Random pics from the village we were at
Cesar Millan, host of National Geographic’s Dog Whisperer who counts numerous “impossible” success stories under his belt, once gave up on a Chihuahua whose owner who couldn’t bring herself to correct the tiny animal when it attacked family members. When interviewed for What The Dog Saw, he said “When you love someone, you fulfill everything about them. That’s loving.” He was referring to the need for discipline, along with affection.
I know… a guy. He’s a sincere friend, hardworking, polite, we really like him – and since he doesn’t read my blog I can disclose that at annual CNY gambling sessions Kings and I try our hardest to lose money to him. He’s one of Kings’ old village friends who works in Singapore, comes back at CNY like so many Malaysians we know.
He’s bought a house here, which his parents live in – except his elder brother who doesn’t really work also stays there rent free with a wife and two kids. So our friend made it a bigger house.
Back then our friend was single. He had no time to date, shuttling back and forth between Johor (cheaper rent) and Singapore where he worked. Hard. Would I introduce one of my girlfriends to him? Preferably a girl without a college degree, because I don’t have one either, he shyly added.
I wanted to. But how do I knowingly inflict those inlaws on any girlfriend of mine?
One of my “famous last words” is “everything’s a package.” How the choosing of an “atas” school package can be diminished by unnecessary ultra-competitiveness and bla bla. In there should be something about inlaws and extended family. Whether they have any idea how much they are diminishing what a guy has to offer by being the Relatives From Hell Who Guilt Him Constantly. (I assume they care about his happiness, but haven’t thought this bit through. Wouldn’t it be total karma if they scare away the nice girl, and so he comes back with a money-grubbing harlot since she is the one who can take any bullying they dish out?)
Anyway. Do we even tell our friend what we really think about his situation? Does being a real friend, the way we’ve come to define it after almost 2 decades of living in larger cities, mean being brutally honest or would we be committing a horrible faux pas that would cause our friend more pain?
We don’t know.
So instead we keep trying to lose money to him at gambling.
We didn’t get to lose any this year though – now approaching his mid 30s like we are, he’s married with a kid. He couldn’t meet up for a gamble because his dad imposed a midnight curfew and everyone had kids they needed to tuck into bed before that.
There is a girl I know. By virtue of a certain extended family relationship, I am obliged to be polite to her in social situations. When she interrupts conversations I have with my son, calling him away for a treat or toy, I am expected to keep mum. It’s not a big thing. I’m being too sensitive. (Frankly I know a lot of mums in Hong Kong who would squish her like a bug for doing that).
It wasn’t always like this. Before our boys were born, there was JD, the border collie Kings bought me one day when we were drooling in a pet shop. Girl I Know (GIK) wanted a dog. She talked about it often for many weeks. So we engineered for her then-boyfriend to find out what breed she wanted, thinking we would surprise her on her birthday. Two weeks before de-day, she found out. She loudly and self-righteously corrected us (obviously this wasn’t something she felt the need to be ashamed of) – she wanted only “Aileen’s dog.”
It seems so absurd as I type, I had to ask myself over and over again if it really happened. In fact I remember much, much more. I’m back in Hong Kong now – what I really want to do is highlight the last few paragraphs and hit the delete key. Like I’ve done for years. But that’s the thing – hitting <delete> when I cool down is what made me take much more. It’s why I’m forcing myself to see the above in print. That’s the behavior you somehow enabled by keeping mum, Aileen. What the freak took you so long?
When more Malaysians living at home began reading my blog, I got facebook messages asking (out of curiosity) why I didn’t live in Malaysia anymore. My replies were I don’t drive, can’t get around. I was almost kidnapped as a child. We are in the financial sector and our work has taken us away. All true. But the bit I never told them was the part played by the GIK Phenomenon.
This is one of the things that costs (some) Malaysians. In Hong Kong, people complain about everything. In Singapore, people complain about nothing. Sometimes Malaysians think more things are ok than they really are.
We allow GIKs to get away with crap because after a time we are so numb with all the shitty things they do that it starts to look ok. Or we just want to forget after they ask for our dog, when we succeed in not giving them our dog. For years until she started leaving her own son with her maid in her determination to keep scooping my son up and away from me (just for the heck of it – and btw she has no mummy friends or for that genuine female friends at all that I am aware of, in the almost 10 years I’ve known her), it didn’t occur to me that it wasn’t about me not forking over my dog. It was about her brazenness in demanding my dog and her own father backing up her insane whim.
Then we go abroad to study, to live, we make friends outside the people who also put up with GIK crap (and thereby subliminally imply to us that it’s acceptable behavior) and we get a shot of “Are you freaking KIDDING me??”
There is something about being “Malaysian” that I cling to. The way people abroad can say some Malaysians make really good friends. The way people in the opposite lane flash oncoming traffic on the highways when they pass police posts / roadblocks – their intent being to tip off traffic in the opposite lane of the roadblock they will be encountering in another few hundred yards. When I tell people I’m Malaysian, when I don’t want to give up my citizenship despite almost 2 decades living abroad, this is one of the things I’m thinking of.
But the problem with “nice” people is they get taken advantage of. One of the byproducts, if we allow it, of “nice” people is GIKs.
It’s when I have no problems believing in a God who says people are all sinful.
Being “nice” isn’t being quiet and tolerating the GIKs in our life. That’s creating monsters. Like Cesar’s adventure with the Chihuahua, loving includes discipline.
I know no mother around me in Hong Kong (or whom I ever worked with in Singapore), regardless of nationality, who would accept GIK behavior. But if you know someone who knows someone especially in the smaller towns in Malaysia, I bet you can find an example of similar. A few (but not all) my close girlfriends living/ working in Hong Kong and Singapore know of some too. Some of em have relatives like that. They don’t like coming home at CNY to it either. The GIK is not an uncommon phenomenon. Nor are the people who think they’re being nice, by spoiling them out of “love”.
Not that bad, the guy/girl-I-know thing?
Just in case you’re still living there and surrounded by people who keep saying it isn’t really,
It IS.
That bad.
Ps: You realize for reasons undisclosed I didn’t squish the GIK in my life like a bug, like I should have, when she was being annoying around Rockstar? I didn’t give up my Malaysian citizenship either. But then I did politely tell her off in front of her whole family. And I come back to Hong Kong happy and looking to be reminded that they squish bugs here.
