Category: General

Today is a holiday in Malaysia because it is the anniversary of Prophet Muhammad’s birthday.  It’s a bit strange, from our perspective, though.  As compared to Islamic holidays in Indonesia, things here seemed very subdued.  The mosques weren’t any more active than they normally were, from our perspective listening from our apartment.  (Then again, we didn’t go to a mosque, so we aren’t sure.)  In fact, we don’t even know the proper greeting for today.  We suppose that it would be Selamat Ulangtahun Nabi Muhammad SAW, but that’s just a bald transliteration.  There may be a specific Arabic term that has been adopted into Malay.

Also unlike other holidays in Indonesia, today the malls were packed.  As we took our daily trip to the gym, we were simply overcome by the number of people.  Now, there may be a good explanation for this.  Given that a much larger percentage of Malaysians are not Muslims, a much larger percentage of Malaysians may view this as just another day off with no religious connotations.  But that doesn’t seem quite right, because there were tons of Malays at the mall today too.  So chalk that up to another difference.  In Jakarta, despite the fact that there is a very large non-Muslim population, almost the entire city shut down on holidays, both Muslim and non-Muslim.  Sure, you could get a cab, but unless you were going to a hotel or something, you wouldn’t find many people around.

We have also learned the translation for the abbreviations SWT and SAW which often follow the names of Allah and Muhammad (see above).  SWT stands for subhanahu wa taala, which means "the Almighty and most worthy of praise" in Arabic, while SAW stands for salla’llahu ‘alaihi wasallama, which means "may Allah bless him and give him peace"  in Arabic.  Not that this comes up much, but you do come across it a lot while reading things that have to do with religion in Malaysia and Indonesia.

So lately at work, I’ve (jm) been seeing lots and lots of kids.  Every single day there is at least one person who comes in and tells me they want to go to Harvard.  Sometimes it’s more like two or three a day.  Seeing as this was the first year that more than one Malaysian student was accepted to Harvard (they took 3- 2 Malaysian kids and an American expat living here), I have to politely inform them that their chances are not good.  I don’t get it.  How on earth did Harvard become such a brand name?  They don’t even usually mention the other Ivies, much less all the other fantastic schools out there, just Harvard.  It’s actually quite funny, they all ask for brochures and we don’t have any.  We get tons of materials from all over the states (I spent about an hour just opening mail the other day), but none from the top schools.  They all have huge endowments, but I guess they save it for things other than glossy brochures.  They don’t have to advertise because everyone knows who they are already.

Last night I went to a career fair with my boss at a British secondary school outside of KL.  It’s a school basically full of expat kids with a few other random people tossed in.  It was a neat event, the guidance counselor arranged to have reps there from all sorts of places so that the kids and their parents could see what some options were for further education.  We expected to be bored all night, figuring nobody would be interested in going to the US, but we were the busiest table there.  It was kind of interesting meeting these kids. Of the ten we met, at least three are going off to programs at Yale and Columbia this summer for some kind of thing where they take a class or two and get to network with guidance and admissions staff at the schools.  I guess they figure this will increase their shot at getting in.  I do hope that if they end up applying to these schools that they don’t apply for financial aid.  You know that at the first blank spot they find on that application, they will write about how they  attended a summer course on campus, and the college will immediately know that they spent $8000 for summer school.  So why not $42,000? (times four, of course)