A Short Post on Haircuts and Malaysian Wine and Cheese

June 16, 2012

This is my friend, Wei Jie. He is Malaysian. He will be taking the same course as me. Here he is, being given a haircut by our lovely housemate, Gajen, in anticipation of our departure to France.




He'll be styling in France. Apparently.

This is a packet of cheese slices. It's the basic kind you can find in Malaysia (though not the exact kind. They usually have Malay words on it and as far as I know, don't sell American. It's usually cheddar). They don't melt nearly as fast or completely than American supermarket cheese, and tend to get rubbery and very, very sticky when exposed to heat. But we still love them.


The cheese selection in Malaysia is rather limited as compared to the united states, and, definitely, France, and for a good deal of my life cheese came lonely as slices. When I was a young (say before 12) fancy block cheeses with stuff like fruit and peppers in it were reserved for the high end, imported foods supermarkets with foreign-looking food and hefty price tags. Back then, anything in cheese that was not specifically cheese was foreign (I'm quite taken with pepper jack after discovering them in the US) and very fancy. Alas, we poor cheese-deprived Malaysians! We had pineapple flavored slice cheese to spice up our lives. Even our beloved Malaysian KFC Cheesey wedges do not exist in the US. In conclusion, we love our cheese.

Wine

The majority of Malaysians are Muslims and hence do not take wine. Or beer. Or Jack Daniels or any of those stuff. In fact, Malaysians do not culturally take alcoholic beverages, though we do have traditional alcoholic drinks like tuak and a lot of Chinese cooking wine. My exposure to wine came mainly from my father, who sips a glass every now and then. The more affordable wines in Malaysia come from Australia and the good ones have an average price tag of RM 200 (~$59). Don't quote me on that. I'm going by experience.


This post will be short on account of spotty Internet connection and shortness of time, but hopefully I'll have more to blog about once the course start.

- Louisa Lee