Camp outs and Childhoods Lost

This last Friday we had a 'camp' at school. I would call it a lock-in or sleep over. The students came at 4 p.m. in the afternoon and left the next morning by 11 a.m. Now this is a common thing to do. In the churches I have attended over the last 10 years I have probably organized 8 such lock-ins. What amazed me was the 'hoo ha' made about it. There was a parents committee, hats were made with a camp logo and lots of flashlights were purchased and given. Every student who attended got a certificate. I kind of chuckled and then it hit me, oh, yeah, these are ASIAN kids.

Now I don't intend to be racist but these are observations that I have garnered over the years. Of course there will be families that are total opposites of this but here are some broad sweeping generalizations.

Asian kids live very sheltered lives. Most of them really got into the camp out when most American kids would have been bored to death. Some families in the US camp out the entire summer at the lake while Asian kids have probably never even spent the night in a tent in the backyard (Malaysia child, "Mommy, what is a backyard? I saw a picture of one once"). Several years ago, the Korean church I was attending asked me to help with a camp out. I organized the camp out, which was held on the church property in Bellingham. Every afternoon we would go to a place to swim or hike or climb around on rocks. I remember vividly the first day when we went to Larrabbee State Park, one of my favorite places in the Ham. I thought I would have trouble entertaining them but they were fascinated with the tide pools and we started trying to climb up some of the rock faces there. 4 hours flew by and as we left I realized none of the kids had ever been there despite the fact it is only 15 min from B'ham. I have biked and run there from the Ham. This trend has continued as I have known more and more Asians. Most of the kids I have known have rarely been afforded the opportunity to camp and to be outdoors for long periods of time. As I was teaching one of the kids how to roast a marshmallow on Friday night I felt a deep pang of sadness. I consider it essential to childhood to know how to make smores, to camp out and swim in the lake. Malaysians do like to go swimming in waterfalls as a family activity but most Asian children are very overprotected.

Let me finish with this thought. Perhaps it is worth it to trade the outdoors experience for parents that care deeply about their children's well being. Many American parents allow their children to experience far too much at a young age. Parental neglect, to my knowledge, is rare amongst Asians. The opposite is true. The care fiercely for their children. Grandparents raising children is now common in the USA but I don't know of a single case of this in Malaysia. The grandparents may live with them but aren't their sole guardians.

In the end, as with many things I've seen and experienced, a middle road is best. Care fiercely for your kids but allow them to experience (and to fail sometimes) all that life has to offer, when they are ready. P.S. Stand back ready to catch them should it be too much :)

Korean Christmas

Well, I’m in the Beijing airport (not one of my faves) on my way back to Malaysia. What to tell you about Korea?

My first impressions of Korea were very good. Nice airport. Great highway system. Comfortable housing. Good public transport. I thought it would be more vertical, it seems most apartment buildings are not over 20 floors where KL seems to be populated with many that are 30 or even higher. Or maybe that is an wrong perception.

After a couple of days we went out to see Min Ji’s aunt, who bought us a 300 USD meal (for 4 people). We rode the bus one hour from her house to the center of Seoul and then another hour from the center of Seoul to Suji where Min Ji’s parents live. I started to dislike Korea a bit at that point. It was the same, endless apartment buildings and urbanization as far as the eye could see.

The next day we went across the peninsula to Sokcho, a beach resort town. We left very early, 3 a.m., in order to go watch the sunrise at a famous spot. The sunrise was very spectacular and I wish I had better pictures but, alas, my battery died just before the sun actually came up. We then spent the next two nights in Sokcho. The first day we spent celebrating her grandfather’s 82^nd birthday and the next we went sightseeing. The Seorak Mountains are nearby and we rode the cable car to the peak of on of the mountains. Then we went north to the area near the DMZ where the current dictator, Kim Jong Il (is he still alive?) of North Korea spent his summers. His parent's summer home is now a museum.

Christmas Day we were out in Seoul after going to church. We went to an exhibit called “From Monet to Picasso”. It was a traveling exhibit from the Philedelphia Art Museum. We also went to a huge clothing market that evening, one that is famous in Seoul. The next day we went to Sherlock Holmes with Min Ji’s step-brother and then to lunch.

He also reserved us a spot at a nice buffet at the Ramadan in Suwon. Now, there is a buffet experience in Asia that most Americans never have experienced. The buffet is all you can eat and open for two hours. This one was from 8-10 pm. So, you go at 7:45 and when they let you start filling your plate, you have to start slow. Eat the best. I had raw oysters and tuna and salmon sashimi for my first go. Basically, you keep eating till it closes at 10 p.m. They have several varieties of food, like lamb, beef and chicken in Western styles to Korean to Japanese. I tried to eat my weight in steak tartar, tuna and oysters because they were so fabulous. There was also a chocolate fountain to dip fruit in. All this cost 40USD per person.

The last day we went out to church and then off to the Korean National Palace. After the long train ride, we came out of the station to find it snowing. It turned out to be one of the best experiences that I have had in ages. The snow muffled the city sounds and the palace complex was sprawling so it felt like you were back in the ages it was used. That and it was gorgeous in the snow. It was a fitting end to the trip, in fact, a fairytale moment that will always rank near the top of my travel experiences.

Korean parents

Min Ji’s parents were amazing in that they paid for everything. Add to that the fact that we went to the best places to eat and I would guess that just in food alone they spent 300 USD on me. Add into that her aunt’s meal and I was treated like a king. The hard part was that her parents treated me like a child. Min Ji was given a 15 minute lesson on how to ride the trains when all was needed was to tell us the stop to get off at. I was told to tuck in my shirt by her step-dad. It made me realize something. I have had several Korean friends and they lived with their parents but sequestered themselves in their rooms. They didn’t watch TV with them, didn’t talk to them much and seemed to do little more than share a house, not a bloodline. Now I realize that is how they kept their parents out of their lives. They kept the relationship active, still living with them, they just didn’t tell them any details or else they would have gotten an earful on how to handle their lives and then expected to act on that advice.

The other side of this was a realization for me as to one reason that Asia crushes creativity. I didn’t bring a plug adapter because I thought they would be easy to find when I got there. Min Ji’s step-father swore you couldn’t buy one in Korea. I stopped two whites in the street and asked them where to get one. They told us a store called ‘Home Plus’. We went there and found the adapter. Min Ji’s step-dad didn’t think it would work and was didn’t conceal the fact that he hoped it wouldn’t work. When I got it home, of course it worked. In this situation I realized that many good ideas, such as Google, Facebook, etc have come from younger people. However, in Asia, the hierarchy is set up so that you have to wait to get to the top. Therefore, when you get to the top, you feel it is your turn to spew idiotic ideas (not always, of course) and that others should blindly follow you, just as you did when you were in their shoes. Hence creativity is crushed. I have seen this some in Malaysia. I call it pak cik syndrome and I have spent many a night over a cup of teh tarik listening to how to cure diabetes by eating chicken livers and other mad tales. Min Ji’s step dad told me I could get to the airport at 9 am for my 9:30 flight. It was kind of shocking how openly (nonverbally) and badly he wanted the plug adapter to not function.

Korea dreaming

Before the trip I had secret fantasies that I would love Korea and move there next year. I can say I don’t really feel that way anymore. You can make good money as an English teacher in Korea but the country is so populated you should be ready to never be alone. We watched the sunrise with maybe 300 other people doing the exact same thing. We went to the top of the Seorak Mountains with tons of other people. I did some figuring and the peninsula of South Korea is roughly the same size as the state of Oklahoma. 50 million people are crammed into Korea whereas Oklahoma has 3.6 million. That means Korea is 14 times more populated, which means the density of the population is intense. KL is a city of roughly three million and it is too big for me sometimes. The Seoul/Incheon urban area ranks in the top three largest cities by population on some lists.

Secondly, I found the level of English low. Maybe I should say confidence level because I think Koreans can speak English but they just don’t think they can speak it so they are shy to talk to you. One major place I found this evident was at church.

My church in KL has a fellowship time after the service and usually I find myself chatting for 20 or so minutes with someone just about every Sunday. We went to church three times during the stay and I only met one Korean besides the pastor. I did meet several English teachers. That was the very good thing about the church. In KL, you either get the hedonistic foreigner or the Christian ‘worker’. Seems that an average, Christian person steers clear of KL. It was good to be reminded that lots of Christians work in other countries and still live out their faith.

Malaysia's National Past time

Ask anyone what America's national past time is and you will get one quick answer from 99% of people: baseball. If you were to survey other countries my guess is that sports would enter into most of the national past time arguments. In Malaysia there are no sports. No Little League baseball, no Saturday morning soccer leagues, no professional sports, no high school athletics, no university sports teams. Nothing. In fairness, I will say a handful of people play futsal (indoor soccer) and there are a handful of pickup soccer or basketball games. If you were to compare Kuala Lumpur to Denver, Colorado it would look like this: Denver-hockey (Avalanche), basketball (Nuggets), American Football (Broncos), baseball (Rockies) and soccer (Rapids), probably 40 or more high school teams, probably 6 universities with teams. Kuala Lumpur: a few soccer teams in the Malaysian Super League or whatever it is called. Now, I could launch into America's unhealthy obsession with sports but but I'm not, this blog is about Malaysia's national past time.

So, what do Malaysians do during the weekend? What would be their national past time? Simple: the mall. When foreigners arrive in Malaysia and are taken to their first mall, they usually have to pick their jaws up off the ground. I have never been to a mall in the US that would be considered equal to the top dozen here in KL. On any weekend, the mall is packed with a crowd greater than the Christmas crowds in the USA. Two facts I can't back up but believe to be true are these. 1) Malaysia has more shopping malls per capita than any other city on earth. 2) The parking areas are roughly double the size of a US mall because of the massive number of visitors. One of the largest malls in the world is in KL, Berjaya Times Square. It supposedly has 7.5 million square feet of shopping. I have been there once and was completely unimpressed. (Wikipedia is confusing, saying on one page that Times Square it the 13th largest mall in the world and on another page that it is the largest. Let's split the difference and say it is 7th largest in the world. And my students wonder why I won't let them cite Wikipedia!)

I created the national past time comparison because last night as I left the Curve (FYI, 1 km from the Curve is 1Utama, another huge mall) the scene reminded me of the one you see in the US after a sporting event finishes. Stop and go traffic inching out of the parking areas, long lines of red tail lights trying to enter onto freeways, 20 minutes waits to get from the parking spot to traffic that is flowing near a normal pace.

A few final thoughts about sports in Malaysia. Malaysians love soccer but they love the English Premier League. The time difference means that many games come on late at night, after midnight. Guys will get up and watch the game in one of two ways (that I know of). One is to watch it at home. The second is to go to a local restaurant (mamak stall) that is open 24 hours and meet up with friends. I really miss the community aspect of watching sports, like a good Super Bowl party (at a decent hour). Lastly, Malaysians will like one of four teams in the English Premier League: Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea. If they like a different team, check their passport because they may be imposters!