For the past week, Miang and I have been in Malaysia and Singapore visiting family and friends. This is my fifth time in South East Asia and it is always a stunning experience being plunged into a completely different world, different from New Zealand obviously, but also enormously different within itself as I am always aware when crossing the causeway from Singapore to Johor.After a night in Singapore with Miang's half brother Miang Wei, we were driven over to her Malaysian home village of Renggam where her stepmother lives with Miang's half sister Miang Hong. If you are by now confused, let me remind you that all of Miang's siblings are named Miang, and she should properly be named Miang Hoong, not to be confused with her Renggam half-sister, Miang Hong, nor while I'm at it, one of her brothers, Miang Hiong. Of course her family call her Mi
ang Hoong, or in the case of her younger full brother, Miang Chiang, as "Sis Hoong". Miang Chiang is known to the family as "MC", in that most efficient of Chinese customs, reducing names of the truly famous to a minimalist acronym (KL for Kuala Lumpur, JB for Johor Baru, and so on).
While in Renggam we commemorated the third anniversary of Miang's father's death. This we did through a simple indoor ceremony with joss-sticks at the shrine inside the family home, and then by burning various items of value to her Dad in the street outside. Those items included paper money (of the Monopoly variety) and, burnable cans of her father's favourite beer, Carlsberg. Yes, o
nly in Asia can you buy burnable beer cans for such purposes!
On this visit, with Miang's other half sister, Miang Key and her husband Daniel occupying the spare room in the Renggam house, we stayed in the nearby town of Kluang, taking the opportunity to climb up part of the nearby Mountain of Gunung Lambak. It was also a chance to do a little shopping, to have our eyes tested and to buy two pairs of fashionable glasses with graduated lenses, all for the princely sum of NZ$350! Of course we ate "a la famille" lunches and evening meals of such irresistible tastiness that we both added 2 kg over our week away.
Miang's brother, Miang Hiong, known to us all as William, is a leader of early morning Qigong and TaiChi exercises in a local Kluang park. We were up at 6 am to join him in the darkness before dawn. In his Qigong moves, William takes on a whole new persona of graceful leadership, with the large crowd of participants doing their best to follow his every move. Miang is the shadowy figure on the right in this video.
After Kluang we travelled back down the peninsula to Kulai to take part in an informal reunion, a chance for me to meet Miang's school classmates, and then to MC's in Johor Baru for a night before crossing back over the causeway to Singapore, where we were hosted by Uncle CC and Auntie June. Of course, this was an occasion for more feasting, the picture showing from left to right Uncle Hew, Auntie Peak Chu, nephew Kelvin, MC, Auntie June, Uncle CC and yours truly.
And no evening in Singapo
re is now complete without a visit to the just finished Marina, with the glittering Casinos and Sands Hotel across the water, complemented by the Lotus-like shape of the new Science Museum. Singapore is truly staggering, a city state of no natural resources with a per capita GDP of US$36,000 per annum. I spent my plane journey back home reading a 2011 book of interviews with the architect of Singapore's rise, Lee Kuan Yew. To quote "What makes a country grow is talent. We must attract and retain talent. Then we have vibrancy. How do we compete with Chinese and Indians where we know they are going to enter in a big way? We succeed by staying in little niches, securing qualities which they cannot match, like credibility, reliability, intellectual property and the rule of law."
Now where have I heard that before?
nly in Asia can you buy burnable beer cans for such purposes!On this visit, with Miang's other half sister, Miang Key and her husband Daniel occupying the spare room in the Renggam house, we stayed in the nearby town of Kluang, taking the opportunity to climb up part of the nearby Mountain of Gunung Lambak. It was also a chance to do a little shopping, to have our eyes tested and to buy two pairs of fashionable glasses with graduated lenses, all for the princely sum of NZ$350! Of course we ate "a la famille" lunches and evening meals of such irresistible tastiness that we both added 2 kg over our week away.
Miang's brother, Miang Hiong, known to us all as William, is a leader of early morning Qigong and TaiChi exercises in a local Kluang park. We were up at 6 am to join him in the darkness before dawn. In his Qigong moves, William takes on a whole new persona of graceful leadership, with the large crowd of participants doing their best to follow his every move. Miang is the shadowy figure on the right in this video.
After Kluang we travelled back down the peninsula to Kulai to take part in an informal reunion, a chance for me to meet Miang's school classmates, and then to MC's in Johor Baru for a night before crossing back over the causeway to Singapore, where we were hosted by Uncle CC and Auntie June. Of course, this was an occasion for more feasting, the picture showing from left to right Uncle Hew, Auntie Peak Chu, nephew Kelvin, MC, Auntie June, Uncle CC and yours truly.
And no evening in Singapo
re is now complete without a visit to the just finished Marina, with the glittering Casinos and Sands Hotel across the water, complemented by the Lotus-like shape of the new Science Museum. Singapore is truly staggering, a city state of no natural resources with a per capita GDP of US$36,000 per annum. I spent my plane journey back home reading a 2011 book of interviews with the architect of Singapore's rise, Lee Kuan Yew. To quote "What makes a country grow is talent. We must attract and retain talent. Then we have vibrancy. How do we compete with Chinese and Indians where we know they are going to enter in a big way? We succeed by staying in little niches, securing qualities which they cannot match, like credibility, reliability, intellectual property and the rule of law."Now where have I heard that before?
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