The (Quiet) American Experience

I was sitting in San Francisco café in KLCC with my baby girl last week, waiting for my husband to finish work, when two Caucasian guys grabbed my attention. They were dressed in t-shirts and shorts, either khaki or jeans variety, and sometimes with a non-descript cap on their head. It was not their dressing style that captured my interest, nor were they particularly good looking. One of the guys was putting his coffee mug and plate on the tray from whence it came from and was about to clear the tray away. But he stopped in his tracks, looked at other patrons and thereafter asked the SF staff nearby cleaning the tables, where he should dispose of the tray and its contents. The staff took it from him since it was her job to do so.

I was amused by the rather mundane action since it was so American to do that – clearing the tray! Their way of dressing – shorts and t-shirts – made me initially suspect they were Americans but it was confirmed when he wanted to clean up his tray. Hehe. And of course the crew cut hair was a dead giveaway that the American sailors had docked onto our shores again.

Yes, perennially, sailors of different nationalities made their way to one of our ports – Klang or Penang – for a short visit into town to indulge in some shopping and entertainment. The American variety is easily spotted due to their distinctive accent, and bulky, physical appearance. Also, having a college friend, Jack (a nickname for John) who serves (or had served – I don’t know if he had quit) the US Navy and came twice to Malaysia also corroborated my story.

That day seeing an influx of American sailors roaming about KLCC alongside Arab holidaymakers is an irony in itself. Amidst the current Middle-east crisis plaguing the ill-fated Lebanese people, I observed the whole mall scenario with much incredulity.

Tidying up your own tray is one element of the American culture that has been deeply ingrained into my mind when an American friend, Jackson berated me for failing to be ever so civic-conscious. I still remember where it was – at a small airport somewhere in New Jersey where I was going to depart for a flight to South Bend – my alma mater. We - Amy, he and I – were eating at a mini food court there. After eating, I just let my tray sat there on the table much to the aghast of my American buddies. Double Hehe.

My American education has given me, amongst others, a refreshing perspective on life and a more progressive worldview. Being geographically held captive in a conservative Mid-western, small town setting in near tundra weather must be just the impetus I needed back then to turn reflective and more matured. There are, as always, setbacks and disappointments to being a foreigner in an American college. When times were bad I even wondered if perhaps I’d chosen the wrong college to go to. The students were, from my experience, myopic in their worldview in the sense that they only see America as the ‘World.’ There is a bigger world out there but they choose not to listen to other nations’ plight or plea for help. Only when they have vested interest or heavy investments in certain areas of the world would they come to the rescue. The Iraq case is a prime example. And conversely, why Lebanon is not uppermost in their mind.

I think this shallow and insular mindset might have a hand in making President Bush win the presidential election the second time around. A majority of people can be ignorant to the facts and believe whatever half-truths being fed to them. This is quite funny coming from a country that practices free speech and freedom of the press but the citizens fail to fully utilize their advantageous position to ferret the real stories.

I do have to admit that some more rounded individuals did stand out and embrace the diversity of other cultures and religions. But most of them would rather spend time with people like them (code word for White) or couldn’t care less to make the effort. Probably, they were being xenophobic at best, or racist at worst.

On the flip side however, I concede that I too have reservation and quite wary opening up to some Americans. At times, I contributed it to my shyness and lack of self-esteem. But mostly, my own preconceived notions and prejudice (coupled with some bad experience) backfired some possibilities of making quick friends.

I wasn’t there to make quick friends anyway. My main purpose was to study but along the way I did develop long-term meaningful friendships with people of different nationalities. Speaking of making friends, another aspect of American culture that fascinates me is the manner in which one greets another when bumping into each other on the streets.

I was walking one day somewhere on campus and someone whom I know from the dormitory hollered from the opposite direction and asked how I was doing. Of course I had thought the person genuinely wanted to know and stop to talk to me. But before I could form a complete sentence, the person had already continued walking away. That was odd. Why asked me what’s going down when you don’t really want to chat? Perhaps in my culture when someone asked you that you would be more than inclined to confabulate the nitty-gritty details of your day or week. Probably the act of just saying “Hi” is considered rude and should be accompanied with “How are you?” or “How are you doing” but one is NEVER required to stop in one’s tracks to take these gestures of nicety seriously.

Maybe a different code word exists if you are close with someone. I think so that is the case. Those kinds of Hi-and-Bye encounters are usually reserved for either those you are not close to or those whom you’ve just got acquainted with.

To sum it up, living in the U.S. for almost 5 years has taught me a great deal about independence, maturity, discipline, self-worth, value of friendships and faith and most importantly, finding and standing by your principles. It has its ups and downs – what would life be without them? – but it’s how you handle them that counts. In the words of Dory of Finding Nemo fame, “You Just Have to Keep On Swimming……”

Contact

I finally managed to catch the movie “Contact” playing on our local cable channel, Astro. I didn’t see when it first came out since I just got back from the States and had other more urgent things to do besides watching a movie – finding a job for a start.

I did catch glimpses of this flick when it played on cable a few years back and also its subsequent re-runs but never was interested to sit through the whole film. On the surface, the slow-paced drama wasn’t intriguing enough for my frenetic, on-the-go lifestyle back then. Now that I, more often than not, can be seen in the boudoir reclining and nursing Sadia, gazing at the telly is quite high on the list of my daily activities.

I actually didn’t see the beginning of Contact but when Jodie Foster was running frantically through a field of gigantic satellites it caught my attention.

Contact is directed by Robert Zemeckis, one of Hollywood’s successful and renowned directors. He also directs Forrest Gump, Back to the Future and The Frighteners, to name a few. Its protagonist, an Academy award actress, Jodie Foster successfully carries the role with much credibility and evokes a wide range of emotions onto the movie screen.

Jodie plays a well-established professor cum scientist whose passion for all things extra-terrestrial was confirmed one day when she (and her cohorts) finally made contact with alien beings through a series of sound and other encoded signals.

The counterpoint to Jodie’s character is Matthew McConaughey, a celebrated Reverend whose wisdom and advice are often sought by the Government on matters related to and/or affecting religious sensitivity.

These two happened to be lovers while in college but their diverging viewpoints and belief systems led to their break-up. Needless to say, their passion was reignited when they reunited for a project involving these aliens’ secret message.

After Jodie and her team triumphantly deciphered a hidden message by the aliens, the government agreed to build a multi-billion machine according to the specifications detailed in the message. It was their hope that this machine would enable them to enter a different time portal and finally communicate with this alien species.

Jodie’s dedication to the project was however met with disappointment when she wasn’t chosen to be the one to sit in and man the ‘time machine.’ This was in large part due to her atheistic stance on life that runs counter to the pro-religion government. As a ‘logic-oriented’ scientist, Jodie believes in Darwin’s natural selection and theory of evolution. Not in the existence of a Supreme Being. In other words, choosing her to pilot the time pod was bad for politics. Unbeknownst to her, Matthew also played a hand in convincing the Selection Committee to reject Jodie since he feared losing her lest the project proved to be fatal.

When a freak accident involving an anti-alien fanatic destroyed the project, she got a second chance to enter the elusive time dimension after being actively sought by a wealthy, eccentric philanthropist who had already built an exact replica of the machine at an undisclosed location.

Equipped with a portable camera secured on her head, she crossed the threshold to a series of unfamiliar, strange planes where our usual perception of time and space is nonexistent. At her last surreal ‘stop’, she encountered her father who had died a few years earlier. In actuality, the alien assumed the form of her dad, someone whom she was close and comfortable with, to answer some questions that she might have in her capacity as a scientist and a daughter.

Following the discourse with her father, she ‘regained consciousness’ and found herself being rescued by men working at the base where the time pod was installed and launched.

When she inquired them as to how long they had waited for her pod to be orbited back to earth, they gave her a bewildered look saying that she never left the place and the pod had just simply fell to the sea from where it was hung.

And it only took 5-7 seconds for it to tumble down to the water.

Jodie was adamant that her experience was real. It was close to a few hours that she was THERE. In this OTHER spatial dimension. Her only proof - the recorded images that she took - however came out as only static.

She was devastated that the Committee that investigated her findings didn’t believe her. Since she didn’t have scientific backing to her discovery, they dismissed the whole episode as quackery and a figment of her wild imagination. From that moment on, she realized she only has her faith to fall back on….

What she didn’t know was that the static images on the camera did capture a few hours worth of pictorial data, NOT 5-7 seconds when she had crashed to the sea!

The juxtaposition of science and religion in this gem of a movie has a profound effect on me. I find the unraveling of Jodie’s character as she was assailed with images and sensations beyond the ordinary human experience, resonates with genuine feelings of awe and remorse. The mostly level-headed Jodie became emotional and found herself in a sticky situation when the events that mattered to her couldn’t be explained away with science or logic.

The faithless Jodie was shown by God, that even her trustworthy science did not have the capability and tools to replicate or prove empirically her presence at a different dimension. The film came to a full, karmic circle as evidenced when the professor was ridiculed by her rational-thinking peers and the public. In the last scene, as she sat down near the seemingly bottomless ravine of Grand Canyon (or was it someplace else?), contemplating her cumulative set of experiences, I believe she has now come to terms with her faith in God, or a Supreme Being if you may. To me, the boundless abyss aptly represents no matter how much knowledge we have earned in this lifetime, we are still small when compared to the sometime unfathomable yet undeniably infinite wisdom of God. So, at the end of the day, we have to take it to faith that God knows best!

Quicktakes – Pheromonally yours?

One afternoon, I was lying in bed going about my motherly duty of nursing when I saw something interesting on tv. It was actually a snippet of a documentary on NatGeo. Or you could say it was a quick summary, running less than 10 minutes, of a documentary that I have yet managed to watch in full.

The experiment involves taking 5-6 different (what look to me as Caucasian) women with dissimilar immune system and biological make-up, as sampling size. These women were each instructed to sleep and wear the same t-shirts for a few days in a row, without taking any bath. (Probably it was 3 days tops, I didn’t pay close attention on the days – it couldn’t be THAT long before the smell becomes really disgusting to bear).

They then had to deposit the said t-shirts to the experimenter who would put and sealed them in air-tight bags before placing them in the freezer.

A number of men volunteers would then be given the t-shirts (at room temperature, that is) and asked to rank them in no particular order with 1 being the least like and 6 being the most like.

Like their female counterparts, the male guinea pigs were also tested to decode their immune systems. From the scent being whiffed and sniffed by the men, it can safely be said that each man likes and feels attracted to the smell of the woman/women with a corresponding compatible immune system.

I found that conclusion quite interesting with its own set of ramifications:
1) Does it mean we are ‘innately’ and biologically attracted to persons of matching immune system? Does this mean beauty is skin deep, after all?
2) How about the external, on-the-surface factors? Personality, complexion, facial features, weight, height and what-have-you do not account for anything at all if we really plug into our primordial attraction to partners that are crucial for continuing our lineage and if you may, ‘good breeding.’
3) If the same argument follows, when a partner becomes incapacitated by a disease or accident, will the other partner stray and ‘prey’ on more healthy and biologically-compatible candidates? Or will the partner remains steadfast and faithful and wait and pray for a speedy recovery?
4) By the same token, does this explain why in some cases when one half of a couple dies, the other slowly withers and eventually passes away thereafter? When the one that (inherently) really matters is taken away from his/her beloved, the other loses the will to live during which his/her immune system takes a toll and inevitably declines. I notice this happens to couples that are so into one another and dedicate their lives to building a happy sustainable life together.

Of course this experiment has its limits and weaknesses. Especially when you take a small sampling size. I am just musing on how it will be like if we are only able to rely on our elemental urges to choose our significant others. Now that’s what I call ‘Natural Selection.’

The Countdown Begins (Again)

July had come and gone. It’s now the beginning of August. Nothing is more appropriate and auspicious to usher in the month of August than with the birth of my friend, Ina’s son – her third child. Speaking of miracle of life, I do believe in everyday miracles, big or small. And every situation that we face and encounter has a reason behind it.

As August sets in, it dawned on me that it’s almost, in a blink of an eye, going to September. The time to leave Malaysia is imminent. Wow, how time flies. And how I had thought, it would be a drag and downright laborious to wait three months to leave.

As most of you have known, my immediate family and I were supposed to board the flight to Amsterdam on 3rd June. However, as we found out, coming back from Kuching that 31st May, my husband’s Masters programme had been postpone to mid-September. It was devastating to say the least. We had already said our goodbyes, personally and professionally, to be hit by such news nearing our departure date. How anti-climactic!

I resumed my wifely and maternal duties in Ampang while my husband assumed his position back at the office, which was somewhat hilarious since he already gave his farewell speech and cleared his cubicle.

As a firm believer in silver lining behind grey clouds, I know there must be a reason for the deferment of his course. No, it’s not because he wanted to watch the World Cup – far from it – the professors are more well-versed in football than us and might have a hand in moving the course date. But I digress.

Some of the silver linings that I have discovered include the break-in of our apartment due to a lack of tight security, the problematic hand-over of my car loan to its rightful new owner, and spending quality time with my mother.

The latter is a surprising element in my unplanned, extended stay in Malaysia since she had earlier broke down in front of me even before I went back to Kuching. She had professed and lamented that she would miss me as well as our heart-to-heart talks. I was stunned and stumped. I had expected her to be prepared. Now that I’ve stayed longer, I hope, both she and I are ready for the one-year separation.

Of course I’m attached to my mother – on some levels even after getting married. She’s one of my trusty confidantes. I’m grateful to Allah that I’ve gotten a second chance to spend more time with her.

Now that September is looming on the horizon, I’ve to come to grips that we are leaving for Holland. There are a lot of things and people that I’m going to miss. I will miss my family, extended family and friends whose presence comfort and encourage me, and all other things that have become familiar, accustomed and dear to me these past two months or so. As exemplified in my first ever blog last year, I’m a slowpoke when it comes to acclimatizing to a new place. With the support and company of my gleeful husband and cherubic baby at my side, adjusting to changes will be a cinch, God willing.

For now, back to the drawing board and that would be packing! Urgh! Hmmm, where did I stash away my darn sweaters (if I could fit in them, that is)…..

The Terrible Two

Two Fridays ago, my twin sister and I met up with our friends, Izana for tea to celebrate her birthday (albeit two days late). As we sat there in Choc’z, this chic chocolatiér cum café, Izana opened as wont the birthday cards we bought for her. Lo and behold, my twin and I had picked the same card!!! That was maddeningly eerie! We screamed in delight at the bizarre coincidence.

What is the odd of that happening? One in a gazillion! Funny that even though we are married and live separately, the twin vibes are still alive and kicking. The card has a cat motif that Izana likes but there is an array of feline-filled cards in the market. It’s from Memory Lane but still there are many cute-cat covers to choose from. You get a rough idea where this is going…

Similar psychic connection almost took place when I wore this ensemble which she also liked and nearly thought of buying. And early in June, both of us agonized over our toothache at the same time. My molar was throbbing inside the right side of my mouth whilst hers was on the left side. Mirror image perhaps? This surreal phenomenon brings me to an interesting topic of the day: My Amusing Facts on the State of Twinhood

1) As a twin, when you come upon your twin’s friend or acquaintance who’s wondering if it’s you or your twin, you have this strange yet mechanical tendency to quickly correct the person first by gesticulating frantically with your hands “No, I’m not Nina, I’m the twin,” Duh! I know it’s uncalled for but bad habits die hard, I’m afraid. I’d rather put the person to right first before they utter the predictable lines “Nina, is it?” and so forth. Let’s just say it’s my idiosyncratic way – twin civic duty, if you may – of saving these people from embarrassment of mistaken identity;
2) You have this strong (or annoying, take your pick) affinity to finish each other’s sentences and humming/singing the tune that the other is thinking in her head;
3) During a chance encounter with someone you either don’t like or want to avoid, you can feign ignorance or nonchalance by pretending to be the other twin. This however takes a lot of practice in order to do it with a straight face. Hehe;
4) You have a love-hate relationship about having a twin. You loathe the comparison and sweeping generalizations made by people but love the attention and privileges bestowed on twins; And
5) Despite your natural inclination to be different from each other – went to different countries and took different courses to study, amongst others – in the end you still gravitate towards one another like peas in the pod that you used to be in. The main reason for this unaffected pull is that fundamentally both of you are the ‘same’ – purchasing the same cards, penchant for like interests such as the same type of clothing, movie genre and writing – in spite of your great efforts to be two disparate individuals. Your physical likeness does resemble your inner psyche, I suppose.

On a more personal note, since my husband and I have the genetic code for twins (he has twin nephews), the proclivity and likelihood to beget twins are high. Yikes! If I were to give birth to a set of twins, I’d make sure that they invariably foster good relations with one another and that their inherent competitive spirits remain healthy. After all, isn’t it all in the genes? J