"SIS Surprised by ban on 2005 book"

"Hey we're late!! Chepap!"

Bahasa Malaysia words of the day:
Berapa harganya ini? - How much does this cost?
kerang - cockles
ikan keli - catfish
biri-biri - mutton
babi - pork
chupat - hurry up!
chepap - pussy

Recent obsessions:
sentimental books
my new little houseplant and the worm inside the pot which keeps attempting a suicidal escape


The past week has pretty much been a euphoric celebration of having my health back again...more great food, impulsive purchases of dirt cheap pirated DVDs, drinking, birthday celebrations and in general, a new found sense of homeyness I have come to appreciate about KL. My sister has always said that it always takes a sickness to really feel at home with any new place you move to, and I think she's totally right.


Some SISters and I went to University Malaya (UM) on Thursday to eat lunch with an ex-coworker who just left to do research on Malaysian economic development. While we ate our noodles the sky instantaneously turned ominously gray and it started to pour. Really pour. This is a photo of us all completely drenched and very late for work.


Some of my lovely coworkers.


On Friday, I rushed home and got ready to go out again to meet a friend and quench a raging sushi craving, followed by a 30 minute foot dunk into a tank of flesh eating fish. [Oh the circle of life...] It felt like my feet where being poked by hundreds of dull pencil tips. For the first 10 minutes, I couldn't keep them in longer than a few seconds without wanting to piss myself, but I eventually got used to it. When they were done with their meal, my feet felt like satin sheets. Amazing. And weird. Mostly weird.



Photo of a decorated tree in Bukit Bintang, the KL equivalent of Sunset Blvd.



I started out my Saturday, lounging around at home, went swimming for a while and cleaned my house until I had to go to the Crown Princess Hotel in Ampang Park for a talk by Dr. John Esposito called "The Future of Islam: Reformation or Stagnation?" and hosted by SIS. The talk was mainly about the misrepresentation and assumptions made about Islam by non-Muslims and Muslims alike. One of the best points he made (which I hadn't even thought of before) was the fact that Islam is currently portrayed as a violent religion. Yet if you think about it, Christian nations (or Christianity itself), has probably caused much more insane amounts of violence and war over the centuries than Islam ever could at this point (think Spanish Crusades, WWII, and European colonialism ALL over the world...)

The fact of the matter is, the principles of Islam like Christianity, is based upon 2 fundamental things: Their holy text and the interpretations that are claimed to be grounded with it. The Qur'an has pretty much stayed the same since the 7th Century, but what has constantly and reliably changed is the social context in which it is read and understood by people. The main point about his talk was that Islam should never be simplified or consolidated to a series of assumptions or ideas. Not only is it constantly evolving throughout the ages, "it" really isn't any singular set of ideas or beliefs. Millions of Muslims interpret it in their own unique way to make it relevant for themselves, and therefore saying anything that begins with, "The Muslims think/believe/practice/claim that..." is in itself a fallacy.
Anyways, it was a great talk AND I got to take this great awkward picture with him after it was over.



After that, I went to a little mixer hosted by a new friend I met at Barcamp Malaysia a couple weeks ago. This guy, Khailee, I swear knows everyone and their Malaysian mommas. So needless to say it was a charming group of people, some of whom were journalists, photojournalists, Ruby developers, tech dudes, and entrepreneurs. There's nothing like having great conversations about everything from politics to tongue rings over a nice glass of wine.


That's all for now. I also made another blog for my other random thoughts, haikus and writings that don't necessarily have to do with life in Malaysia. If you're interested: www.mairasutton.blogspot.com

Until next time.

Before arriving here I had decided that getting horribly sick was going to be one inevitable step in adapting to life in Malaysia. 5 weeks later, it has finally come in the form of a brutal body cold that has temporarily robbed me of my voice, any interest in food or the will to do anything other than lie around my apartment and stare blankly into space.

I just came back from the university hospital. I got 7 different numbers just to get a fever medication. A number to check in, to give them my home address and phone number, to get my weight and temperature taken, to get my throat looked at, to get a prescription from the doctor, to give the pharmacy the note, then to buy the meds. In the waiting room, a small child vomited behind me and an old man next to me kept playing with his bag of urine. As I continued to wait and watch the red digital numbers incrementally increase, the only comforting thought I had was that as a foreigner I was getting much better treatment that I could get in the U.S., and the fact that I only paid RM 10 ($3.20) to see a doctor and get medication. Despite all of this, I'm glad they could tell me that I don't have strep throat and that it's just a very bad cold. I don't get sick that often but when I do, I lose my mind, panic and convince myself that I'm relapsing with mono. Oh well.


This blog entry is going to be ridiculously long since I've been feeling a little blog-constipated lately so...bear with me.

A summary of what I've been up to recently:

I spent two weekends ago at a beach resort town called Port Dickson where I was paid to take the minutes for an evaluation and planning meeting for the Joint Action Group for Gender Equality (JAG). It's a coalition of 5 womens' organizations that work together for a common agenda to end women's discrimination and fight government policies that purposefully make life more difficult for women. It was a little stressful, given that I was still making sense of Malaysian politics and that many of the acronyms sounded like actual words and vice versa. All in all, I learned alot about the Malaysian women's movement and realized how much I take for granted as a woman in the U.S. For example, the government isn't attempting to make high heels illegal for women on the basis that the "clicking" noise they make are too enticing for men.
The sound is too sexy...? so bizarre.

Then last Saturday, I went to a conference called Barcamp, which is part of a network of user generated events focused on early-stage web applications, relate open source technologies, social protocols, open data formats and entrepreneurship.

I found out about it online and it really turned out to be really fun and a great networking opportunity. I went to workshops on Entrepreneurship in Malaysia, increasing efficiency in the workplace, Ruby on Rails, as well as many others. The best part was meeting so many passionate, innovative entrepreneurs who were all there to share their knowledge and ideas about business and technology. I pitched GIIP and SIS to everyone I met and many people were interested in learning more about the program, helping me with my senior thesis research or just giving me travel tips in Southeast Asia.

Me with some guys I met at Barcamp.


Sunday, SIS had their first mobile legal clinic in Klang (40 minutes east of KL) where we gave a workshop on legal rights of married women and families on issues of divorce, labor, property, domestic abuse and polygamy. I'm planning on making a mini-documentary/promotional video about this event and the impact it's making on women's lives.

Some women registering for the clinic.


The participants.


Handing out our pamphlets and brochures.


Then Monday, I went to a workshop on Islam in Southeast Asia with a focus on civil society and the environmental movement. It was a workshop for various professors, journalists and researchers exploring various aspects of the emerging Islamic environmental movement, to share their individual papers and to brainstorm ideas for new areas of research. I finally got to meet the guy that got me connected with SIS because he spoke at the event, and thanked him for everything he did. Although I didn't get to talk to him very much, I think he was glad to know that my internship's working out.





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some more photo re-capping:




One of the women at SIS took us out to lunch last week at this restaurant that serves food from the Kelantan state, which lies at the border of Thailand and Malaysia.



This catfish was just...amazing. It was slow barbequed in a way that gave it a crispy skin on the outside with amazingly soft, juicy flesh on the inside. I also ate sliced coconut/ground up dried fish salad, some stewed vegetables, curried escargot and curried beef.



testing driving a burqa. it's pretty suffocating to wear one of those...I can't imagine what it's like to have to all the time.

That's it for now. Gonna go wash this hospital smell off of me and pass out for the rest of the day.

Peace.

Chapter 1

It's been a month since I've arrived in KL. Shit. Has it really been that long? Or that short...? When I meet someone new and I come to the point when I have to tell them how long I've been here, I just can't get myself to say that m-word...it always seems to get stuck in my throat and I end up telling them that its been 4 or 5 weeks. How long am I gonna keep this up? I'm not sure but I think I've come to understand why new parents count their baby's age in weeks ("He was born right before Christmas so it's been 32 weeks!" ...)

Anyways. A couple of exciting new developments in my now semi-new home:
- My roommate got a TV = Olympics and Malaysian soap operas. Woo!
- just realized that my washing machine sings a song when the laundry is done. I think it's the cutest thing ever. (especially since I grew up in a house with a dryer that made the most obscene honking noise in the middle of the night.)
- the new 7-11 which magically appeared on my block in a matter of days
- finally started cooking food at home! ...despite the fact that it's more expensive, more laborious and more time consuming than eating out. it's still awesome to be able to make miso soup at home.
- FINALLY got a gym card after going to the management office SIX TIMES (a long story which only makes me relive my frustration to the point that I pop a vein on my eyeball every time I retell it)
- have decided only to smile at female neighbors as I pass them by because too many guys have gotten the wrong idea by this minor friendly gesture



Right before seeing Dark Knight with my new hilarious friends from work. (Doesn't pertain to the rest of the post but whatev)


I'm not sure why I started off this post with the most mundane developments in my life, but now I'm sleepy and I realized I have to wake up early to go to a conference on "Islam in Southeast Asia" at University Malaya. One of the speakers is the professor/activist/blogger who got me connected to SIS so I'm pretty much required to go stalk him.

Preview for the next entries: JAG E&P meeting, new SIS projects, and most importantly, Barcamp...!


Cheers.

KL at night

Chicken and cous cous

After a long weekend of swimming, shopping, eating and reading, I start off the Monday morning by jumping into a cab to the Crystal Crown hotel where SIS was hosting a mini-Conference and workshop on "Muslim Women in Contemporary Societies." There were about 20 participants there from various organizations, international agencies and journalists who were all interested in learning about ways to interpret and understand the Qur'an in a way that extends more liberties to women. The two guest speakers were two professors from Indonesia, Dr. Nor Rofiah and Nyai Siti Ruqayyah, who are Muslim scholars and feminists. My duty was to film this two-day event. However, it was soon clear that I wouldn't be able to get much out of it since it was all conducted in Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malaysia (which are two very similar, but slightly different languages).

Despite this, I picked up on many of the points they raised, such as reading the Qur'an WITHIN context instead of removing certain sexist passages out of them. I was also able to meet many interesting and established journalists and activists from the field. One such person was up until recently, the author of a controversial column in one of the largest newspapers of Malaysia which dealt with international religious political questions and raised various tabooed points on how the Qur'an, the Bible, or other holy texts are misinterpreted (the other participants were initially weary and intimidated by him being there). I slowly figured all of this out as I spoke with him, and also found that he was a very sincere, friendly guy, who's not even religious himself and yet passionately reads and studies holy texts. He has worked all over the world as a journalist, speaks 5 languages and is feared for his textually grounded critiques of religious doctrines. In short, he is my hero...

So the conference finished up around 2 on Tuesday and I headed back to the SIS office where I finished the report on child support. During which, they invited me for dinner at a SIS board member's house that evening.



The host was an ex-activist, ex-government staff member and painter. 72 years old and extremely active, she made this amazing Moroccan feast for all 7 of us. It was so nice to eat a home cooked meal.






This is her home.

Gorgeous.












Me pointing to one of her paintings...I wish you could see it better. :(


















Me with the ladies of SIS.










I saw a completely different side to these respected Muslim scholars as they continued to giggle and make dirty jokes about their vaginas all throughout dinner.




It was a great evening.

Internship: The first week

Last week was my first week at SIS, but I already feel very comfortable at the office. Everyone is so friendly! They're very serious about their work but they joke all the time despite the emotional weight of what they do. They're hilarious. I'm also learning so much about Malaysian politics because they're very much into talking about it all the time... They're also into making fun of me and the other intern, Femi, who's also from the U.S., and they're crazy about lunch time (this is probably universally true for the working world).

So what am I doing exactly? Right now, I'm finishing up the first draft of a research paper outlining 6 different child support agencies from various countries. I'm going to present it to the Joint Action Group for Gender Equality in a couple weeks, who will use it to plan and design such an agency in Malaysia. These agencies, while they vary, are mainly for supporting and enforcing child support payments from the non-custodial parent and making sure that in cases of domestic abuse, the abuser doesn't find the spouse who's receiving the payment. It's been very depressing reading agency websites because so many get away with not paying child support. (In Japan, apparently, 87% don't pay! AND joint custody is illegal there too...)

Then I'm supposed to be working on a database for them to input data from their legal interns doing "Court Watch" visits. This is when they go to shariah (Muslim law) courts that are dealing with divorce, domestic abuse, or other family matters, to make sure that the courts are following proper court procedures. As of now, they just have dozens of forms with notes with no way of organizing all of it. To be honest, I don't have much experience with making databases but I'm not too worried. I need to consult with them to figure out what kind of system they want.

I've also been doing IT odds and ends...such as helping Zainah Anwar and an occasional SIS staff member (who's American) named Jana, to design and find a good logo for their international conference on Muslim family law in February. In a couple weeks, they're going to put on their first Mobile Legal Clinic, in which their legal interns and staff will be going out to different destinations around the area and provide workshops for Muslim women to learn about their legal rights. I'm sure I'll be doing other things but I'll write about it as it comes up.


Below I've posted an excessive amount of photos of their office (mainly for my family who wanted to know exactly what it looks like) and some of my coworkers.

This is on my walk to the office from the LRT (Light Rail Transit) station, which is only one stop from my house.


I can even see my building from this street. Woo!


The view of the office from outside. I think it's a house converted into an office since the neighborhood is full of people's homes.



This is the view of the inside from the entrance.


The kitchen is in the center of the building...which is really nice because this is where everyone convenes for lunch and breaks together. When it rains, it falls through this hole in the ceiling and into this little garden.


This is the room where I work...


...and my cubicle. I get to sit next to a picture of Dubya all day.


Some of the people I work with at SIS.


Friday was the last day of Najib, the young legal intern and pretty much only guy at SIS, who was really nice and funny and knew more about American celebrities and pop music than I did. I'm going to miss him...