I think what makes everything almost surreal about living in Malaysia is that everything around me is just a little.bit.different.  Everything is green, but it’s a different green that I normally see in the summer in the US, a bit darker maybe? Not as dark as pine, but darker.  There are flowers everywhere, but different flowers.  I saw some dark purple flower growing on a bush in the median, a color I had never seen in a flower in the US.  I look for that bush every morning on my way to work now. I hear the birds in the morning, but their calls are different. The clouds seem to move differently in the sky, I can’t tell which direction they are moving.  I was looking out at the river between Johor and Singapore and I noticed large deposits of sand.  I was confused as to why someone would dump and store sand in the river like that.  It was only after I mentioned it that someone informed me that the bottom of the river was sand, not mud like I am used to see in the states.  Everything is just slightly different.

The first difference I noticed in Malaysia, which honestly threw me off, was the sunrise and sunset timing.  Being close to the equator (approximately 100 miles where I live) there are very little changes in when the sun rises and sets. Johor has about 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night, every day, every month, every season.  The sun rises around 7am and sets around 7pm.    There is a little flexibility; the longest day in Malaysia is 12 hours and 20 minutes while the shortest day is 11 hours and 59 minutes. 

Since I moved here in the summer, I was used to long days and short nights; sunrise around 5:30 am, sunset after 9.  The early sunset made me think it was much later than it was, which I chalked up to jetlag at first.  It took me a few days to realize what was throwing me off.  I realized it in the middle of the day and asked one of my Malay friends when the sun rose and set.  It led to a fun conversation about the constantly changing sunrise and sunsets in the US.

Now that I have been here for 4 months I have gotten used to it.  When I wake up in the middle of the night, I peek at the bottom of my curtains to see if I can see any hint of sunrise.  In the evening, I can tell about what time it is by the light outside.

Last weekend I experienced something that really showed me the differences between the culture in the US and the culture here.  I was driving home from the beach and a truck repeatedly tried to cut me off. This is very common here (just like it is in the US) and usually I don’t care.  I am new to driving here, maybe I am slower than they would like, maybe it is common to let people cut you off at the last minute when they are supposed to merge.  I don’t know what it was last weekend, maybe I was tired from being in the sun all day, maybe my mind was elsewhere, but I did not want to let him cut me off so I didn’t.  He didn’t like that.  First thing I noticed: they don’t use their car horns here.  He drove behind me flashing his lights at me, but no horn.  After him trying to cut me off a few times, and me not allowing him, we came to a area with 2 lanes on each side, so he pulled up next to me.  Here is where I noticed the 2^nd big difference – he rolled down his window and pointed at me.  Just made an angry face and pointed at me for a few minutes.  I thought it was absolutely hilarious.  Was that supposed to intimidate me?  Upset me? Or just let me know he was mad at me? After getting no response from me (and with darkly tinted windows I doubt he would have seen it if I did respond) he finally sped up.

I don’t know what he could see through my tinted windows.  Did he know I was a woman and was showing me how mad he was at me?  This is a very male dominated culture, would that be enough to make me “behave” if I were from this culture?  Did he expect me to roll down my windows and engage with him?  Would it have surprised him that I am clearly not from here?

Everything about me shouts “I’m not from here”, but when people ask me where I am from, I love to respond, “I live here.”