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Red, Orange, Yellow: ROY Food

If you're wondering what ROY means, it stands for red, orange yellow: the basic food color of Indian food. It's all because of curry: the magic ingredient that makes Indian food wander all over the world like Alladin's magic carpet.

Back at home, I only get to try one curry dish: chicken curry. It's the yellow kind of curry. I've always known many different kinds of curry but I've not tried most of the other kinds. You have to go to authentic Indian restaurants in Makati and Manila area to try the many different Indian dishes. But here in Malaysia, they're everywhere. They're found in most every corner.

So here are some of the dishes I've tried for the past few days I've been here.
Usually, they serve three kinds of curry sauces in one plate. The more common ones are the fish (ikan), chicken (ayam) and mutton (kambing). You can just dip almost everything to it: bread (roti), rice (nasi), eggs (telur) and others.

Fist meal ever - This is my first meal in Malaysia. I ordered deep fried shrimp and chicken and had string beans in coconut milk as side dish.

Nasi goreng ayam - It's basically friend rice with chicken. It's a staple here. If you're not for the plain rice, you can ask the cook for fried rice for an extra cost of course.

Roti Canai - My colleagues say it's a popular food here. They also say that I have to walk 100 meters to get rid of calories it contains. It's a mix of ingredients that are high in fat: condensed milk and flour and fried in oil. But it's really worth trying.

Appam - It's not very commonly served in most Indian restaurants. I'm lucky (blessed) to have it in one restaurant found in little India (any place that's crowded with Indian shops and restaurants is called little India). The best part of it is you get to dip it in sweetened coconut milk that makes it even more heavenly.

They say Malaysia is one great food paradise. I can say it is. The diversity of its people brought about the diversity of its food culture. You can find Indian, Chinese and Malay restaurants one beside another in most blocks and corners in Kuala Lumpur. Thai, Italian and Japanese restaurants also share the food districts. McDonald (they call it McD) and KFC are also found in most shopping centers and malls. My colleagues even say that Filipino food can be found in some particular ares specially near Catholic churches. The foodie in me is dying to explore all the great dishes I can find here that are truly sedap/ masarap (delicious in Malay and Tagalog respectively) and truly warms the heart. 

Language Similarities

I recently bought an English-Malay Malay- English dictionary. I was also looking for the English-Tamil, Tamil-English but I wasn't able to find one. My colleagues in the organization said I have to look for it in bigger bookstores 

During the nights and free time at the office, I would browse through the dictionary to learn basic words like greetings and common things. I already know that there are words that are similar (if not the same) in the Bahasa Melayu and Tagalog (my language). I've came to know about this when i went to Indonesia for vacation. You see Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Melayu are very similar except for certain words and the pronunciation especially of the 'e'. the Malaysian would read it like the u in under and umbrella and the Indonesians would read it as the word is spelled. example berapa (how much) is read as spelled by the Indonesians and the Maysians would read it as burapa (like the u in under). 

So going back to the similarities in Tagalog and Malay. Here are some of the words that are similar:

And here are some more:

(erratum: rich person should be orang kaya not irang kaya)

Not only are some words similar, the loan words (borrowed words from other language) are spelled almost similar as well:

I think that these similarities are due to the fact that geographically, Malaysia and Philippines share a border. There were even theories that the first Philippine people were descendants of the Malay and Indones races. During the barter trade era, Philippines has also been actively trading with Malaysia and Indonesia being neighboring countries.

As for me this fact is very interesting. Having studied Language in college, finding these similarities brings a clue/ key into their culture as language, as they argue, represents the culture of a country in a dialectical manner.

Not only is it interesting, it is also very helpful. I get to have a clue of what the signages on the streets or document titles say because of the similar words. Meanwhile, I'll go check my Malay dictionary for more.:)

Alone in the dark...

So it was weekend. My first in Malaysia. In my office now, we go to work even during Saturdays, half day of it. At least  I still have 1.5 days for the weekend. I'm currently staying with one of the staff now. They say it will be the case for two weeks as my organization is yet to find a place of my own. I think it's a good thing really but I'm also looking forward to the day I'll be living on my own. It's so romantic that idea. I'm in a foreign country, I get to work with people of different cultural background, I'm in control of my time, I get to explore the way I want and just live the overseas life. But right now, I'm really ok with the setupI

So it's the weekend. I decided to go with my housemate to TESCO, one of the many shopping centers in Malaysia. He works there part-time and during Saturdays, he works til 12. I went along. He went up to his work and I went around the mall. Pretty much the same as my country. There's the grocery/supermarket, the department store, food court, bookstores, boutiques and some other smaller stalls for those selling condominium units or photo packages for wedding and all.

Upstairs was the theatre (yehey) and I decided to eat up time watching a movie. Checked the movie list and found Tin-tin. I saw the trailer back at home and it was pretty interesting. The graphics was really great so I chose to watch it on 3D. I chose my seat, nothing is taken yet so I chose the best seat: the middle one near the stairs. I paid the bill, checked the time and found 30 mins. more before the showing so I decided to take my dinner. Glad there was pasta in the food court coz I've been dying to have sort of comfort food in a while. I've been having Indian and Chinese food for the whole week so I decided for a change in taste at least for the weekend.

After dinner, I went to the theatre and waited a little before they opened it. I'm handed the 3D glasses and went directly to my seat.  Some trailers/previews and the movie started. Wait! Something's weird about this. Is it just dark that I can't see a single soul or I'm really alone? God I'm alone. I'm really alone! Amoooazing. It's the first time for me to go to the theatre all by myself and it's the first time for me to be all alone in the theatre. It's as if I blocked the schedule and paid for all of the seats for me to watch it all by myself. It's really awesome.

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About the film, I immensely enjoyed it. It was the perfect adventure film. It's all the good elements combined: mystery, travel, genius-journalist-lead-character, history of family feud, pirates and ocean adventure, clues here and there, and all the other elements you wish to see in one package plus the really great graphics. It was so detailed that the animated characters looks like real people at times... Good job Spielberg... I'm waiting for the sequel (as I suppose there will be because of the clue left at the hat of gold)....

Sweet simple things...

The day before I left my home country for Malaysia, Krista and I went to out to go to church and meet my high school friends. It was the last leg of meetups and despididas I've been having for the past two weeks. I fetched here from her house to say goodbye to her family also and to take some pictures we've had for the past weeks.

So she transferred some files to my USB. the folder's name was "vanilla twilight." Thinking it contained the pictures I asked her, I opened the folder and saw the pictures of friends' greetings and well wishes for my going to Malaysia. All the while I thought there was only one file there that I should read when I am already in Malaysia.

The supposed-to-be-surprise was at once revealed. So all the while, whenever she meets up with our friends, she would take time taking videos of them saying well wishes to me. Some friends whom she was not able to meet just sent their picture messages. all these files were contained in the folder she saved in my USB. She was supposed to make an AVP out of it but because of busy-ness, she was not able to.

As I was watching the videos and reading the messages, I really felt loved and special. It was the perfect confidence-booster a person leaving home for a while could ever have. So I'm really thankful to Krista for such a wonderful idea. It's a very simple yet touching act she made.

In Service

Finally. I'm already at my host country Malaysia. A little bit later than most of my batch mates because of visa processing but I have no complains whatsoever. It was i think God's perfect timing. No doubt about it. Maybe I've been a little too excited to really focus on preparing for the post so He gave me a little more time to reflect the gravity of the endeavor I am to embark.
And so the timing was as precise as the universe intended it to. And I'm here, sitting at my desk typing a blog entry about the things that happened and will be happening and the emotions that come along with them.

Social Engineers

It's a term "coined" by one of my batchmates in the 19th FK Prepcourse in Bangkok. He was actually an engineer by profession and he used the term social to indentify himself as a "real" engineer and to differentiate his tasks from the rest of us NGO workers. 

Let me clarify. He did not say it to demean us NGO workers. I actually thought he wanted to create a metaphor out of the term engineer for all the different tasks we're going to do in 10 months. Engineering is the field that deals with the scientific application of knowledge in order to build and design structures and processes to improve people's lives. If we put the social component in the scientific concept, the meaning would not change dramatically, the meaning will only be enriched. It would expand in ways that the metaphor captures development work as an attempt towards building and improving people's lives. 

It's a great realization for me. The concept if used in political science would actually mean manipulation of people to change their attitude or perspective towards policies or systems that a political entity wants to pursue for their political gain. But putting it in the light of development work, social engineering can mean the other way around. It can mean changing or inlfuencing people's attitudes towards development. It can mean taking away the culture of mendicancy among the poor people; it can mean changing people's attitude towards government systems and the culture of corruption; and it can also mean changing people's attitude towards gender relations and power. 

It's a concept that can define the work that we do. I'm proud to be a social engineer. Scoail