It has been a little while since I posted last and I have been pondering if I should post this, I don't think it's a rant, but it's something I can't do a single thing about. I have been trying to paint Malaysia with nothing but a good brush, but I have to confess to not having anything good to post right now, I am not feeling all that warm to Malaysia right now, oh its nothing concrete and it'll pass.
Malaysians are loud! No matter where you go, there is noise. if you go out to eat, like I am now in a McDonalds, I have to wear my earbuds at all times if I'm alone, just to block the noise. People here talk loud, the music is loud, the staff makes noise all the time, it is one thing I can't get used to, the noise is ever present.
When you are out eating the last thing you want is to have to yell to be heard by your dinning companion, well here you'll need a bull horn. Table conversation is considered a shouting match. To be honest I find Malaysians to be very rude in this respect, for such a likable people they sure do get on my nerves when you have to listen to them make noise.
I'm sure my parents are going to get a kick out of this, they never mention the sound level when they talk about Malaysia and they will like that I am complaining about the noise, being that I was pretty loud when I was a kid, unless I was doing something bad.
I have a few theories about why they are so loud. One theory centers around the languages spoken, Mandarin, Bahasa and Tamil, all three are loud but Mandarin is exponentially louder, to the point of being physically painful to listen to. With all seriousness I think Chinese people have evolved to speak louder than anyone else, they are all from a society where there are so many people living in one area that to be heard they have had to learn how to talk louder than the person next to them.
The Malay people tend to speak loud when they are in groups of Malay people, this is understandable in that they tend to be shy, but when they feel comfortable they tend to speak as loud as the Chinese Malaysians. This I am sure is due to them wanting to be heard at all.
The Indian people tend to talk very quietly, unless they are drunk, which is fairly common for the men. The women when in groups are loud, but nothing like the Malay women when thay are trying to talk over the Chinese women.
The Expats living here tend to blend in, until they are drunk, usually in the company of an Indian guy trying to make some money. Expats that have been in Malaysia for awhile tend to deal with locals with a little distrust, they have all been approached by agents for one thing or another. More on that in another post.
When you think of noises we hear all the time but tend to ignore, there are traffic sounds, there are the sounds of equipment like a computer or the heating/air con system. These things are in our everyday lives and we learn to ignore them simply because they never change. As a way to show this, go turn off your main breaker and see how much quieter your house is, you might be surprised, I'm not since the power goes off here at least once a week.
The noises that get to us as soon as they start are the noises that are not normal, or consistent, this is why we notice a new noise our car makes, even if it is always loud. The consistent noises here are sometime so intense that you really do have to yell to be heard, for example the sounds in a public place, like a shopping mall. Have you ever been to an empty shopping mall, the quiet is almost scary, there is still noise, but its all a background hum. The sounds that people make are unpredictable, unusual and sometimes a little frightening.
When I first came I thought it was just because the voices or languages were different so I noticed them more, but it never went away, I still find going to a restaurant painful, like going to a night club, loud music, loud people and everyone bumping into you, thats exactly what dining out is like here.
The other night we went grocery shopping and then had a bite to eat at a small restaurant in the same complex as the grocery store. We sat in a back booth that looked pretty quiet and secluded except of an a joining table, that was empty when we arrived. A few minutes after we sat down 2 families sat at the table behind us, there were 2 couples and their 4 kids. Both couples were Chinese* and young. One couple had a boy about 7 or 8 and he sat directly behind me which I wish he hadn't. This young boy obviously wanted something that he wasn't getting because he was crying and screaming. I did my best to ignore him, but I wasn't doing to well.
Since we had just ordered before they came into the restaurant we weren't going to leave now. Our order seemed to take forever and this kid didn't stop kicking and screaming, oh I forgot to mention the parents simply ignored him. After five minutes of this I turned around and the father looked me in the eye and then ignored me, he knew his kids tantrum was getting annoying but he chose to ignore it. When our food finally arrived and we ate as fast as we were able, the whole time this kid was screaming behind me. We went to pay and it struck me funny that not one single person in the restaurant seemed to be bothered by this kids tantrum, weird.
The strange thing is not that this happens all the time, it's that I am still pissed off that parents still let their kids do that and they them selves don't care if their kids actions or their own disrupt people around them.
I guess I should learn to accept it, I'm not going to change things.
*I know I point out the race of the people involved a lot, but it really is important to understand that the differences between the races is there and not my prejudice.
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