back up to the post office. Now, obviously the line has moves on far past my number. I guess technically I was supposed to grab a number again and hop back in line; wasn't going to happen though. I walked right up to the lady who had been handing me before and wait until she's finished with her current customer. So everything is finally ready, the total price by air is RM 210 or so (about $70 US) which actually wasn't bad. By sea, it's only RM 54 (about $18) but it would take about 3 months rather than 1-2 weeks by air. It's worth the extra to me. Especially since it's still only about half of what it would cost with DHL or FedEx. After hours and lots of impatience and aggravation, the package is headed stateside finally. I'm not in a rush to deal with a post office here again, POS Malaysia is noone's friend. But as I was told about the long wait getting many things - access card, new SIM card, wi-fi in the house, etc - this is the Malaysian way. Lucky me. Selamat malam...

Powerless, Literally

About a month ago, we received a notice at our door saying that several bills were past due including maintenance fee, water bill, and others. The notice says if the balance owed hasn’t been paid by November 30th, they would turn our water off. So the next day after I work I take this notice into headquarters to let them know. One of the ladies in accounts tells me to consult another lady who works there because she is our contact with the renting agent. The condo is actually owned/lived in by a family who has gone somewhere and rented it out to my company. This process and the attached bills are handled by some combination of the owner, my company, and an agent that my company hired. I’m not exactly sure how it is supposed to work. I don’t know if the owner is supposed to pay the bills and my companies pays him back a fixed rate or if the company is supposed to pay him a rate and handle all bills, etc. All I know is that they told me upon arrival that they would “take care of my housing” so I expect it to get handled. I talk to the lady they refer me to who is like “Ok, I’ll talk to the agent.” When I follow up, she hasn’t spoken to the agent at all because she has been busy with work. This is a higher priority to me than them, so even though I’m disappointed by this, I understand how that can happen. She gives me the number and I talk to the agent myself. The agent is saying that in their terms there is some stuff that the agent has to handle, but not others and that the company is responsible for most of what they say is owed. So we speak back to the accounts department at HQ, now I’m pushing the issue because that deadline is almost upon us. They say “fine, but we need an official statement to write the check.” In the back of my mind, “so you couldn’t have told me that before instead of trying to bounce this to the agent” but whatever I have to do what is necessary to avoid them cancelling our water. So I go to the mailbox (full of bills and notices and such despite the agent telling us that she checks it weekly for these things), I go to the management office, go everywhere I know to go and gather up everything I can. At the management office, the lady tells me “Don’t worry, your water won’t be cut off right at the end of the month, you will have more time to settle before they actually take such action.” This eases my mind a little; I still want it handled though. The next day or so, I hear that handling this has now been delegated to our new human resources lady, who’s already garnered a reputation as a bit of a shrewd despite only starting a few weeks ago. Once again, my mind starts working “why are they trying to bounce this thing around so much?” But I assure myself it’s cool because one thing uptight people are usually good for is handling things in a timely manner. The 30th comes and goes, water is still on, no more notices. I’m relaxed, I don’t inquire anymore about the issue and go on with my life. On a day where I was fairly annoyed at work, which also happened to be one of the hotter days we had in a while (there are no seasons here, so despite being December I could easily be working in 85-90 degree weather), I return home to the apartment anxious to engage in my usual routine: I walk in the house, walk into my room, switch on the air conditioning and lay at the spot in the bed it points to for a few minutes before going about my evening. I unlock our gate, unlock the front door, in stride towards my room I hit the light switch; nothing. I try another light switch, nothing still. I look on the ground and see what must be a “cut off” notice; I’m not entirely sure because it’s in Malay. The notice we received mentioned maintenance fees, water bill, and some other jargin, but it didn’t mention electricity at all. My Filipino housemate opts to stay in the apartment but I can’t sit stewing in a dark room. After a somewhat stressful day, I want to shed the day’s troubles and relax, not sweat off pounds of water weight as if I’m a boxer trying to make my division size limit. The entire time I’ve been in Malaysia, despite working 6 days a week at a job which can be very stressful at times, despite my frustrating lack of independence as far as transportation goes, despite missing family and friends and a traditional holiday season, one thing I always have had complete confidence in is that my company has been taking good care of me; paying me good, exposing me to some things, taking care of my housing and transportation. For the first time, that confidence was shaken a little bit.

Tom, Tom, Tom - A Cautionary Tale

The weird British roommate stories continue, soon you’re gonna think I’m making them up. This man is simply a story in contradiction. Early after arriving here, he criticized cameras as girly and smart phones as risky (along with complaining every time me or our safety officer Seelan used wifi on our phones), then he ended up buying an iPhone and taking pictures of everything. Be reminded, he bough this iPhone for RM 3000 (about $1000 US) after complaining that he didn’t have enough money to buy more shirts for work. Since we’ve been here he’s boycotted (either short-term or permanently) foods such as bread, rice, noodles, and chicken because he claimed they don’t agree with his stomach. But he will eat weird foods, including octopus, stingray, fermented beans, durian (these are just some of the ones I’ve physically seen), with no hesitation at all. But none of that tops his contradictions when it comes to alcohol. First of all, the first time we ever went out drinking here in Malaysia, he was talking big junk about drinking ability “Oh, Americans can’t drink, the British have to show you how it’s done,” etc. Then the first two times we went for beer, he tried to outdrink me and failed miserably and then felt terrible the next day while I felt fine; and I don’t even really drink beer back home. So he decided afterwards that he would go with us to the bar but he wouldn’t drink, he would watch us drink while sipping ice water. This happened several times. Then once we went out to a club with some Chinese ladies we work with and had bottles of Hennessy (see blog entry “The Bite”). When we first got there and the bartender put Coke in my Hennessy, he sounded off “I thought men were supposed to drink it on the rocks” despite me not requesting Coke. So the rest of the night I drank it straight. By the end of the night, he was drinking ice water again. But his latest fiasco…SMH. We were without power at our apartment for a day and a half because someone at our headquarters was slack paying our bill. Rather than sit in a hot house, I ended up going to some friends’ place and chilling with them. He chose to go to a bar, by himself. Going out drinking already seems like a move of desperation or alcoholism, but whatever I don’t think much of it. When I get back, I go straight to sleep and I don’t see him in the mornings because we now work on different projects. That afternoon, he can hardly eat because his stomach has been weakened. I inquire why. I find out that he apparently drank an entire bottle of wine in the span of about an hour and followed that up with tequila shots…by himself on a weekday. He doesn’t remember how he got home or much of the night, all he remembers is waking up in his bed in a puddle of his own vomit. Absolutely terrible. Most people I know, myself included, are social drinkers; they go out drinking with other people to have some fun, you know about where your limits are but sometimes people go a little overboard if you’re having a lot of fun. Or if you do go by yourself and drink a lot, it’s probably because he was entertaining some chick he met and was trying to enable a good time with her or something of that nature. The concept of drinking is usually to have fun in the company of others. For this reason, most people don’t really go out to a bar to drink by themselves. I mean I understand if someone goes out alone and has a beer or two while he watched a game on their TV. But to down a whole bottle of wine in a short span and follow it up with tequila shots, which result in you swimming in a pool of your own regurgitation, is not cool by any means. It seems even more odd when this is the same guys who has sat at a table full of coworkers and cute bar girls while we were playing a drinking game with dice and chose to drink ice water instead of participate. He didn’t even have to drive that night. I simply don’t understand. I’m not sure I ever will. Wish me luck, I will be traveling with him to Singapore for Christmas. I’m not sure what to expect. Selamat malam…