Cultural Learnings

 What have you learned?

So this is a quick round up of things I have learned about myself or about life in Malaysia (please note - this in not intended as an altogether serious post so please take this accordingly).

1: I don't work well in a tropical environment.

Me halfway through a 'short' hike up the hill at the end of our street...

It's hot - damn hot! Well we kind of knew this, but it's a very different kind of heat here and my pasty white self doesn't deal with humidity well. Solution - sign up to a half marathon! What was I thinking?

In fairness they run the race at 3am because that's the coolest part of the day, so that's okay then....

2: People are people.

People are no different when you move to the other side of the globe. Their behaviours, concerns, attitudes, wants and needs are not so far different from back home!

3: People here are very different!

People here are completely different from the UK in many respects and it's both a good and bad thing. Some stuff which is 'just a cultural thing' like hyper politeness is great, some stuff, like the attitude towards waste and trash in general is less so...

4: Dialect words.

Being called 'boss' by random people, the omnipresent 'lah', the ubiquitous 'can' and the frequent 'ayoo'. All of these remind me that we are somewhere very different.

5: You can get a lot more on a moped or scooter that you'd imagine...

Okay - this is stock footage, but in my defense I'm usually driving, so not able to take the pictures.

Here I was in a queue of traffic, so this is documentary evidence that I have witnessed this phenomenon.

From gas bottles to entire families (I've seen a family of five on one bike at a major interchange), two wheeled transport is ubiquitous in Penang. There are even dedicated moped lanes on the second bridge and some of the major highways... the bikes rarely use them.

6: Risk Assessment

That doesn't happen here...

7: Bureaucracy

They do that better than we do in the UK! Whatever complicated system we invent for something in Britain then there is one that is at least 50% less efficient and far more time consuming over here. Except occasionally things happen in a matter of minutes - my EPF (equivalent of social security and pension) for instance.

8: Main course/desert Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner

There is no defining line between any of the above labels - it's all food here and all eaten almost any time you like. Roti Canai is breakfast food (it's griddled bread and curry); but is also available in the evening; eggs appear with alarming frequency; you can have a desert salad with radish, pineapple and shrimp paste; you can have frog porridge; mains are often sweet and deserts frequently not. All bets are off.

9: Everyone seems to run a restaurant, cafe or food stand.

The famous Gurney Drive hawker market - honestly, not that good, we've been to many that are far better.

There are more F&B outlets per capita here in Penang than anywhere else I've ever been!

Even the sleepy village of Balik Pulau is replete with food courts and kopitam

10: Monkeys are an everyday occurrence - so are geckos. 

Stuff you think of as exotic and weird very rapidly becomes normalised. We haven't stopped taking pictures of the wildlife yet and we still tend to yell 'monkey' in an excited fashion when we see them, but the shock an awe has worn off.

11: Malaysians are crap drivers.

Sorry, but I'm not pulling my punches here. Culturally crap driving appears to be the norm. Now I'm not saying all Malaysian drivers are crap or all European drivers are great, but on the whole the driving here is catastrophically bad by comparison to home, to the point where the road fatality level is 14 times higher per capita! You can't soft soap that figure. 

Partly this is because of the high proportion of 2 wheeled vehicles being driven without any regard for their surroundings; partly because of the quantity of poorly maintained vehicles on the road; partly due to the poor policing of commercial tachometers in goods vehicles and buses; partly because of the quality and design of the roads; partly because of the poor lane discipline and spatial awareness of the average car driver.

On the whole the idea of driving in a way where the car in front or behind you shouldn't have to react to your road manoeuvres is completely alien here. It tends to be just concentrate on what's in front and pray a moped doesn't rear end you as you'll likely be at fault for reasons I can't really find an adequate explanation for!

Madness!

12: I'm definitely a Northumbrian.

Okay, before any pedant points out that I wasn't born in the North East I'll point out that due to my advancing years I've lived there longer than the average Geordie and as such I'm claiming Northumbrianism. In fact I'd say my claim is more valid in that I'm making it as a choice rather than as an accident of birth! 

I still miss the coast, the towns and the hills of my native county (I'm sticking with the historical boundaries for the purposes of this post) and that will not change. The main issue I have with living here is the inability to just go for a walk. Being outside requires a huge amount of preparation in comparison to the UK and there are often not many footpaths or trails. I'm used to being able to walk out of my door and have direct access to hundreds of miles of well curated and accessible national trails. You can very literally go from my front door to the borders of Scotland along the Northumberland Coastal path. We're also within easy striking distance of Hadrian's Wall, the Cleveland Way and only a couple of hours away from the North York Moors, The Dales and the Lake District. Combine that with the fact that the weather is much more bearable in the UK (yes, controversial, but true - if you have a problem with the UK weather you probably do just have the wrong clothes on!) and being outdoors is on the whole a lot more pleasant in the UK. And I do prefer to spend my time outdoors.

Penang is charming and there is plenty to see and do for a while and there is the whole of South East Asia to explore over the coming months. We've already seen some impressive sights here in Malaysia and are looking forward to exploring even more. However, we will be coming back home to settle for good after our overseas adventure and that is a simple fact!

13: I'm more resilient than I thought!

I honestly didn't think this was going to work out at various stages - there are times when I'm still not sure, but given that we're a year in, both Nicola and I are working now, I've been promoted and they keep trying to get Nicola to do more hours I guess the work component has worked (I am fully aware of how many times the word work has cropped up in that sentence, but I'm not changing it!).

We have been through a process that I don't think we have fully digested yet. I was thinking recently about the moment when we left our house in the UK. A place that had been our family home for 12 years and all of Thomas's life. Fully 25% of my existence has been spent under that roof; we brought our son home to that house; we converted, extended and decorated the place; we filled it with our belongings, furniture, personalities and personal histories; then we emptied it and left...

I still can't properly reflect on that moment and having received an inspection document of the house from our rental agency I really can't look closely at the photographs of someone else's things in my home. 

We have distanced ourselves from friends and family by 8 time zones and almost as many a thousand miles - those are some scary numbers!

It could be a little overwhelming when you think about it. Frankly it is a bit.

However, we did it. Lot's of people do and with less wherewithal than we have, so I guess we're fine.

14: The More Things Change the More they Stay the Same

So much of our adventure has seem exotic and outlandish, but also so much remained almost identical to life in the UK. Concerns at work, the way kids interact, impacts of global events - these all play out much as they did at home.

Teaching is very much the same as in the UK, but slightly more passive students. Schools go through the same issues - problems with classes, structural and management issues etc. 

On the whole though we are lucky enough to be able to say that life here is pretty much as stable and normal as back in the UK, which means we are doing pretty well!