My Living Situation

Penang has its oddities. There seems to be an abundance of 20-plus-story apartment complexes scattered throughout the island. From my balcony, on the 10th floor, I can see at least two dozen of the white stucco concrete structures. I live in a complex called Sunny Ville Condominiums. It’s made of up five buildings each 22 stories high. There’s a café, a mini mart, and a pool. The pool is nice to swim in, but it reminds me of an abandoned theme park as there are waterslides that don’t work and the two hot tubs sit empty of water. The café is really great though as I can usually eat large meals for under the equivalent of $2. A very nice family runs it with two daughters as the waitresses. For working what seem to be 10-plus hour days, they are all so cheerful all the time. I always walk away learning something new to say in Hokkien.

I’ve had a hard time gauging who the residents are. Every time I think I’ve got it figured out, I realize I’m not even close. There is a decent amount of Chinese Malaysians, but for the most part I think there are a lot of foreigners living here. My neighbors are a Chinese Malaysian family, an Iranian family, and a few Indian students whom I’ve seen once. Just like my Bahasa Malaysia class, there are people from all over. I’ve gotten to know people from Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Iran, China, Iraq, England, to name a few. There are a lot of Iranians and Iraqis living here, as well as plenty of others from countries in the Middle East. In the first week I was here I met a guy my age from Baghdad. It was a bit awkward talking to him at first as the thought lingered in the back of my mind: “he’s here because of the war.” As I talked more with him he told me he supported the US invasion and that he volunteered to work for the US army. Sure enough he showed me photos on his cell phone of him wielding an AK-47 standing with American troops. Now, I’m not sure about the validity of this, but he told me he came to Malaysia after he was kidnapped and his captors threatened his family that they would kill him unless a ransom was paid. He said his father paid $300,000 for his release and was sent to Malaysia as soon as he was returned to his family. Hearing a story like that, it’s impossible to really say anything. He’s since gone back to Baghdad saying he’d be back in October. I’m not saying that I didn’t believe him, I did. He pointed to scars on his face from being beaten and explained his nose was crooked because the butt of a rifle smashed it. It’s hard to comprehend something like that. Last summer I was playing golf and sitting on the beach, last summer he was…I don’t know where to begin.

There are plenty of other people I’ve met with stories I can’t even begin to imagine. I will revisit this topic as I do have a lot to write about hearing more and more every day from those around me. Hearing these stories, I can’t help but be thankful that I was born into circumstances absent of war, poverty, persecution, etc. It really, really makes you think.

How to segue back to my original topic from that, I’m not sure.

In my apartment, I live with two other exchange students. I live with Panu, a guy from Finland, and Morgane, a girl from France. While I’ve recently started to increase my efforts to pick up a bit of French, I’ve given up on Finnish already. My deepest regrets to Panu and the other 20 some Finnish students here.

Our apartment is furnished with the basics. Coffee table, some couches, some non-functioning kitchen appliances save the refrigerator, and a television that gets all FOUR of the local channels. Yes FOUR channels. I am living the highlife. My bedroom has two queen mattresses stacked on top of one another, a wardrobe, and a weird makeup mirror table thing that proves useful in keeping a pile of Ringgit, Thai Baht, Brunei and Singapore dollars.

I live a pretty comfortable life in Penang I suppose. I pay about 1/4 the rent for a much nicer place here than I paid for a hellhole in Dinkytown, although it was a loveable hellhole. The 10-minute walk to campus is sometimes grueling and many times I’ve arrived to class sweating through all the clothes I’m wearing. Overall though, I live a good life here.

Ian