Uses of Palm Oil

A few years ago, U.S. nutritionists declared that palm oil was very unhealthy. Soon after that, the flavor of all fast-food French fries changed forever. Many would say the change was for the worse.

Here in Malaysia, palm oil is one of the major products. Gigantic palm oil plantations cover many hectares of land. And the French fries at McDonald's taste the way French fries used to taste! Yum!

Two days ago I had some Ritz cheese-sandwich crackers. Delicious! Yep, palm oil was ingredient No. 2 on the list. No butter at all.

In the supermarket aisle for cooking oil, there is about a 3-ft.-wide space for olive oil. It is fantastically expensive. Olives are not grown here, and I don't think I have seen a single olive, black or green, the whole time I've been here. Not even in a jar.

The bottles of palm oil are arrayed from one end of the aisle to the other, and the label simply says "cooking oil." I had to read about 30 labels before I finally found something that was a mix of canola and safflower oil. It is imported from Australia.

Here is the weirdest thing: "Ice cream" here is made from palm oil and powdered skim milk. I am not joking. You do not want to know what it tastes like. There is not a drop of cream, or even real milk, in it! The flavors are something else altogether -- lychee, durian, rose. They do have chocolate, but I have not tried it. I had vanilla with black currant syrup, and it was edible, but something was very wrong about the taste. That was when I read the label, and ... well. The ingredient labels on all products are printed in English (usually also in Malay, and sometimes in Chinese and Tamil as well).

In the shopping malls, you can get Haagen Dazs, Baskin-Robbins, and a wonderful gelato from a place called New Zealand Naturals. But you cannot buy any of those brands in the local supermarkets in Shah Alam. Only this bizarre palm oil product.

I asked one of my Malaysian friends about it, and she said that when Malaysians go abroad, they go crazy for the foreign ice cream. They love it! Well, no wonder!

Dairy products are just not big here. The cheese section of the refrigerated case in the supermarket has stacks and stacks of processed cheese-food slices -- and almost nothing else. There is one real cheddar (imported from Australia) at my supermarket, but they have been out of it for two weeks now. Its name is "Old Bitey"! There is also the French Laughing Cow cheese spread -- which is very tasty on cream crackers made with palm oil.

There is very good yogurt. My two favorite flavors are mango and kiwi fruit. No palm oil is listed in the ingredients.

The Tropics

The "inter-monsoon" -- the hottest part of the year here, just north of the Equator. Many people carry umbrellas to shield themselves from the sun.

Last night on TV, on a live show that comes on about midnight, they had some British band members who are here to play in the Force of Nature concert (tonight) to aid tsunami victims (warning: the Web site opens only in IE). One of the guys had big red blisters on his face (ouch!). He fell asleep by the pool at his hotel.

The host asked what the famous phrase is, something about only mad dogs and Englishmen ... go out in the midday sun.

That's the first time I heard the second part. Really, I only know the phrase as the title of a Joe Cocker album (that's my generation, what can I say?).

So of course I went to Google, and further enhancing my education about Malaysia, I discovered the lyrics to a song by Noel Coward (slightly before Joe Cocker's time). Here's a little snip from it:

"In the Philippines they have lovely screens to protect you from the glare./ In the Malay States, there are hats like plates which the Britishers won't wear./ At twelve noon the natives swoon and no further work is done,/ But mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun."

Today being Friday, it is quite true that after noon, no further work will be done! People leave work by noon and are supposed to return by 2 or 2:30 p.m., after prayers, but really you can't count on seeing anyone until 3 at the earliest, and even then, if you don't have an appointment, don't expect to find someone in the office. (This custom is compensated for with working Saturdays, of which there are at least two each month.)

Life without Internet

The Internet was down at my university (yes, for the entire university) for 24 hours. It went down late in the afternoon on Tuesday. It came back Wednesday evening, after I had gone to teach my class. This is not too big a deal, but it was frustrating. I had agreed to give a talk to the undergraduate journalism students here at UiTM this morning (Thursday). I was not sure whether I would have a connection at all. Since the whole talk centers on examples of online journalism, if I do not have a live connection, I have nothing to show. Luckily, the Internet connection was okay during my talk.

Today Halimah and Siti introduced me to a sweet called "dodol." It is coconut milk cooked with sugar until it becomes a gel-like dark brown paste. I am sucking it out of a plastic packet as I write this. It is amazingly yummy. The coconut flavor is very subtle. It's similar to butterscotch or caramel, but less sugary.

This morning Siti gave me something called "asam boi" (preserved plum or prune). This is an incredibly sour, sweet and salty (all at once) snack that made my mouth feel like it was going to turn inside out. And yet, I liked it. My mouth watered like crazy. I told Siti it would be a good food to take with you on a trek in the desert!

Halimah said that when she told the first-semester master's students that I eat all kinds of Malaysian food with her, they were surprised. People here always try to warn me about everything spicy -- but not my friends, who have seen me eat everything. Restaurant servers cannot believe I want teh tarik (sweet milky tea), a favorite local drink. People definitely have very set expectations about what a Westerner will and will not eat.

Elephants

On Saturday MACEE took all the "Fulbrighters" on a day trip to the Kuala Gandah elephant sanctuary in the state of Pahang. We took a very beautiful drive through the hills east of KL and then drove quite a ways down a dirt road. It was very different from my 2001 visit to the elephant conservation area in northern Thailand. Here we got to have a lot of interaction with the elephants (only four of them, compared with about 20 in Thailand). Very enjoyable! Now I have put my hand inside an elephant's mouth, and I have held the end of an elephant's trunk in my hands.

I have posted 13 photos at Flickr.

I have also ridden bareback on an elephant. I posted a short slideshow, which may stall if your connection is slow. Just Reload/Refresh if that happens.

Reading Material

I found an excellent book at Kinokuniya in KLCC, titled The Consumption of Kuala Lumpur, by Ziauddin Sardar. I am almost finished the first essay, which begins with an evocative description of how the jungle is still heard and felt in the city today, but which goes on to explain (in a very literary way) how the Europeans intruded on the spice trade as they slowly figured out how to get their boats into this part of the world, and then basically destroyed a centuries-old trading network that they found incomprehensible in its fluidity. I found this fascinating because it wove together many narratives I have heard and read in a way that really made sense.

It's not a simple story of the Europeans deliberately trying to destroy a culture. That was a by-product of their desire to control the spice trade. Their idea of control was a very European or Western idea, and its incompatibility with the way things were done here is what really chipped away the foundations of what had long been a multicultural marketplace.

Ziauddin urges the reader to turn to the Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals) to gain a real understanding of the old history of this region.

Another enjoyable read I found here was a novel, A Bit of Earth, by Suchen Lim. It follows the life of one immigrant tin miner from China who comes to Perak as a teenager and makes his fortune in a time parallel to the tightening of the British grip on Malaya (the peninsula). To my great pleasure, along the way the central character makes close ties with a Malay leader (menteri besar), a wealthy Straits-born Chinese, and an Indian Muslim trader, so the story manages to illustrate the interlocking relationships that formed the culture here.

Sate (Satay)

Who knew that sate was Malaysian? I keep telling everyone here that in the U.S., we think of sate as a Thai appetizer. They are usually surprised to hear it. To Malaysians, sate is absolutely a Malaysian invention. They even know where the original sate was born -- not very far from where I'm living here.

Last Saturday some friends took me to the famous Sate Kajang Haji Samuri restaurant, in the town of Kajang. It's not fancy. The tables are outside, but there is a roof. The first thing that struck me was the gigantic parking lot. It was empty at 4:30 p.m. My friends, who live quite close to the restoran, said it is totally packed every weekend night, and there are huge traffic jams.

So, was it great sate? YES! The peanut sauce is served in a giant bowl, and you get a bunch of small bowls so everyone can dip his or her own. You get a separate bowl of chili sauce, to mix with your own peanut sauce, so it's just as hot as you like it. The meat (beef or chicken) is juicy and charred at the edges. Sate must be cooked over charcoal. Otherwise, it's just not right. The pieces are thick enough to really hold the juice inside. I do not know how many sticks I ate -- all I can say is, I ate a lot! The sate was served with pieces of cucumber and rice cakes, both of which are also yummy when dipped in peanut sauce.

The owners are expanding the business through a chain called Sate King. But my friends said that even though you can get Sate Kajang in Kuala Lumpur, it's not the same. You really have to go to Kajang to eat the real thing.

Everyday Things

I have resolved to post to my blog more often. Shorter entries, more often. Otherwise I will forget what I have done here! A few weeks ago, I went to Kuching for five days. That's in Eastern Malaysia, on the island of Borneo. They don't make shrunken heads there anymore (they used to! I saw pictures in the museum!), but they do hunt with blowpipes. In the jungle, that is. Not in Kuching.

So the best thing there (out of many good things) was the Cultural Village. If you ever get the chance to go, you must. Go early. We arrived too late in the day and did not see everything they have. The ethnic dances were fantastic, though!

I have photos from the Kuching trip on my Flickr site.

Another thing I wanted to make sure to remember is Sepet, a new Malaysian movie that everyone here is talking about. It's a very sweet love story, and what's best about it is that it's a real Malaysian story about everyday life here. The link goes to the blog of the director, Yasmin Ahmad (see also her previous post about the national censors giving her a hard time). The movie also has its own promotional Web site.

I know it will not be easy for Americans to see this movie, but it's so enjoyable, I had to mention it. What's more, it is making Malaysians very happy when they see it -- like a fresh breeze blowing through the land. I think the people here are tired of the old paternalistic ways. I think they are really on the road to becoming a developed nation in 2020.

This is just my opinion as an outsider, a visitor in their country. But I think the public is more advanced than the government is. I think the government does not give the people credit for being as smart as they are.