Malaysian snippets

I have been in this place for close to a month now. Overall I think this place is quite accommodating and friendly. It is quite an open society though being a predominantly Muslim country. The vision is to become a developed nation by 2020. Here are some snippets on certain features of this country and its people.

• Predominantly Malays, followed by Chinese, Indians, Sri lankans, Indonesians, Pakistanis etc. Most of the private businesses are headed by people of Chinese and Indian origin. There are lots of privileges allowed to the Malays, say in jobs, education etc. So you will find lots of students of these communities studying abroad. Very recently a group of ministers of these ethnic communities approached the government with some recommendations, which was smartly turned away by the government

• Crime is a worry here these days. The crime rate seems to have picked up with rape and murder dominating the pages in the recent past. The latest sensational case has been of a 20 something girl being raped and murdered when she had gone for a jog in the evening. There have been enough cases of bag snatching that I have come to hear by now from different sets of people. These crimes are done basically by drug addicts it seems

• Malaysians love to eat out. The restaurants are open late night and there are a couple of 24 hrs restaurants as well. Chinese restaurants, Thai restaurants, Indian restaurants and Malay restaurants. The Indian restaurants have different names, some are called Mamas coz they are basically Indian Muslim restaurants and some sell North Indian food as well and are a bit expensive than your normal curry house restaurants etc

• Then there is a chain of restaurants called Lotus. Started by couple of enterprising Tamilians, these are huge restaurants which serve almost the entire Indian cuisine. Some of them are open for 24 hours and are priced at a not too expensive as well as not so cheap rate. The guys who own lotus are building 2-3 mansion like houses near where I stay, so you know how successful in their venture. The Lotus close to my place has a small theatre complex which shows Tamil movies aswell

• The quality of English Newspapers is not so good. The leading ones are Star, New Strait Times (NST), Daily Mail and Sun. Sun is free and make money only from their ads, whereas the other newspapers are priced at RM 1.2 (1 RM = Rs 11.8). Sometimes I wonder if it rightly priced as one Dosa is RM 1 at the Indian restaurant where I have my breakfast. Star and NST are basically 100 pages newspapers and more or less a tabloid. There are some Chinese as well as Malay newspapers too. But I think the quality of our Indian newspapers are far better than what we have here

• Bahasa Malaya is very similar to our Hindi/Sanskrit. There are many words which sound similar like Bahasa itself. Some other examples are Bahaya (Danger), Sandas (Toilet, this is one of the most funny words I find in hindi too!!!)…

• The quality of infrastructure is supreme, no doubt about it. Malaysians have this inner desire to make the tallest and largest of everything. Eg.Petronas towers. The largest Ikea showroom in Asia is here in KL. They make new flyovers in 7-8 months flat. I need not say about the Airport, it is one of the best in the world. Agreed that the traffic jams are still there, but I think even London has got jams that last an hour.

• Talking of transport, the city is connected by Light Rail Transport (called LRT for short). There are 2 separate lines (Putra and Star), which meet in 2-3 common stations, the important one being KL Sentral. This place also has the KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport) Express, which takes you from the city centre to the airport in 28 minutes flat. You can do a check in at this terminal also, very convenient and avoids all the traffic in this city. The bus service I think is lacking in this city, never got into one so far. Cabs are another efficient mode of transport and beware of Teksi Premier, they charge you double the Teksi Berimeter rates, a sthey are the luxury taxis.

• This country has got very rich vegetation. When you land itself you will see the thick greenery around the airport. The largest exporter of Palm oil, Malaysia has a lot of Palm trees. There has been also a recent sighting of a mystery animal of 2 m height being spotted in one of the forests. A la Yeti

• Every country has got this dark shade to it. Be it the Mumbai underworld or the Delhi Mafia or the local Goonda. This country has the Chinese mafia. It seems they have personal stake in the government too. The Dons roam around freely and they control a lot of business in this country. Mafia killings have not happened for some time now but everyone knows about it but no one speaks about it

• The Malay local banks are protected from the foreign banks, so you will find only 3 Citibank branches in the whole country, something similar is the case with HSBC and Stan C. The local banks that are doing well are Maybank, Public Bank, Am Bank (Arab Malaysia, they own the mall where I stay), Eon Bank, Overseas Limited Bank etc.

So that’s about it on life in Malaysia. If anything comes to mind later, will jot in. Btw the Malay way of speaking English is very sidey, most of them add a “lah” to almost every sentence. Their justification is it is like the “you know” which other people use in their English. Hmm...

Also if you ask them, anything like, Will you do this/Can I take this train to KL Sentral etc, be sure to hear this “ Can Can” with a very strong shake of his/her head. “Can” used twice, is to ensure beyond any doubt or convince you to do that or suggesting that you can go ahead and do it. It is very funny I should say.