the corners of my mouth are still a little bit greasy from the half-slice of bak kwa, or yuk kon as my family prefers to call it, that i generously allowed myself to have, a few minutes ago. the wonderful sweet meat is from a little shop that i stumbled upon while walking along Allen Street in Chinatown today. this is the first time i’ve seen bak kwa being sold in NYC, and i was so glad and relieved to have found the shop. i couldnt wait to sit down and open the packet to have some bak kwa! and now that i have, i am experiencing that sticky and double-chinned but satisfied feeling that i always get when i eat bak kwa. this city always gently holds out to me little slivers of home when i least expect it.

i had some very fascinating conversations with several fellow freshmen the other day. it was during an event for international students, and while talking to this Swiss guy who seemed to know a fair bit about Malaysia, a Polish guy joined us and shared that he was vacationing in Penang during the 2004 tsunami. so we all started talking about Malaysia, much to my delight. the Swiss guy seemed to have the impression that KL is a very ugly city because he was told that we have many highways and that the city is very pedestrian-unfriendly. undeniable on both counts, but i assured him that there are very, very few cities in the world that are more beautiful than KL to me. the Polish guy then chimed in and said that he found it very amusing that Malaysian girls seemed to hate getting tanned, because when he was at the beach in Penang, he noticed that a lot of Malaysian girls darted quickly under trees or were constantly in long-sleeved shirts despite the heat. i couldnt help but laugh because i immediately thought of Tze Ching. and Darren.. although he isnt exactly a Malaysian girl.

the novelty of people knowing about Malaysia’s petroleum industry and Anwar Ibrahim has worn off a little bit, but i got very excited when i spotted from across the room, a guy wearing a shirt with a Malaysian flag on his sleeve. he was in the middle of a very heated discussion, and i was fidgeting for about 5 minutes wondering if i should just interrupt and ask him why he was wearing that shirt.

i eventually did, and he told me he was in KL last year for a Model UN conference at ISKL. i got even more excited and squealed that i lived really near there. “oh my god, you live in Ampang?” he asked, equally excited, and i was extremely impressed that he pronounced it correctly (äm-päng, not ām-pāng). he went on to say that he thought the best thing about Malaysia was the mamak stalls, also pronounced with the correct ‘a’, and that he loved tosai with dahl. amazing. he knew and could remember so much about KL even though he was only there for 4 days and was at a conference most of the time. it kinda mitigated the slightly depressing conversation with Swiss Guy who heard KL is ugly and the one with Polish Guy who said his first observation of Malaysians was that they nonchalantly threw trash everywhere.

after all these weeks of talking mostly about politics when the topic of Malaysia comes up within my new friends, it felt strangely – but i guess not unexpectedly – good to talk about something trivial like mamak stalls. apparently the one that Model UN Guy went to all the time was in Taman Sri Ukay, because he lived there with his host family. to hear a foreigner say ‘Taman Sri Ukay’ in perfect intonation is an experience everyone should have. i felt proud, a glowing feeling that lasted a couple of hours, that Malaysia was so interesting to this one person that it could captivate his fancy this much.

spotted in an asian mart, next to some cans of 100 plus and milo

i also love hanging out with the singaporeans here because they ALL (except this guy called Chang) still have their accents and can switch back to it within a split second. lah leh mah meh wah sibeh ex. i loooove the fact that after a full day of straining to speak in an American accent and practicing Italian speech for my classes, i can meet up with the singaporeans and let my tongue loose (in a purely linguistic sense of the phrase), and we can compare notes on the little Americanisms that we’ve observed over the course of the day. like.. how everyone here holds doors open for the person behind them and how everyone in your vicinity says ‘bless you!’ when you sneeze.

but of course, there are no proxies that are better than the real thing. in my first week here, i was introduced to a whole bunch of Malaysians (of course, by means of Chen Chow, because EVERYBODY knows Chen Chow…) working here in NYC. i’m really glad to have met them because they are so much fun to hang out with, and they remind me a lot of my friends back home.

i met up with some of the Malaysians over a buka puasa ramadhan bazaar at the Malaysian UN Consulate sometime last week, and the array of food drove all of us crazy. it was so good to see onde-onde, satay, asam laksa, karipap, cucur udang, bubur durian, nasi dagang, nasi lemak, popiah and RAMLI BURGER all under one roof, cooked by the wives of malaysian ambassadors and delegates working here in NYC. it was also nice to speak malay again, ‘berapa kak?’, ‘pedas tak?’ ‘ni buat apa?’. even though i didnt know any of those ambassadors or their wives, it was so easy to strike up conversation in Malay and talk freely like friends. if there is any reason for our government to insist on children learning 11 years of Bahasa Malaysia, this is it. the ability to speak malay is an access to unity that i have sadly taken for granted all of my life.

us girls very excited to see sugar cane and lychee drinks at the bazaar

i was also really amused while listening to the young children talk. they all had flawless american accents when speaking amongst themselves, but they almost always reverted to colloquial malay when speaking to their parents. the kids were the ones manning the Ramli burger stall by the way, and i must say they make a very mean burger ayam special tambah sos cili!

Carol is staying over with me right now, because tomorrow we’re going with the singaporeans to Woodbury Commons for a full day of fabulous shopping. i’m really glad to have her here with me :) next week Suet is coming to stay and that will be much fun too. Carol will join us, and then we will have a night of Malaysian dinner and a lot of good ol’ gossiping and catching up.

i feel thankful for these little slivers of home (though sometimes they feel larger than life) that i am serendipitously finding in little nooks and crannies of New York, but sometimes bared out in the open for me to just reach out and grab at. whether in loud or subtle ways, my transition from home to away is eased by these things, and i find that every day that i spend here in this new city, i love it more and more.

i’ve always wanted to blog about the person who sent me Envelope 3, and now opportunity has just presented itself in the form of a bright, smiley, sunny orange card that came in the mail for me all the way from Aarhus, Denmark :) the Danish stamp was a clear indicator of who the sender was, though the totally perasan note on the back of the envelope was a dead giveaway as well. it said, ‘before you open this, remember that Tamtim is awesome!’ -_-

so the card is from Tamtim, formerly known on my blog as Timtam before i realized too many Tims were running around with the same nickname, and formerly formerly known by his real name Jak Tim.. though sometimes i call him Lummy when i feel like irritating him. he’s currently spending a semester studying abroad at Denmark to finish up his degree in Finance, because it is his big goal in life to become a power hungry investment banker. i assure you he will do a very good job at i-banking because he actually likes the culture of staying back late to do work. and he also likes bloomberg and microsoft excel. wtf…

he is one of my favorite-est friends ever, though i would never admit this to him in person. i tell Tamtim all my shit with reckless abandon, even though he’s probably the most judgmental friend i have :P he’d be one of the first people i would talk to if i were facing a problem, and also one of the first i would go to to share good news.

tamtim, crabby as always

Tamtim is one of those people that i got along with grandly even within the first few hours of meeting each other. he’s like one of my best friends now, but we actually only met two years ago, in 2006, through my blog! he’d been reading me since the days of my old blog at pinkskyes and occasionally he would leave me comments under the moniker ArtificiallyVerbose (hahahahaha!), but one day we started talking via email because i wrote on my blog that i desperately wanted to go watch Damien Rice in Singapore, and he offered to help me get the tickets. omg Tamtim why last time you so nice, now not nice anymore T____T anyway i never did get to go watch Damien Rice because the tickets sold out within minutes, but nevermind lah, in the end i still found Tamtim! i think if the Damien Rice thing didnt happen, Tamtim and i wouldnt be friends today. so, all is good :)

we like a lot of the same things, which makes us good kakis for just about anything, be it movies, food or shopping. as is apparent with the Damien Rice thing, Tamtim and i share similar music tastes, which is awesome whenever there are gigs going on in Singapore. so far we’ve gone for The Album Leaf and Death Cab for Cutie. he’s also one of the few guy friends i have who actually LIKES watching musicals :O i usually have to beg Martian or other guy friends to take me to musicals :( oh and get this: Tamtim also watches Grey’s Anatomy and…………. GOSSIP GIRL!!! hahahaha! best. so i get to rant to him about plot twists and stupid characters that should just disappear, cos he watches all the same shows as i do. we watch Heroes too but that information is not as gempak as the fact that he watches Gossip Girl.

to those who have been reading my blog for a while now, remember the supermarket series of photos where i was terrorizing the supermarket aisles from inside a trolley? well, my partner-in-crime on that day was none other than Tamtim :P actually, he’s my favorite camwhore partner because he’s so game to do anything. most people just get tired after awhile or they dont want to cause a scene. haih, but causing a scene is when the photos are best!

there are very few people who know me inside out, and i think even fewer people who know how to handle me when i’m upset or angry. i dont always agree with what Tamtim has to say, but most of the time it’s a case of him saying what i need to hear, and not what i want to, and even though i get a little bit miffed at first, i always feel much better at the end of the day when i realize that what he says is right. this, among many other reasons – like the fact that he watches Gossip Girl and likes musicals :) – is why i’m so glad that Tamtim and i randomly found each other. we dont just get along, but we get each other, and i think everyone needs a friend like that :)

everyone also needs a friend who will help them do their economics homework. hehe! thank you Tamtim! we got the answers back today and you were right about the electronics’ workers wages..

i also found a peer recommendation that he wrote for me for one of the colleges i applied to. i want to share the last line of the letter because i think it’s amazing what foresight Tamtim has and also how well he knows me. in the letter to the college, he says: “Perhaps the only concern I have of her being admitted to your school would be her taking on too many tasks as she has a diverse base of interests and this would put her time management skills to the test”.

IT’S SO TRUE OKAY. there are so many things i want to do here, but i’m spreading myself way too thin, and i’m already feeling the massive physical and emotional drain. and i also find the sentence as a whole kinda amusing. haha. it’s very Tamtim to talk like that. ‘as she has a diverse base of interests’… hahahaha damn serious.

there’s so much more i could tell you guys about Tamtim, like how he has this weird fascination with Cookie Monster, but it’s already 3 a.m here and i still have lots of work left to do. you know lah, my time management skills are being put to the test wat. so i shall end this post with a snapshot of the little note that Tamtim wrote on the front of the envelope for the postman:

shy and anti-social wtf. thank you tamtim for the card! it really did make me smile :)

even though i am far away from home, there is great sorrow in my heart today.

Raja Petra Kamaruddin has just been sent to Kamunting to begin his 2-year detention under the ISA, a period which can be indefinitely renewed at the arbitrary wish of the government.

i hope and pray for big waves of change in malaysia to come soon. they cannot bully us like this.

i have been feeling extremely stressed out in the past week. i guess i dont really want to say why because it’s going to sound like i’m making excuses, but sometimes i wish the people who loved me would be a little bit more understanding. or maybe that is an unfair request. but why am i constantly made to feel like i am not good enough? or like i’m not putting in enough effort into this or that, that i am doing things wrongly, that my priorities are muddled. the past week has been full of such claims, and it’s so draining and discouraging. it’s a small thing to get worked up over, i know, but right now my nerves are so fried that i’m hyper-sensitive to just about anything.

but something happened a couple of days ago that made me smile :) i finally remembered to check my mailbox to see if i had any letters, and amidst some boring letters from the bank, i found that i had two cards sent to me! those cards totally made my day. then the day after, i got a package in the mail. and today i got another!!! :D

so! i’ve decided to start a new blog category titled ‘What I Got In The Mail’ to document the cool things people send me in the mail for as long as i’m here, whether they are postcards, photos, letters, packages or a quick note scribbled on a napkin, haha. it’s going to be my little way of saying an extra thank you to the people who so kindly took the time and effort to send me stuff :)) mail makes me so happy!

the first ever package i got ever since i arrived was the one from Chew Fui, which i blogged about here. and since it’s the first package i got, clearly it must precede all else in my brand new category! so this is Envelope 1. Chew Fui sent me:

1 packet of Keebler’s animal crackers (very good!!) 1 packet of Quaker’s granola bites (which Martian finished off while he was still in NY) 2 Rice Krispies treats 1 pack of Pringles pizza stix 1 pack of Kellogg’s Yogos Bits 2 pads of Post-Its

and also a card + a lovely photo of her family, with a pack of Pop Rocks taped to it. when i peeled off the Pop Rocks, there was a big smiley face there with ‘it’s kiddo, i know’ written on the card. haha! kiddo indeed!!! i havent had pop rocks in ages. nostalgia nostalgia. back in the day (wtf), each pack used to have these yellow lollipops shaped like feet that we could dip into the pop rocks. best!

i met Chew Fui late 2002 when i first started going to church at TMLC. i only went to TMLC for about a year, but made some very good friends there :) we drifted apart after a while though, because i stopped going to TMLC and being the lousy person that i am, didnt keep in touch with most of them except for a few. a few years down the road, one of the TMLC guys, Michael, told me that he shot Chew Fui’s wedding, and he showed me some photos from his camera. i was so surprised to learn that Chew Fui had gotten married!!! and then Michael tells me that she’s moving to America!! this was at a time when i hadn’t even considered going to study in the US.

fast forward some more years later, just a couple of days before i was due to fly off to New York, i get an email from Chew Fui saying hi and that i could come visit her when i arrive at the States. it was such a shock to me because i never knew she knew my blog existed, much less be reading it! super cool. i started jumping up and down excitedly when i saw the email, the kind of jumping up and down one does when meeting an old friend again, or when predicting the victory at a writing competition (Andrew :P).

Chew Fui, i already said this before, but i’m so glad we found each other again. hahaha. during one of my breaks, imma go visit and take lots of pictures with her baby daughter!!! very cute; in the photo CF sent me, her daughter was half-frowning and half-pouting :D it’s all in the pout, i always say.

Envelope 2 didnt really come in an envelope, because it’s a postcard! GUESS WHAT KIND OF POSTCARD!

it’s a postcard of Hong Kong!! with a beautiful sunset picture of the harbour. sigh. there are some days when i miss HK loads and wish that i had made more use of the time i had there. the person who sent me the postcard is Mandy, a Malaysian working in HK. we’ve never met, and i dont think she’s ever left a comment or contacted me in any way, which makes the postcard all the more cooler. she says (in very nice penmanship) that she hopes a postcard of one of my favorite places will make me smile. and it definitely did :) it also made me beg Martian to go back with me to HK some time next year *prays

mandy, if you are reading this, thank you so much. if you dont mind, i’d like to send you a postcard too, so pls pls do email me your mailing addy.

okay that concludes the first ever chapter of What I Got In The Mail :) more soon.

juggling is tough.