STORIES, STORIES

I met with a group of millennials looking to collaborate on an innovative media project. We talked over traditional Malaysian food at a hipster joint in the forever-hipster plaza Publika. Here was my nasi lemak   plate pushing my notebook to the side. Millennials are fascinating in the way that they have one foot in fast-paced tech and the other in old-school culture. They are simultaneously just one step above your regular Facebooking, social-media-nut adult, and one step below the Facebooking, social-media-nut Gen Z cohort. ~END~ This post is part of a series of photos and stories very creatively called 100 Days of Malaysia .

The publishing industry is famous for being in the business of networking, but I didn't realize how much of it I needed to do in my job. We go to so many events to "show face" as we say here, just shoot the shit and make small talk and recycle anecdotes with a steady stream of strangers. Every so often, we meet interesting people from different places and backgrounds.  That's the stuff movies are made of, but all apples lose their shine.  My colleagues and I were out on a weekday until the wee hours of the morning networking. And singing along to Argentinian music. We were back at work a few hours afterwards. ~END~ This post is part of a series of photos and stories very creatively called 100 Days of Malaysia .

One Friday night after work, like many in my stay here, I ordered in from Pizza Hut. Pizza to me is a symbol of: * Freedom. Especially when paid for with my own hard-earned money. * Being "international," because it's not traditional, home-cooked food. It's not a rice dish. No, I don't think it's a symbol of poverty, because I can get cheaper food. It's not a representation of my bad relationship with food, or my social standing, or my education. Pizza makes me defensive about all of that. ~END~ This post is part of a series of photos and stories very creatively called 100 Days of Malaysia .

I know how to eat using my hands (in lieu of utensils) as it's common in both Saudi and Maranao cultures, but I don't do it often now that I'm "not home." For some reason, it feels to me like such an intimate thing to do, only in the presence of family and friends around whom one is comfortable, but also, because it's just a bit more convenient and less messy to use utensils. Here in Malaysia, people eat with their hands, normally when having traditional food, no matter their social status or the event. I love the confidence with which this is done, and wish I wasn't so messy at it so I could do the same. There was always that little part of Maranao culture that sneered at people who ate with their hands or didn't know how to eat with utensils. It's never serious, this sneering, but it's there, this underlying accusation that you are uncultured, uneducated, uncivilized because you eat with your hands. It's always "cuter" t...

Having spent the majority of my life in Jeddah meant that my pedestrian skill level is pretty much zero – I was not allowed on the streets, didn't drive, had no access to public transportation nor sidewalks or the outdoors except to and from a private car. There was a 5-year gap in my late teens when I lived in Manila as a university student, but that was a decade ago, and even then, it was a mostly a "sheltered pedestrian" existence when I was led around, often literally by hand, by either my brothers or cousins.  These zebra crossings mean nothing to me. My Malaysian co-worker Azzarul and I were crossing the street in front of our office a few days ago. He was strolling. "Azzarul, come on, walk faster, there's cars!" I yelled. "No, just relax. These lines are for us. They can wait. Watch," he said. And he slowed down even more, exaggerated-like, as cars paused to let us pass. "See? That's the Malaysian way." He was...