We wanted to write an open letter to Malaysia in honor of living here for three years (which is actually the longest we have ever stayed anywhere) and it will probably get very rambling and anecdotal. (Gotta get those disclaimers in there.)
Malaysia is a lot of things. To start off, I would like to thank Malaysia for offering us so many more experiences than we had in the United States. Basically Malaysia has taken my viewpoint of the world and expanded it, flipped upside down, spun it etc.
In our travels we have had the opportunity to use some pretty sketch transportation (including but not limited to: ferries, propeller planes, trains, the LRT, the bus, speed boats etc.). Among those, thank you Malaysia Airlines and Air Asia for both trying our patience and taking us new places. While we have lived in Malaysia we have more than quadrupled the amount of countries we have been to:
Gwyneth: Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia, Amsterdam, Sri Lanka, and a bunch of random Malaysian islands.
Liesel: All of the above plus Cambodia.
Thanks ISKL for allowing us to go on GAP and “broaden our horizons”. Thank you for being filled with amazing people and being the best school we will ever get to go to.
We had the chance to meet and become friends with a bunch of fantastic people who are among the smartest, funniest, pun-iest, nicest people I have ever met (on top of all that, they are all pretty dang gorgeous). We love all of you (you know who you are) and I hope that we are able to meet up some day in uni. The past few days of saying goodbye have been hard on our entire family. The Dream Team and squad are breaking up and we are not okay with it.
Also, thank you ISKL for the chance we had to be on a swim team and *practically* make up our own “Allen” relay and being able to learn how to speak with a Ukrainian accent.
Thank you Church for making us laugh and cringe when people get up to talk and start to sing songs they have written (bless you all for having the confidence to do that). Thank you for teaching us that there are some amazing sunday school teachers/seminary teachers that really care about you and make dang good baked goods. And that there are some teachers that still care about you but will show it in different ways. And even if our opinions differ from theirs, they are still really good people.
Also quick anecdote: this Sunday at church all of the expat families that are leaving had to stand up and sing “Families Can Be Together Forever” and literally half the congregation stood up and took pictures which is something that would never happen anywhere but Malaysia.
Thank you Malaysia for cultivating our love for cacti and succulents. (Shout out to Cold Storage.)
Also shout out to Hock Choon for the boxes of soy milk and for thinking our mom is a small restaurant owner for the amount of food she buys and for accepting me the time I paid them sixteen ringgit in coins. (Which was yesterday. Because when you have to get rid of your coins, you gotta do what you gotta do.)
Thank you Kuala Lumpur for making us crave brunch and for having vegan options and being the best places to say goodbye in (RGB, Antipodean, Ben’s [not as a brunch place, but as a goodbye venue]).
Thank you Malaysia for the sweaty bus rides, sweaty walks, and sweaty airplane rides (I swear over half of the airplane rides I have been on lack air con). You 90% humidity, I will not miss.
Speaking of air con, thanks for the new vocab. Air con has now replaced air conditioning in my vocabulary. And air con discussions are a big thing here because there is a constant battle between the people sitting under the air con who are freezing and the people sitting not under the air con who are melting into puddles. There is a separate air con unit and button in every room. Lots of discussion about whether to “on” or “off” the air con. (Or “onning and offing”.)
A quick lesson on Malaysian slang (these are only the ones I know; this list is not all-encompassing):
Can: The word ‘can’ is used for literally anything. ‘Can’ means anything and everything, all based on the tone of voice. If someone responds ‘can’ to something, it can mean: yes, it works, you are able to do that thing, I agree, an affirmation etc.
“We are meeting at five o’clock for dinner, does that work?”
“Can.”
This is often followed by ‘la‘ as in ‘can la.’ It’s for emphasis.
Haze: Haze not smog. I don’t exactly know the difference but haze is something that cancels school and makes everything look gray while smog is… Okay I just asked my mom and there is no difference, but if you say “smog”, nobody knows what it means.
Fringe: aka bangs. This is more international but it still counts.
Queue: Again international, but it basically means to line up. If you ask people to line up, they will be like, “The queue?”
Also just because of the international school thing, I sometimes feel inclined to put ‘u’s in words that Americans don’t normally put ‘u’s in. For example: colour, favourite, and humour. That and for some reason my Word autocorrects me to the British spelling.
Organize: As in “I have organized some treats.”
‘The net’: Although, this may just be my church teacher. It means the internet and can be used in conjunction with “the youtube.” Yup, definitely just our church teacher.
Same: Doubles as teenage girl slang and Malaysian slang. Adult Malaysians use the phrase “same same” all the time. (“Should we get pizza from Papa Johns or Dominos?” “Same same”, meaning either one works.)
Most people can also speak more than one language, adding some of the above words into the mix. Nothing makes you feel more inferior than learning that English is someone’s second, third, or fourth language.
Also, whenever we are brave like making a right hand turn (which we do to get out of our building) or whenever we do something equally crazy with little to no regard for safety we are always like, “How Malaysian of us” (all in good humor). A good example is not being alarmed at all when you see several people coming toward you on your side of the road or coming to a four way intersection with no stoplights or stop signs. We have to do an intersection like this every time we come home from swim and everyday it is a miracle we make it out alive.
A lot of things in Malaysia are just Malaysian.
The labeling of apartment floors.
1. The fourth floor does not exist because the word for four in mandarin means death which is bad luck, so instead the fourth floor is 3A. We applaud their problem solving.
2. The first floor is not the first floor it is the ground level. The second floor is the first floor and so on and so forth.
Drinks in plastic bags: I just don’t understand it.
Malaysian movie ads. And the Malaysian movie experience overall. In the US normally the ads before movies are promotions for other movies. But in Malaysia we get “Asia’s Brickfield College” with Terrence. Also if you order popcorn you automatically get caramel corn instead of butter. Made that mistake the first time we went to the movies. And the last time.
Thank you Malaysia for the invention of Food Fests and my (Liesel’s) ability to eat an entire large bucket of said popcorn. Thank you for mobile Food Fests and our Cherating weekend.
Thank you Malaysia for teaching Wells how to recognize the “Peptromas” Towers. We will miss our skyline that is sometimes hidden by haze.
My Dad said that our three years in Malaysia were basically a motorcycle ride with a jacket on backwards, drink bag swinging wildly from the handlebars, possibly with three other people on the back.
Love,
The Allen Family
HEY LIESEL & GWYN 
