Friday, June 27, 2008

Things I'm starting to get used to:
- Seeing women wear head scarves
- Being sweaty all day
- Eating fish heads more than once a month
- Public transport
- Getting lost
- Not speaking Bahasa Malaysia
- Eating with a spoon and a fork at the same time
- Addictive melodramatic Malaysian soap operas


Things I'm not yet getting used to:
- Seeing women wear full body hijabs walking a couple feet behind their husbands
- Bug bites
- Creepy men following me around train stations
- Everything stopping during times of Muslim prayer
- Showering twice a day
- Erased belly buttons on women in Western fashion magazines
Sidenote: When I first saw Fergie without a belly button, I just decided that it was either that she was indeed a robot afterall, or the editors made a mistake. THen I saw a whole bikini ad with 8 girls without belly buttons...just a smooth, uninterrupted stretch of skin on their stomachs. Weirrrd.
One more sidenote: Men's belly buttons AREN'T erased. ?!

I have more but it's getting dark outside and I must go eat some noodles.
Tomorrow, I finally move into the apartment and meet my roommate. I really hope he's a good guy.

Cheers.

5 comments:

Green Eric said...

hey, i'm betting there's something huge that i just don't know, but why do they erase the belly buttons? is there some kind of religious thing or are belly buttons too sexy or something? btw, did you feel the earthquake at all, i just heard about it on the news.

Unknown said...

That is so weird that they erase belly buttons. I think its because they are too sexy.

ITS really weird because, it seems that the attitude is, men can't control themselves, so women have to cover themselves? That seems to sync up proper by the way you've described weird men following you around.

Anonymous said...

HAHAHAHAHA. Wait, you have a belly button? I don't. I don't even know what that is! WHat are we talking about again?
i love you.

Hanami

Anonymous said...

hi maira! its sara :)
im here with derry, derek adn lauren and we miss you. thats sooo great that you are experiencing Malaysia! Im sure you will do great things while you are there!
Question: what is your typical daily outfit there and what does KL mean?
messages from the crown
i love you-lauren
"farted"derry
"what's up"derek
que estes super bien. cuidate mucho, te mando un abrazo

Maira said...

Eric-
Belly buttons are apparently very "in" right now. (Fighting urge...to make horrible joke....) So yeah, it's just a social strictness I'm guessing.

I didn't feel the earthquake, but I never do.

Sara and co.:
Aw...I miss you guys so much. Thanks for leaving a note. I wish you could be here experiencing all of these new things with me.

To answer your first question, I've been wearing knee high skirts or shorts with t-shirts. I want to be able to wear shorter shorts that go to my thigh but I'm still testing the waters for whether that's appropriate here.
Second question, KL means Kuala Lumpur which is the capital city of Malaysia and the place that I'm pretty much staying (PJ stands for Petaling Jaya which is the suburbs of KL).