Goodbye, Ah Huay

Our family cat, Ah Huay, died last Friday. She was a little under two years' old. She wandered off as usual in the morning to walk around the neighbourhood, and was hit by a vehicle. We only found out on Saturday, when a neighbour told us.

Ah Huay was a spunky little girl. She thought and behaved like a dog... not unusual since she had five older canine siblings. She meowed loudly everywhere she went, announcing her presence in no uncertain terms. We would often find her at our feet, looking for a tummy rub, and meowing if three seconds had passed and she hadn't gotten one.

One of her favourite perches was on top of the car bonnet, looking into the house. She had a panoramic view of all that went on in her kingdom.

When she wasn't sleeping blissfully on Dad's chair, stretched out like a, well, cat, she would find any number of chairs in the house, hang out and observe what was going on. The kitchen was always a hive of activity.

One day, as I was attempting to make the classic Hokkien noodle dish mee hoon kuay from scratch, Ah Huay sat across watching eagle-eyed, not very impressed with my technique on the dough. She wasn't far wrong... I sucked.

Goodbye Ah Huay, we will miss you.

Fighting for Burma

Sitting on the steps leading to Wheeler Hall, waiting for our Political Science class to begin, Min Zin started telling me the story of how he had spent most of his teenaged years on the run from the Burmese junta. From age 14 onwards, he had hidden in temples and underneath floor boards in the homes of sympathetic villagers, keeping still for hours on end, afraid not only for his own personal safety, but for the fate of his protectors, who had nothing much to begin with, but were putting all that they had at stake for a belief.

He was a student who turned to activism and journalism (The Irrawaddy) when his world came crashing down with the arrest of his older siblings in the 1988 crackdown on Burmese university undergrads. He was already in his late 20s when we spent nine months trudging from lecture hall to lecture hall in 2001/02. Yet, being older and having had his formal education prematurely halted had not dimmed his desire for learning.

Since then, Min Zin's story has become fairly well known. He continues to work as a journalist for Radio Free Asia, and when I see the shocking images of monks and ordinary Burmese being gunned down by soldiers, I think of Min Zin feverishly trying to get the story out to a world already weary of war, destruction and killing.

Picture credit: Copyright USIP

Going crabbin'

A scene from one of the many small wooden bridges on Pulau Ketam.

One of our favourite excursions is a day trip to a fishing island just off Port Klang, about 40 km west of Kuala Lumpur. Pulau Ketam, or Crab Island, is home to a community that has lived off the sea for over a hundred years, and continues to do so. Life seems slower and one catches a glimpse of 1950s Malaysia as one strolls through the homes built on stilts.

According to an “official” website, a “long time ago” Pulau Ketam was a deserted island full of mangrove swamps, before three fishermen, who went crabbing on the island, found the day-long journey back to the mainland too taxing, and built homes on the island, sometime in the mid-19th century.

Thankfully, nowadays it only takes about 30 minutes to get there from the mainland jetty, using a speedboat (above). This is a long craft usually packed with locals bringing provisions from or catch to the mainland. The bustle inside the enclosed boat is heightened by the Mandarin or Hokkien karaoke blaring away from the front. Plonk yourself on the wrong seat – under an aircon vent – and you’ll be blasted with an Arctic chill. Both the karaoke volume and the air-conditioning seemed stuck on Maximum!

On a trip to Pulau Ketam in the 1990s, the journey to the island took well over an hour, on an open wooden boat that chugged along serenely. We could then sit on benches at the back, hang out with the pilot, or perch ourselves at the bow, feeling the breeze on our faces and taking in the picturesque sea and mangrove swamp views. This time, we were cooped inside, and could only look out through small round windows that were either frosted, scratched or dirty. The price of progress! Thankfully, once the boat slowed down and was hopping from jetty to jetty along the island, the boatmen opened the doors, and claustrophobic locals and eager tourists crammed the small openings to breathe in fresh air or to take pictures.

The houses on Pulau Ketam are built close together, and are connected by a warren of raised, narrow wooden (and, increasingly, cement) paths, on which pedestrians, bicycles and motorbikes jostle for space. The population is mainly Chinese Malaysians, although there are a growing number of Indonesians working alongside the local fishermen.

Right off the jetty is the main town, with its administrative offices, market, food stalls, homestays, tourist offices and places of worship (above, the Hock Leng Keng temple). The social life of the Chinese inhabitants revolve around the temples, and in this tightly knit community, the temples sit cheek by jowl (below) with the congregation they serve.

At the time of our visit, the temple folks were busily preparing for a big Hungry Ghost celebration. It wasn’t just the two-legged creatures who were enjoying the whole fuss – the temple’s resident tortoises were in on the act as well…

However, it is the eight-legged delicacy, which gives its name to the island, that is often the highlight of any trip to Pulau Ketam. One cannot wander by the restaurants without being drawn to a colourful pail containing freshly caught crabs.

Before...

... and after! Yummmmmm.

Our meal for the four of us that day, at the restaurant just next to the jetty, also included…

… bamboo clams (above), home-made fish ball soup (below; we had two orders!!) stir-fried kangkong (water spinach), and curried large prawns.

The ceiling fans and ice-cold beer kept us cool as we ate our lunch on the large restaurant verandah. The meal finished, we sat back and took in the panoramic vista.

Another of Ketam’s well-known products is dried shrimp, small in size but packing a wallop in flavours, and a favourite of Malaysian cooks. All the stores in the town sell them (below right)…

… but if one is more adventurous, one can walk through the village and stop by any fisherman’s home and buy it off him. However, on that particular day, there were no dried shrimp in view, and we walked a fair bit before finally spotting some laid out and baking under the sun. See the many decks below jutting out from the homes? They’re all usually filled with sun-tanning shrimp, but on that day, only one deck was golden hued.

We walked towards the deck for a closer look.

A lady came out from the nearby house and explained to us that the fishermen were not having much success catching shrimp those past few weeks. (Was it because of the Hungry Ghost month, we silently thought?)

She grumbled something about the unpredictably of depending on the sea for one’s livelihood, while giving us a quick socio-historical slice of the island community. As for the shrimp, well, her husband was having better luck than most; he and his crew had left that morning at around 2 am and had returned just after lunch. They had cleaned and cooked the shrimp and had just laid them out in the sun, so that day’s catch was not quite ready for the market yet.

Instead, she arranged to have her neighbour’s previous day’s catch brought out and, without much persuasion, we took a good chunk home. It doesn’t get fresher than this!

A man and his dream,

…to go on a journey to uncover and rediscover what brings us together, not what keeps us apart. If we want to make a difference, we should get off our butts and do something, like putting them butts on a bicycle seat, for instance!

He knows his art

You couldn't make this one up!

Reading through old newspapers is like taking a peek at another age, another social climate, another set of values. Yet it all looks so familiar – the towns, the names (even if the spelling is rather quaint), the bits and pieces of clothing. We laugh, we cry, we’re in despair, and sometimes we’re freaking disgusted at what went before and what we’ve become.

But enough of the soap-opera psychology. Let’s roll the tape. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you a little snippet from Page 4, The Malay Mail, Wednesday October 17, 1956.

(Full text below pix)

(Headline)
Stripping can be an art – says magistrate

IPOH, Tuesday. STATING that a strip-tease act cannot be indecent merely because it is shocking and objectionable to certain people, the Ipoh Magistrate, Inche Abdul Kadir bin Yusuf, today acquitted three of four strippers who claimed trial to a charge of indecent behaviour during their performance.

The three who were acquitted without their defence being called were Wong Fun, 20, Lee Pui Fong, 30, and Leung Mei 21.

Kong Koh Yum, 20, who appeared with the other girls, was asked to make her defence on the charge that she behaved indecently during her performance at the Hong Kong Au Yong Hoong Revue at the Capitol Theatre here last Thursday night.

The Magistrate, in his long judgement, said that his decision was made difficult because he had to determine what was indecent behaviour. The dictionary was not much help, he said.

The test

Inche Kadir said: “I think that the test of whether certain acts are indecent or not is to find out whether the alleged act as described by the witnesses tend to corrupt the minds of those who saw the act.

“An act cannot be said to be indecent merely because it is shocking or disgusting or is in bad taste or because certain people think it undesirable. The act must have a tendency to corrupt.”

He acquitted Lee and Leung because there were “serious discrepancies: as to which of them took part in the acts that were described in court.

As for Wong and Kong, the magistrate said he was satisfied that they had been identified in connection with their dances.

But he would also acquit Wong without calling on her defence because, he said, he did not consider the lifting and lowering of her G-string indecent as it was part of her strip-tease act.

The Magistrate said: “strip-tease is an art and by a clever actress it can be amusing. It cannot be indecent and it cannot be obscene.”

Kong is defended by Mr. F. C. Arulanandom, who also represented the other three girls.