H-E Double Breadsticks
I mean this in the most positive way possible, but I think Malaysia might have been my own personal hell.
Alright, that still sounds dark, but I promise now, this will be the most upbeat idea of hell ever.
Lemme see if I can define my terms secularly before I go any further.
Hell: a place that sucks.
Heaven: a place that doesn't suck.
Purgatory: a place that kinda sucks for a while.
So back in my old life stateside (which may or may not have been just a dream, I'm not sure) I could at times, be lazy. This is apparently a well-documented issue in people, with it's own mascot, ranking in the top 7 sins, and cultural heroes. My Malaysian hell punished me for my laziness above all else. The brilliant thing about this hell is that I got exactly what I wanted. Don't want to work? You don't have to! But the catch that you'll actually end up craving work. Working will be the highlight of any day, and you will wait hours upon hours just for the chance to do good work for 35 minutes. It's diabolical. You get a job that you love that's easy, but you waste 80% of your time waiting to do it.
Moreover, expectations are low to non-existent, so it really doesn't matter what you do outside (or inside) of teaching. In my old life, I craved free time, and so in my Malaysian hell, I was given enough to drown in.
But, and here's the cool part, the hell is entirely of my own making. I wish I had figured this out a bit earlier, but Malaysian hell isn't a necessary hell as much as it is a potential hell.
When I arrived here, I was given few things to do, and so I chose to do nothing, thus enjoying all the benefits and pitfalls of nothingness (low blood pressure and high boredom, respectively). I see now that it's not really Malaysia's fault at all. It just gave me time and left everything else up to me. Malaysia was a blank space. It's my fault if I didn't fill it with what I liked. If you have nothing that you're working toward, then yeah, the time can be a curse. If you're not doing what you need to do to be happy, then yeah, any place can become a hell.
With that in mind, a couple of weeks ago, I finally started doing what I was meant to do here. As it turns out, this was to entertain locals by trying to make local food. Roti chennai is that beautiful, flaky flat bread that I've mentioned once or twice here, and it's by far the best thing to come out of Malaysian cuisine. I thought it would be the saddest thing ever if I left this country never to taste its fluffly, oily goodness again, so I resolved to learn how to make it.
It's hard. You have to whip the dough around in the air to spread it out, making sure you don't let it rip (I do that a lot) or fold over on itself (I do that even more). People take pictures of my failures on their cell phone. I think it's the equivalent of seeing a dog try to make a grilled cheese sandwich. Even if I am the object of a lot of attention, it's so much better to be doing something hard and failing than to be doing nothing and succeeding. Right now, I've gotten as good as I'm going to get at doing nothing. But I still have a whole lot better to get at making roti.
It feels really good to start at the bottom, because you can only get better. That's what I came here for in the first place: to start over knowing nothing and see how I'd do. What kind of life would I make for myself if everything about me was gone and I went back to day 1?
The answer to that question is "an uneven one." I made a life with great interactions with students and friends separated by long stretches of nothing, separated by long stretches of travel, punctuated with medium stretches of doubt and frustration, dotted with moments of intense euphoria and annoyance. Sometimes, I wrote about it. And right at the end, before I was about to leave, I found something that I liked doing and decided to learn how to do it as well as I could.
It's a shame that I didn't have the drive to learn how to make roti earlier on, but I guess I needed some time in hell to overcome my sloth.
I suppose if you get to leave, it's not really hell, it's more like purgatory. But the thing about purgatory is that you get to leave for good. Since I created this hell, I can't be sure that I won't create it for myself again in my next life back in California. On the bright side, as soon as you start doing whatever makes you really happy, you get to leave hell.
I have 11 days left in Malaysia. By the time I leave I'll cook the best roti chenai ever made by a white guy. I know it's like saying the best grilled cheese ever made by a dog, but you gotta admit that dog would be really proud.
Alright, that still sounds dark, but I promise now, this will be the most upbeat idea of hell ever.
Lemme see if I can define my terms secularly before I go any further.
Hell: a place that sucks.
Heaven: a place that doesn't suck.
Purgatory: a place that kinda sucks for a while.
So back in my old life stateside (which may or may not have been just a dream, I'm not sure) I could at times, be lazy. This is apparently a well-documented issue in people, with it's own mascot, ranking in the top 7 sins, and cultural heroes. My Malaysian hell punished me for my laziness above all else. The brilliant thing about this hell is that I got exactly what I wanted. Don't want to work? You don't have to! But the catch that you'll actually end up craving work. Working will be the highlight of any day, and you will wait hours upon hours just for the chance to do good work for 35 minutes. It's diabolical. You get a job that you love that's easy, but you waste 80% of your time waiting to do it.
Moreover, expectations are low to non-existent, so it really doesn't matter what you do outside (or inside) of teaching. In my old life, I craved free time, and so in my Malaysian hell, I was given enough to drown in.
But, and here's the cool part, the hell is entirely of my own making. I wish I had figured this out a bit earlier, but Malaysian hell isn't a necessary hell as much as it is a potential hell.
When I arrived here, I was given few things to do, and so I chose to do nothing, thus enjoying all the benefits and pitfalls of nothingness (low blood pressure and high boredom, respectively). I see now that it's not really Malaysia's fault at all. It just gave me time and left everything else up to me. Malaysia was a blank space. It's my fault if I didn't fill it with what I liked. If you have nothing that you're working toward, then yeah, the time can be a curse. If you're not doing what you need to do to be happy, then yeah, any place can become a hell.
With that in mind, a couple of weeks ago, I finally started doing what I was meant to do here. As it turns out, this was to entertain locals by trying to make local food. Roti chennai is that beautiful, flaky flat bread that I've mentioned once or twice here, and it's by far the best thing to come out of Malaysian cuisine. I thought it would be the saddest thing ever if I left this country never to taste its fluffly, oily goodness again, so I resolved to learn how to make it.
It's hard. You have to whip the dough around in the air to spread it out, making sure you don't let it rip (I do that a lot) or fold over on itself (I do that even more). People take pictures of my failures on their cell phone. I think it's the equivalent of seeing a dog try to make a grilled cheese sandwich. Even if I am the object of a lot of attention, it's so much better to be doing something hard and failing than to be doing nothing and succeeding. Right now, I've gotten as good as I'm going to get at doing nothing. But I still have a whole lot better to get at making roti.
It feels really good to start at the bottom, because you can only get better. That's what I came here for in the first place: to start over knowing nothing and see how I'd do. What kind of life would I make for myself if everything about me was gone and I went back to day 1?
The answer to that question is "an uneven one." I made a life with great interactions with students and friends separated by long stretches of nothing, separated by long stretches of travel, punctuated with medium stretches of doubt and frustration, dotted with moments of intense euphoria and annoyance. Sometimes, I wrote about it. And right at the end, before I was about to leave, I found something that I liked doing and decided to learn how to do it as well as I could.
It's a shame that I didn't have the drive to learn how to make roti earlier on, but I guess I needed some time in hell to overcome my sloth.
I suppose if you get to leave, it's not really hell, it's more like purgatory. But the thing about purgatory is that you get to leave for good. Since I created this hell, I can't be sure that I won't create it for myself again in my next life back in California. On the bright side, as soon as you start doing whatever makes you really happy, you get to leave hell.
I have 11 days left in Malaysia. By the time I leave I'll cook the best roti chenai ever made by a white guy. I know it's like saying the best grilled cheese ever made by a dog, but you gotta admit that dog would be really proud.
Comments
I look forward to eating some of your roti and having you teach me how to make it.
Think it would go well with a side of fresh garden tomatoes and basil?