USA, here I come!

My visa interview was for 10.00am. I had picked that time slot to avoid the rush hour, which I did, but took  a wrong turn and went into KLCC instead. But my GPS guided me back. So it was  9.45 by the time I got to the guardhouse to the 'forbidden city', which is what most people I have asked consider the US Embassy on Jalan Tun Razak to be.

Before I could join a visible short queue, the guard on duty, Clement, asked, "What time is your interview, sir?"

"Ten."

"You can go to the counter with your documents, then," he smiled.

"Don't I have to queue?"

"For you special, sir," he grinned. I learned that the queue I saw from a distance was for entering the premises, which was after showing the guard my appointment letter.

It was a short wait before I was allowed in for security clearance: remove shoes, belt, wallet, empty pockets, etc, etc. But, again, the guards were all scrupulously polite. Then, I put them all back on and stepped into the empty courtyard of the Temple of Doom where there were chairs for me to sit on to tie my shoe laces.

I'm almost there! One more large door, and I saw another burly guard on the left, outside another door.

"Ambil nombor disini ke?" I asked redundantly to break the silence, seeing the queuematic machine.

"Ya, ya. Tekan butang merah," the guard smiled, before pointing me to the opposite side. "Ada tempat duduk disana. Sini sudah penuh." I opened the door to see a room full of people. I had seen more smiley faces at wakes and funerals!

What is it about the US Embassy that terrorises people so?! It was as if the people in the room, mostly Malaysians with a smattering of foreigners, were all uniformly afraid to even breathe in case they made too much noise and their visas were denied for that reason, or make eye contact with anyone. A man who was chatty while we were queuing outside the main gate, suddenly seemed to have turned to ice inside that room. It was the same look on all the faces, one of dread. Like in 1984, the Apple commercial. "Oh no, they're going to reject my application. They're going to reject my application." Come on people, you're going to America. Smile! Look happy!

I thought the application process was quite painless, with good instructions and a relatively easy to use website. Everyone seemed to be going out of the way to be polite and helpful, starting with Clement at the main gate. Well, almost everyone. When my number was called promptly at ten to present my documents at the main hall, the woman at the counter looked like she had had too many sour lemons for breakfast. But she was not rude, only unfriendly. Oh, people have their 'off' days, I thought to myself as I walked back to my first waiting lounge.

Not much of a lounge, actually. A large American flag behind a glass, a soundless television playing a western that nobody was watching, dull posters on the wall and a stack of magazines -- Newsweek, The Economist, The Circular, The Statesman, etc -- that were probably too old for a dentist's waiting room. I used the men's room, came back and found an empty seat. Why don't I write a story about this, I thought, and started to scribble. Then I looked up, suddenly. Do they have CCTV cameras in here? What if they ask me what I'm writing? Mild panic. Oh, what the hell.

My number was called again at a quarter to eleven for finger printing. The gentleman attending to me was sufficiently polite and professional, even if he didn't quite have the customary Malaysian friendliness we are used too. I found a seat and decide to wait in this second lounge with the, almost apologetic, framed photos of Obama, Biden and Kerry in a corner near the door, for my actual interview. Here again was the same nervousness. Everyone looked around very careful, turning slowly, making no sudden movements, not smiling, speaking in whispers -- I wanted to laugh. Oh no, what if they reject my visa?! I heard someone shush an over exuberant child behind me. "If we don't get our visa today, it will be your fault," I imagine the man scolding the boy.

My interview was at 11.15. Again it was painless, with even a small joke at the end. My visa was approved in less than two minutes, with a promise of delivery within two days to the address specified. I was smiling when I left. I saw Clement outside in the hall and we exchanged smiles. "You're here now," I said, again redundantly. "Yes, sir, no more queue outside."

Ordinarily, people like Clement would make all the difference to your experience at an new place. I have been to many embassies and high commissions, where some of the staff have been outright rude, but nowhere have I felt intimidated. The smiley security guard or the receptionist usually makes everything all right, anyway. Meet Americans outside on the streets, and they are perfectly friendly, sometimes annoyingly so, as if they feel they need to make up some perceived 'bad behaviour' by their  government. (Hey, we have heck of a lot more to apologise for our in own government, okay! We are a boob-a-day country.)

So why is the US Embassy so forbidding? I thought my visa application was sufficiently well handled. The people I met in person were professionally pleasant, a far cry from ten years ago. So why this anxiety? Is it us, or is it them? Do they know this is how the rest of us feel?

15 years of Silverfishing

"May you live in interesting times," goes the Chinese curse, and 2014 has certainly been anything but boring. The year opened with the raid by Jais on the Bible Society of Malaysia in Petaling Jaya who took off with 321 copies of the Alkitab, 10 copies of the Iban Bible -  Bup Kudus and 20 copies of Luke's Gospel in Malay, causing much indignance, belligerence and confusion in equal measure. Was this an act of high-handedness by a bunch of pocket Napoleons, or something much more sinister -- a well thought out political-chess play. Then, a deputy minister gets walloped in public. And forgives the assailant!

Then, on what I though was the bright side, the new year opened with three motorists stopping for me at a pedestrian crossing! This was in Bangsar Baru. And another lady driver let my car pass at the Maybank junction instead of creating a grid-lock. Wow, wow, wow! Then it all came to end quite abruptly when three barbarians tried to run me over at the zebra crossing 10 yards from the Bangsar Baru Police Station. (Where else?) In one case, I was already halfway across when a white car stopped and waved me on, when one of Attila the Hun's peasant sister in a red Myvi saw me crossing and immediately floored her gas peddle and sped past me! In the other two cases, too, I was already halfway across. It's no wonder that Singaporeans see us as a frontier country. (By the way, many of these barbarians are mat salleh, not just local.)

The real reason for this piece is that Silverfish Books will be celebrating our 15th anniversary this year in June. I knew it June last, of course, but it didn't hit me like a tsunami then. Approaching December it did, though. 15 years! WTF have I been doing for 15 years?!

When we opened our doors in Desa Seri Hartamas in 1999, it was probably at the worst time possible. It was just after the Asian currency crisis and the country was in deep recession. And, here I was concerned about books! I used to get my books from the UK through the Good Book Guide, or from Skoob Books. (MPH Bangsar Baru had a section labelled "For Mature Readers" -- one shelf of Penguin Popular Classics. That's how pathetic the book scene in KL was.)

Then, another tsunami struck: the mega-bookstore madness. Remember those days? There were more bookstore space in Klang Valley than in the whole of Singapore, a city of English readers with twice the population. It was a recipe for disaster. What were the bookshop owners thinking? What were the banks thinking? Only Kinokuniya played it sensibly. The rest is history.

Silverfish Books too would have been collateral damage, if we hadn't been quick on our feet. We moved into publishing, and focused our efforts on Malaysian titles in English (which, surprisingly, the chain stores  neglected). So, many of the decisions we made were based on circumstances. We were certainly affected business-wise. Like hell, we were, and we had to do some major ikat perut and managed to keep our heads above water.

In terms of retail we have a decent following of regulars (in the country and overseas -- amongst individuals, universities and libraries) for our Malaysian books in English. No other shop in the country has our collection (at least, not our back lists). Yes, we tend to be looked at as 'intellectual', but these are the people we want to engage anyway. In publishing, we dare say we're world class, with five of our books appearing on international short and long lists since 2009, and selling foreign language translation rights for a book we have not even published yet!

What happens now? We could carry on as we have in the past, plodding along. You know, after you ikat perut so long, your appetite lessens somewhat. But on the other hand, we have dreams. Our Malaysian English collection is nowhere near what we'd like to be, and we'd also like to add Malay, Chinese and Tamil books to it. So, one dream is for a truly Malaysian bookshop with a curated selection of books in all the major languages, which would attract knowledgeable customers and scholars from around the country and the world. (We are already doing that now, but it could be better organised. And probably move to a swanky shop-space.) Included in the collection would be books from other Southeast Asian countries (I prefer not to use ASEAN, because it really is a failure. All they have done so far it pose for group photographs in silly shirts.) And of course world books, meaning from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas.

All this means work. When you work 12 hours a day, and you are a shopkeeper-cum-publisher who translates, edits, critiques, writes, runs workshops, administers and manages a business, is the IT technician, the webmaster, and the plumber who fixes the toilets, time is often short. Still, I have never been afraid to dream. When I wanted to organise the first KL International Literary Festival in 2004, everyone else around me had palpitations, but not me. (It was scary how steely I was.) What do you have to lose from a dream, anyway? Besides the dream itself? Such journeys are always lonely, although sometimes when you meet a fantastic co-traveller, it would be like ... what? ... the Beatles at the Ed Sullivan Show?!

So, here's to, at least, another ten years of Silverfishing!!!

Malaysia's new historical narratives.

Malaysia needs a new historical narrative that can unite its people of diverse races, Tun Musa Hitam said at the launch of the 60th National History Summit, as was widely reported in the media. I don't think anyone would dispute that. Certainly, history cannot be only about winners and losers. “There is a historical combat in many countries," Tun Musa Hitam further said. I won't say 'many', I'd say every. Every country has historical disputes but, perhaps, none like Malaysia.

Historians regard their job as a science and it should be. However, if only they were not human, nobody paid them, didn't take sides during wars and disputes, have no loyalty, no emotion, no belief system, and are totally and utterly objective. It has been argued that the myth of the battle of Agincourt, the centrepiece of Henry V by William Shakespeare,  boosted the British national confidence, pride and ego to such an extent that it made them the most powerful colonial force in the history of the world, one that even the Roman's couldn't dream of. George Washington's apple tree incident is now disputed. More recently, in India, the Sethu Samudram project was put off because of a Hindu myth; Hanuman and his monkey horde won the court battle against the country's leading geologists and scientists.

In a battle between myth and history, the latter will always lose.

But Malaysia has another problem, one of credibility. People have no confidence in historians because they are assumed to be under the payroll of unseen forces, and therefore blatantly lie. So, no matter what version of history is written, it will be suspect. The main agenda of the 60th National History Summit should have been: How do we clean up the public image of Malaysian historians? Much of it is only perception, and patently untrue. But so what, if people think you are lying?

Everyone in the country wants history to be rewritten. But which version? Theirs. History only becomes accepted and acceptable when we are no longer afraid of the truth. Sure, everyone will call their version the truth, when it is merely a version of a lie. I will give you an example.

I get several customers in the shop who come looking for 'good' history books. One lady asked about one such recommendation, "Does it have Parameswara in it?" I said, "Yes," but I didn't add, "but that's not why it's good." She didn't look like someone who was clever, or non-poitical, enough to understand. For her, a good Malaysian history book must have Parameswara in it because she learnt that in school, or else the government was doing a fiddle.

Would it have made a difference if I had told her that Parameswara may not even been a name but a title, one of the four he had (according to some sources) in the fashion of Hindu rulers of the period? It was often difficult to say where titles ended and names began. Parameswara means the great lord from the words "param" meaning the highest and 'ishwara' meaning supreme being. (Yes, that's the reason many Hindus were sniggering when Proton decided to name a model of their car that.)

That entire problem was probably caused by Tome Pires, the apothecarist from Lisbon. In The Suma Oriental, he named the prince from Palembang, "Paramjcura which means the bravest man in the Palembang Javanese tongue." Why Javanese tongue? In all probability, it was of Indian/Hindu origin. (You can imagine a ruler assuming the role of the Great Lord, can't you?) Tome Pires went further to say that his wife was Paramjcure. Parameswari is the female equivalent, the great goddess, and our own Permaisuri probably comes from there. Winstead appears to have taken off from that, but stretched it a little more by suggesting that he was called Parameswara because he was a commoner who married a princess. Where did he get that? The Andayas' sources appear to have been the same too.

None of the versions of The Malay Annals I have read mention Parameswara. In Sedjarat Melayou translated by Devic and Starkweather, he is King Is Kender Chah. In Leyden's (often called Raffles') version, he is Raja Secander Shah. CC Brown calls him Sultan Iskandar Shah. Iskandar (after Alexander the Great) was the name of choice among many Malay kings. (Interestingly, Skanda is also another name for the South Indian god, Murugan, to put a cat among the pigeons.)

Tome Pires and Richard Winstead, and a host of others, were colonials, not professional historians. They were amateurs, albeit gifted and passionate. (Winstead was a civil servant). But their agenda was clearly colonial, and they made no attempts to hide where their loyalty lay. Their prejudice and lack of knowledge often showed glaringly in their writings. Still, let's not thrash their work summarily, lest we throw out the baby with the bath water. Let's not take their word as gospel either.

We still don't know the truth of many historical events and people, and we may never. A good historian must also be a linguist. However, in Malaysia it's not historical accuracy that is at stake, but credibility. Once a reputation (real or imaginary) for lying and manipulation has been established (and believed), it is difficult to turn it around. Historical errors might be due to plain incompetence, but try telling that to the people who are convinced that you are merely a stooge because you're constantly quoted in the 'wrong' newspapers.

So let the first agenda of the 61st National History Summit be: Rebuilding the credibility and dignity of the Malaysian Historian.

Kerja macam Cina (Work like a Chinese)

Two stories in the media recently made me sit up. First, was a column in the New Straits Times (22 December, 2013) by one Awang Hitam about 'apartheid' in Malaysia, in which the writer accused non-Malay companies control the economy by of refusing entry and employment to Malays. Second, there was a story in The Malaysian Insider (23 December, 2013) about Ku Li's claim that Malays have only themselves to blame for their troubles.

In Abdullah Hussain's Interlok, one of the leading characters is called Cina Panjang (now a Silverfish meme) -- an unscrupulous Chinese shopkeeper who keeps his Malay kampong customers in debt, with the view of taking over their property. A stereotype, no doubt. But think of an entire Malay population that does not read anything fed on this, with the stereotype reinforced over and over in book after book. (I'm certain there are many Cina Panjangs of all races out there in Malaysian and nobody like them, but this Cina Panjang in Interlok had a strong work ethic too.)

Let me tell you four stories:

1. Some time ago, Dina told us this one: Her uncle (or someone like that) was starting a business and asked if she could help find him good hardworking people from amongst her friends. Part of their salaries would be fixed and the rest will be performance based. She asked around and got this response (or something similar): "Ta'ndak lah, kak Dina. Saya ta'mau kerja macam Cina." (No, kak Dina. I don't want to work like a Chinese -- another delicious Malaysian meme.)

2. At a recent stand-up comedy show in PJ, Patrick Teoh reportedly made this crack (I heard this second hand, so please correct me if I'm saying it wrong): "He only looks Chinese. Actually, he's Malay," in defence of his friend's lack of business acumen. (Another meme, no?)

3. This happened several years ago when I was in the government service. I was in the office of another head of department, to seek his help to locate a document. He called in the staff in charge, a young women in her late twenties, to assist me. "Ta'mau, lah, Mr Tan. Saya malas cari." (I don't want to, Mr Tan. I'm too lazy to look for it.) I watched Mr Tan going sheepish, and realised that he was going to just let it go. Was he frightened? Of what? I decided to take charge. "What do you mean you're lazy? Is it not your job?" I snapped at her. The document landed on my desk that afternoon. Still, this is probably the only country in the world where you can tell your boss you're lazy, and get away with it.

4. We had a fairly large order from Taiwan recently, and had to get in touch with about twenty local publishers. Calling and emailing them to get someone to respond was a nightmare enough. Getting some of them to send a proforma invoice was worse. And then, after paying them in cash and in full, persuading them to send us the books (or let us pick them up) was like tooth-extraction with wobbly pliers without anaesthetic, with the patient kicking and screaming as if not willing to part with anything. It took us about four weeks for something that should have been done in four days. (The people in Taiwan must think Malaysians are quite spectacular.)

But seen from another perspective, the situation might become clearer. Many of these publishers are used to selling their entire print-runs (of two or three thousand copies) to the national library or other government departments in one order -- all done, paid in full, no discounts, kow thim. An author, who is published by one of them, who asked if her books will be in bookshops, was told that it was too much work. Leceh.

I guess, with our order, the malas cari syndrome kicked in big-time. What? Look for the books in the warehouse? Who do they think we are? Coolies? Dia orang 'ni suka buat susah, 'ja. (These people are only like to make our lives difficult.) Why work when you can live forever on the gravy?

And the debate about unemployed and unemployable graduates continues. Is it a problem of knowledge and competence, English language or work ethics? Does anyone have the courage to investigate, and give it a name? Turnover cycles are getting shorter and shorter, time is getting more and more critical in business. We simply cannot afford to take four weeks to do a job that needs four days. Maybe that's why others are eating out lunch.

Another two stories (more positive ones, these):

1. I once came in early to the shop (at 8.00am) to finish some work. When I opened the door. I saw Irman in the shop. "You're very early," I said. "No lah, haven't gone home yet," he replied. He  was working on my cover design the night before when I left, worked late into the night, and decided to sleep in the shop because it was too late to go home.

2. I frequently work on the IT aspects of my job over the weekend at home. Sometimes, I'll have get in touch with 'support', normally in the US, where it's night when it's day here, and I am surprised at how quickly they respond. "Don't you guys ever sleep," I sometimes ask (often way past midnight, their time).

Maybe, 'kerja macam Cina', is not so bad.