Evie

Introducing Evie Annabelle Treece!





She is the 7th addition to the young Treece generation! It all started off in 1996 when Hannah was born... I was just 12 years old. I remember pushing her stroller around my middle school. She turns 13 this November. She can babysit. In 3 years, she can drive a car. In 6 years she can vote. Wow that makes me feel old.
The Treece clan isn't finished producing babies yet, however; my sister Kerry going to have another little girl in May!

The irony of erininnepal

When I went to Nepal in 2002, I created a new email address: Erininnepal@...com. How creative. I used this up until last year when I switched to a boring gmail address. So I spent 6 years outside Nepal using an email address saying erin was in Nepal. This makes no sense. How ironic is it, then, that as soon as I change this email address I start again working with the Nepalese. And how strange is it that I came all the way to Malaysia to work with the Nepalese.

Nepali men come here to Malaysia as migrant workers. Unemployment is so high in Nepal, especially in the villages, that the nation sends many of it able-bodied men abroad. They end up working in factories, construction, and other tough jobs. If their employers are fair and honest, they can make enough money to send home to their families. If they aren't, they go into debt bondage and become trapped, quite literally. They work for 2 or 3 year contracts and go back to Nepal at the end of time. Like any normal person, they would love to stay home with their families more than anything, but they're never quite able to make the transition back into life at home. Many of them have become believers, and now that they've become the main income for the family they're expected to provide forever. So they go away for contract after contract, despite the families and wives and children they leave behind. One man in my class was in Malaysia for three years, and had a three year old daughter that he had never seen. He finally went back to Nepal last month. Can you imagine?

Our purpose is to help make that transition home a little easier. To give them the knowledge, ideas, and skills to go home, stay home, and make a positive difference in their communities. Things like principles of community development, the process of (and resistence to) change, and basic leadership skills, etc. I finished our first 12 week series in November. I was pretty sad about it ending, but I've gotten to see most of the guys since then. Two of them have gone home. There was one addition to the group when Rabin and Gita had their baby. Can you guess what they named it? Ragita.

I love these guys. I am so proud of them. They suffered through 12 whole weeks with me. I admire how big they dream despite their circumstances. What amazing visions they have for their villages and families back home. They can reach areas in Nepal that would be impossible for me to get to. So I don't even have to go to Nepal...they've come to me!!

Below are some pictures from our community transformation seminar.



Drawing maps of their communities - what they would look like if Jesus was Lord of their villages




Weighing risks/benefits of starting their own small business.


The graduates! They're all smiles until someone pulls a camera out.

The art of appreciation

Oh, the things we take for granted...



I ran into a quote in Singapore that says 'the true voyage is not in seeking new lands, but seeing with new eyes.' If only our eyes could be opened to how ridiculously amazing everything is. Airplanes. Sidewalks (you don't miss them till they're gone). Velcro. The internet.

And for me, how incredible Malaysia is. The fact that I can see both the rainforest and the ocean from my balcony. There's a waterfall behind there too.


My easter peep and the sea.

I can get the most delicious Chinese and Indian food anytime I want. I have tile floors...my favorite. My airplane ticket to Bangkok cost me a whopping $66...who else could say that? I can drink the tap water (my mom would cringe). I can watch American Idol. I'm able to teach and make a difference in the lives of the poor. I can see movies for $2. I have my very own Malaysian 'tour guide/interpreter' with me always. What an amazing place I live in!!!
We get caught up on the few negative things about where we live that we lose sight of the many, many great things. I could get get mad at my neighbor's drum set, but then I get to hear the tropical birds singing on my balcony every morning. I may miss my Yakima peaches, nectarines, and plums, but I get to eat pineapple, papaya, and dragonfruit!! When I see that dead dog rotting away on the beach, I should be grateful that I leave so near to the sandy shores (as stinky as they are!)


People in general here grumble against the foreign workers from Indonesia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, and the Phillipines, but I am so grateful for such diversity and the opportunity to serve some of them! I don't even have to go to Indonesia, Nepal, and Bangladesh...they've come to us!


So turn that frown upside down!

This is the 5-star resort that is a 10 minute drive from my place...and my favorite beach chair.

Rags to Raja

So I recently heard this supposedly incredible movie called Slumdog Millionaire. It won 8 Oscars this year. Hmm, sounds interesting. Lucky for me, it just came out in the cinema here last week. I heard about some of the child actor controversy, but I decided that I wouldn't make an opinion about it until I saw the movie for myself. I wanted to see what the hype was all about, and if it was good because it really was good, for if it was good just because the media and the Oscar people told everyone it was. There's a difference, people.

And it was amazing!! What I love so much about it is that it didn't portray the slums and the people in a way that is asking people to pity them like other films raising social awareness(take Angelina Jolie's Beyond Borders, for one example). It went along the lines of Constant Gardener (and its portrayal of Kibera) in choosing to show life in the slums, rather than death. The last thing the poor need is more pity. Even if 500 people pity a poor man it makes no difference in his life if no one does anything about it. Instead of being a sad and tragic pity party, Slumdog Millionaire portrays India as vibrant, pulsating, devastating, and chaotic. It celebrates life. It weaves together passion and poverty. Love triumphs over all, even in the slums.

The UN approximates that 1 billion people today live in slums [And they predict this number will double by 2030]

Slum = “a heavily populated urban area characterised by substandard housing and squalor”. And possessing several of the following:
• Inadequate access to safe water;
• Inadequate access to sanitation and other infrastructure;
• Poor structural quality of housing;
• Overcrowding; and
• Insecure residential status.

This is a map representing the location of the 30 biggest "mega-slums" in the World (circle size correlates with population size), according to Davis' book "Planet of Slums":


Wow, look at Mexico city.

Anyway, it's easy to look at slums (or a picture of a slum or a picture of statistics of slums) and forget that people actually live there. It's more than corrugated metal and tarps and open sewers. One good thing about this film is that it shows that slums are more than slums-they're full of life and people. People aren't just the numbers or statistics that we hear in the news, but have names and faces and members of families- and somebody's loved ones. Life goes on. People go to work and school. And Jamal and Salim and Latika could have just as easily been Khumar, Samal, Agharia, who perhaps fared a far worse fate. I don't think the American audience is ready to see that yet.

Who cares if it's not Indian enough, as Bollywood claims. The book was written by an Indian and adapted for film by a Westerner...it was made to be a blend of both worlds. However, the song and dance number in the credits was rather weak, in my opinion. Let me tell you that as of this moment, the world has more than enough Bollywood films. There's enough song and dance numbers to last till the end of time; I feel like I have the authority to say this confidently because I have already seen half of them. Not that I'm not knocking on them or anything.

Art

I am not an art person. I do not particularly enjoy museums and have no ability to appreciate good art. Maybe that's why I've never been interested in visiting Europe. Sometimes I wish I did, but, well, I am who I am. Not really an art hater - it's more of an indifference to it.

But I love Islamic art. It's not about painting naked people or throwing paint at a canvas. It's about geometry. It in no way, shape, or form resembles the geometry that we suffered through in middle school. It's all about turning quantitative lines and shapes into qualitative, beautiful things. "Geometry is an objective manifestation of the principles of creation". Hmmmm.

Islam forbids making likenesses of the Prophet Mohammad, so all of their art is people-less. And Islamic art is manifested through their architecture. You start with a line, every line turns into a shape, every shape turns into a group of shapes which turns into a wall or a carpet or a picture that makes up a building which supposedly represents God. And there is purpose behind it: "For architecture to be significantly effective in enabling us to experience ourselves as complete, embodied spiritual beings, all the senses need to be addressed simultaneously." Quite different from growing up in a church building whose geometric lines were made from the floor of a basketball court.
Even the Petronas Towers (below) in KL were created to reflect designs in Islamic art.


Mosques are beautiful places. Churches are certainly beautiful too, but I haven't been to any of the old architectural wonders of Europe etc. Christians don't place such a high value on their buildings, which is fine because we see and discover God in different ways. But we can at least appreciate the beauty and the meaning behind it.

I went to KL last week for some UNHCR meetings. I myself didn't actually get to go; I gave up my spot so that someone else could attend. But because of that, I got to visit the Islamic Arts Museum in KL. Which is great because Reuben hates to go, but it happens to be one of my favorite spots in the city. Geometry made beautiful galore. I have been there three times and have fallen in love with their gift shop. The pictures below are from the National Mosque, built right next door (from my 2006 trip-a few might be from other mosques, too. It's been long enough that I can't remember).
The National Mosque also had a rather large and intimidating "Boycott America" banner posted out front, condemning America's 'support' to Israel during the Palestinian attacks.


It has big logos of Colgate toothpaste, Starbucks, and Coca-Cola with big fat red X's through them. Although I was stupid enough to admit that I was American when I went in (I often claim I'm Canadian - who doesn't love a Canadian?), I was still received warmly. I even had my own personal escort.



Note: I love this picture. I snuck my camera into the museum and stumbled upon this big old painting on which, upon closer inspection, the entire Koran was written. You wouldn't be able to read the words anyway; they're in Arabic.

Glorious rain!!

Yesterday I went into my bathroom and smelled something hideous. It seriously smelled like something died in there. I checked my cupboard - yup, it smelled, I checked the shower - yup, it smelled. Man, I thought to myself, I really need to clean up around here. The mold is starting to build up. Then I stepped out of my bathroom and realized that the whole apartment smelled like it. Finally I had a hankering of what it could be, so I stepped onto my balcony which confirmed my suspicions - it smelled like rain! Normally rain smells refreshing and cool, but this particular rain yesterday smelled awful. Penang hasn't had any good rain in months...it's the dry season. My non-scientific opinion is that this rain yesterday possessed all the icky pollution and smog that has been hanging out in the air for the past month or two.
Every year during the dry season the Indonesian forests of Borneo and Sumatra go up in flames - fires from land clearing and deforestation. BBC calls it an "air pollution disaster." The Sultanate of Brunei has actually threatened to sue Indonesia if they don't stop. Malaysia, to my knowledge, hasn't threatened to sue because, well, they're burning too!!
I took these pictures last year in Sabah (N. Borneo)

Imagine this picturesque scene turning into this:

which then turns into this:

or this [palm oil plantations]

or occasionally this: [shrimp farm]


Poor forest didn't even stand a chance.

As you can see in the picture below (NASA took this two years ago), this smoke can be seen from space. [Note: I'm under there, somewhere, suffocating.]


So my non-professional guess is that all of this smog fell down yesterday with the rain, causing the horrendous smell in my bathroom.

Sideways man can!

This is the Leader Garden pool. It is freezing cold. And it is bigger than it looks in this picture. And yes, that is a picnic table right in the middle.

Today I was simply minding my own business doing my laps in the pool in peace. All of a sudden I spot sideways man coming my way. Sigh. Sideways man is the man who comes in his teeny little Speedo and thinks he rules the pool. I do my laps down the length of the pool, as does every other normal swimmer that I know. You swim the LONG way. Sideways man swims sideways, therefore interrupting the rest of us swimmers who do it the normal-person way. It's like he's the frog in Frogger who is trying to veer past all the cars and trucks in order to get to the lily pad.
I am the car or the truck who is just trying to do things the normal way while the Frog is risking death to get to the other side. It's not my fault if I run into him.
This reminds me of the time when I found the old Atari in our cabinet. Madie and I tried to revive it (because who can resist frogger or the bowling game) but it was so old that none of the cords were adaptable with our tv. We went on quite a Yakima quest looking for the right cords or whatever, but to no avail. Apparently they are not a very hot commodity.



BUT today it was different! Sideways man started out swimming sideways, but after a length or two he gave up and started swimming the long way. Finally, sideways man can!! I'm sorry I ever doubted him, and yet I have no doubt that that he will revert to his old ways when I leave the pool. Then after that I don't care.
There's all sorts of strange motions and movements all disguised as exercise going on among the Chinese. I often walk or run in the morning on the road behind my apartments, and many of my neighbors do the same. After doing this for a year or so, you start to get to know people. There's Clapper Man, who walks up and down the hill swinging his arms and clapping the whole time. There's also a Swinging Arm Woman (who bears no relation to Clapper Man) who walks while flailing her arms across her body. Then there's all sorts of hip-shaking movements and enough other stuff to really make you laugh, except for the fact that I see it all the time, so therefore it's not that funny anymore. The one thing that still really makes me laugh is the old man who does his stretches on his balcony every morning in his underwear.