Bald(ing) but Brave

There comes a time in a man's life when he is made to realise that he is not immortal, may be not even long lived, but entirely human and perhaps even a little frail. Such a moment hastened its unwelcome way into my life this very day.

 

   I was minding my own business and looking at the images from our latest book launch. It was then that I saw it. It was there, thumbing its metaphorical nose at me. It was the sole cause of today's woe. That alien, that monstrosity of a barely covered morsel of human flesh, shone in the camera flashlight, giving the lie to my youth, and the certainty of my mid-life onset.

 

   It was a crisis. It was a moment of utter dread. That casually caught image, captured within a fraction of a second by a nosey lens, revealed to the whole world, and most of all to me, that I had nurtured, at the near unobservable rear of my noggin - a much dreaded and seemingly insidious - bald patch.

 

   It was a bald patch to end all bald patches. Gone was my personal myth of my peter pan looks, gone the Wilde like portrait in the loft. Gone was the idea that I might remain unscathed by the passage of time and live on – an immortal, slightly wrinkled but nevertheless handsome and still youthful looking.

 

   It was a revelation. It was thus revealed. Though I had no monk like intentions, I had evidently developed the makings of a tonsure. Should I wear my hat more? Should I wear it less? Was the hat the cause of the hair loss, or would the hat prevent it. I was at a loss. Would I go forth forever conscious of my depletion, obsessed by my poignant baldness or would life return to almost normal once I got used to yet another sign of creeping age. It was a sixty four million dollar question but I don’t have a sixty four million dollar, drat!

Dream Weaving

I imagine that cat’s name must have been Tiger, or its equivalent in Malay (Harimau), but I think of him as Blake’s ‘Tyger’. He was certainly one of the most striking cats that I have ever seen. He lay there, in that long greenhouse, stretching to his fullest extent, on that old wooden table, with the table’s grey only serving to make that animal’s fur even more golden, and his stripes more pronounced. It was as if that aging table, the greenhouse, the plant nursery and maybe the whole hill too - belonged to him, and maybe it did.

 

I had spent the entire morning, and most of the afternoon, on that hill, at Janda Baik, near Bukit Tinggi, in Pahang. It was an hour’s drive through Selangor, on the way to Genting Highlands. There was a nice little R&R, conveniently situated at the bottom of the hills. Mc Donalds’ had proved a convenient convenience and, after loading the SUV with bottles of wild nectar – courtesy of the local Orang Asli, I meandered my way up that hill, up narrow roads and espied countless rest houses, camps, training centres and one or two really charming places, which would not have had to try too hard to seduce me to stay. But stay I didn’t.

 

That golden cat, stretched in all his furry feline glory appeared after a midday sojourn wandering around the open gardens of that Malay political writer Syed Hussein Al-Attas. There was a hand-painted sign cheekily calling those gardens - Wadi Hussein. After a morning traipsing around Janda Baik, with its similarities to Perak and Cameron Highlands, it was a sheer delight to fall into the gardens of that author’s The University of Life, and be introduced to one of the most magical and surprisingly serene places that I have, to date, visited. It truly seemed to be an oasis.

 

Being an Englishman, I was a little wary about just marching through someone else’s gates, and helping myself to their obvious delights, but my companion egged me on and I followed into the most amazing gardens. All my apprehension and pseudo-middle class British pretentions melted away like so much dairy produce in the noon-day heat.

 

It is needless the say that the day was moist; Malaysia is mostly moist, it is moister still in hills where humidity lurks amongst the dense foliage. I was moist, my shirt was moist, and moistness was creeping in places that I would rather not have a moistness creep.

 

I wandered hither and thither. I gazed at amazing waters, gawped at surprisingly coloured urns (not Greek), and was charmed by the splendid array of blossoming flora. Within those grounds sprouted houses, guest lodges, small and large ornamentation - organically blended amidst the planted flora until it was difficult to tell which had been placed and which planted. It was a veritable wonder assailing my eyes. Every nook echoed a cranny, and every cranny had a marvel to present.

 

My eyes darted everywhere. My camera clicked until it could click no more – flat battery. There was so much to see, to take in and to savour. I peered and snooped with, and without, mechanical devices – my mind was enraptured. It is true, I wax eloquent. I ramble like a poet in my writing, but since having entered those gardens it has become difficult not to do so.

 

The midday sun, berated by Noel Coward, formed painterly patterns on tiles, grasses and statuary. Light, and its tricks, conjured a wonderland replete with giant concrete mushroom. I half expected to see a gigantic caterpillar smoking a pipe. Was I the Mad Hatter? My hat was a little age-worn and discoloured, but did that make me mad? I longed for tea, and a biscuit or three and travelled on. 

 

Food was to come later – down the hill, and after the stroking of that magnificent golden being who appeared to be half-civet and half-cat. Photographs were forbidden in the plant nursery not five minutes drive from Al-Attas’s gardens. The nursery was where ‘Tyger’ rested his golden mane, so I took no photographs. That act of forbidding robbed me of any joy that I may have had in that nursery. It robbed the Helliconia of their sun-kissed glory and made the fruiting Mulberries mere commonplace. That censorship deprived us of the ability to relive the scents and sounds of that nursery, for of that enterprise and their multiplicity of plants I shall say no more.

 

After a late lunch (which threatened to empty our collected wallets) we tumbled into Bukit Tinggi and the fruit market. Red bananas were bought, as were passion fruit. On the way back, the Al- Attas gardens haunted me, as did the fact that I didn’t get to meet that gentleman himself. I was also haunted by that spectacular golden beast, seen in the plant nursery – calling it a cat is insufficient, and other words seem either too pompous or too belittling.

 

That day seemed as though an angel had stripped Lou Reed’s song of its negativity, and strove to create a Perfect Day in actuality. It was the sort of day that your mind returns to time after time, dipping its toes in the serenity and the peacefulness of that place and time. I should like to thank my companion for that day and S.H. Al-Attas for weaving the dream which is his garden.

Bereft of Bacon

    To have been bereft of ‘real’ bacon for neigh-on seven years was a great hardship. I was born and brought up as an Englishman; the consumption of bacon, and all things porcine, was second nature to me. The absence of pork products, and in particular – bacon, in my life for those oh so many lean years was poignantly noticeable. That lack became somewhat burdensome to me, in the hot and humid equatorial country where I had chosen to end my days.

   Beef bacon, chicken bacon and all other forms of meat ‘bacon’, which does not derive from a porcine source, is not bacon. Bacon is, at its most simplest – pig meat cured with salt, and that is the most important part – it is meat from a pig. Bacon comes from a pig, it is pig meat, it is not, repeat not, from any other animal except from a pig. It is porcine. Beef or chicken bacon just is not bacon; it is a gross misunderstanding of English terminology and a cunningly mischievous word play on behalf of some. Bacon, or so we are led to believe from internet sources, has been with us since Roman times. Bacon is thin slices of pig meat that is boiled, salted or smoked to produce a most distinctive flavour – that of deliciously cooked pig. 

 

   In my seven-year forced abstinence, I constantly daydreamed of bacon sandwiches. Bacon sandwiches had been my saviour as a small boy. In the late afternoon, I would traipse back from my almost entirely hateful secondary school, dragging my education weary feet up the formerly Anglo-Saxon hill and through the Norman Castle Park, to reach the town bus station. As I sauntered, my recurrent youthful fantasies included a drive-by featuring the mythically marvellous Boudicca, knives on her whirling chariot wheels, ploughing through the school bullies who were always making my life hell. Those fantasies tended to dissipate as I crossed the road by the war memorial, and caught an imagined scent of bacon sandwiches. 

 

   In the bus station cafe, fronted by the monthly American comic book display, lurked the most delicious of sumptuous repasts – those inequitable bacon sandwiches. Those truly divine sandwiches were sodden with greasy bacon fat, and stuffed with mouth-watering rashers of fried streaky bacon. The small boy that I was could only enhance that bacon loveliness with Heinz Tomato Sauce – none other condiment would do. I was proud to have that sauce, and accompanying bacon fat, dribble down my young chin – it was a coming of age, an initiation into adulthood. Bacon sandwiches were my liberator then, as now. I saved my school lunch money, went hungry all afternoon, and denied myself the pleasure of a comic or two, just to be able to delight in bacon sandwiches at that old Roman town, bus station cafe. It was a small piece of heaven.

 

   The country in which I had found myself, reduced the grand notion of cured porcine bands to thin strips of beef, which could have be mistaken for leather....I continue to have doubts along those lines. There is simply no comparison between what is so loosely called beef bacon, and the real, genuine article – bacon from a pig. The name ‘bacon’ is most misleading. It was not until I had once holidayed in that sunny clime - where three predominant cultures try to avoid rubbing shoulders with each other, that I ‘discovered’ the entity known as ‘beef bacon’. It was a severe culture shock.

 

   There were two ribbons of a dark brown substance lying on my hotel breakfast plate. I prodded them, half expecting them to shuffle off the plate, slither across the table and plop onto the floor. They didn’t. I poked those two objects sniffily, then slashed my yellow egg yolks (with apologies to Buñuel and Dali), and let them bleed across those odd objects. I punctured and cut those brown strips, dowsed them in yolk and eased then into a position commensurate with chewing.  They would not be chewed. I tried harder and eventually evacuated them from my oral orifice, much to the disgust of my travelling companion. I discovered later that those two dark brown objects were called, laughingly – beef bacon. During the years that followed, I abstained from the travesty that was beef bacon, and later – in the company of people of certain religious convictions, abstained from real bacon too. After my epiphany and resurrection, I rushed headlong to Tesco – cornucopia land of wines, spirits et al, and purchased rashers of what was to be the most delicious bacon I had ever tasted. It was delicious because of the seven-year denial. 

 

   In days off from work and writing, I actively seek venues where bacon may be consumed, despite the creeping religious limitations of the beautiful country in which I now reside. 

Dharma Dog...

With the ‘Stones' song ‘Walking the Dog’ (just a , just a) running around my head like some unleashed canine desperately in need of a pee, I led the enthusiastic Jackie out for his morning walk. I have mentioned elsewhere that I am not a lover of dogs and that the relationship between this particular animal and me came about purely by chance - but he does have his good points as you shall see later.

It’s not a long walk. Simply out of the apartment (in England we would call it a flat, but never mind) along the length of the car park – with some people on the verge of panic at seeing my scruffy, docile canine, and panicking at the very thought of a dog - then under the security barrier and out onto the road and down a short incline – the return journey taking no more than twenty minutes or so.

 

It is rarely an interesting journey. Jackie pulls at his lead urging me to go here or go there in his quest for olfactory satisfaction, and I try to keep awake – having been roused by Jackie’s insistent banging on our bedroom door with his tail. Our journey is largely spent dodging cars and me pulling at Jackie’s lead so that I don’t have to explain to his owner – my wife, why I allowed him to commit doggy suicide.

 

Rarely do we see other dogs. Once, some weeks back - we did, we saw another dog on our daily walk. Jackie looked. The other dog looked. They satisfied themselves that they were both dogs - and alive, and went their separate ways with no verbal utterances taking place. This day was different.

 

 Jackie had been performing his daily sniffing routine – running up onto the small grass curb and collecting his doggy mail, urinating or defecating depending upon his will - and just the right spot to do either, then came this hound out of hell – luckily on the other side of a wire fence.

 

Other Dog – obviously a little short on the manners front, gave no introduction other than a very large growl – practically enough to swallow both me and Jackie, and one of the most ferocious barks you might imagine if met on a moor somewhere around Baskerville Hall, England – with or without a deerstalker bedecked detective.

 

Chopping at his metaphorical bit, Other dog attempted to eat the wire fence – so desperate was he to consume the hapless Jackie. Jackie, on the other hand, mooched up to said fence, with his nose practically poking through and into Other Dogs maw, and gave what I considered to be a quizzical look at this raging beast not millimetres from Jackie’s face.

 

‘Chill, man. Why must you start your day all upset? Metta mate, metta, spread a little loving kindness in your day’ - well that’s what I imagined Jackie to be saying, while Other Dog  - a cross between a hound from hell and a German Shepherd dog was trying to eat Jackie’s face off. Jackie frowned a little, cocked his head, then cocked his leg at a portion of fence about a foot away from the dog eating dog – jettisoned some fluid waste, then shook his newly combed body and calmly walked away. Other Dog, now acutely insulted renewed his ferocious attack and almost dragged his human companion into the fence with him. But Jackie knew better. Jackie knew the fences strength. Jackie knew that he was one side and Cerberus was on the other, and that the twain would never meet.

 

It was, at that point, that I grew a reluctant admiration for Jackie, and Jackie acquired a new name - an alter ego in fact. Jackie - at that moment of supreme calm and deportment became Dharma Dog – cool, metta/loving kindness spreading Buddhist dog, and earned my eternal respect for his calmness under extreme duress.

Mother-in Law’s Dumplings

'Mother-in-Law'’s kitchen was infused with the sort of light which could only be accurately captured by that miracle of Chinese film making - Zhang Yimou. Inside - the ambience was Chinese rustic meets culinary museum as a poignant and pregnant romanticism filled the cooking scent-filled air. I was poised – at the very tip of my metaphorical seat, to engage, for the very first time, in my new family’s ‘Dumpling Festival’, otherwise known as Duan Wu Jie.

 

I tittered a Frankie Howard titter when my new 'mother-in-law' offered me her dumplings. It was a cultural misunderstanding – not the first and will certainly not be the last. At the very last minute I realized that I was the only one in the room getting the joke – the smile on my lips died an ignominious death, the way of all such, and I let the bawdy Englishman in me take a backseat for the remainder of our visit.

 

A plate of small dumplings was set before us. It was being converted into a ‘still life’ which my wife was so painstakingly drawing, but as she did so the ‘subject’ was rapidly disappearing as I snatched sweet dumpling after sweet dumpling, unwrapped and then dipped them into a gula Melaka (palm sugar) sauce. Dripping with sauce, I proceeded to throw each summery coloured delicacy into my mouth with barely room enough for breath. That pile of yellow dumplings (Ki Chang) – so called because of their colour was reducing at an alarming rate – alarming to my artist partner that is, not to me – I was quite happy with the way things were going. I was not deterred by the stickiness of those goodies, nor of the fiddliness of unwrapping the bamboo-leaf packaging. In fact, as time slipped by I was becoming quite adept at unwrapping all things Chinese. 

 

'Ma-in-Law'’s antique fan-cooled kitchen spoke of sundry other worlds. It was enhanced with flavoured teas from Japan, crispily dry crackers from the Americas and, of course, a super-abundance of delicious foodstuffs from the mother country – China. Woks bearing the patina of ages sat beside antique rice-cookers, those rice-cookers sat next to aging hot water boilers bearing antediluvian brands, while gleaming tins of straw mushrooms leaned on other tins stuffed with black bean sauce doused fried Dace.

 

We sat, correction – I sat, and consumed delicious sweet yellow dumplings while dragon-boats bobbed up and down on equatorial waters a few kilometers away and memories of dead Chinese poets haunted the warm air. It was my very first ‘Dumpling Festival’ and aside from a heaviness brought about by over consumption, the day was looking like a great success.

 

That visit, unlike previous visits where car tyres were counted and I was grilled as to my intentions towards the family’s only daughter, was also looking like a great success as Dim Sum followed dumplings and yet more dumplings followed Dim Sum. My waistline – a little dormant over a six month period, began to assert itself onto my (British bought) Bangladeshi leather belt. It was a gluttonous day, a day concerned with 'Mother-in-Law'’s dumplings, of long forgotten delights of Chinese delicacies and, ultimately, the warmth, love and care of families. Schoolboy titters had long since been left in the playground of my memory, and cultural misunderstanding pushed to the side of the plate as the last yellow dumpling slipped with ease from the fork, seemingly dipped itself into the sweet sauce and hastened its way to my waistline. Then, SUV loaded and permanently visiting stray dog stuffed back onto the rear seat - we once more shot down the North/South Highway, back towards the city haze, to suburbia and home.

Dog Days

There was once a sign. It had become weather-beaten and a little dog-eared over the years that it had been posted on that notice board, in a leafy Shanghai park. That black and white sign prohibited dogs and Chinese from entering the area of the park. From the very precise wording, it was quite clear that the park was reserved for foreigners only, despite the fact that Shanghai is in China.

That sign has long since vanished. Shanghai has moved on. Dogs, Chinese and many other nationalities share that once forbidden playground. The sun shines and all may seem well with the world. Yet here, in equatorial Malaysia the vestiges of cultural separation and ethnical misunderstandings yet prevail.

Recently, over teh tarik, I was told this story...

A friend of mine, and his lovely Chinese wife, were invited to brunch with an old acquaintance. It was right across Kuala Lumpur from where they lived, so there was much effort made to get there. The road was tangled with highway and byway, misdirection and dead-ends, yet my adventurous friends navigated well and soon – ok maybe not so soon, but soon enough, arrived at their acquaintances’ door.

The door opened. Their acquaintance beckoned them in. There was a slight look of surprise when she noticed the husband, but quickly adjusted her smile and led them to a table where sat three women. It was a hen party. There were no men. My friend’s husband was gently escorted back outside, in the most gentile of manners, and into the yard. It was explained that he might prefer the garden. Admittedly, it was a very charming garden – replete with water features and green leafy plants, sturdy furniture and enough shade to cool the eternally equatorial sun. But it was, nevertheless, a yard.

 After the initial shock had adrenalin-rushed through his system, my friend’s husband had the distinct inclination to bark. He did not bark, but perhaps barked an internal bark, a hound of the Baskervilles howl, or a werewolf howl to the moon that was then hidden by the bright sun. That urge to converse like a canine was so very strong that it consumed much of his time, sitting on the designer furniture, watching shadow play as a slight breeze stroked the lovingly planted plants and swayed the leaves.

In a thoughtful mood, my friend was reminded of that Shanghai sign. He too was reminded of the fact that both his wife and his ‘host’ were Chinese, and he English. It was an irony, he thought, that he should be escorted out of the house of his host, very much like one of those unwanted Shanghai dogs, or Chinese.

Over time, just when he was beginning to cool and look dispassionately at his situation, his host reappeared with coffee and food. Once again, my friend was reminded of his dog-like situation - he sought for the dog bowl and leash - there was none. There was only the dog bowl and leash in his mind as he surveyed the food and drink. Grabbing at his hand phone, my friend’s husband SMSed his wife, who was inside the house. He told her of his feelings – his kennel-like treatment, the dog bowl and his inclination to bark. They left – all smiles and regrets that they could not stay longer.

He recovered, with no ill effects, save the need to pee on seeing lampposts. Perhaps, in that dim distant leafy lined suburb of Kuala Lumpur, there should be a sign - posted for all to see. Like that Shanghai sign, the suburban Kuala Lumpur sign should be prominent and available for all to see. In clear, concise, writing it should state that no husbands, and certainly no Englishmen would be welcome in that corner of suburbia – giving advance notice of that household’s preferences.

Dog Satay

Despite extant rumours to the contrary, my partner has returned to suburbia and her apartment is still safe, all her belongings are there, accounted for, and not sold off to the nearest pawn shop. I have not run off with her car, money or any of her priceless paintings and/or jewellery. Her dog – whom I have fed and walked ever since her departure, had not been roasted, boiled, grilled, fried or otherwise made into a gourmet delicacy. And, despite us being of two different races our bond together is as tight as it ever was.

Friends and family are, no doubt, well meaning - that is to say they wish my love well, me on the other hand, being new to them and a Gwailo (white man or ghost man) they are not so sure of. It comes as somewhat as a shock, nay a disappointment, to know that I have been and am being watched and judged, literally taken at face value and stigmatized on racial grounds. It comes as shock - because we white people have been so good at doing exactly that, to so many races and peoples, over our long domineering history.

 

Malaysia, truly Asia - where it is advertised that all races live in a harmony as perfect as the durian harvest will permit, is deeply racist. I came across this disharmony a little at a time. Small things like antique slang words for other races - tiny insignificant slur words dredged up from the history of the federal states still have the power to stab with their barbs and innuendoes. Notions that this or that other race is lazy, stingy, smelly, ignorant or simply waiting to rob you blind (apparently), prevail in a country ever being divided along racial or religious grounds.

 

The golden age (retrospective illusion) dictates that twenty-five years ago all was perfect in the world, and therefore by default –Malaysia. The races, when not intermarrying, ate together, drank together, laughed, and joked at pretty much the same things. On the internet we can espy ageing posters of Malays advertising beer, see images of mixed race dances and coffee houses where those eating pork or drinking alcoholic beverages, and those forbidden to by religious laws sit side by side - enjoying each other’s company.

 

Was there racial tension behind those poster smiles and air-brushed advertising – some would have us believe so. Some would argue that racial harmony is no retrospective illusion, but a myth instead. They would debate as to whether it is, or was ever, possible for the three predominant races in Malaysia to get on together, let alone accept a fourth – a white race into their bosom, despite the remarkable evidence to the contrary.

 

Everywhere I look in my little suburbia I see mixed race couples. They, and we, partake of fusion food, and hear a lingo - seemingly a hotchpotch of Malay, English and whichever language the speakers wish to inject into their earnest conversations. Evidence of the coming together of Malaysian races is everywhere, but steadfastly denied by those with a politic to do so. To add to the mix, many white men (Orang Puteh, Mat Salleh, Gwailo) have successfully married into one or other of the races in Malaysia. Some have changed religion to be with their heart’s desire; others have simply adopted leanings towards goat curry and dosai or prawn mee and pau.

 

Clear evidence of the longevity of these mixed race marriages is all around in Malaysia, but more especially within the apartments and condominiums of suburbia, my dear suburbia, where rojak marriages produce mixed race children who sparkle with health and intelligence (another myth). For myself I can only but point to all the successful mixed race marriages clearly evident amidst the professional strata of Malaysian society - where no-one has run off with the belongings or possessions of the other, despite their colour, creed or religion, nor have roasted, boiled, grilled or fried any form of domestic animal either, as far as I know that is – dog satay anyone?