Malaysia

The Extinction of the Walker

Americans use their supermarkets as a second home. Malaysians aspire to be like Americans. Their currency used to be called the Malaysian dollar and even in written form it resembles the dollar sign. Our group of foreigners were given opportunity to see what was the rightful second home of Malaysians. Four of us -- a Finnish professor, a young German scientist and two Slovaks -- explored a Malysian Megamart, which even included artificial canals with big boat tours. First we went to the food market. It had everything imaginable from all over the world, but it was difficult to find anything that could have been considered Malaysian. The next area, luxury cosmetics, offered the same brand names (and shelf arrangements) that one would find in London, Paris or New York, or even Sofia, Prague, or Warsaw.

Exhausted after looking at the endless variety of goods for sale we decided to leave. That wasn’t easy. We all agreed that we had to take a taxi in order to get to the university campus. We also concluded that everywhere in the world taxis park in front of the main entrance. Unfortunately we couldn’t find the main entrance.

We climbed up and down four floors of Megamart, finding every possible and impossible type of store, but no main entrance. Several times we returned to our starting point and began all over again. Finally, we found three possible exits from this massive beehive of a building -- one to a construction site, another to a gigantic children’s playground, and a third to a five-level underground parking lot. There were no taxis in front of any of them. We were four university-educated, well-seasoned travelers with shopping experience in virtually all the corners of the world but now we were at the end of our tether. After much tiresome wandering -- fruitlessly asking surprised local shoppers who were hurrying to their cars – and increasingly heated arguments between ourselves about where to go next, we proceed, in the darkness, to the construction site and walked to a nearby highway. There, by chance, we flagged down a cab and -- not in the best mood but happy to have the adventure over -- went home. We retired to our separate rooms, each of us pondering on our clash with this blossoming civilization of the third millenium.

A few weeks later, when I told this story to my friends back home, the idea suddenly occurred to me that, of course, the Megamart did have a main entrance -- we had simply failed to recognize it. We had even passed it a few times. It was the underground parking lot. Well, in past people may have gone to shops on foot. But today, huge, impersonal shopping malls sprout like aircraft hangars in the middle of concrete deserts. Like highways, they are far removed from where people actually live. Going to the supermarket without a car is tantamount to walking across a six-lane freeway.

In fact, that evening in Malaysia, everything was okay. Only we eccentric walkers, foreigners from Europe, didn’t realize that the main entrance of this store of the future would forever be a multilevel, concrete cavern for cars -- the mausoleum of the last, unknown walker.


Available in E-books:

http://itunes.apple.com/sk/ book/svetje-maly-the-world-is- small/id554103459?mt=11

http://itunes.apple.com/sk/ book/le-monde-est-petit-world- is/id554104733?mt=11

http://itunes.apple.com/sk/ book/the-world-is-small-svet- je-maly/id554101744?mt=11

FACE TO FACE WITH THE MALAYSIAN TIGER

I'm sure you know the feeling that, contrary to the saying "north, south, east or west, home is always the best," at a particular moment anywhere else is better for you to be than at home. Usual domestic quarrels or wrangles, not only between politicians but also between friends and colleagues, or even in your own house, might reach such an intensity that you become prisoner to one importunate question: How can you know that home is the best until you've not gone north, south, east and west? And it may occur to you that only being face-to-face with a Malaysian tiger could make you believe that home is not the worst place you could find yourself. Anyway, I ran away to Malaysia. It happens sometimes that, awaiting something exotic, you find that the prior imaginings do not always match the reality. Instead of an image of exotic tribes and poverty I found civilization in some areas that was more progressive, richer and in every way better than the one I had left behind. The only Malaysian tiger I saw -- stuffed -- was in the national museum, and, of course, it didn't leave much of an impression on me. Nor can you meet your tiger on the streets of the capital, Kuala Lumpur. My last hope for the shock cure I needed was a trip to the Malaysian jungle. After the international conference we set out for Pasoh, a reservation that features the largest number of tree species in the world. Ordinary visitors wouldn't get there, neither, as we discovered, any Malaysian tiger did. This sample jungle is only an enclosure among a broad area of fields and villages.

The trip organizers showed us a 30-meter aluminum construction with three towers connected by walkways designed to allow study of jungle vegetation at its various heights. We were offered to climb the towers but first had to sign a waiver called "Personal indemnity declaration" -- not for being devoured by a tiger, but rather for falling off the tower. I signed with a carefree heart, and was the first to run up the steep ladder. Of course, I didn't foresee that at the top of the ladder there would be a platform where a small, green and highly poisonous Malaysian snake awaited me. When I saw the snake, I was certain I could fall off the ladder very easily. And yet I couldn't back down because others who had also, lightheartedly, signed the waiver were stacked up behind me.

Strangely, my first thought was to photograph the deadly snake, so that when investigators would develop the film from my camera and will see the snake in last frames, they could determine what had happened to me. I took the photograph, but the snake's camouflage was so impeccable that no one could see it on the photograph. In fact, the meeting with the snake turned out to be uneventful, and my exciting description of this adventure fetched only a bemused smile from the local guides. And to get rid of the feeling that we were so far removed from civilization, they served for our lunch portions of original Colonel Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken. In this boring way I spent my visit in Malaysia until the final day, when all I had to do was have a swim in University swimming pool, to pack my luggage and get to the airport. And exactly that time, between these two points of my daily plan, it happened!

Even today, I don't understand why. On my way back to the hotel I had to cross drainage. I must say, it was bigger than our non-tropical equivalent. Nevertheless, in my good mood this seemed like an easy jump. But dreaming with open eyes is dangerous. I slipped and fell so hard that I felt as if I had met a Malaysian tiger after all. The effect was similar. With this one unsuccessful jump I went from the absolute comfort of a beautiful, relaxing day to the victim of an accident that will scar me for the long time. Even the pleasant ministrations of the Malaysian stewardess, Elyana, throughout the whole return flight, couldn't change my painful feeling that I had behaved like a complete idiot. My professor at our Institute back home tried to comfort me and revealed to me how he had fallen into a manhole in Sao Paolo, Brazil. My colleague, writer and publisher's editor from Slovenia, assured me that he has on his table a manuscript from a woman who had fallen twice into the same manhole in Burkina Faso, Africa. But the topper was the remark by the 70-year-old administrator of our university building where I work.

"Don't worry," he said compassionately. "We had someone like you in our village."

Explanation followed. That was in the early years of 20th century. That someone was nicknamed "scientist" because he had finished all five years of that-time primary school and was therefore the most educated man in village. He also earned a reputation as an incredible idiot because, taking water from the public well, he fell headfirst into it. By amazing fortune nothing serious happened to him, but his mother until the end of her life remembered this shame, shaking her head, would say "An educated man, and such a nincompoop."

Pay attention, my friends: the Malaysian tiger can be dangerous. But you also shouldn't underestimate tropical ditches!


Available in E-books:

http://itunes.apple.com/sk/ book/svetje-maly-the-world-is- small/id554103459?mt=11

http://itunes.apple.com/sk/ book/le-monde-est-petit-world- is/id554104733?mt=11

http://itunes.apple.com/sk/ book/the-world-is-small-svet- je-maly/id554101744?mt=11

Malaysia

What is Certain in the World?

I am the enthusiastic owner of a VISA card. Everywhere I go (in Mexico, India or all the Baltic States), I have used it with such facility that for my trip to Malaysia, I didn’t take any cash with me at all. Suffice to say, I believed that technology in our globalized world has arrived at a state of perfection. Alas, on the first day of the conference, this state-of-the-art technology betrayed me. On the University campus in Serdang the ATM wouldn’t accept my attempts to withdraw any money. It was morning and a queue of working Malaysians, with their undoubtedly working credit cards in hand, stacked up behind me. My Malaysian colleague from the conference’s board advised me to give up for the moment because my lecture was due to start in ten minutes.
So the conference started. I was physically present but, by rights I shouldn't have been there. I was to give a lecture at an international forum before my distinguished colleagues, all of whom could sit there, satisfied in the knowledge that they had paid the registration fee for the conference. Only one person hadn't paid. Me! And all because of my faith in technology, I hadn’t taken my iron reserve of US dollars. I had blindly expected my money to be conjured up by a little piece of plastic!

After my lecture, the conference organizers provided me with another Malaysian colleague and a car. We went to all the other ATMs on the University campus and, again, nothing. He didn’t lose hope and offered to visit the nearest bank. The teller smiled, took my card, and begged my patience. The wait seemed infinite. But in fact quite soon head clerk of the bank politely but resolutely returned my card. He said they couldn’t help me in any way. I was traumatized.
I hope you never feel that one of the pillars of world globalization is crumbling. I was forced to ask the heretical question. What, in fact, man could rely on in this world? What is certain in this world of ours?

My Malaysian colleague looked sympathetic and offered me another try in nearby branch of Malaysia’s biggest bank. This it appeared was my last chance. Into the bank I walked in a state of total panic. I was desperate. 'Please God. Give my money. After all it is mine!' I couldn’t face the prospect of waiting in line, so I asked my Malaysian colleague to call for the manager. After a short time we were sitting in his office. He was big, fat, phlegmatic and sweaty, but polite. He listened to my story, took my VISA card, and carefully examined it from every possible angle. Then he typed some numbers into his personal computer and the information was whizzed off to somewhere. He wasn’t satisfied with the result. I started to perspire, which in Malaysia during monsoon time is not difficult even under normal circumstances.

The manager remained silent. Once again, he checked the data on my card and asked me for my passport. Then he wanted to know the name of the bank that had given me the card - of course he hadn't heard of my brave little Slovak bank. Finally he grabbed the phone and called the head office in Kuala Lumpur.

The whole time my Malaysian colleague sat beside me and tried to keep my spirits buoyed with optimistic glances and grunts of approval. From time to time he spoke softly with the Malaysian banker - either trying to help me or trying to expose an international con artist - how was I to know? I was alone in the middle of an unknown country and had only a plastic connection with home and my money. The phone connection with Kuala Lumpur broke down every moment. The Serdang branch office, meanwhile, was a haven of rest. Everyone appeared to be snoozing in the midday heat. Another half an hour and I could have swum in my own sweat. The connection broke down for a second time and then for the third time the manager repeated the information from my VISA card. At last he enthusiastically raised his eyebrows. My chance had come, but it rested on one crucial question.

He leaned toward me confidentially and asked: “What’s your mother’s name?”

“Who?” I said, fearing I had misheard him.

“Your mother’s maiden name.”

“But my mother never had any account before she was married,” I said.

“But you must have given it when you applied for this card.”

I hate questionnaires of all kind, but at that moment I was happy.

He had me write the name just to make sure. It was bizarre to hear my mother’s name in Malaysian pronunciation. But it worked. I got my money, breathed more easily and, with pleasure, shook hands with my Malaysian colleague and the bank representative. When I walked out to the unbearably hot pavement I finally understood. Who else, if not the world’s bankers, know that everything in this world cannot be entirely relied on.

Only Mum is always certain.