Ui Hua has been practicing Balloon Folding these past few days. I think he’s gotten pretty good. We dropped by this new Chocolate cafe in Bangsar Village I (next to the Starbucks, where Bakerzin used to be) to grab a hot chocolate (it was delicious) and Ui Hua demonstrated his skills for me. He made me a dog called Sally and a hat.

Whenever I’m with Ui Hua we always have these arguments on who gets to pay for meals – which is surprising because I feel most Malaysian men don’t usually pay for meals, much less argue to pay for meals. So I asked him, “What is a girl to do?”

These are Ui Hua’s tips on how to get a guy to pay for your meal:

• Wait till he says, “So, you want to adjourn from here?” (Though if he actually uses the word ‘adjourn’ you should never see him again purely on principle) so that he calls for the cheque. For some reason Ui Hua believes that whoever calls for the bill first needs to pay for it?
• Go to the toilet when he calls for the bill so you don’t have to pay. But you run the risk of coming out of the loo only to see that he has actually divided the bill in half and is waiting for you to pay your share (Ui Hua’s theory is that any guy with half a brain will settle the bill when the girl is in the loo – out of politeness. But see, that’s the problem there. He assumes that men have half a brain and are polite).
• When the bill arrives, take out your purse realllyy slowly.
• If he asks you out, it’s a given that he has to pay. So wait till he asks you out (uh, ok..)

Ui Hua’s theory is that chivalry is not part of Malaysian culture, hence that’s why most men don’t pick up the tab. I don’t know to what extent this statement is true, but having grown up in Malaysia, I must say, I haven’t encountered much chivalry myself. I never knew that chivalry was cultural thing! Or maybe men find it easier to get away with things here?

According to Uncle Lim’s friend, Farez (I think that’s his name) Malaysian men don’t think that women are of the same level or standard as them a.k.a, they look down on us. So basically, we don’t deserve chivalry. In fact (according to him) they think that having them take us out for meals is such a big deal that we should pay for our meals and perhaps even theirs. Now I’m not sure if these are also his views or if he’s just generalizing on other men.

Wow.

Is this really the viewpoint of Malaysian men? If it is, us women are screwed. If it is then it goes to show how much bullshit the women put up with. If it is we’re so deluded that we don’t even know we’re getting the short end of the stick.

So I’m going to conduct a little experiment here. I’m going to try and see if the statement “Malaysian men don’t believe in chivalry (and won’t pay)” is actually true. I’m going to go out with as many men as I can (ha ha, sound like fun eh? You haven’t met Malaysian men have you?), and when it’s time to pay I’m going to hold back or just pretend to pay and see how many men actually make the grand gesture.

Yes, it’s a great sacrifice I’m making for womankind…

If there’s one thing we’re good at here in Malaysia, it’s eating. Garreth leaves for Cambodia on Wednesday, so I invited him out to go to the BBQ at Palate Palette. Turns out I was wrong. The BBQ is in October, but we decided to stay and eat anyway. Who should we bump into but Karen, then Peter shows up (ok, so I invited him too but it’s much more interesting to say that he just happen to ’show up’) and a friend of Garreth joined us later.

So there were 5 of us at the table, a lawyer, 2 lecturers, an architect / artist and me.

Hmm.. doesn’t sound like a fair fight. Any discussion and I’m bound to lose!

Anyway, after a fair amount of healthy discussion spanning the HINDRAF, Anwar, Prostitutes, Sex, Crystals and other hasty topics thrown in but never really given proper attention to, we decided to move the discussion to Nirvana Maju in Bangsar, because you know.. we were hungry after all that eating we did at Palate Palette.

New venue, new topic of discussion and also a new person to join our little cult – Rashid! What did we choose to discuss? Sadomasochism, Bipolar, Obsessive Compulsive and all in the first 10 minutes. Because of the all that tea we had, we were riled up on caffeine (yes, this is really sad, we’re riled up  on caffeine from teh tarik!) and we had to ‘walk it off‘ by walking Garreth to his house just behind Nirvana Maju. Thus ends a lovely night. I’ve posted a shaky picture I took outside of Garreth’s. It was lovely night for a walk and a great one for a discussion!