Day 8: Eat, Sleep, Rave, Repeat

Chicken ham and beef bacon

This is the day that the program starts repeating, at least to some degree: in the morning we are visiting another embassy, in the afternoon another university. A nice opportunity to compare Singapore with Malaysia.

One item in that comparison is the hotel breakfast. Where in Singapore I described this as adhering to world-wide blandness, here in KL we have gone almost fully native. The only concession to stomachs not used to rice or noodles in the early morning is white bread, a toaster and lumps of butter, plus eggs prepared differently every day. Unless, that is, you consider baked beans breakfast fare (inherited from the British?) or include creative inventions such as beef bacon or chicken ham.

Residence of the Dutch embadsador in KL

Another difference is our daily mode of transportation. Here, there is no question of using public transport to get to where we are going. There is actually a monorail passing directly in front of the hotel, but we are not so lucky as to have a destination close to one of the other stations. Anyway, since we have rented a bus complete with driver and guide for the entire duration of our stay, it is only natural to use it; and there is the pleasant side effect that we arrive at our destinations unsweated.

In the morning it was embassy time. We were received at the residence of the embassador, by the second in charge as before: Jurriaan Middelhoff, head of the economic department. As before in SG and in fact as throughout much of history, we Dutch are mainly interested in economic ties. We learned that though Malaysia trails behind Singapore in terms of economic importance to the Netherlands, the distance is not that big, and it actually outstrips Indonesia - a fact that is not reflected in the sizes of the respective embassies, as Jurriaan explained with some envy. Population: 50 million; main export: palm oil. Ethnically a mixture of autochthonous Malaysian - for the most part muslim - Chinese and Indian (immigrated in British times). Few racial conflicts until fairly recently, when the government started to systematically apply positive discrimination in favour of the Malaysian. System of government: a kingdom where the crown rotates over the sultans of the constituent states, which came together into the federation of Malaysia in order to get their independence (Singapore having dropped out after the fact).

Malaysian-Dutch Business Council

We were also assured that Kuala Lumpur is not really unsafe, contrary to what we were told before. In fact, when we inquired about it, Jurriaan immediately inferred that we were warned in Singapore (which was correct) and claimed that KL was not less safe than Amsterdam. This does jibe with our own observations: the city is busy and mostly ugly, but does not feel threatening. I'm sure that there are less savoury neighbourhoods, but we will not go looking for those.

Jurriaan then played tag with Bart, representing the Malaysian-Dutch Business Council. They are a kind of Chamber of Commerce for their members, who consist of medium and large Dutch companies with offices in Malaysia. He confirmed the economic importance of Malaysia to the Netherlands, and also that there is a lot of opportunity for growth. Another sneer in the direction of Indonesia. I found myself wondering how objectively correct the picture is that was painted for us. If there is truth in it, then the study tour is stepping down on the ladder of developed countries, and it may make sense for the University of Twente to look more towards Malaysia for exchange and collaboration programs than we are right now (currently Singapore and Indonesia are high on the list, but as far as I know Malaysia is pretty much absent).

Shopping mall with food court/hawker center

After the fairly brief presentation session we were treated to some more watery coffee, then it was back to the bus for a visit to UniMY, the University of Malaysia for Computer Science and Engineering. Partially because of the brief duration of our embassy visit, we once more had plenty of time to spare. This is indeed a pattern: the schedule allows for major traffic jams that so far have not materialised. When this is at lunchtime, it just means we can hunt for coffee after finding a good lunch. I have not had or heard any complaints about the food: you very soon realise that lunch is the same kind of fare as dinner, and typically we are at a food court (the kind of place Chris called a hawker center) where there is plenty of choice, prices are low and quality high. Coffee, however, is amother matter (as is tea): they sweeten it to an insane level, only a very desparately coffee-deprived European can drink that stuff. The up to an hour of spare time ahead of the first visit of the day has caused some grumbling from those who think a better place to spend that time is in bed.

Sander Giesselink in the merry-go-round

In a way we are combining the worst features of our own culture's way to deal with scheduling, which is to say, strictly, and that of our host country, which is definitely on flexible time, as I got confirmed just this morning by an intern at the embassy. To make absolutely sure we are on time, because of the unpredictable traffic we have to build in large buffers which in practice cause us to be early. By the Malaysians themselves, on the other hand, the problem of unpredictable traffic is met by not minding too much that a meeting is delayed by as much as an hour; so they may actually be late themselves (though that hasn't to us happened so far). I think the solution would be for us to adapt flexible time scheduling ourselves and just take the risk of being late; but that is a very difficult decision to make, since it goes against our cultural grain. Also, in the end, just being on the safe side is not that costly since it is just for a few weeks: the grumblers just have to deal with it, and could easily regulate their sleep in the old-fashioned (but boring) way of going to bed on time.

In this particular case we had enough time for Sander Giesselink to collect 2RM worth of coins and take a ride on the merry-go-round meant for people a quarter his age and length. Fortunately the thing continued going round merrily.

Welcome at UniMY

At the UniMY (full name: university of Malaysia of computer science and engineering) we were received with open arms. There was a large group of staff and some students present to welcome us, and we finally got to do the full range of presentations from our side. I think we would have been welcome to show more, but that is hard to judge in advance. From their side we learned that this is an even younger establishment than USTD, having been established in 2012. So far there is only a BSc program; they are due to start with MSc and PhD programs from 2017 onwards. More important to understand this establishment, however, is something that I learned only later and was left more or less implicit during their presentations, namely that this is actually a "private", in other words, non-government-sponsored, university: they are funded by a conglomerate of IT-industries. (The presenters used the term "boutique university", which might, with hindsight, have been a much more elegant word for the same thing.) Though there is certainly nothing wrong with this in principle (witness the many excellent private U's in the US), it is a different model than for a public university, and as little the standard here as in the Netherlands. One thing you certainly have to look out for is (the suggestion of) a conflict of interests. The UniMY has therefore taken the probably wise step of having the University of Melbourne monitor them for quality of the research and educational program.

Their lack of age and tradition showed up in many aspects, but they made up for it in enthousiasm. Two UniMY researchers presented their work: it was evident that they had been attracted from neighbouring fields, computational chemistry and biology. If they are representative of the staff, it might be some time before they have put together a more or less standard curriculum. Then again, there are currently only 200 students and 30 staff; a luxurious ratio, enabling a very personal supervision. The reason why we were so warmly welcomed was also because this is the first ever visit of this kind, they were sort of surprised that we had found them in the first place. I asked the OC later how the contact was made. They have started top-down, by first getting in touch with the Malaysian version of the national IT branch organisation; they were then connected through to Dr. Dan, the most effusively friendly of our hosts. She had in fact also helped further by bringing the OC in touch with F-secure, the company we're scheduled to visit tomorrow.

Representative of the Student Representation Council (in uniform)

After the presentations, I had to redirect a gift from our host to be presented to Joyce instead: the message that the students were really in charge hadn't sunk in completely. A sequence of interviews was then held with organisers, a supervisor (yours truly) and a participant, for publicitary purposes. I wonder how well we have been able to get across the alien principle of a study tour. While this was going on, the rest of the group received a tour around the building, which I had to miss; followed by "refreshments" of the same kind as at USTD, which is to say, consisting of food enough to cover dinner and coffee sweet enough to satisfy a year's dietary requirements. I almost missed that part, as after the interview I decided to try and decrease the queue of unanswered emails in my inbox and was subsequently accidentally left behind. I was discovered just in time to try some of the green pancakes (which turned out to be harmless enough) and sate (delicious). I also chatted with the staff, found out they are very open to the idea of student exchange, and also that most of those whom I had taken to be students were actually staff members. The large majority was female, and we had already learned that the same holds for the student population; a fact that is strange to our male-dominated student landscape - at least in the technical studies, including computer science. They are actually as unhappy with this lack of gender diversity as we are. It is a phenomenon that is known also in the southern European countries. I have read that there is a correlation with the lack of perceived status and ensuing lack of macho or nerd culture.

Green pancakes (pandan)

Another striking thing was the abundance of head coverings and scarves. This is of course more easily explained: ethnically Malaysian students are favoured, and they are muslim by law. (That last bit is not what the embassy had told us, who maintained that there is a minority of non-muslim Malay; it is a trivium, if that is the right word, I learned from the mouth of one of them a few days later.) But it must be said that the impression you get here about this ubiquitous dress code is quite different from what it appears like in the Netherlands: the girls are very lively and open, dress fashionably with pretty and decorated scarves, have no compunction about shaking hands. Observing this it is clear that, by choice, by culture (it is probably just as superficial to equate middle-east and far east islam as it is to equate northern Europe and southern American christianity) or by being forced into that particular box, the average Dutch muslim is quite a bit more severe than the average Malaysian one.

Tg's Nasi Kandar at a panic-free time

There was a collective dinner planned. To my surprise and slight chagrin, out of the hundreds of restaurants in KL we landed at Tg's Nasi Kandar, the exact same place I had found myself yesterday. Eating there with 28 healthily hungry Dutch, however, turned out to be a different type of deal than for a solitary one, and engendered total chaos. It would have been funny to watch had we not been really hungry. One lady who seemed to be in charge came to take our orders table by table, but when it came to delivering them the myriads of waiters seemed to have no clue how to match up the dishes with those who had ordered them. Dishes were brought to one table, taken to another on the command of the boss lady, and then returned to the open kitchen, from where we could hear a lot of shouting and see running around. This was aggravated more than a little by the fact that there was no alcohol to be had and so everyone ordered fresh fruit juice (mango, watermelon, banana, orange, or various mixes of those and others) by the pint; delicious though this turned out to be, making one of them was almost as time-consuming as cooking the food, and the confusion was even larger. Long after everyone had eaten, some had not yet received their drinks, whereas others were on their second or third round. Waiters arrived with one drink or another, stood for a while, and disappeared again when no-one spoke out to say that he wanted what they had to offer.

Drinks promo

The food was as good as yesterday. I had myself a portion of lamb-and-cheese murtabak, on the suggestion of Chris back in Singapore: a kind of thick pancake stuffed with meat paste, one of the typical regional dishes. The mango-and-banana juice went down well with that. I don't think I had banana juice before, I would have said that bananas can't be juiced. It's kind of frothy and, as one would expect, quite filling. When I ordered a second glass they had run out of bananas, unfortunately. I have read that there is a world-wide shortage of bananas as they seem to have fallen victim to disease, though in the Dutch supermarkets there is still a steady supply.

After dinner  (which set us back a whopping 750 RM for the entire group, almost 7€ per person, drinks included) the students got ready for another night on the town, but I felt more like some solitary hours after this busy day, so I went and had a couple of Tigers on my own, with my head behind a laptop screen again. It was a short walk back to the hotel for some well-earned rest.