Tales from Klang Valley

This is KL

I've been hearing it from cousins and various relatives living in smaller towns and more rural areas - people in KL are a breed apart. I think they're being polite. What they mean to say is KL people are just up their own asses.

When they say KL, they don't necessarily mean the city of Kuala Lumpur itself but also that amorphous sprawl of suburbia that extends past the city itself. Sometimes people just call this vast area of human colonisation the Klang Valley. Geographically, the Klang Valley is a huge place, extending from the Titiwangsa mountain range in the north and east from which the Klang river starts and ending where land meets water in the Straits of Melaka. PJ kids and KL kids might get indignant when you lump them in the same group but to anyone who lived outside the influence of the capital city, they are all one and the same. The growth of the middle classes since Independence 50 years ago mean middle class neighbourhoods have mushroomed as well, along with all the trappings that go with it and the notions of what it means to be educated and upwardly mobile.

So I guess, it's only in the Klang Valley that I could have heard this particular gem. I was sitting at the open air tables outside a Starbucks (yes, I know, I am supporting an evil, over-priced global corporate chain, but it is the only placeI know that makes a decent soya cappucino for the lactose intolerants like me) in yet another shopping mall built within spitting distance of another shopping mall in the Klang Valley.

Anyway, I was writing in my notebook, my sister was on the internet while other people were sitting around us at tables shaded by large umbrellas, drinking their coffees and just generally relaxing and having a chat. (As you do in a coffee shop). It was all very pleasant, sitting in the shade, a gentle breeze was blowing and even the 4 o'clock sun had lost its intensity.

Before long an entity known as a Mak Datin approached a young girl who had been sitting at the table behind us. They evidently knew one another because the young girl said, "I've got us a table here," to which the Mak Datin replied, " Alaa, we can't sit outside. This is Malaysia, it's too hot to sit outside. It's not like Melbourne, kalau kat situ bolehla."

Now, to the uninitiated, this might sound inoffensive. But this statement is typical of what is wrong in Klang Valley society. One - the kind of people who want to ape the mat sallehs because they think white people are better, more sophisticated and well-travelled, they try to achieve that by buying loads of designer tat and flying to places like London and New York. Unfortunately the only reason they go to these places is to shop; they take in none of the arts, culture or heritage of these places. And to show people that they are sophisticated, they name drop like crazy. And think everything in Malaysia sucks balls.

I know Malaysia can suck but so does every country in the world but don't thumb your nose at what normal Malaysian culture is. And I'm not talking of the Malaysian culture of not knowing how to queue and parking wherever they feel like it, I'm talking about the time-honoured Malaysian culture of lepaking at the kedai kopi!

Secondly, it's the attitude that anything from overseas, especially the white Western world is automatically good and better than us. Much of this attitude is leftover from colonial times but this is the modern world, now, everything sucks!

Anyway, you can call me a hypocrite now since I was at Starbucks when my sister and I were laughing openly at that lady and dissing her behind her back. In my defense, as much money as I pay for a coffee at a global coffee chain, I throw money equally on a kopi o ais at a mamak stall. Clean ones, only though; I am still my mother's daughter and I have a weak stomach.

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Get me connected!

We have recently moved to a smaller house because my parents have sold our family home to build a super-duper, multi-powered dream home in the hills of Bukit Jelutong. I haven't had much time to explore this new area due to all the moving and cleaning but i did find a group of shoplots somewhere past the DHL and Triton headquarters. Thank God, there was an internet shop - cheap too - but it was one of those dark place half-filled with noisy primary school kids playing computer games. It reminded me of those dingy gaming arcades my mother never let us even look at because it was the haunt, she says, of truants, school drop-outs and unsavoury men. I went in anyway though I only lasted half an hour because I hate it when people look over my shoulder at my screen and th epeace was frequently interrupted by various kids screaming, "Belakang kau!", "Tembak dia!" and "Bodoh!"

The next day after having lunch at KLCC with my mother, I went to use the internet at a place which cost 4 times the price as the one in my neighbourhood. Cekik darah betul but the place was clean, comfy and CIVILISED. I had an hour before my mum called to say she was bored of shopping and wanted to go home.

The day after that the telecommunications technician that came to set up our phone line says that whoever put up the awning at the back of our house had cut one of the phone wires. This means that we can only use the phone line downstaairs and if we're desperate to have an upstairs line, we need to get somebody else in to dig into the concrete wall and reconnect the wire. Also, he tells us, that due to some techno-babble-bla-bla our broadband connection will probably last between 6 - 12 months before it goes kaput.

I'm going to be putting on my angry face to a lot of kids from now.