Down Under Where?

I hate packing for trips. I hate that you have to go through a mental checklist of things that you should bring, and inevitably, you will always forget something important - your shaver, hair products, your phone charger, socks, your Hello Kitty bolster. (What? Don't judge me.)

One of the worst packing experiences I have ever had was when I was going for a church camp in my first few years here in Melbourne. I had gone through my mental checklist methodically - 'Towels, underwear, toiletries, shirts for wearing out, shirts for sleeping in...' and packed my suitcase initially, but just realised that it wasn't big enough so I transported everything over to a bigger knapsack.

We took a bus to the campsite about two hours away from civilisation, and laughed and joked along the way. Soon, we poured out of the bus and dropped our luggages off at our respective cabins and got changed for the first event of the day - icebreakers and games. We had a great time, and I was in my element - getting everyone laughing, taunting the opposition, playing the fool.

I had worked up quite a sweat and felt really good about being there as I returned to my cabin with my other bunkmates to shower and change before dinner. I sat astride my backpack, mocking my friends good-naturedly as I rummaged around and pulled out my toiletries, my towel, my shirt, my trackpants, my underwear...my underwear....*grunt*... my underw....

It was then I broke out in a cold sweat. I went through my knapsack with the fervency of a United States customs officer, frisking it up and down, looking in every pouch and orifice possible before the truth hit me squarely in the groin.

I had forgotten to transfer my underwear from the small suitcase to the bigger knapsack.

Now how shall I put into words how I feel?

It was a mixture of when Frodo witnessed Gandalf falling to his death, when Luke found out who his father was, when Manchester United fans found out Sir Alex Ferguson was retiring, when you've poured out that bowl of cereal, and then open the fridge to find that there is no milk.

No. Milk.

If I could have sunk to my knees and cried out a dramatic protracted 'NOOOOOOO!' I would have. Or maybe I did, because my bunkmates had to lift me up again, slap me a few times and ask me what was wrong before I sheepishly replied 'Urm, nothing. Nothing what. Everything's okay.'

And so I went to the shower, my shuffling feet betraying my ruminating mind. This church camp had suddenly turned into the Worst. Camp. Ever.

I was going through the motions of showering myself and looking up at my solitary (slightly used) underwear hanging woefully up on the shower door next to my towel when I tried to come up with a plan of how to maximise my single underwear use.

Now, I have four days of the camp to last, so if I wore it normally on the first day, back-to-front on the second day, inside out on the third day, inside out and back-to-front on the fourth day, I should just be able to manage, I thought to myself, as I pulled my towel down to dry myself....

And that's when my only underwear dropped to the wet shower floor.

*sinks to his knees* NOOOOOOOO!

Now, it was the really the Worst. Camp. Ever.

I almost dived into the shower floor tiles trying to rescue my precious briefs (or in this case, brief). I picked it up as quickly as I could, but not quick enough, apparently - a wet patch had developed around half the underwear. At this point, I despaired even for life itself and wondered how long I could stay hidden in the showers before someone noticed I was missing.

I dried my underwear as best as I could by swinging it around for a few minutes and I *eew* slowly *yuck* put *urrgh* it *oh, man* back *gross* on.

Urrgh, I still shudder at the thought of wet underwear against my skin.

Anyway, I noisily squelched my way back to my cabin, and into the arms of my understanding bunkmates, who I confided to with the earnestness of a inconsolable child who had just lost his puppy.

They looked at me with great kindness in their eyes - and proceeded to laugh their asses off at me while rubbing their own stock of clean underwear mockingly against their faces (Ooh, can you feel that Heng Khuen? Feels so... clean. And dry.)

Okay, so they weren't that bad, but they certainly did laugh really hard at me before offering to help me out with my predicament.

My pastor was informed, and he rang some guys who were driving up to the camp later that night to bring in some disposable underwears.

After having laughed until he held his sides for a good five minutes, of course.

And so salvation came in the form of some Made in China disposable underwears that night from my friends (amidst a bit more chuckling and ribbing) and I could finally heave a sigh of relief and enjoy the church camp properly once more.

In case you needed a visual aid
to go with this story.
It goes without saying that I am
far better looking, of course.

The disposable underwears were like, how shall we say, really sheer. It was made of a gossamer thin paper material with two holes in it to put your feet through. It was like wearing a shower cap around your ass instead of on your head. I was worried every time that I ran in it, that I would somehow spark off a fire in my pants from my thighs rubbing against this potentially flammable material.

But I was grateful, nonetheless. At least I didn't have to survive on one semi-wet underwear for the whole camp.

Or no underwear for that matter.

Now that would have made me really popular and potentially made it the Best. Church. Camp. Ever.

Not.

Did I mention I hate packing?

Where Is Your Accent From Again?

When we were still in primary school, we had a slightly eccentric schoolmate return from a holiday to Australia. Somehow in that one week where he was away, he caught something while he was overseas which he brought back home to Malaysia - the Australian accent.

He would walk past us, smile brightly, and greet us with his slight lisp - G'day!. None of us, having ever been to Singapore, much less Australia stared at him weirdly and walked quickly away, before he finally explained to us that it was a customary greeting there, replacing our well known Good Morning, Good Afternoon, Good Evening greetings.

We did what all caring, considerate, thoughtful twelve-year-olds would do - we teased him no end. From that day forth, he was Sir G'day to us.

'Oi, G'day lei le! Fai tit chao ah!' (G'day's walking this way! Let's run away!) or 'G'day, G'day, hei sei le lei!' (G'day, G'day. Go and die lah you!)

It was almost this tribal cry of twelve-year-olds who could no longer identify the scent of one of their own - he looked like one of us but no longer sounded like one of us, and we quickly distanced him from the pack.

Not until he came off his high Westernised horse and joined us again in the Malaysian-English world of lahs, where gots, dowans and How I knows would we be his friend once more.

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I absolutely love this video from dmingthing, a popular Malaysian Youtuber who, together with the team from Wah Banana in Singapore, collaborated to show us that this is a problem common to both our countries. This video eloquently captures with wit what I am trying to explain here better than my words will ever do. 

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How many Tiffanys do we know? How many people who are seemingly ashamed of our own localised versions of English (Manglish or Malaysian English or Singlish, Singaporean English) have resorted to coming up with some indistinguishable version of Westernised English (American, British or Australian) just to sound more sophisticated and impress others?

There are some who handle it quite well, and perhaps have spent a significant amount of time overseas in a Western country (ie. longer than four days) and then I have met some who have never really been overseas, whose accents are so put on and jarring, and would even dissociate themselves from being Singaporean or Malaysian completely. These people make me sad, and wonder what traumatic experience would have happened to make them want to so badly be identified with a whole different country altogether.

This phenomenon is unique, as far as I know, to Malaysians and Singaporeans but I am certain that it is true of any country that has been previously colonised before.

My friend refers to this phenomenon as the Pinkerton syndrome - a reference to Lieutenant Pinkerton in Puccini's Madame Butterfly where it describes the tendency of some Asians to consider the Caucasians to be superior in every aspect, and to be biased towards them and to despise our own.

Blame it on our post-colonial masters heritage, or blame it on all the American cartoons and sitcoms that stream through our television and Hollywood dominating our silver screens - there was a distinct group among us who thought the world of the white person, and wanted to join that group, sometimes to the exclusion of our own local friends.

We were affectionately (or derogatorily) known as bananas (yellow on the outside, white on the inside) or Oreos (the Indian version) while the Singaporean version - 'ciak kantang one' [Hokkien for 'one who eats potatoes' because obviously all Westerners are Irish. :)].

Interestingly enough, this phenomenon is quite rare among my Malay friends, as far as I know. Their sense of community and identity is so strong, and their ties to their religion so deep-rooted that there are fewer of them who I know belong to this group, although times are changing that as well.

You could tell these people by a few features:

1. Speaks English only, or mainly English

2. Speaks little to completely decimated Cantonese, Mandarin or Tamil and are in no rush to rectify that

3. Grew up listening to English radio stations mainly, secretly loves boybands

4. Devoured Enid Blyton books and all other form of English literature growing up

5. Were more likely to be Christian or Catholic (the 'Western' religions)

6. Tended to have friends who did 1-5.

Oops, guilty on all six counts as charged.

I speak in some kind of indistinguishable accent of English myself, but I believe I am a product of my upbringing. My family spoke mainly English at home, I went to a school that used to be run by religious brothers, listened to Radio 4, the only English radio station in my time, watched He-Man and Friends on TV, went to church, and read all of The Secret Seven, The Famous Five and The Magic Faraway Tree. And I secretly loved boybands. (Okay, love, not loved.)

It's not like I thought the world of the Western society necessarily - it's just what I was exposed to. I know I am Malaysian through and through still - I love food so much I want to marry it, eat at hawker centres and mamak stalls, I am easygoing and friendly, I turn up late to almost everything, everyone older than me is my 'uncle' or 'auntie' and all my Indian friends are my 'macha's and I support an English Premier League soccer team.

Having been in Australia for nearly a decade now (has it been that long already?) I find that I still gravitate towards Malaysian, Singaporean and Indonesian friends as we share somewhat similar values and culture. (We all take Instagram pictures of our food).

Being away from home has made us even more acutely aware of what we really miss from home and we seek solace in familiar faces all these miles away from our tanahair (motherland).

What I do find myself and friends like me doing is what Karen describes as code-switching - our grammar and accents change depending on whether we are at work with a mostly Australian group or at a Malaysian restaurant with our friends. I think we do this chameleon-like transition not necessarily to be accepted but because we care for who we talk to and want to communicate as effectively as possible.

As the world becomes more and more globalised, I wonder what our children's futures would look like one day, and who would they truly identify with, and whether we can really pick from their accents where they come from.

Boy Bands, I Hate You.

Wow - kids nowadays! What's up with all this One Direction madness! I can't look anywhere without seeing some kind of product tie-in with 1D! And what kind of lame-ass music are they churning out anyway? Why, back in my day...

.... erm, well, erm... back in my day... we had... erm...

New Kids on the Block
Take That
Backstreet Boys
N'Sync
Boyzone
Westlife

... okay, screaming girls (and some screaming boys). Here you go. Enjoy your One Direction. I'll be sitting here sulking in the Corner of Hypocrisy.

God must have spent a little more time on  you,
I mean them.

Ah yes, boy bands. Oh, how I used to hate them.

I hated their schmaltzy love songs, I hated their perfect hair, hated their million-dollar smiles, despised their clear skin and well-trimmed beards.

I hated the fact that they were rich, hated that they were popular, and hated that girls tripped over themselves trying to get to them. I hated that there was the Cute One, the Shy One, the Silent One, the Bad Boy and the Only One With the Actual Singing Talent.

But most of all, I loathed the way that girls my age were talking about them. 'Oh, I'm in love with Robbie, he's such a bad boy!' or 'Nick's floppy hair, oh my God!' or 'I'm going to marry Justin!' or 'I want to pour Ronan's voice all over my body' (okay, maybe not this last one).

Love me for a reason, let the reason be...
my immensely good looks and stylish clothes

And then we would take a look at our woeful teenage selves - the scrawny average Malaysian male student with the

acne-ravaged face from too much spicy food and too little facial wash

centre-parting hair

wearing the short-sleeved used-to-be-white school shirt and

the baggy olive green pants that looked like we had been prancing around in mud

waving our stick thin muscle-less arms used only for computer gaming and shoving food into our mouths

singing with our puberty-afflicted voices which always broke, making us sound like donkeys in heat

splurging the daily RM 1.50 we got for our allowance, which just got us above the poverty line.

Oh hai baybeh. 

We weren't anyone's fire, or the one desire, if you know what I'm saying. It ain't no lie, the girls our age were looking at us and going Bye, Bye, Bye. (Hands up, 80s kids!)

We were more Friendzone than Boyzone.

Weren't they supposed to be singing songs that made us fall in love with each other instead of in love with them? Damn it! How were we ever supposed to live up to that kind of perfection? Talk about girls being pressured to look a certain way, it's not like we boys had it easy either!

So here you go, new generation, here's a new batch of pretty boys for you to idolise and scream your lungs out to, and to throw your undergarments at - and leave you shaking your head at the substandard quality of men around you.

Don't bother going out with that boy who's got his eye on you all of last year - he's no Zayn Malik! And why date that dorky loser who sits next to you in class when you could be saving yourself for Liam, Harry, Niall or Louis?

But seriously, enjoy it while you can - every generation is entitled to their version of The Beatles (go ask your grandparents who they are) and one day, you will fall madly in love with that boy who waited patiently in the corner for you to sit out your imaginary crushes, and he will be far from perfect, but then again neither are you (and that's okay).

And if you're really lucky, you will be perfect for each other. Pock marks and braces and all. (...and that's what makes you beautiful, oh oh oh).

I am sure the Backstreet Boys would have wanted it that way.

Here's one for all the screaming fangirls who 
were in their teenage years in the 90s.