Dear MCG Members, In May, the Malaysian Culture Group held its 23rd AGM. This was a great event held at the Islamic Arts Centre with over 50 members in attendance. At the meeting the Board of Management for MCG 2005/2006 was elected. Prema Kanagalingam is now the Vice-President and myself, the President. Cindy Zeier has stepped down as President and taken on a no less important and time consuming role as Events Planning Convener. Noma Nainar has stepped down as Vice President but will continue in her role as Web Master. The remaining board members are retaining their positions. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all board members for their hard work and commitment to the MCG in the past 12 months, for without their efforts we would not be able to enjoy the wonderful fruits of their labors. In particular, I would like to thank Cindy, our former President, not only for her dedication to the MCG but her incredible enthusiasm, organization, creativity and sense of fun. On behalf of all the MCG members, thank you, Cindy. June is the last month we hold events until we close for the July and August summer holiday. I suggest you all make the most of MCG in June as it is long time till we recommence in September. (I should add that the Events Planning Team already has some great activities planned for the months ahead.) In June, we have three wonderful events. Starting with our ever-popular monthly lecture series, we have a talk on Healing with Acupressure and Acupuncture. Come and learn about the ancient sciences and the benefits you can derive from both these disciplines. Continuing our travel series, we have a fascinating talk on Cape Malays in South Africa. Did you know that many Malays emigrated to South Africa - come and learn about this amazing community. Finally, we have a very special event simply titled "Eight" which is an exhibition of Malaysia's top photographers. "Eight' is a very auspicious number in various cultures.. At our exclusive showing two of the photographers will be present to talk with us about the exhibition. And if that doesn't whet your appetite, there is always our wonderful book clubs and explorers club to join. Please contact a Board member, or myself, about joining these groups or becoming involved in any of the behind-the-scenes activities of MCG. It is a lot of fun and rewarding too. I hope to see you all at our June events.
- Sunita Varlamos PROGRAMME OF EVENTS
MCG ANNOUNCEMENTS
NEWSLETTER SUBMISSIONS
If you have any interesting stories, travelogues or photographs you'd like to submit, we would love to have them. You can submit articles, artwork and photographs to the editor at mcgevents@yahoo.com with 'newsletter' in the subject line. Please send text as MS Word documents. Artwork/photos should be at 300dpi resolution. Please submit all articles for the August newsletter by July 11. There will be no newsletter for the month of July. Stories are edited for reasons of clarity, space or accuracy of expression. The opinions expressed in the MCG newsletter are those of the writers concerned and not necessarily those of the MCG.
WANT TO JOIN A BOOK CLUB?
The two MCG Book Clubs meet monthly to discuss books chosen by each group. Group I meets on the last Wednesday of every month and Group II meets on the last Friday of every month. The membership of each group is limited to a maximum of 15 members. At present neither group has a full quota, so if anyone is interested in joining, please contact the Book Group Convener, Joanne Mahendran by email on: Joanne_Mahendran@iskl.edu.my or joannm@streamyx.com for more details. The Groups read both fiction and non-fiction books, with a focus on the South-East Asia region. It's a great way to meet new people in an informal environment and you'll get to read some great books too.
REPORTS FROM PREVIOUS EVENTS
TRAVEL TIPS & EXPERIENCES JAKARTA / BANDUNG /YOGYAKARTA
- 10th March
Twenty ladies and a gentleman gathered at Ardy's house on a sultry morning in March to learn more about Java's tourist attractions and vibrant contemporary art scene. We enjoyed Ardy's hospitality and the culturally appropriate "makan" she provided. Ardy Timmer, of Dutch nationality, lived in Indonesia for five years, and was the co-founder and leader of the art group of the Indonesian Heritage Society. Her enthusiasm for Indonesia's people and culture, particularly artists of the second half of the twentieth century, was demonstrated by the enormous effort she put into preparing her talk and sharing her expertise. Ardy lead us on an interesting journey to the tourist highlights of Jakarta, Bandung and Yogyakarta, covering much cultural, tourist, and geographical information along the way. In a short review it is impossible to do justice to her efforts, however I will attempt some highlights. Jakarta
Other attractions include the old administrative centre of Batavia at Fatahillah Square. Here the old town hall (now a museum) and the Wayang Museum are worth a quick look. No outing is complete without makan - the Café Batavia sounds interesting and reasonably priced. China Town provides the usual "designer treats", an award-winning restoration of an 18th century mansion romance, and Medan Merdeka is home to the Museum Nasional, where a fine collection of Chinese ceramics, bronzes, textiles and ethnographic items would intrigue the enthusiast. Ardy also recommended visits to the Istanas, local churches, temples and botanical gardens. Bandung
It remains an interesting town for urban planners and architecture buffs to explore as an example of the Dutch planning the first modern city of the east, including 'garden city' elements. Buildings were designed for the tropical climate by adapting traditional designs to meet modern needs (eg the Grand Hotel Preanger), or by adapting western designs to the climate (eg the Savoy Homann). The Malabar Tea Estate and the Mt Tangkuban Perhau volcanic crater are worth visiting in the vicinity of Bandung. Yogyakarta
Further temples are located on the Dieng plateau, within the caldera of a volcano. The setting is impressive, although only eight of the original 400 structures remain. There are sulphur springs and swirling mists that contribute to the overall supernatural feeling. Hindu temples are located on the Prambanan Plain, east of Yogyakarta. Within Yogyakarta itself, the Kraton (palace) is a 'must see' with its traditional Javanese court architecture, serving as both royal residence and centre of the kingdom. The Kraton was the focus of the five traditional Javanese arts: the Wayang (as puppets, dolls, or actors), court dance ('beksa'), the gamelan orchestra, the keris (no Javanese could consider his life happy without one), and batik. Modern Art in West Java
Ardy shared an enormous amount of information about the art scene that deserves a write-up of its own, or perhaps a book! As Ardy pointed out, it is not necessarily appropriate or helpful to compare Indonesian artists to European ones, though it was clear that social and political struggles have informed their work, often in a similar way. The cultural and political environments of Bandung and Yogyakarta have fostered different approaches to local work with Bandung art tending to be more abstract and symbolic while art from Yogyakarta is often bolder, darker and more about social realism. Although some of the pieces she showed us were both confronting and challenging, we were all impressed by the range and skill portrayed.
WOVEN DREAMS - TEXTILES OF LAOS AND THAILAND
- March 22
Percy Vatsaloo is a Thai with a remarkable knowledge about the Laos textiles. Living close to the Laos border for many years, he developed an interest which became a way of living. The clothes of the people on the other side of the Mekong River where to him of such an interesting material that he started to read about it. Slowly his interest became knowledge and he started to collect the material. This was not an easy task. He asked his friends to bring him the materials when they crossed the river, sometimes wearing six layers of skirts over each other. A couple of times he dared to take the risk of entering the country of Laos illegally by going in to the villages and talking to the people to know more about the fabrics, how they created them and where the patterns came from. When the French came in, they made the borders, but in the patterns you can still find the old traditional borders. When a woman gets married she will start to weave the pattern of the husband but, you can see that after years the patterns start to mix. There are different patterns for different occasions. Daily wear, wedding, festivals and ceremonial occasions. The best time for weaving is from the end of December until the beginning of March when the work at the fields is not very demanding. The weaving is done in a simple style and all the patterns have a meaning. The skirt is made of three parts, which is practical for changing the material after longtime use. Not only the clothes have patterns, the home textiles are also decorated with special designs. To create a little privacy in the one-room house, the mosquito-nets are made from indigo blue material which is not only hardly to see through, but also gives some warmth during the night in the hilly sides of the country. Most of the silk material is made from bombyx mori species. The quality of the outside is less than that from the inner side of the cocoon and more mixed with other materials than the silk only. The more you come to the heart of the cocoon, the finer the quality of the silk is. For the dying process a different type of colouring is used. Traditionally the natural colours are found in plants, insects and fruits most of the time are made from family recipes. Percy Vatsaloo has been a collector of Laos textiles for 18 years and might be considered an expert on this matter. He can tell you if a piece is original by smelling and seeing the material. He looks at the structure and way of weaving technique, the neatness of the material and the finishing touches. The patterns can also tell a lot about the age. In the older materials the patterns are smaller than the newer ones. Percy Vatsaloo lives and works from Singapore. A few times a year he goes back to Thailand where he and his associates are running a business in the manufacturing of beautiful scarves made from first class silk and special weaving techniques.
EXPLORERS April 2005: SMART Tunnel
Have you driven along the Ampang Elevated Highway recently and wondered why that great big hole is being excavated behind Gleneagles Hospital? Or have you wondered why there are so many roadworks on Jalan Tun Razak, south of the Bukit Bintang turnoff? Both of these construction sites are part of Kuala Lumpur's biggest ongoing infrastructure project, the SMART tunnel project, and on April 11, the Explorers set out to find out more. SMART stands for Stormwater Management and Road Tunnel and it is a 2 billion ringgit project aimed at preventing Kuala Lumpur's flash floods and also alleviating those chronic traffic jams on Jalan Tun Razak, from Bukit Bintang down to the old Sungei Besi airfield. The whole tunnel length is around 10 kilometres, which in itself is not that amazing. Plenty of longer tunnels have been built under other cities. However, what is amazing, and what is a world first, is the dual use of the tunnel. As well as diverting storm water away from the city centre, a short (three kilometre) section of the tunnel will also be used for traffic, so there will be a double decker road and below it a storm drain. And that's not all. The innovative -and potentially rather scary part - is that when there is a very large downpour, the tunnel operators will be able to close off the road, open the sluice gates and let the entire tunnel (which is the height of a 4-storey building) be used as a massive stormwater tunnel. Lorien Holland led the Explorers down to the SMART site office in Cheras to talk to the project's director of communications, Wan Azhar Wan Yeop. Wan was a very enthusiastic and well-briefed proponent of the whole scheme. He had a large scale model of Kuala Lumpur in his office, which showed the path of the entire tunnel and how the road system would fit into the whole scheme. For those of you who are interested, there will be a large extension of Jalan Sultan Ismail from Times Square and the Park Royal Hotel down to Jalan Tun Razak. That should help traffic congestion in central Kuala Lumpur too, by about 2007, when the project is finished. But back to 2005, and Mr Wan Azhar in his office in a shop lot in Taman Miharja. I had apocalyptic visions of cars getting swept down the road tunnel when the sluice gates opened in a heavy storm. But Wan Azhar assured us this would not happen. Instead there would be a 40 minute period to clear the entire tunnel. And after the storm waters had passed, the tunnel would be closed for up to 48 hours to ensure all was clean and dry again for the road. Also, that kind of massive storm only occurs once every year or two, so there wouldn't be frequent closures of the tunnel either. For most of the time, water will only flow along the bottom portion of the tunnel, under the double-decker road. The water comes from the Sungei Klang and the Sungei Ampang rivers, which meet under the Ampang Elevated Highway, near to the very large hole which is currently being excavated behind Gleneagles Hospital. That hole will become a holding basin to take excess water from the rivers, and the water will be diverted down, through the tunnel and emerge 10 kilometres to the south at a storage reservoir near the Sungei Besi airfield. From there, it will go join back into Kuala Lumpur's river systems, south of the city centre, and eventually flow out to sea around Port Klang. Wan Azhar was particularly enthusiastic about the two enormous German drilling machines which are currently boring out the tunnels. Both started near to the Jalan Davies/Kampong Pandan roundabout in 2003 and each is slowly burrowing through the earth in opposite directions. Progress is slow, at a maximum of 18 metres a day, and temperatures can reach a sweltering 50 degrees celcius. But there is no down-time, as the machines are in continuous operation and workers are divided into three eight-hour shifts every 24 hours. Because the tunnel cladding is put in place as the drilling machines move forward, the machines cannot move backwards, meaning there is no room for error. The drilling machine going north to Ampang is under the operation of more experienced foreign contractors, as its path is more wiggly and the rock structure potentially more problematic. But the drilling machine going south to Sungei Besi is operated by Malaysian engineers, who have benefited from technology and skills transfer. They are currently in the lead, and have excavated further. If you're wondering why the tunnel is wiggly and not straight, the answer is government land - the tunnel can only go where there is government land, so it follows the path of roads on the surface, or cuts under other land owned by the government. You may also have read complaints in the papers about structural damage to some apartment blocks near the Jalan Davies/Kampong Pandan roundabout. Wan Azhar said the damage was partly caused by blasting in the area (some ventilation shafts need to go in at the roundabout) but was also partly due to poor workmanship on the apartment buildings. SMART has agreed to pay some of the reparation costs, but Wan Azhar conceded there would be more such disputes from other buildings near to the tunnel as work progressed. Obviously, SMART is hoping there will be no major disasters along the way, as it needs to finish the tunnel to start recouping most of its costs. It will do that by charging a toll to use the road tunnel between the Jalan Davies/Kampong Pandan roundabout and the Sungei Besi When the construction is finished at the end of 2006, a new visitor centre will be open at the Jalan Davies/Kampong Pandan roundabout, so we made a date to come back and see Wan Azhar in two years' time. If you want to find out more before then, visit the website at www.smarttunnel.com.my.
GAYE PHILLIPS, UNICEF: Life After the Tsunami
- 4th May 2005
Gaye Phillips, the Representative for UNICEF in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, was very kind to give us basic information on the work of UNICEF in general and especially on the UNICEF work done after the devastations of the tsunami on Boxing Day in 2004. UNICEF is the United Nations Children's Fund and is a UN organisation especially created for the needs of children worldwide. It is represented in 157 countries and has a working force of more than 7000 people. UNICEF is not working on its own but relies strongly on local partners and governments to implement its programs and establish guidelines to create an environment where the rights of children are realised. The organisation was created to focus on children and guarantee their well-being, good health and education, so that they do not have to suffer from poverty, violence, disease or discrimination. UNICEF works with a range of partners, at local community level, district and state level as well as nationally with government and civil society to achieve the goals of human progress. The tsunami struck the Indian Ocean countries with devastating consequences on 26th December 2004 killing more than 300,000 people, injuring approximately 500,000 and leaving 100,000 missing. Among the victims, the children were the most cruelly affected. They could understand the least what had happened to their world. Within 48 hours after the seaquake off the Sumatra Coast, UNICEF as an organisation had the know how, the local connections and the money to set out immediately to work to get the children back to some kind of normalcy and restore order in a world that had lost all order. The work of UNICEF post tsunami focused on health and nutrition, child protection, education, hygiene and water supply in general. When schools were destroyed, water sources polluted, and children bereaved of their parents and guardians children were prone to attract criminal forces who would take advantage of their plight. UNICEF could step in and help protect the most vulnerable in a situation where the normal life had collapsed within a few minutes. The consequences of this disaster could have been an increase of child trafficking, an increase of forced adoptions, an increase of child abuse and displacement of people without rights to be relocated. People with little education and little knowledge of their rights of land ownership might easily be cheated out of the few possessions they have. And children without parents and traumatized children might be forgotten or neglected in this world of turmoil. UNICEF could make a difference for these children by applying their measures tested in many years of emergency help worldwide. They could get children back to school, see to their health, help prevent the spread of diseases and ensure measures were in place to protect children from exploitation. Gaye Phillips stressed that it was vital to get children back to school, so as to help them return to a normal routine as well as to more easily assess their physical and emotional needs in the aftermath of the tsunami. 90% of the children affected returned to school within a month. Emergency clean water supplies and shelter for the children was equally quickly installed. The outpouring of generosity worldwide has resulted in UNICEF receiving approximately 700,000,000 US Dollars for its tsunami emergency and long term recovery work. Accounting for the expenditure of these donations in a transparent manner is critical. The world's attention is particularly focused on the UN to ensure that it operates efficiently and effectively and uses the funds in the way they were intended. To this end, UNICEF's internal and external controls and audit procedures have been strengthened by the work of independent auditors Price Waterhouse Coopers who offered their services to the UN free of charge to monitor expenditure of tsunami funds. The Special Representative to the Secretary General for the tsunami, President Bill Clinton and his team are also tasked with ensuring transparency and accountability of the tsunami funds entrusted to UN agencies. Miss Phillips said that it is inevitable in a disaster the magnitude of the tsunami that mistakes will be made. Coordination is not perfect and there will be lessons to learn from this disaster in terms of better emergency preparedness. UNICEF, however, has had nearly 60 years experience in working in emergency situations and while it can always do better, it has demonstrated its ability to respond quickly and effectively to ensure that the rights and needs of children and their families are met. UNICEF's work always involves local people. To work with local communities, to restore the local infrastructure and to give people back an opportunity to make a living within their environment, restores confidence and empowers communities to pick up the pieces and get on with their normal lives. Apart from physical recovery and restoration of basic infrastructure like water and sanitation, schools and housing, UNICEF also assists those children and families who need emotional and psychological support to recover from the trauma of the tsunami. Many children and adults will recover well by drawing on their own reservoir of strength. But there are those who need extra support and time to recover from the psychological and emotional damage the tsunami brought with it. These children and adults can be helped with professional counselling and support services and the awareness that there is not only bodily health but also mental health to look after. Many teachers and medical workers were killed in the tsunami. UNICEF is working to identify and train local teachers and health care workers to cope not only with the physical needs of children, but also their emotional and psychological needs. Gaye Phillips also told her audience that while UNICEF works in many emergencies, and spends more than 40% of its annual global budget on emergency recovery and post conflict situations, it also works to better children's lives in every day life as well. Dealing with the spread of HIV infection, trafficking of children for sex, forced adoption, child abuse, lack of education, malnutrition and the burden of poverty are some of the many issues troubling mankind worldwide and children especially and for this reason it is likely that UNICEF's work will be needed for many years to come.
MCG NEWS BOOK CLUB REPORTSThe Girl Who Played Go by Shan Sa Originally written in French, The Girl Who Played Go is a war story in which the game of Go is a metaphor for the real-life battle taking place between China and Japan in Manchuria in the 1930s. The two protagonists, a teenage Chinese girl and an older Japanese soldier meet in the Square of a Thousand Winds to play Go. Shan Sa chooses to echo the moves of the game using short almost clipped chapters that alternate between the voices of the two protagonists. Fluent in Chinese, the soldier is told by his superiors to spy on the Chinese; to do so he assumes Chinese dress and goes to the town square to play Go, hoping in this way to infiltrate enemy territory. Here he meets his opponent, the teenage girl. The protagonists rarely speak, silently communicating through their game strategies. The focus of the book is, to a large extent, the inner dialogue of each main character - the contrary emotions of adolescence for the girl, and the equally contradictory emotions of combat for the soldier. She is torn between youth and her growing maturity; he is torn between his private life and his public duty. Shan Sa's use of language is compelling ("molten snow", "silence as heavy as a plate of cold, unsalted noodles"). We were fortunate to have a guest in our group who had read the original French version as well as several chapters of the English book. She was able to tell us that the language of the original was accurately reflected in translation. The Girl Who Played Go is a quick read, though some found the back-and-forth style disconcerting, and the brevity of the chapters an "impediment to a sense of involvement" in the story as one reviewer put it. Most, though not all, members of the group enjoyed the read, while at the same time feeling that it was overly "lightweight" and could have been more "meaty". It is an intriguing story with great potential, but lacks the depth to draw the reader deep into either the internal or external conflicts. Nevertheless, the consensus of Book Group I was that we were glad we had read it.
In April, Book Group II met at Sunita Varlamos' home to discuss The Girl From the Coast, by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. This book is set in a coastal area of North Eastern Java at the turn of the twentieth century. The Dutch Colonial government had allied with the feudal Javanese aristocrats to strengthen their regime. The book describes life in an era where the impoverished interact with the privileged, and women were little more than chattel.The author relates the story of a beautiful, unnamed young woman who is forced to leave her fishing village to wed a nobleman, the Bendoro. It is a proxy wedding, with a Kris (sword) representing the Bendoro; he has no interest in attending the ceremony. Although the Girl from The Coast (who never acquires a name throughout the book), fulfils her role and serves her husband well, she eventually learns that she is merely a "practice wife". The Bendoro not only divorces her, but takes away her 3 month old daughter, and banishes her from his home. She cannot face returning to her village filled with such shame, and forces herself to move to another area where she finds a way to exist on her own. In the Epilogue, it is revealed that the Girl from The Coast is actually Pramoedya's grandmother; thus making the story especially poignant. The novel's strong socio political commentary is evident throughout the story, explaining why the Indonesian government has banned the book. Pramoedya Ananta Toer is a major figure in Indonesian and world literature, highlighting the brutality of the Indonesian century, colonial exploitation, revolution and the purges and exile of intellectuals. He is the author of more than 30 books, many written while imprisoned on the Buru Island Penal Colony for 15 years, under the Soeharto government. He is often mentioned as a top contender for the Nobel Prize. The importance of appropriate (cultural) translation was an issue our group discussed. Many members felt this 'literal' translation did not do justice to this cultural tale, and thought it probably did not accurately represent the author's original work. One group member did have a different translation, published in 1997, and it was interesting to note the differences even in the opening paragraphs. Other members commented that if the information contained in the epilogue (this is the true story of Pramoedya's grandmother), was presented in an introduction, the book would have enabled the readers to gain more insight and understanding of the story. Overall, half of the group enjoyed the book.
LIBRARY REPORT A reminder that The Board would like to resolve the long-standing issue of library deposits. Few people claim their deposit on leaving the MCG or advise us that they would like to donate it instead. The treasurer is left with ongoing uncertainty about what to do with the deposits from people who have left the MCG, or even Malaysia, without taking either step. We therefore propose that, in future, library members donate rather than deposit RM50, and that existing
members have 60 days from the date of the AGM (i.e. until 4 July), in which to claim their earlier
deposit.
BOOKING POLICY FOR EVENTS Reservations Wait List Payments Cancellations Refunds Eligibility Event Participation
Eligibility Your co-operation with the Booking Policy would be much appreciated by the Events Planning Team.
PLEASE NOTE that the information in this website has been gathered informally within the group and reproduced privately for members' enjoyment only. There may be inaccuracies and these publications are not designed for commercial use. Anyone intending to make formal or outside use of MCG material is requested to contact the President
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