Home Thoughts From Abroad

Transportation is a huge problem in Kuala Lumpur. There is no way we can justify or afford the expense of a car. Malaysia imposes an excise tax of 100% on all imported vehicles and their local product, the Proton, is notoriously unreliable. Scooters and motorbikes abound, and while they are an attractive option for me, it would be a pretty selfish, and possibly career ending decision. There is just not enough respect on the roads to make it a wise move. Even the young teachers over here are wary.

Public transport, including cabs when necessary, is the way we have chosen to go, and while that option can be extremely frustrating given the lack of expenditure by this city on buses and trains, it has the twin virtues of safety and economy to commend it. But public transport won’t get me to school, or up to the 7-Eleven, and so I have decided to buy a bike.

I wish I had done it when I got here; I love it! I always had a bike in Canada, but they just are not seen on the roads over here. I guess the need for speed is just too all consuming in Malaysia. Obviously I would never take it out of the city, or even out of Subang Jaya, the little college community where we live, but around here it has been just great. There are plenty of little trails leading from one residential area to the next, so I basically never have to go out on the main streets. When I do I am given far more consideration that I am given when I am walking (which is all Asian countries is zero), and I feel pretty safe out there.

But even more important I feel free. My poor feet, which have degenerated from occasional pain to chronic disfunctionality, have some relief, and perhaps the possibility of recovery over the long term, and already I have been able to get out far more than I could. The knees, well they are letting me know that they do not like this new regime, but I think they will come around in time, and once I have relaxed the death grip I am presently employing on the handle bars, my hands should feel better as well!

I am a culture junkie. I like to see how people interact with the world around them and compare their attitudes to it. Theologically I am an absolutist. There is only one God, and no you can’t placate him with your own efforts at piety and purity. But culturally I am a relativist; culture is what we make of it.

So what do you make of Michael Jackson? Was he just Wacko Jacko? Millions would disagree with you and call your read of the man simplistic and your view a mere parroting of the toxic journalism that has made money off his misery over the years. They would cite his millions in record sales and rub your nose in the fact that Thriller, Jackson’s 1983 blockbuster, is still 25 years later the highest grossing album in history.

They would point out his business acumen in securing a 35% share in Thriller and subsequent albums, amassing for him a net worth in the low billions at his peak. They would point to his legacy; that since his ground-breaking routines no significant pop star has been able to avoid a measure of dance competence in order to compete at the highest level. They would even make reference to his humanitarian efforts, echoed in the likes of Bono and Bob Geldorf.

Whatever you make of him, his swan song This Is It is worth a view. I dragged a very reluctant Pam out to see it on the weekend, and even she was impressed. Here was a man, obviously in the terminal stage of his career, putting forward an effort and attention to detail that can only be called heroic. Every move was an obvious pain, only alleviated by the equally obvious joy he took in expressing himself through music and motion.

Like every tragic hero Jackson had his tragic flaw. In fact he had several of them: his attraction to prepubescent boys, his obsession about his appearance – which has been identified as body dimorphic disorder, and led to multiple disfiguring operations on what was once a beautiful face – and his perfectionism, which must have driven everyone else around him nuts.

It also brought out the best in others as well. The backup dancers were out-and-out amazing and the young female lead guitarist Orianthi Panagaris is clearly going to be a huge star in her own right. Of Jackson she says “I wish he was still around. He made me believe in myself.” Jackson’s off stage antics had a lot of people not believing in him anymore, but seeing this film had you grieving for what might have been. He was without doubt a troubled and disturbed man. He was also an enormously talented musician and dancer. And perhaps, in some weirdly relevant way, symbolic of the culture that bore and crowned him King of Pop.

Steve is the type of person who likes routines, in fact he thrives on them and routinely reassesses and revises his routines to make them work better for him.  I am more with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis who said “The only routine with me is no routine at all”.

Nonetheless, I have a new routine.  There is a little lake near our condo with a lovely walking path and a group there doing Tai Chi every morning.  Not sure how it is organized but someone sets up a boom box and a series of people lead the exercises for about a half hour each.  There is always a very diverse group, with a wide range of expertise in Tai Chi.  So far I am the only  “orang putih”  in the group but they are happy to have me join in.

If I leave with Steve when he goes out to work, I can get in a half hour of Tai Chi and a brisk walk around the lake before 8:30 when the sun is fully up.  By then it is pushing  30 degrees and too hot to be out. 

Those of you who know me are probably in awe of the fact that I have kept up this routine for almost a month. 

However, tomorrow I leave for a week in Cambodia, a long awaited break from this routine.

I was twelve when the Berlin Wall went up, forty when it came down. It was one of those markers of our generation, one of the things that defined us. It was Churchill who named Soviet control of Europe the Iron Curtain, at the close of the Second World War. If he had been re-elected, perhaps he would have got his way and continued the war in Europe against the Russians. The Brits in their inestimable good sense, wouldn’t give him the mandate, and the world entered into a long Cold War, marked by client states and hegemony. The Berlin Wall came to symbolize all that the Cold War meant: its division and suspicion, the restrictions and deceptions.

It seems a world away now, but when we were at school we were given training on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack. We were to scoot under our desks, put our hands on our heads and not look out the windows. It seems quaint and ridiculously ineffective, but that was the routine. It was called ‘duck and cover.’ Cuba had fallen into the Soviet block and they had placed in Cuba dozens of medium range missiles capable of hitting every city in the continental United States (except Seattle), including several cities in Canada, Toronto among them.

With several options open to him, including an airstrike on Cuba, followed by an invasion, Kennedy chose a safer route and opted for a blockade – technically called a quarantine to avoid having to go to Congress – and managed to avert a catastrophe. In order to coax the missiles out of Cuba, the States pulled their missiles out of Turkey, a quid pro quo that cost Kennedy a lot of military support, and depending on your level of paranoia, might have cost him his life twelve months later.

Years later Ronald Reagan, in one of the few acts of his presidency that I admire, stood in Berlin and challenge then Russian president Gorbachev to ‘tear down this wall.’  Two years later it fell, just two days before the Remembrance Day that marks two earlier conflicts, and the world for a while felt like a safer and friendlier place. Germany reunited and eventually elected a leader, Angela Merkel, who was born in East Germany. This is the twentieth anniversary of that historical event. The world has moved on to other, perhaps more intractable conflicts, and The Wall, and the existential anxiety that it produced for our generation, has become a fading memory. May it remain so.

Steve and I have been blogging for two and a half years, nowhere near the over eight years our son has been blogging and probably considerably less than many of our regular readers. Although it began with the simple idea of wanting to keep in touch with our family and friends back in Canada while we were in Malaysia, it has grown into much more than that, as we have found our voice through our writing. Now we share our thoughts not only on our travels in South East Asia, but also reflect on our cultural and personal journeys.

On the days when it feels like blogging is a lot of work, we are encouraged by a neat feature that we discovered about six months ago that we have been using.  It is called ClustrMaps, which you can find by scrolling to the bottom of our homepage. ClustrMaps creates for us a visual graph of our readership. Not only does it create a red dot for each hit on the site, but the dot increases in size with the number of hits.  We are also able to see a complete list of the countries in which we have readers. We are now at 86!

Each time we look at this graphic we see a new reader in some far off part of the world. We have readers now on every continent except Antarctica. We have several readers in both South America and India, two places in the world that we have yet to visit. We also have visitors in Alaska and Hawaii, and visitors in Korea and China.

We find all of this quite amazing; it certainly does reinforce the idea that this is indeed a small world, and a most interconnected one at that. Surely this can only be a good thing for human understanding as we learn more about who each of us truly are. Hopefully over time this will lead to greater compassion and a recognition that all of us are just one species, uniquely endowed with a capacity to envision God, and an inborn desire to know our Creator. Wherever you are in the world, dear reader, may God smile on your journey to find Him.

Most people go to Singapore for the showy stuff: the Grand Prix or Raffles, the shopping along Orchard Road or the concerts at the futuristic Esplanade, and I do confess that is what we did as well when we first visited. This time we had a very specific goal in mind, to see Mel and Abel and wish them well. That we did, and it was as multicultural an event as you can get, an Indian Malaysian marrying a Mexican American at a wedding attended by Chinese, Indians and Europeans in the heart of Singapore. We felt right at home.

We stayed at a lovely little spot called Albert Court and in the morning we wandered off for breakfast in Little India, and had some dosai and dhal while we chatted to the locals. Then we strolled to the Arab Quarter for some shopping and a mid-morning tea of chrysanthemum flowers, ginger and rosehips. It was not showy, but it was very pleasant and relaxing, full of the charm of the East that we have come to really appreciate.

The five hours on the bus went very quickly as I had a pile of marking to catch up on. As Pam slept and read, the rolling green countryside whisked by the window. It had been five months since I was in Singapore, the last time being my birthday back in May. Pam doesn’t get down as often as she needs to, although that may change shortly as well. But each time I am impressed by how well that city works, while still managing to retain much of the culture and the ambience of the people who live there.

One of the real pleasures of my travels with the TWR Singapore team has been the opportunity to get to know Mel (P. Mallika), who has worked out of that office for a number of years. Last year I got to travel with her and Serene to Nepal to visit some TWR listeners there. On that trip we shared some unique experiences together, mostly good but there were certainly others that we probably would rather not repeat.  Together we visited  brothels and prisons, slept in filthy bug infested hotels, travelled almost impassable roads and tried our best to swallow some unique foods.  However, we also had the privilege of meeting some of the most wonderful women and hearing their stories of the impact of Project Hannah on their lives.

Just this past month I was with Mel and Serene once again, this time in Vietnam. Although the scenery was not nearly as dramatic as the foothills of the Himalyas, the area around DaNang had its own beauty, and Mel was once again good company as we listened to believers and listeners share their stories of how the ministry of TWR had impacted their lives.

In her years with the Media Resource Group, Mel has developed an extensive knowledge of the programs that TWR braodcasts and an amazing love for the listeners.  Her role with TWR opened the door for her to travel to Dallas for a Christian radio broadcasters conference where she was able to make connections with other organizations involved in broadcasting.

God works in amazing ways and in Dallas she met Abel, a Mexican pastor and musician who lost his wife to illness five years ago. One thing led to another, and this weekend we are going down to Singapore to celebrate their formal engagement prior to her moving to Dallas where they will be married.  Mel will continue with TWR for the time being but she will be sorely missed by the entire Singapore team. We wish her and Abel the Lord’s blessing on their marriage.

As a Christian I have thought deeply about my relationship with Muslims. I have read the Quran from cover to cover, not once, but twice. We spent a year in the predominantly Muslim country of Bangladesh and are now working our way through our third year in Malaysia. I work and eat with Muslims, and Muslims make up the overwhelming majority of the students that I teach. I would not wish to offend them in the least. I recognize that the only way forward for the West and Islam is through understanding and dialogue.

It is in that spirit that I urge all our Muslim readers, and those who have an interest in this cultural dialogue, to find and read a copy of this important book. Having read thousands of books, from Dante to Dostoevsvky, C.S. Lewis to Cervantes, Milton to Moby Dick, I can tell you that this is one of the most remarkable books I have ever read in my life.

I encourage you to put this book on your reading list for the coming year. It will expand your understanding of Islam tremendously, and uplift you with the tenacity and beauty of the human spirit. This is one amazing life, and yes I do see the providential provision of a loving God in the preservation of this unique woman. She has a story to tell that needs to be heard.

I am not a race fan, I am a Formula 1 fan. There is a difference. There is something special about watching the world’s best driving the most highly engineered vehicles on the planet that appeals to me. The NASCAR circuit, sometimes refered to as rednecks driving in circles, holds no such appeal.

That said, I was not going to miss the opportunity to see the World Championship Motorcycle races when they arrived in Malaysia on the weekend, especially when grandstand tickets were $10! We parked ourselves at the end of the starting grid, at the first turn, which is a downhill S-curve. The action was great, and the dog-fights – especially in the 250cc class – were outstanding, with takes and retakes within seconds. The 1000cc race was a blowout, the Ducatti of Casey Stoner tearing away from the higher revving Yamahas, Hondas and Susukis in the rain and building a 25 second lead with five laps to spare.

With the race in the bag we skipped out ahead of the crowd and got out of the parking lot before the jam. I had rented a car for the day so we made a quick escape before the traffic began to build and had an easy ride home. With friends Jim and Michel along for some easy conversation, three good races and cooler weather it was great outing on a pleasant Sunday afternoon.

Our friend, Kay posted a link on Facebook to this video of the work of Kseniya Simonova, the winner of “Ukraine’s Got Talent 2009.” This remarkable, young lady creates a story of the history of her country in an incredible display of a unique talent.

We are so intrigued and moved not only by the vast number of stories within each culture, but the variety of amazingly talented ways there are to tell these stories. The world seems to us to hold such an incredible wealth of wonderfully rich cultures, each contributing in its own way to the story of mankind’s journey upon this earth.

It is a long video at over eight minutes, but once you have started to watch, you will not be able to tear your eyes away. So get a cup of tea and and be prepared to see an art form that is completely captivating.