Let me tell you the big secret of my life in Kuantan: It's boring. Like, incredibly boring. I get up, sweating, put on a baju kurung, sweating, go to school, sweat in front of teenagers, come home, sweating, quickly change into my "I feel like a real person again" clothes, drink water, and sweatily walk down the street to eat some roti. Then, I usually come back, nap for a few hours, try in vain to get good internet access at home and research trips, watch a movie, read a book, or talk on the phone for hours to friends/family from home. Rinse (thoroughly--remember, it's sweaty) and repeat, with very little alteration. I'm usually in bed by 11. Basically, I traded everything I liked about my life in the US--close friends and family, interesting jobs/schoolwork, a bustling, walkable city, museums, performances, seasons, fall-themed beverages, witty conversations about topics other than my ability or inability to eat spicy food, etc. for the chance to travel. The day-to-day stuff here basically kind of sucks compared to life at home, and I often feel listless.
Sure, it has its moments of interest and glory. Having so much free time that I can read without feeling guilty is nice. Teaching has moments of touching warmth and hilarity, but it comes with a lot of bureaucracy. The ETA role itself comes with a lot of ambiguity. And ambiguity, as we all know, can produce mild anxiety. Am I glorified camp counselor? The students' friend and confidante? Just a teacher? Their one beacon of American culture, however mixed my own feelings are about that culture? Am I bad a person if I just want to teach my classes and go home, instead of going to the mall with students?
Here are some photos to help you understand the basics of life at home in Kuantan. I'll start with the most educational section. Suggested soundtrack for this post: "Common People" by Pulp. I'm listening to it now.
Let me preface this whole thing by saying that my apartment is in a great location that is in walking distance of pleeeenty of places to eat, shop, and use the internet (like this lovely cafe). It's really, really, really lucky. And I'm lucky to be in a city and not a podunk (sp?) town. Kara and I have a ton of space for when friends come visit--two spare bedrooms and a really big living room. We even have a mysterious room full of the landlady's junk that we never go into. Birds live in there. A lot of this post will sound whiny, but it's just that standard of living here is not the same as at home. I wouldn't expect it to be. And I somewhat knew what I was signing up for. So there.
I. The Bathroom
Let me introduce you to the concept of the wet bathroom. In many parts of Asia, a wet bathroom is a clean bathroom. In public bathrooms, that means that you may find a courtesy pair of flip flops outside the door--if you're lucky. If you're unlucky, you will be wading through an indeterminate mixture of urine and water to position yourself over a squat toilet. Next to the toilet, there will be a faucet, a metallic "bum gun" (little contraption kind of like a miniature shower head nozzle), or an unsightly yellow plastic tube attached to a tap for bidet-like purposes. In some cases, there will be a large basin full of water with a little bucket in it that you can use to flush if the flush isn't working. It's not uncommon (but not common, either) to turn on a sink and realize that the sink isn't connected to any plumbing, but just drains right out onto the floor at your feet. Once in a blue moon, a toilet will do something sort of similar when flushed. That's bad news bears.
In bathrooms that include a shower, like my apartment's bathroom, the wet bathroom concept means that there's no need to separate the shower area from the toilet area. The shower head is usually right next to the toilet, with no separating stall or wall. Doesn't that mean the toilet gets all wet and so does the floor and sometimes the toilet paper roll if you're not careful? Yes, friends, it does. Many bathrooms, including mine, also have a hard-to-describe little tub-like area. We learned that this is not, in fact, for bathing babies, but actually supposedly for filling with water in case your water cuts out. (Which it sometimes does with no warning and for indefinite amounts of time--record was 3 days--even in Kuantan. Luckily, my shower is fed from a tank of rainwater above my roof, so we could always shower and could boil shower water when necessary.)
Bathtubs don't really exist outside of the nicest hotels here. I cannot complain, because I at least have a hot shower with good water pressure, which is more than many ETAs can say. There is no hot running water here, by the way. Nor is there really cold running water, so I cool all my filtered water in a pitcher in the fridge.
Oh, funny thing: You may notice my bathroom has no sink. I could put soap in the basin thing, but then the water just runs out onto my feet to get to the floor drain. My bedroom, oddly enough, DOES have a sink. I wash my hands and brush my teeth there.
Take a look. Oh, WARNING: Lots of parts of my house were painted with brown paint, apparently in a big hurry. That means there are drips and drabs of brown paint all over everything, including our squatty potty. It's not what it looks like.
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| See the little built-in basin area with the taps behind all our toiletries? |
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| Forgot to mention that my washing machine drains through a hose into the squatty room, through a hole in the wall into the bathroom, and then out through the floor drain under the shower. Fun with plumbing! Such creativity! |
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| BROWN PAINT from the door. This is our squatty. We never use it or go in here, although squatting to do your business is supposed to be good for your colon. My school has squat toilets that I must use every day, but I still haven't mastered the technique. What happens when you haven't mastered the technique? Channeling my grandmother, I'm going to tell you in no uncertain terms: You piss your ankles, kids.
II. The Kitchen
Here are two things you will never find in Malaysia:
-a full-size oven (of the non-toaster-oven variety)
-a real, indoor stove (of the non-camp-stove variety)
After our one-burner stove broke last week, Kara and I experienced an unexpected windfall when our landlady replaced it with a two-burner camp stove. The luxury! We don't have a microwave, though we probably could have asked for one from our program. We opted instead for a toaster oven. You will now understand why I never cook, given that meals out are so cheap.
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| Kitchen overview. With authentic teacher clutter. |
Maybe you noticed in that kitchen overview that there is a staircase straight up to the roof. It makes the house very indoor-outdoor, especially when it rains right down the stairs. There's no way to close off this rooftop space, so I basically have a gaping hole in my kitchen. That brings me to a list of animals that live in my house on and off:
-geckos--Cute! Fast-moving! They eat bugs! They also make birdlike chirping noises in the night.
-cats--One in particular wonders in off the roof sometimes. Have you ever found cat poop in your bathroom in the morning only to groggily realize that you don't, as far as you know, own a cat?
-birds--Sparrows swoop in and out. You'll see why in later photos.
-flying cockroaches--God help us and save us
The rooftop is a lovely place to hang laundry, catch breezes, hear the call to prayer, and read until you can't stand the mosquitoes any more.
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| Stairway to heaven. |
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| Alley from the roof. I know what you're thinking: "It's so...so...Asian!" Sometimes I see my students walking along here on their way to a concrete playground just a block over. (Also visible from roof.) |
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| View of a tropical hill and neighbors' water tank from the roof. I can actually see straight into my neighbors' house from my roof, since they don't have a roof covering part of it. It's like watching a Chinese cooking show when the wife is in the kitchen. The husband's hacking coughs and semi-nudity are less welcome appearances. Although I'm sure they see me reading up on the roof, we seem to have agreed not to acknowledge each others' uncomfortably close existence. |
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| Water tank that feeds my shower. |
IV. The Bedroom
The most important fact about my apartment is that it doesn't have AC. Many Malaysians have AC. Why don't I? I ask myself this every sweaty, sweaty night. I never sleep through a night here, due to a combination of having to pee, being overheated, or being bitten by mosquitoes. I keep my windows open, which means that mosquitoes get in. (The concept of the window screen has not made it to Malaysia. I pray that it someday will.) I religiously buy a plug-in mosquito repellent. The concept is kind of like a plug-in deodorizer. It works wonders, but sometimes it stops working in the night. (It's a finicky little thing that needs to be kept at the right angle in the socket. Long story.) I immediately notice because I wake up from bites over every part of my body that is exposed to the air. So there you go.
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| It's actually great having a sink in your bedroom. You may wonder why I have a comforter with Chinese characters. Well, it came with a set. The set doesn't include a flat sheet, though. Those are mysteriously unavailable in Malaysia. It's fitted sheet or comforter. I love having a blanket to cuddle up with, even if it's really hot. Weird, I know. |
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| That fan = lifesaver. |
The living room is full of humorous decor courtesy of our landlady's dead mother-in-law. Enjoy.
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| Everyday life includes Kara napping on the couch in a baju. The living room is kind of her lair, while the kitchen is mine. Note the rectangular openings above the window. No, they cannot be closed or effectively blocked. Yes, birds and bugs get in. |
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| Art with a capital A. |
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| This deceased turtle was hanging on the wall when we moved in. Sort of as if he had crawled up there and died. |
Obviously, this post is for diehard fans of high-end interior decorating and simple Asian living. I find it hard to believe anyone but my parents made it this far in reading, but I thought a picture of my life here should include some of the less-glamorous aspects, too.
READING
Nonfiction bonanza since Wolf Hall.
Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull by Barbara Goldsmith. READ. IT. I learned so much.
A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance by William Manchester. Really fun overview, but not impressive as a serious work of history or anything.
Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love, and Death in Renaissance Italy by Sarah Bradford. I'm making very slow progress on it. The treatment of Italian politics is pretty convoluted and hard to keep track of, but those were convoluted times.
The Hundred-Year-Old Man who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson. Light and fun.
