11 Oct 2023
Somewhere above the seas between Malaysia and Australia, somewhat turbulent shaking on board an Air Asia red-eye heading back to the Gold Coast. Probably another 5 hrs or so to go. I tried to close my eyes to get some rest, but my mind is active, and I cannot sleep.
Next to me is a lovely old Chinese Malaysian lady from Ipoh, who said she’s going to visit her sister in Brisbane. Traveling with her son, who is a few rows behind us. She’s quite gentle, soft-spoken, and hard of hearing. I noticed she was struggling with opening a bottle of water, so I offered to help. That’s how we connected. Such a small gesture, but she was ever so grateful. Later she would also ask me to help with filling in the landing form, as she said she has trouble reading and seeing where to fill in the form.
I gladly obliged. Again, such a simple task, which is so effortless for me. Yet, it seemed to fill her with joy and gratitude.
Earlier today, I walked around downtown close to where I was staying overday during my 15hr layover in Kuala Lumpur. It’s a busy city, and the heat and humidity, even now in October, is quite oppressive. I enjoy the city, and generally visiting Malaysia. There is a s certain charm about the country and its people. That, and the fact that I can easily get by with English, and if necessary revert to Mandarin.
I was hungry so went to a mall to have some chicken rice. I would have liked to try some of the more local establishments, ones that are rated highly, but then at the same time, I’m a bit concerned about hygiene, so ended up at the mall and some generic Hainan chicken rice chain restaurant. It was decent, and efficient. Just what you’d expect from an eatery at the mall.
A few months earlier, back in June, I had been in Malaysia, where I had a three-day stopover on my way to Europe. Back then, I had the opportunity to try a local night market next to the hotel I was staying at (the same one that I was overdaying earlier). I had the opportunity to try some amazing kwuay tiaw (stir-fried thick rice noodles, my favourite), and also some satay.
I remember the satay place the most. It was this smiley Muslim lady, probably in her late twenties or early thirties. She just somehow stood out in the midst of the busy night market. She sold just a few things, of which most prominent were her beef and chicken satays. I ordered a few, as I wanted to support her. She immediately got to work, smoking the eight skewers that I had ordered. They were quite delicious. Yet the process of grilling them over the charcoal sent a lot of smoke into the air.
She just stood there patiently, smoke occasionally wafting into her face, beads of sweat accumulating on her forehead, as she worked hard to prepare my meal. It was a beautiful sight of toil, hard work, and trying to make a living. In the middle of it all, a man, who I can only imagine is her partner dropped by on his motorbike. He had a young child with him, and they got off and crowded around the lady smoking my satay. it warmed my heart, for it was already close to ten at night, and she was still there, working hard to make a living, and her child had come to visit.
It’s the kind of story that is repeated countless times throughout Asia and around the world. Parents who have little other than a spirit of toiling and working hard to provide for their families and children. Street vendors, hawkers, night market stall owners peddling their goods, foods and drinks for a little money, with which they must raise a family and feed children. It’s a heart-warming sight.
Perhaps that is the reason why Malaysia seems to have a place in my heart. It’s similar, in some ways to the humanness and warmth that I identify with growing up in Taiwan (but in many other respects, also very, very different—especially the Muslim culture and foreign language). It’s an interest mix of cultures, of modernity and tradition that is fascinating and feels so real. In contrast to Singapore, which is far too modern, and the people far too proud, Malaysia has a certain charm, a charm that reminds me always of that tourism slogan in the early 2000s, “Malaysia, Truly Asia“.
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It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost four months since I left Australia. In the intervening period, I’ve been to Kuala Lumpur, the Hague, Berlin, Bremen, Baku, Istanbul, and spent time in Montreal, Toronto, and most of my time in Newfoundland.
It’s been a lot of traveling, a lot of staying in different places, bed hopping from one bed to another. I must say, it’s been a mixture of feelings, and towards the end of this four month journey, I feel tired and longing to go home (home, in Australia, where at least I have a stable place, my own place, albeit in my landlord’s semi-basement).
The most troubling of all would have to be time spent at my brother’s. It is simply awkward, for he doesn’t engage with me, and we hardly engaged in conversation. Sadly, he makes no effort to talk, and I’d really have to make conversations, which don’t last as he seems to show very little interest or care what I have to say.
It’s the reason why I flipped the last day before I was leaving. Together with all the complaints and tears of my nephew I’ve been seeing, I asked my brother outright why he has so little to say to his own family… why almost forty years of my life, there is such distance, and what just now feels like cold silence which is unbearable. I don’t know how my sister-in-law puts up with it. I don’t know how my niece and nephew cope with this…
It's just frustrating, and so very, very sad. Just after the death of our mum, for the first year or so, there seemed to be some hope. My brother was warmer, he seemed closer. Then, I guess tedium, mundanity, and just life set in, and to him, it’s all just the same. It’s as if he has given up on life, just repeats the same routine of work, gaming on his phone, and watching movies/series at night. Most time spent alone, even though his family is around him. Imagine, my nephew feeling happy whenever he hears the door close and his own dad leaving. And quickly stopping whatever he’s doing whenever he hears his dad returning.
Imagine that that is the way that people, your own blood and kin, react around you. It’s sad, because I remember a time when I felt like that living with my brother. I remember a time when mum visited, and she too would feel this constraint, this invisible pressure or heaviness whenever my brother is around. It’s as if his very presence just chills and makes everything feel heavy, oppressive, and as if you need to be on eggshells, because you never know what can trigger him, what may offend or annoy him.
Imagine that you are so deeply unhappy and discontented with life, that you make others feel distant and unwilling to engage with you.
What a sad, sad existence that is…
I don’t know what he thinks of me, or what he thinks of all that I’ve said to him. All I can speculate is that he thinks I treat his place like a hotel and come and go as I please. In reality, I’m trying to visit whenever I can so that I can, hopefully, bring a little light to his kids and perhaps his own life. But perhaps he just sees me as a disturbance and burden (even though every time I visit, I bring tonnes of things, and try to cover expenses of food or even take them all out for a nice meal)…
I’ve been thinking a lot of what I said to him. Was I unkind? Was I too harsh, too absorbed in the misery of my broken relationship with him that the words came out wrong and hurtful? I just hoped there to be some change, a little change, mainly for his own sake, and for the sake of the wellbeing and happiness of his own children… but in that interaction we had, he mostly just sat there, his expression half hidden under his hoodie, sighing and saying nothing, or not knowing what to say. (…I’ve noticed he seems to do that a lot. Hide under his hoodie, even during dinner time, the brief moments he would actually sit down at the dinning table with the rest of the family, he’s eating on his own, quietly, not interacting, not engaging. Quite tellingly…)
I can only hope I was not too harsh, and that he somehow can absorb just a bit of what I was trying to get across. It was out of kindness, out of my concern for his own well-being, and his relationship with his own children (let’s not even begin about his relationship with his estranged wife).
Because I can see he is deeply troubled, deeply depressed, and deeply weighed down by something that I cannot figure out what. The need to keep up a facade? The need to maintain this image of being the stern, angry, tough person that he somehow feels he needs to be? The need to replay that role that our own father played when he was still alive?
Does he not know better that stereotypes, that mould of family trauma, unhappiness and misery does not need to be repeated? Does he not realise that the longer this goes on, he will end up all alone, and abandoned and estranged from his own children who feel very little but mostly fear and alienation toward him?
I can see that especially his own son is deeply troubled and distraught. In the past few months, I’ve had several opportunities to see him (…first in January, when I was there almost a month, when his mum went back home for the lunar new year). Then in April, and then in June, and the most recent time in September. All these times, the complaints are the same: he deeply detests his father, says he wishes his father dead, or that he can move out and take his mum with him. Says that when he is old enough, he will leave and never visit his father, and that his father is not welcome. My nephew cries and laments about why his father is never proud of him. Why his father does not love him, and cares much more about his sister.
My nephew can be a very, very difficult child. I experienced several times, for he can be demanding, insistent, and pesters me for material things, that he seems to attach so much meaning to (…much like his father, the father he so much detests and does not want to be). Several times, I’ve been tested to my limit, and shouted back at him. A few years ago, I was so pushed to my limit, I pushed him when he complained about my food and kept telling me how wrong I was. Back in June, I left him screaming and throwing a tantrum when I shout the door in his face (I had told him an hour before that we needed to leave to pick up his sister, and yet, he was not ready and blamed me for not having socks or clothes to wear…)
I do wonder sometimes, when I calm down and think about my interactions with him, how much of it is personality (he is just a very particular person, very much his way or the high way, much like the father he so despises), and how much of it is due to him acting out from the circumstances of his upbringing. I do wonder sometimes, if the relationship between him and his father were better, if his parents were more loving, would my nephew be so difficult sometimes? Would he still have these tics and make these noises (that he does not seem to be aware of…)? Perhaps he sometimes makes these sounds and involuntary eye twitches because he is repressed, because he is feeling insecure and those tics are ways for the body to “act out”.
For sometimes, when I look at him, when I reach out and hug him (when he is lying there and asking me to hug him), I see a child. An innocent child, who still has a lot of maturing, who needs a lot of nurture and care and love, but is sadly perhaps not receiving enough from both his parents.
I’m not a parent, and I’m certainly not his parent. Even if I were, I am tested often by him and his temperaments, by him acting out and throwing tantrums (which according to my sister-in-law only happens when I am around, or at least happens with great frequency when I am around, because my nephew seems to “pick” on people to act out with).
I just want him to have a stable and safe environment to grow up in, to receive the love and affection that every child needs and craves.
Is that too much to ask?
