Difference

When I lived in South Korea, I was often met at the doors of shops with the welcoming statement, "No, no, no big sizes here, go other shop." The crazily tiny and beautiful Korean girls meant that I was seen as huge, although in most Western countries a size 10 might be seen as being just fine, thank you very much.

But all is not lost for my self-esteem in Asia:

The other day, here in Sabah, I walked into a little shop. As I passed the counter at the doorway, there was a sigh, and the shop assistant murmured, "So beautiful, lah." And yes, she was looking at me ;) I checked...

Now this is the kind of place I like to live!

There are two downsides to being the kind of person that draws sighs of admiration from lovely Malaysian girls.

The first is that the commentary doesn't always come from the girls, it's often too blunt, and it's not always wholly complimentary. A headmaster's comment on seeing me for the first time in three weeks recently: "Emily, you are looking so slim and beautiful. Your body looks very good like that. Have you stopped eating? Because last time I saw you, you were getting quite fat." Yes. Cultural norms can be a bit of a shock.

The second, of course, is that often, and I am reluctant to admit this, the admiration isn't of my actual beauty, my perfect skin, my soft, wavy hair, my slender body... none of which are attributes I can honestly boast of. The admiration is of my white skin - the paler the better: the compliments tend to dry out after I've spent a couple of days on the beach.

Many Asians are so locked into a particular ideal of beauty that I have to really search for non-whitening cosmetics - and we're not just talking about face cream here, but even deodorant, which advertises its whitening properties in nice big letters. Because, you know, pale armpits are one of the first thing men want to see.

It's such a shame, when on the other side, us orang putih are trying our very best to darken our skins...

It's a crazy world.

Superlatives in Dubai

Arriving in Dubai in the dark is like I have always imagined it feels to arrive in Las Vegas. It's pitch dark, nothing out there - no snaking highways lit by streetlights in the early hours of the morning, no small towns - then suddenly there is light, a lot of it, and in the middle, the strip of the runway.

By the time I've landed and have negotiated immigration and the tour agency that forgot I was coming, it's light and the city is laid out below me as I travel from the airport to the city centre by sky rail. It feels like a building site, or rather, it is a building site, and the sky rail twists and turns between and under glass and chrome, and past the occasional sand-coloured suburb. There's not far to go though, which feels strange; my knowledge of Dubai as a booming Middle Eastern city, which has come from glossy magazines and documentaries on 7-star hotels, hasn't prepared me for what is actually a very small collection of homes and businesses.

I had planned to leave the city on a tour of oases and seaside villages, but as the tour agency has messed up, I end up spending the whole day in amongst the the excesses and luxuries of the capitalist capital of the world. The excesses can be extreme, and pretty odd when you consider them - why, in a place with rather a lot of available space, would you build tall buildings? Or, in a region with a bit of a lack of water, develop a golf course? People are strange in their pursuit of self-aggrandisement and pleasure.

So I spend my time exploring some of the ways in which Dubai is superlative.

The tallest building in the world.

It's pretty big. It's more than 800 metres high, and the lift, when we stop at the top, actually has the number "124" after the word "Floor". It's kinda cool.

Also, the biggest aquarium in the world...

...with the largest collection of sand tiger sharks in the world...

...and the biggest single panel of glass in the world...

...situated in a shopping mall that contains an entire taxi fleet.

The world's most luxurious shopping malls - even the smaller ones...

...the world's cleanest subway stations...

And, I expect, the world's tallest Model-Of-Burj-Khalifa-Made-Out-Of-Ferrero-Rocher.

It's a pretty remarkable place, really, a strip of hyper-development in the middle of the sands of the desert. Being well-acquainted with the airport, it's interesting to finally get outside and see the city. At least, the malls, although I do sit on the sky rail a lot as well. And the malls are truly something to see. Whatever shop you've got down your street, the Dubai Mall's got a bigger and better one. Really. Nando's. Marks & Spencers. Cold Storage. That Irish pub you've all got nearby. There's even a Bloomingdale's - although at first I don't realise I've seen Rachel's iconic place of work because here, it's in Arabic.

Towards sunset, I get on the train to go to the Creek, which sounds nice and simple and deserty, but when I get to the stop before the one I want, the train stops and everyone is asked to leave the carriages. I hesitantly approach the men at the exits, who laugh and tell me it's been closed for some time, the Creek stop. "Why?" I ask. "Because there's nothing there!" they laugh. I point to the entry in my mini guidebook that has it as a pleasant place to sit by the river and watch the sun go down. "Oh yes!", they laugh, "No! Closed down, no longer, finished, go somewhere else." So I go somewhere else.

I stumble on what appears to be The Creek, anyway; there's an open-air museum on the side, with clay houses and camels and calligraphy exhibitions, and it's rather nice after all the glass and steel to see a bit of raw ground. It's not quite real, though - sort of charmingly clinical. It's a bit like Sun City outside Johannesburg - 100% African, and yet not African at all...

Eventually it's time to get back to the airport for my flight onward to Malaysia. It's been interesting, but I'm looking forward to being able to stand outside for ten minutes without requiring air conditioning as a matter of medical urgency. I never imagined a year ago that I would consider Borneo to have a pleasant temperature, but Dubai's been extreme in more ways than one.

Timing

Timing is everything, huh?

I got invited by a friend who lives in my village to attend the wedding of her neighbour. As you may have picked up from other blogs, weddings here are an open affair, and any passing stranger is welcome to drop by for a bite to eat. I knew that the wedding was happening - it had been happening all day, with cars roaring past my house, filled with gong-players escorting the wedding party to the Catholic church in town, and back again, then music, then entertainment for the family while photos were taken at the hot springs, then more gong-playing. 

So I walked up the road to meet my friend, and she brought me to the village hall, where some of my students were performing the bamboo dance for the bride and groom. We peeked in through the window for a while, and then my friend suggested we go and salaam the happy couple. Just then, the electricity went out! Now, this has been happening a lot lately, on, off, on, off - I just keep a candle to hand and make sure my Kindle is fully charged for those very dark hours - and my, is it dark in a village of 100 people when the power goes out!

Anyway, so the power was out. Amazingly the bamboo dancers continued - bamboo dancing is not something I would be willingly doing at the best of times, and here were these young girls committing their slender ankles to bamboo poles being slammed together with force by their brothers, in the dark! Brave kids.

Anyway. So the the power was out. We went ahead anyway, squeezing past the dancers and through the audience, and up to the stage, where the newly married couple was seated. It was very dark, but without appearing too schoolmarmish and crazy (I think...) I managed to squint over at them and offer my congratulations, as my friend explained who I was. They appeared pleased to see me, as all the brides and grooms whose weddings I've crashed have appeared to be. They greeted me politely, and asked me to accept a gift from their bridesmaid, who passed me a golden pen prettily boxed and beribboned - another tradition that always leaves me balanced precariously between my roots (i.e. Give The Bride A Present) and trying to be culturally sensitive (i.e. Accept A Gift From The Bride.)

So there I was, smiling and half bowing and heading off the stage. Which is when the lights came on.

Now, I like to think it was a collective gasp at my awesomeness, but I have to say, it was probably the shock for a hundred people of suddenly seeing an orang putih where none had been before. Like magic! 

I'm just grateful I didn't fall over.

Never mind, at least I got a delicious meal out of it. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, in Sabah they feed their gatecrashers. 

Most of my little students were in attendance as well, dressed in all their finery and squealing "Cikgu Emily! Cikgu Emily!" which is a HUGE improvement on "Orang putih! Aaargh!", and anyway, I quite like being Teacher Emily...