A Trip To Italy

A Trip to Italy. Really? After a slew of slow travel tales with silly titles like "Melbourne Memory", "A Picture of Paris" and "Hong Kong Hangover", I can understand it if you're holding out for even more thoughtless titles like "The Italian Job", "Romancing Rome" or  "You're Too Brutal, Brutus". But no, not this time. You're already dazed and damaged after paying tax on your tax, it's unfair to tax you further with a slick travel title. So A Trip To Italy it is, and it's about a trip to Italy.

About Italy (And Italians)

Italy isn't easy.
 
Dante and da Vinci on the one hand, Berlusconi and Balotelli on the other. Cradle of civilization and core of corruption and all things in between. Its politics and finances are such a dithering mess that the only way out is to invade Bavaria.

But what you can never fault is its offbeat dynamism. Italy is never boring. It changes and renews itself. Italians are exceptionally curious, creative and adventurous people. Not to mention talented and good-looking. Hollywood's sad portrayal and stereotyping of Italians is both unfair and unfortunate.

They're by nature easy-going, and some might have drifted into organized crimes and frauds, but they're really few and far between. There are many more famous Italian artists, actors, scientists, explorers and footballers (it's alright if you know only Sophia Loren). In primary school, I was taught about the epic expeditions of wayward Italian seafarers like Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus. I was so fired up that I memorised all the dates. But our teacher was quick to put a damper by reminding us that they're nothing compared to our home-grown Laksamana Hang Tuah who'd travelled all the way to Indonesia.

The first time I fell for Italy was when I watched the Godfather.  I'd read the Mario Puzo mafia opus  in record time, but the movie was even better. The part where the young, dreamy Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) went on his first date with a local Sicilian girl, and the title song Speak Softly Love soared, and the whole village turned up to cheer the couple on was so cool and heart-warming. But what struck me most was the backdrop: a village clinging precariously to a hilltop. Pretty, old and sensual. How long must I wait before I could see and feel something like this?

About forty years.


Going To Italy

I finally went to Italy, on 20 March this year, with wife and my two girls Aida and Sarah. An unsuspecting sister-in-law, probably misled by all the tall-tales and fish stories in my travel blogs, joined us. She brought along her full-grown son. So altogether it's six of us.

Actually I have another eight sisters-in-law and I did invite every one of them to join our party, just to be fair. They all declined for a variety of reasons, like husband was unwell, husband couldn't fly without his bicycle, husband wanted to buy the whole Tesco before GST, and so on. Well, you don't want to know any of  this, but you'd appreciate that I'm just trying to be fair here.

We didn't use Air Asia this time only because the airline didn't fly to Italy or Sicily or any part of Europe now. We took Etihad and had to lay over at Abu Dhabi airport, which was technically part of the vast Arabian desert. As expected, Etihad was different. 30 kg baggage, non-stop meals and juices, latest movies, noise-cancelling head-phones, cold-cancelling blankets etc. And the doa before the take-off was a nice touch and a humbling reminder. 

Italy Itinerary

And we didn't go to Sicily, of course. You don't go to Sicily. You go back to Sicily.

I'm afraid at this point my brother-in-law, who's not very good with places and spaces, might get seriously confused. Is Italy Sicily? If I didn't go to Sicily, how did I go to Italy? Is Ottawa the capital of Italy? Sorry, but let me explain. Sicily is an island and is part of Italy, just like Penang is an island and part of Malaysia (Note: there's no DAP in Sicily. At least, not yet). Technically, we went to the non-Sicily part of Italy.

Our itinerary reads like this: KL to Abu Dhabi to Rome to Siena to Florence to Venice, then back to Rome then back to Abu Dhabi then finally back to KL. From 21 March through 29 March. Altogether 9 days, 8 nights. Reliable travel agencies like Reliance or Kopetro would promote this itinerary as  3 countries, 14 cities, 14 days, 8 nights.

We stuck to our London and Paris formula. We rented a car at Rome Fiumicino airport and then headed out and broke at Siena (3 nights) and Ferrara (2 nights) before swinging back to Rome (3 nights).  Siena and Ferrara were kind of base camps for further assaults on the surrounding towns. From Siena, we covered Pisa, Lucca and San Gimignano. On the way to our next base at Ferrara, we would stop off at Florence. From Ferrara, we hit Venice. Finally we drove south for about 400 km from Ferrara via Bologna to Rome for the last three nights. From Rome, we roamed  Rome.

All the cities with pretty names above are genuine and deserving Unesco world heritage sites, unlike Melaka which tricked its way into the list by claiming that the Jonker Street pineapple tarts recipe was passed down by the 16th century Portuguese Jesuit priests.

Linearis Casa Vacanze e Agriturismo Podere Sertofano, Siena (21 - 24 March, 3 nights).

This isn't an Italian expression of surprise.  It's a farmhouse. We holed up here for the first three nights in Italy. About 9 km from Siena, the house was smack in the middle of the Tuscany (Toscana) region famed for its postcard-pretty landscape and scenery. Many Hollywood movies were shot here, including The Gladiator, Under the Tuscan Sun and The American. It's alright if you haven't watched any of them. My wife swore that she'd seen a Malay TV drama with a Tuscany backdrop. I thought she's aging exponentially.

We'd to climb an off-road to get to the farmhouse. The interior had been remodelled to fit in six apartments. We took one unit with three rooms, a kitchen and a bath at 288 Euro (RM1200) for three nights. Our farmhouse had a real farm with a human farmer, not a virtual farm and a human nerd like FarmVille. It's surrounded by endless acres of olive groves and vineyards. The scenery was simply unbelievable. Farmstay or Agriturismo is now a trend  and I'd encourage you to try it before it goes out of fashion like FarmVille.

Handsome Hill Towns

From our location we ventured out to Siena, San Gimignano, Pisa and Lucca. Like I said, these sweet-sounding towns were all ancient and steeped in history with rich medieval architecture and engineering on full display. San Gimignano and its towers, in particular, was a gem and it's a pity that you've never heard of it. Time stood still here and the atmosphere conspired to render  a sense of serenity and unhurried life of 2000 years past. Streets were narrow and rough, but very safe and quiet without Malaysian drivers. Non-residents were not allowed to drive into the town centre at the top, so we'd to park at the foot and climb up. I overheard my wife and her sister breathing heavily behind me. 

A piazza or city square is a standard feature of Italian towns, big or small. The smaller the town, the bigger the piazza. Don't mix up piazza with pizza or Pisa. Piazza is a square hemmed in by buildings with brownish and  yellowish facades, and it's where most Italians converge and do what they do best: nothing. Pizza, on the other hand, is small and expensive everywhere. Pisa is Pisa.

Both Siena and Lucca were certainly impressive, with typical narrow alleys and expressive buildings and cathedrals. Their piazzas are worth a visit if you have no morbid fear of too much space. Those who've done MRI would find these places therapeutic. Siena's Piazza Il Campo especially was huge and expansive, reputedly the loveliest empty space in Italy. It's the site of the mad biannual Palio bareback horse-race you saw on the National Geographic channel and repeated on Astro 500 times in one week.

Lucca is smaller but equally old and graceful with no less than three piazzas to boot. Signages and directions (and public toilets) are definitely not Italy's strong suit. It took us almost one hour to find Piazza del Mercato, the biggest of the bloody piazzas. I really thought I was mentally failing, losing all my senses and just too old. To make matters worse, we easily stumbled upon a halal kebab shop, which was never a tourist attraction. I was very relieved when a niece later told me that she had the same problems when she visited Lucca three years ago. She added that it's a lot easier to find all the tourist attractions in Gombak, where she now lives. Thank you, Mek.

I thought that Sicilian village in the Godfather was pretty. It's pretty pedestrian compared to the glorious San Gimignano and Siena.

Galileo And The Leaning Tower

Pisa was the easiest and friendliest city to visit. From the car park, it's an easy 500 km walk to Campo dei Miracoli, where our object of desire, the Leaning Tower, stood. Aida and Sarah jumped at the sight of the tilting structure. It's freakishly beautiful with a clean all-white tone and perfect cylindrical form.

Looking at the tower, I tried to picture the great scientific mind Galileo doing the fabled experiment. He threw two two balls from the tower to debunk once and for all the scientific wisdom that heavy ball always falls faster. I'm not very good at physics, so I didn't understand all the fuss. Maybe this breakthrough is important if you play football and score lots of goals with your head, like Edin Dzeko.  In the meantime sister-in-law and son did the world's most maligned "pushing the Leaning Tower" camera trick. The picture that came out was so realistic that both of them looked heavier than the tower (actually the tower was heavier, but not by much).
     

Apart from Siena and San Gimignano, there were many other similar walled hill towns in Italy, like Volterra, Orvieto and Montepulciano. I always wondered at all the efforts and expenses required to build towns like these. According to a taxi driver in Siena, it's easier to protect and defend a hill town from invaders like Attila, Hannibal and Chelsea supporters. Now I know why Melaka was attacked and easily taken by the Portuguese (once), Dutch (once), British (twice), Japanese (once) and Javanese (now). I heard that Kelantan is now eyeing Melaka as part of its long-term political and spiritual expansion.

Villa Regina at Cona near Ferrara  (24 - 26 March, 2 Nights)

No trick here. It's a small hotel with basic breakfast. We put up here for two nights for our tour of Florence and Bologna (Bologna). The hotel was in Cona, a small town about 5 km to Ferrara and one and a half hour to Venice.

Any good travel book will tell you that Florence and Venice are a must for any serious Italy itinerary. And our itinerary was very serious.

Firenze And Bandung

Somehow, I thought Florence (Firenze) was tame by Italy's very high standards. Maybe because we're not art and culture vultures who roam the museums. But my jaw still dropped at the sight of its Cathedral, Florence landmark since the 11th century. The city's alleys were teeming with quaint shops plying high quality, non-designer leather bags and accessories. They're good value even if you convert the prices into your wretched ringgit. It's hard to keep a cool head here, as my wife and her sister found out. One shop owner claimed that Malaysian Sultan and wife bought something from his shop. Speculate, if you like. I didn't tell him that Malaysia actually has nine sultans.

Later I found out that although Florence is the hotbed of Italy's leather industry, it's not the cheapest place to buy leather goods. It's just like Bandung isn't the best place to eat mee bandung. In fact you can't find mee bandung in Bandung. Not an elegant analogy, admittedly, but you surely get my point. Buy leather bags in Rome or anywhere in Italy but not in Florence.  

Gerimis Di Venice

Venice or Venezia was every bit what I'd imagined. Maybe more. The rain didn't dampen our spirits one bit. Venice was so stunning, unique and inspiring, oozing so much aura and charm. You could never be prepared enough for something like this. Simply out of this world. An engineering and architectural marvel, it's a city built on islands with canals and bridges criss-crossing it.

This was truly a trip to reminisce, starting with the 10th floor parking at Piazzala Roma, slow boat ride along the city-splitting Canal Grande, gaping at exquisite facades and marble domes, ambling aimlessly up and down the lively Piazza San Marco, traipsing around the narrow alleyways and pathways, and tracking back to Rialto boat station for the return trip. The boat was packed and we're all crushed and drenched. I saw Sarah, the smallest person on the boat, shaking and grasping for air.

Visiting Venice isn't cheap even if you're already in Italy. In our case parking fee alone was 30 Euro and the boat ride was 84 Euro. So it's about RM 76 per head just to go there and do nothing. But it's well worth it. It'd cost you your arm if you hit the museums or got scammed by the gondolas. I don't know how much it cost George Clooney recently when he went  to Venice and married his 25th girlfriend. Must be well worth it.

At sea-level and vulnerable, Venice is an antithesis of the hill towns. Instead of idly waiting for attacks, it decided to go global by starting world's first money-for-flesh loan scheme now widely practised by all banks and Ah Longs (read the Merchant of Venice and Annual Bank Negara Report).  Marco Polo was sent to China to trade fake silk with Kublai Khan. This fakes business would've never been possible had Marco lived in the Tuscan hills instead of Venice waterfront.

We'd planned for a quick tour of Bologna on the way back to Rome as I'd wanted to see the University of Bologna, the oldest university in the western world, and buy a real college t-shirt to match the fake University of Pisa we bought at the Leaning Tower. We reached the place quite easily but just couldn't find a legal parking space. We gave up, and tapped the GPS for a quick exit to the A1 Autostrada. Rome was about 370 km away.

146, Via Cavour, Rome (26 - 27 March, 3 nights)

It's an apartment on via Cavour, a major artery in Rome city centre. It's on the fourth floor of an old block with no lift, about 700 m from Rome Termini railway station. This building was at least 100 years old and its one storey was actually two times higher than one storey of any standard and sub-standard house in Malaysia. So we'd to actually walk up eight floors. When we reached the apartment, the heavy sister-in-law almost passed out.

I'd booked this place through Tripadvisor, and now we got to meet the owner, Marco, who came to greet us  with a friend. Aida reminded us that he's the third Marco we'd met in five days. He gave us the  key and showed us around the apartment: two rooms, a kitchen, a bath, and heater. He left us a bowl of apples and a bottle of wine. We appreciated the thought, but it didn't stop us from speculating that Marco's friend was actually Marco's boyfriend. Hahaha.

Romping In Rome

It's Rome, finally. The  Eternal City. Rome, or Roma, is smaller than London or Paris. Like London and Paris and other great cities (eg Kota Bharu), it has a river. But River Tiber, when I saw it, was narrow and yellow and all in all charmless and nowhere near the flourish and splendour of Thames or Seine. 

But Rome's gorgeous monuments, sculptures, structures and other vestigial remains of its past triumph simply had no equal.  These tourist draws were not too far apart. They could be explored on foot in one day, unless you stopped at, say, Colosseum one whole day to reflect and visualise what it's like to fight a lion. We did just that (cover in one day, not fight the lion). In one day we did Colosseum, Roman Forum, Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, Piazza Navona, concluding at Piazza del Popolo. It's an easy walk for a total distance of about 3 km. We took the Metro back to our Apartment. The better option was always to walk back on a different route and enjoy different sights. My wife and sister-in-law were all shot and I didn't have the heart to suggest anything imaginative.   

March is actually off-season but the crowd was thick at these spots. We started with Colosseum which was only 400 m from our apartment. There's a very long queue snaking towards the entrance. We decided not to compete. This sublime piece of Italian architecture and grandeur had from time immemorial been the iconic face of Rome. Intense and gripping, it could stop you dead on your tracks.

We just hung about trying our best to appear as literate and educated as we possibly could against the raunchy Chinese tourists who're more interested in photobombing rather watching the crumbling Colosseum. It's easy to denounce these Chinese jet set for being what they really were i.e Chinese. But with 9000 km of Great Wall crashing in their backyard, they'd seen more than enough old structures collapse. They'd really want to see something different, and I would strongly suggest they visit Trengganu, where they could watch new structures fall down. Not just stadiums, but also mosques, airports, hospitals, politicians etc. More variety, more value.
        

The neighbouring Roman Forum was elaborate and slightly difficult to get the message if you, like me, don't have a degree in ancient Roman politics. Pantheon, Trevi Fountain and the two Piazzas were more straight-forward, and the attitude and atmosphere here was decidedly happier.  Time and again you'd to stop and marvel at the art and architecture on offer, which had been variously described as medieval, gothic, renaissance, Romanesque, baroque, bad-ass and so on. I'd never know which is which. Trevi Fountain was closed for some restoration works. I suspected they're drying it up to collect the coins. Italy, the one-time economic and technological powerhouse, has really fallen on hard times.

Pope And Poet

Spanish Steps and the adjacent Piazza di Spagna were a fun place. The crowd was young and boisterous. I'm not sure what these steps actually were, but they're filled to the brim. My wife and I were easily the oldest couple that afternoon. We joined the crowd just for the hell of it. We sat on the steps, catching our knees before we moved on. The English poet John Keats loved this place, and he lived and died here 100 years ago, when crowds were gentler and he could write romantic poems. No living poets come to die here now.

The next day it's Vatican City, home of the Pope and officially the smallest state in the world. It's quite alright if you still think Perlis is the smallest state. Next to Colosseum, Vatican is the most visited and photographed part of Rome. Again it's all thronged and packed with people from about everywhere. St Peter's Square and Basilica, like other Roman structures, were imposing and so massive that my standard camera lens couldn't fit all of it in.  The crowd was well behaved, and you know why. Angels and demons walked this place, and if that eponymous movie was to be believed, there's plenty of scandals and skullduggery going on behind the somber and saintly veneer.

Fake Market Day

Our last day was 29 March, a Sunday. Our flight had been scheduled for 9.45 evening. There's still time for one final foray, and this time to what was supposed to be the biggest street market in Italy, the Porta Portese Sunday market in the Trasvetere area, across the Tiber. The market was big, no doubt, but the goods on offer were disappointing. The problem was the same in markets everywhere now: cheap fakes and African traders.  

Actually the best place to buy genuine Italian stuff was the small family-run shops around Piazza Navona and Pantheon. The ones at Via Del Governo Vecchio were certainly worth a look. The stuff carried no designer labels, but you could feel the pure Italian care and craftmanship. Prices were surprisingly affordable even for retirees. Aida snapped up a rare-looking leather shoulder bag for her college runs for 40 Euro. You can buy a Burberry or Mulberry anywhere in the world. But stuff from Via Del Governo Vecchio can only be bought at Via Del Governo Vechhio.  

Italy in Italics

Despite its economic difficulties, Italy is swamped by migrants, mostly from Africa and South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh). They stuck out like sore thumbs and they're everywhere, from Florence, Venice right to Rome. At every tourist spot, they'd be hawking all kinds of fake stuff and selfie sticks. These artists saw the words "We are tourists. Hit us" written all over us, so we're real hot.

To be fair, these traders were quite harmless. Most speak English very well and they're quite useful if you need direction to Vatican or toilet. Some were proud Muslims like us. These people were fine with me. Just look at the positive side: it's fun listening to Banglas speaking Italian for a change.

Some of these traders prospered and they opened up restaurants around the Termini Rail Station, offering halal cuisines with faux Italian names. We discovered these vibrant food joints on the last day. Sister-in-law and son splurged all their remaining Euros on kebab, beryani and pizza here. They finished off the food before they could convert into ringgit. Quite awe-inspiring.  

Afterword

Italy is everything. Classic countryside, lovely landscapes, showpiece structures, ancient towns, rich cultural heritage, you name it. Fruits, mineral water and chocolate are abundant and shamelessly cheap. The Italian language is so smooth. Listen to the Italians (or Bangla migrants) speak the language and it's like listening to somebody reading a poem. The city names are easy on the ear: Siena, Ferrara, Verona. Compare that to Gombak.

You might notice that there's no record of our visits to museums. It's only because we didn't visit any museum. We're never trained to go to museums. The last time we visited Museum Negara was about fifteen years ago when there's an exhibition of Malay ghosts. My two girls kept asking me throughout "Which one's the ghost?". It's a very well-organized hoax. I could only hope that our Prime Minister wasn't in any way involved. We weren't exactly traumatized and it didn't cost us all that much, but the hangover lasted  for a while. 

But, really, for the truly cultured and refined, Italy is a visual and emotional feast. Museums and art galleries are everywhere, and they're all bona fide and fraud-free. One travel book recommends three days in Florence, with two days just for the museums. Do you think those Chinese tourists we met visit the museums? I think they're off to the factory outlets.

For us, Italy is still an incredible experience even without the museums. If you take away the river, Rome is practically a museum. Tuscany is a live and living painting, and all the reason you ever need to visit Italy.
 

Arrivederci

Our flight was on time. From Rome to Abu Dhabi, it's Alitalia, which was actually 49% Etihad. It's a 5-hour stop-over at the desert airport before a connecting flight to KL on Etihad, which was 100% Etihad. We had a delicious lamb beryani on board.

We landed at KLIA at about 10 pm, 30 March. My two boys were waiting at the airport to whisk us back home. I can still recall the first time travelling overseas with them (to UK) 22 years ago, when they're still in primary school. Lots of fun. 

The next morning I went out with wife for our weekly away-ground breakfast. As we sat down to enjoy our favourite roti canai, those famous words came to haunt us "a man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it". Hahaha.    

Questi giorni quando vieni il belle sole
La la la la la la la la la la la la  

The View Can Be A Lot Better Without The Old Couple

No Cars. No People.Just Like Subang Jaya.

We Thought Only Trengganu Had Falling Buildings Like This

Julius And Brutus Had Lunch On This Rock When They're BFF

Their 50th Ice Cream In 7 Days

Don't worry, I Didn't Go In

Mother And Son Hunting For Halal Kebabs

We Came, We Saw, We Straightened The Tower

Ah, The Lights Of My Life

  

Definitely Not AirAsia

Breaking For Buffalo (Part 2)

It's only a short stroll from the airport building to the main road, where we (me and wife) came upon rows of small but pretty motels and inns with brightly-lit vacancy and price signs. They all looked tantalizingly cheap before we realized that they're in US dollars. After conversion (2.5 at the time), the price shot up to RM75, which was still reasonable considering that we'd nowhere to go. We just picked out the nearest one. As we strode up, the bored-looking black guy with Jimi Hendrix hairdo at the reception almost jumped out of his seat and, in no time, he's all over us, jinking and gesturing and trying his best to please us. He talked so fast that all I could figure out was our room number.

The First Week
Despite flying half the world, we're neither jet lagged or fagged out. We woke up the next morning fresh and fit. The Hendrix hunk checked us out, but he's surprisingly sober and subdued. Hard to tell whether he's sleepy or stoned, or both. We're now ready to invade Buffalo.

Did we say we'd nowhere to go? We fibbed. Actually we knew somebody in Buffalo. My wife's cousin was married to an Indonesian university lecturer who had a friend living in Buffalo, of all places. We had his home address and phone. For some strange reason, I still remember his address to this day: 185, Commonwealth Avenue, Buffalo 14214. His name was Harun Arrasjid. His wife, Doreen, was kind enough to prepare what looked like Malaysian/Indonesian fusion for our dinners throughout our short stay. They had only two kids,  teenage boys John and Eddie. Both were half a foot taller than me.

After a week with Pak Harun's family, we moved into a house at No 4, Rounds Ave, off Bailey Ave, a walking distance from the university campus. Doreen had negotiated the rental and assured the landlady that we're genuinely nice people and we're not Mexican migrants and we left our shoes outside and so on. That shoeless scam clinched the deal.

Back To School
The official name of the university was (and still is) the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo. But nobody in Buffalo knew where  the university with that windy name was, because locally the university was known by its sexy moniker UB. With a student population of about 30,000, UB was the biggest public university in New York, but it's still considered small because Penn State had 100,000 students and University of Phoenix had 5 million. Among US college graduates in Malaysia, the university is known as SUNY Buffalo, where SUNY rhymes with Sunni.

My first day at the school passed without any rude shocks. My very first class was Economics (MGE 650). There were about 20 of us, mostly American whites, with a sprinkling of Asians (Indians, Koreans, me) and only one black. The class was taught by an Indian lady and a Columbia Ph.D named Ramaswami. My next class was Marketing (MGM 625). The teacher was ...an Indian. His name was Mittal. I remember him quite well because he called me Omar. Only two classes on my first day, and I was looking forward to the next day, partly to find out whether there's any non-Indian teacher in this school. It's Statistics class (MGQ 606) the next morning and I was dead certain that it's going to be another Indian. It's Professor John Boot, a Dutch.
 
I used to hate Chemistry with all my life but here's different. The teachers were passionate and knew their stuff inside out. They wrote textbooks. Some of them came to class dressed down and undone and you could mistake them for flood victims. Boot was the best of the lot. He used pornography to spice up his statistics class. Nobody missed his class.

I very rarely spoke in class, any class. On the odd occasion the professors had to seek my esteemed opinion, the whole class could be seen squirming to unscramble my thoughts and navigate my choppy English. My best friend was the lone black guy, who's exactly one foot taller. We hit it off at first sight. I wasn't sure why but my theory was that, in the absence of other blacks, he saw me as the closest thing. Of course there were Indians, but Indians were, well, Indians. He, like me, rarely spoke in class or anywhere.

Things took a comical turn in the third semester. We'd to write a paper at the end of a group marketing research project. The leader was so impressed with the part I wrote for the project that he secretly asked me to edit other members' write-ups on other parts. I declined. I simply had no stomach for a showdown with the guys once they found out that their masterpieces had been corrected by a Kelantanese. Hahaha    

He didn't ask me to present the paper.   

Melayu Met Melayu
I was into the second week, and I'd yet to speak to another Melayu other than my wife.  I jumped with joy when I finally found a name at the students association office: Razali Mohd Taib. He's listed as president of the Malaysian Students Association, with a contact number. I called the number but apparently it's out of service. I later learned that Malaysian students changed their numbers (and names) every semester as they moved around a lot. And got away with unpaid bills.

After three days of staking out, we finally bumped into a small-size girl in unmistakable tudung walking alone on Bailey Ave. She smiled, and it's the sweetest thing I'd seen in weeks. We knew we'd found what we're looking for. Her name was Mazni. We're so happy that we took her home and asked her "mana budak Melayu lain?" ten times. Word about a good-looking Malay family floated fast and the next few days we got to meet more Melayu: Fizal, Bakar, Anuar, Huda, Asiah (Hat), Haz, Jasmin, Kurshiah, Romi, Shimah, Sabariah, Pah and, of course, Razali Mohd Taib, now ex-president.


The following week, out of the blue, another three girls joined us : Yati, Marzita and Nazita. They all looked drained and confused. I forgot to ask these freshers why they came so late and why Buffalo, of all places.

I thought Huda had the natural pr personality and flair to sustain a healthy connection not only among us, but also with other Malay communities outside Buffalo, right up to far-flung Louisiana. Everybody in US called her Hud, except Fizal, who called her Huk.   

The Melayu population swelled further as more migrated to UB the following semesters: Azam, Azman, Rahuni, Md Nor, Sufian, Sufian, Asmadi, Norazman, Tahir, Megat, Ruzila, Puteri, Asiah, Faridah and a few others (can't recall their fancy names). All of them were from the surrounding community colleges, except Tahir, who didn't come from Poughkeepsie or Spring Valley. He came from Singapore.

Beautiful Buffalo (I'm Serious About This)
To be sure, Buffalo isn't Bologna, even if you don't know where Bologna is. But it's pretty enough in a rather unshowy and understated way, with its own character and charisma, whatever this catch-all means. The city centre, or downtown, is located on the shores of Lake Erie, bordering Canada, which is a different country (in case you're not aware). It's a real pity that the city and its sweeping skyline can only be fairly admired from the lake, at night, in a boat. Problem is, nobody wants to be in a boat on a lake at night.

The main tourist draw is the nearby Niagara Falls, one of the world's greatest natural wonders. I'd learned about Air Terjun Niagara in standard six Ilmu Alam but I'd never imagined seeing it in the flesh. Anyway Buffalo is globally known for its very own natural wonder: snow. The first time I saw snow in Buffalo, I felt my stomach drop.

Our house was actually not far from downtown, but the journey by bus could easily take an hour as the bus would stop at every corner to pick up or drop off old ladies. These lazy ladies would more often than not make small talk with the equally old driver before getting off. They're so slow and hard on hearing that your dark, sadistic side might find it tempting enough to push the ladies (and the driver) off the bus. For this reason, I'd rather go to New York City (700 km) than downtown Buffalo (10 km).

Baby, Born in The USA

It's life's little milestone as we welcomed our first baby in Spring 1983, in Buffalo, of all places. What an experience. For months the whole Malay community in Buffalo was buzzing with anticipation. For months everybody in the state of New York was eager and anxious. And why not, my wife and her baby bump had been sighted in all corners of the state: Downtown Buffalo, UB Campus, Niagara Falls, Manhattan, the Bronx, Binghampton, Syracuse, Rochester, Tonawanda, you name it.

To prepare for the baby, I bought a car. It's a 5 year-old manual-shift Mitsubishi Colt. For  $2200, I didn't expect it to move like a red Corvette, but it's good enough for grocery runs and campus commute.

It's late evening of 11 April 1983 when I'd to rush my wife to Buffalo Sisters of Charity Hospital. I dragged along one of the girls (Yati) just in case. The doctor was an Egyptian named Fuad Darwish. With a name like that, he should be a poet. The nerve-numbing wait was soon over, and my heart leapt when I heard my baby scream.

We're back home after three days at the hospital. "Home" now was no longer the "shoeless" house at Rounds Ave. We'd actually moved to another house, on a narrow cul-de-sac off Bailey Ave, sharing with Huda, Yati, Marzita and Nazita. It's a huge property with an uncanny Bates Motel architecture. (We named it Rumah Rados, after the landlord). Lucky thing we had these girls around, who helped us with the baby. We could never thank these instant aunties enough. 

We'd befriended a Vietnamese lady who owned an oriental store not far from our house. This Makcik Vietnam was our baby care "consultant" whose invaluable A to Z of baby bearing and baby bringing helped us and our baby brave the harsh Buffalo winter. On her advice, we immediately enrolled in WIC program, a state social (OK, welfare) program that handed out baby-food coupons to "deserving" families, like most black families, Makcik Vietnam and my family. It's not much, but it helped. We sometimes used the coupons to buy our own breakfast cereals (Hahaha, Melayu tetap Melayu). 

Lovely Sambal Rainbow Trout
Ah, rainbow trout. Smooth, silky, savoury. Fabulous food. I didn't miss home cooking because we cooked, I mean my wife cooked. Every weekend I'd prowl Wegmans, Bell or other grocery stores for rainbow trout on the cheap. Fried rainbow trout in sambal prepared by my wife for deep winter dinners is the best food I've ever eaten.

Fizal would occasionally drop by at mealtime to ask about our baby. This ploy worked every time. If he's in luck, he'd be rewarded with my wife's trout trophy. I can still recall his kind words like "Sedak miseh masok" etc. Very clever.

On The Road Again, and Again
We liked to travel and, boy, did we travel. Days and nights and days on end. We'd spend every semester break and long weekends on the lam somewhere far from Buffalo. Normally we'd travel in two or three rented cars with our housemates (Huda, Marzita, Nazita, Yati) plus a few other girls, with Fizal and Bakar as our drivers. Nobody drove like these two guys: they could drive without any sleep. And when they finally slept, they slept in the cars !

I think I'd covered more than 30 states in US plus the eastern provinces of Canada (different country), seeing not only the famous places and iconic landmarks, but also the lesser-known treasures like Yale, Old Montreal, Prince Edward Island, Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Navajo Indian Reservation. There were of course some forgettable duds I chanced upon, you know, places like Tallahassee, Baton Rouge and Kalamazoo, which didn't quite live up to their funky names. By the time I left Buffalo in June 1984, I would've easily logged 20,000 km, longer than Marco Polo.

Travel in US was cheap because car rental was only RM25/ day and fuel was 80 sen/litre. Divide that by four or five persons in one car, you actually paid a pittance. Lodging was free because Malaysian students could be found in every state (except Alaska, but you didn't go to Alaska). I can still recall, on our trip to Florida, we stopped off at Charleston, South Carolina. The Malay students there lived in trailers and they welcomed us with plenty of food and Mountain Dew. We're so hungry that we only talked to them after we're done with the food. That night I slept in the trailer home like a log. These people weren't rich and famous but they're just kind and proud to provide fellow Melayu with enough rest to recover for the next leg.

There's one trip that's absolutely out-of-mind in every sense. It's a 900 km drive to Orchard Beach, Maine. Nobody knew where Maine was, let alone Orchard Beach. Bakar and I were obsessed with photography, not so much with picture-taking skills, but with the hardware (cameras, lenses). Things got out of hand as we decided it's time to upgrade our cameras to capture the full glory of frozen Niagara Falls and the Adirondacks foliage. The cheapest place to buy cameras in US happened to be Orchard Beach. We reached the town late evening, parked our car in front of the camera shop and slept in the car until the store opened the next day. I bought a Nikon FE2, a real beauty and an excellent workhorse. Bakar bought a Nikon F3, top of the line model, and one up on me. I still have the FE2 with me in perfect condition but I'm using a mirrorless Fujifilm digital now. I heard Bakar lost his F3 in a flood or a fire. 

Another trip that's massively memorable was the coast-to-coast drive from Buffalo to LA and back to Buffalo in a two-week blitz in spring 1984. Until today I still wonder how in the world did I ever conceive the suicidal idea. The risk was so real. Imagine, our Mitsubishi was a near-junk, it could decide to break down and fall off any time during the 10,000 km drive, while we had our one-year old boy on board. We stopped and slept literally anywhere, including one nice rest area in Alabama. But it's fast and furious all the way as we crossed more than a dozen states, passing pretty sights like Grand Canyon, Mojave Desert and Las Vegas Strip, and sneaking into Mexico (another different country, haha) just for the hell of it. We got booked by police in Tijuana for no reason and had to pay $20 on the spot. We lived to fight another day, and were back in Buffalo in time for more classes.

Wrapped Around My Finger
It's hard not to notice that a lot of the students here listen to a lot of music. For the serious student, music would calm his or her nerves after the daily grind of classes and winter flurries. For the more serious one, it's the other way: classes are calm and comfort after a whole night of high music.

The biggest source of free music was the radio, and some radio stations played music, mostly the rockish and rubbish variety, around the clock. Some of the guys (not Azam or Azman) even wore loud rock t-shirts, attended live gigs  and so on, which I thought was fine since that would inspire them towards better grades in their studies (don't ask me how). Md Nor upped the octave when he bought a guitar to impress all of us although he couldn't even hit the simplest chords.

I had a radio that was perennially preset to the station that played only 60's and 70's oldies. Boz Scaggs, Three Dog Night and the like, hahaha, which I turned on whenever I was up late toiling on my homework. The strange sound would fill the whole house, but Huda and the other Rados residents never made an issue of my choice, probably out of respect. 

I'm no music maestro, but I thought the music tastes among the Melayu here weren't strikingly sophisticated or wildly imaginative. They're pretty much straight-line: the boys loved Bruce Springsteen, the girls would die for Rick Springfield. And that's that. Today Bruce Springsteen is still at it but is largely ignored. I don't really know what's become of Rick Springfield. Maybe he's a senator or prime minister of Australia, who knew.

I still have a radio now but I only listen in fits and starts, in between my two lovely grand-daughters. 80s music is mostly aired by the light-and-easy station, which also plays California Dreaming by the Mamas and the Papas. Whenever the likes of Wrapped Around Your Finger or Come On Eileen come on, they would shake my senses and conjure up the moods and memories of my Buffalo break. Nothing spectacular about these numbers, but, somehow, they're just.... there.

Bye Bye Buffalo
Time flies, even in 1980s. It's June 1984 and it's time to pack our bags and leave on a jet plane. Before that, on May 19, I had my convocation, or commencement, as it's called in US, a straightforward, low-key affair. The one I had at UKM five years earlier was really grand, as it was broadcast live over Radio Malaysia. Every graduate's name was announced, so the whole country knew I graduated that day. It's something to celebrate as there were only five universities in Malaysia and all graduates were locals. The radio stations have stopped this practice now that Malaysia has more than 100 universities and half of the graduates were born in Nigeria.

But there's still time for one final fling, the proverbial last kopek. Yes, one last road trip. This time to the New England states and eastern Canadian Provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Quebec. Exotic names and pure, pristine places. Add them to your your bucket list.   

It's very early morning of June 18 and I can't recall who drove me to Buffalo Airport and saw us off. Probably Bakar and Rahuni. It's a short flight to JFK before a long, multiple shut-eye flight to Tokyo, and then another flight to KL the next day. We landed at the old Subang airport finally, and as I was waiting for my bags, a sister-in-law came in from behind us and snatched our baby away. It's her first nephew and she's not going to wait.

UB's Engineering Students

 

Niagara Falls When It's Not Frozen

My Boy Showing Off His Snow Skills

Second From Right Is Clint Eastwood. 

Doreen Preparing Nasi Padang For Her Malaysian Guests

Historic Place. Historic Hair

Ottawa, Japan

    

    



 











  

  







 








   

   


 
  



 

Poetry In Passing

 
                                                                                 I

When I was 18 and 19, I was literally prolific, which literally means that I literally wrote or produced loads of literally literary stuff, mostly poems. In the crystal ball of hindsight, I can confirm now that the quality was, generally, suspect. We're totally driven by a "publish or perish" mentality. There's a new poem by somebody every other day. Nowadays nobody writes and reads poems, not while we're being rounded for sedition or listening to Anwar Ibrahim.

I wrote only Malay poems. Not Pantun, you know, dua tiga kucing berlari and the like. But Sajak, "Aku ini binatang jalang..." and so on. You're right, Sajak is a lot more exciting. It's kind of free for all with no rules to obey: the lines don't have to rhyme, a line may contain just one word like "ah", and one glorious set of Sajak may contain just one line with one word "ah". The main advantage of this variety is, you can always blame the readers if they don't understand it. There's in fact a sub-genre called "Sajak Kabur" where only its writer and her husband know its meaning (if there's any). These grey products, just like the grey imports, are technically illegal.

I can't recall writing any English poems at any time. Not at school, not at home, never at work. I worked for 30 years non-stop but never wrote a single line of poem. Petronas maybe a fun-loving, Fortune 500 company, but it's fiercely poetry unfriendly. Papers and letters all had tight templates and standard words and expressions, leaving absolutely no room for poetry.

I'd never been exposed to English poems because the secondary school I went to was purportedly a serious science-stream school. We're groomed to become brain surgeons. This science-or-shame doctrine was understandable. In 1970, there were only 14 Malay doctors and 29 Malay engineers in the whole country. Compare that with 140,000 Malay doctors and 1,400,000 Malay engineers now. Latest available statistics show that there are more full-time doctors than full-time farmers in Kelantan now.

Instead of learning period poetry, we learned periodic table where Oxygen is O and Iron is Fe. Chemistry and poetry may have vastly different contexts, but they exist for the same objective: to confuse you. In my school, there's no written regulation but poems or anything that resembled poetry were practically outlawed. Aspiring writers were summarily dismissed as fringe and subversive and jambu or simply up to no good. So we went underground and found a clandestine  dead-poets society.

With an old Olympia typewriter, poems would just flow and flourish, pretty and plentiful. All in sajak form, in passionate Malay, some shone, some shite. One left-leaning guy wrote a poem with a stirring line "kita gantung kutang-kutang". I can't remember what had really pissed him. Nobody was happy that we're an all-boys school. He must be having some kind of premonition while crafting that precious line because he's now a high court judge. Gantung, your honour, gantung, ha, ha.

For more than 40 years I was in literary hiatus, which is a pity because I'm quite talented. At least, I think so. I'm now a passive follower of four active poetry social groups (Penyair Malaysia, Jom Sastera, Anjung Puisi, Puisi Maya). Plenty of poems posted but they all lack fire. Mostly dry and dreary, products of a persistent publish or perish mindset. But at least these people are very determined and brave enough to plod on and write. Even six years into retirement with mind now free of fuss and fetters, I've not written one line. Truth is, I'm still struggling to find the spark to restart my literary crush.
                                                     
It finally came.

                                                                       II

My mother had been admitted to Universiti Hospital (now called PPUM) since early December for something I could never understand. Her shoulder was bulging like a balloon and the pain was unbearable. The four of us  (her children) took turns to be by her side. She's officially 86 and dialysis-dependent. With an average age of 60, we're not much younger either. It's a four-bed ward and it's fairly comfortable for any age.

I can tell you that caring for the sick isn't easy. Well, you didn't say it's easy. It's not so much the physical part, she's not too difficult. It's the emotional side. Watching her struggle to eat and lift her head could break you psychologically. It's times like these you become contemplative, philosophical and, well, serious. Suddenly it dawned.  Why didn't I write? Yes, why not, since I'm talented and, now, serious? I could almost feel the adrenalin. I must write. I wanted to write. I wanted to write a poem.

I was soon on fire. Thinking and labouring for ideas and the sexy words for my poem. It's not easy to restart anything if you're already 40 years old. I'm past 60. You can't use the plebeian or prosaic words like makan, pencen, boss, mydin for a poem. It has to be the more pretentious language like senja, musim, berlalu, kamar,  aku.

My sick mother was my inspiration, my muse, if you like. Sitting by her bedside with my oversize android, it's easy to write and delete and write and delete. After toiling for more than two weeks, I finally managed to come up with some semblance of poetry. Born on the banks of Kelantan river, I couldn't resist an imagery and allusion of water and river. I can promise you it's an easy read since this is my first foray after 40 years.

berdiri di tebing kamar
mengusap jiwa yang terdampar
berkali aku diamuk soalan
begini jugakah akhirnya nanti?

nafas yang patah dan payah
meminggir bibir yang tipis.

matanya jernih
memandang tetapi tidak melihat.
namun suaranya pantas dan jelas
memanggil dan menerimaku.

betapa tenang dan bebas
hati yang sudah menyerah.
tiada lagi niat dan hasrat
resah atau amarah
di muara usia yang panjang.
kepedihan yang kaudatangkan ini tuhanku
mungkinkah buatku
agar aku lebih cair dan hampir?

apakah makna yang terkumpul
di fikiran yang sudah dihanyutkan
arus ubat dan air ini?

apa mungkin bertahun keperihan
dan kasih yang mengalir
dibayar dengan penantian sehari?

ah, siapakah yang dicari 
antara beratus nama yang diimbau
dari lipatan ingatan?

Soalan dan soalan terus melanda
bagaimana harus kurungkai
malam ini
di sini.


She passed away on 25 December.
I'll never write a poem again.





 

 

  

 

Breaking For Buffalo (Part 1)

 

Until now I can't figure out why I went to Buffalo, of all places.

It's hard to find a reason to go to Buffalo even if you knew that it's the second biggest city in New York. Perhaps it's hard to find a reason to go to Buffalo because it's the second biggest city in New York. The problem with the name New York is that 100% of non-Americans and 99% of Americans know only New York the city, not New York the state. So the second biggest city in New York  state is only meaningful in the way that Democratic People's Republic of Korea is democratic.

Maybe I just liked the name Buffalo. There were easily more than 2000 colleges in US, so how do you sort the wheat from the chaff? There were no full-blown college rankings in 1980. The only scams those days were black money and scratch-and-win. So choosing a college was pretty much an art and a game of chance.

All I'd heard was a couple of really good colleges in US I shouldn't waste my time on because of my appalling physics and chemistry grades in form five. Harvard accepted only very quick geeks and gooks, apart from future presidents and prime ministers or future sons of future presidents and prime ministers. And everybody agreed that it's easier to go to jail than Yale. So I didn't apply to Harvard and Yale.

Good thing that Petronas had no problem with my school choice. A good friend named Zainal had his application to do MBA at Moscow approved with no fuss. Moscow  was actually a town in Idaho, but I've no doubt that Petronas would've approved it even if it's Moscow in Russia. Getting scholarship at that time was roughly 100 times easier than it is now. The whole idea was, right or wrong, to encourage smart staff to get smarter, not the smartest staff to get smarter. All you'd to do was to fill a form and provide one good reason why you felt that you'd not been educated enough. Another friend wrote succinctly that " I just discovered that my current third-class degree in Malay studies wasn't cut out for all the challenges going forward". The committee immediately fell for this 'going forward' trick and approved the scholarship, with full pay and all allowances thrown in.

It's all different now. I heard that, on a scale of complexity, getting Petronas scholarship now is the midpoint between Yale and jail. You know, how you've to be clever and seen to be clever and how I hate this cliche. You've to be a potential Petronas president or son of a potential president or, better still, if you're the president himself. When you somehow met the criteria, there's still the small matter of an interview. There's no committee to interview you now, which is well and good until you discover that it's going to be a vice president instead. You and some maverick vice president, one on one or one to one, sizing up each other, over dinner. Lose your spoon, you'll lose your scholarship.

It's 1982 and it's annus mirabilis. I got married and we're breaking for Buffalo. My young wife (she's young at that time) admitted that she'd never been to Buffalo. She also admitted that she'd never been to Kelantan. At least, she's consistent. All the same, we're excited about the prospect of living through the next couple of years in the second biggest city in New York state, hahaha. We're further fired up by friends and former classmates who'd just come back from US with glowing tributes to US liberal education and cable TV. Most of them had attended schools in Athens, Troy, Syracuse and other ancient-sounding places, but none from Buffalo.

I don't keep any record of the exact date we left for US. But I'm sure it's either late August or early September 1982, just in time for the Fall semester. What I can still remember is losing all my sense of proportion after a long flight spanning over 12 time zones, three sunrises and four inflight breakfasts. And, of course, the long layover at Chicago airport and the smooth landing at Buffalo-Niagara Airport. Nothing striking about the airport. Those days an airport was an airport, not the whole kingdom. Immigration was fast, no body patting, no terror trivia, and we're allowed to keep our shoes and belts as part of our fashion statement. We picked up our luggage and eagerly wheeled out toward the exit just to see what's outside. As we pushed the door, gusts of cold air flooded in and froze my spine. My (young) wife smiled and shuddered slightly. She'd never been to Buffalo.

It's early evening, about six or seven. The sky was still bright, and cloudless. I was immediately overcome by the rush of fall foliage in the distance. What a pretty sight. All's fine, it seemed, except for one small problem: we had nowhere to go.