And now from my hairy faced companion:

for those unfortunate souls who have not made it onto eben's email list, here are some thoughts from him:

Salamat
(greetings)

Remember to always keep your cool here, keep it tucked away, 'cause if you
lose it, man it's hot.  When it rains, you rejoice, though the Malaysians seem
to run for cover.  I think the rain is the cover.  Tucks in the cool.  Keep
it.

I just had a sugar cane drink.  The vendor put these huge stalks of the stuff
through this rolling pressing wheel about four or five times until the stalks
were practically dried and mushsplintered and then I drank.  Mmmm.  Very very
sweet, and very greeny tasting.  Green is good.  This was nice, but I think
the coconut drinking is the best: we've had a large green one and a smaller
brown one.  The guy chops off the top and you stick in a straw and slurp up
the sweet nectar.  Oh, outside the Hindu temple we ventured into in Singapore
(remember to go in the front way and to take off your shoes), some would smash
coconuts as symoblic of the ego: the hard exterior revealing the soft
interior.  I didn't actually see this, but I saw the coconut rinds (assuming
they are rinds?).

So we've been keeping busy; it feels like we've been here ages and yet, not
really.  Hours go by so fast but days and time in general is slowfastslowfast.
Yesterday, we decided to take buses to a ferry and go to Perau Besar (I think
that's what it's called -- meaning, "big island").  We got on this
40-passenger boat and started off on the rough waters.  Almost immediately,
this guy to our right started to lose his lunch.  He was in real rough shape.
A child also lost (seemingly) four lunches at once.  The woman sitting behind
Natalie was also in rough shape.  Well, they'd stop the boat to try to help
out these people, but the seas were not calm, so finally the guy who kept
vomitting yelled at them and they just drove the rest of the way.  All this on
what was supposed to be a 25 minute crossing!

The island was nice, seeing fiddler crabs (perhaps?) and some villagers and
nice trees birds sky water fish land love sunshine death garbage and a man who
informed me "pray pray pray" as he went to a shrine with incense.  So much
incense burnt.  Save the incense!  But that's nothing compared to the amount
of Chinese shrines in Malaka.  There must be more than there are Chinese!
We've been inside a mosque (in Sinagpore) as well as that Hindu temple...no
Chinese temples yet.  Going into these places is a tough thing to do.  Is it
acceptable?  What are we doing there?  What's going on?
How/when/why(QUESTION) does one pray in that kind of setting?  How do I escape
the escapade of my own language?

Today is the first time really Natalie and I have split up.  I went to the
bank then got promptly lost.  Well, not really lost.  Lost of course is more
of a feeling, and I didn't feel lost.  I just wandered.  Bought some ciku
fruit as well as a yellow pomegranate.  The fruit here is so tasty (peel it
first!).  Have had mangos and mangosteens (WOW!) and oranges and mini orange
bananas and a rose apple (not so good)...pineapple awaits at room (different
kind from back in Canada).

And we saw this beggar in Johor Bahru after getting off the bus coming up from
Singapore.  He had two chunks missing from one leg: red in a forest of brown.
A hint of things to come?  Will my coconut harden or try to envelope the
impossible?  It's a bit of a nervous area.  All coconuts can crack.  All
coconuts can grow.

Being vegetarian is a challenge.  Indian food is fine, but Chinese and
Perkanan and most other Muslim food is not so good.  They'll say it's
vegetarian but it'll have anything from tiny fish (an interesting experience)
to chicken to god knows what else.  Veganism is touch and go, not an essential
thing really.  (I had some gross egg tart thing this morning...didn't know it
was egg!)

Ok, time for you people to make bets.  How long before ... wait, more context
is needed: there are open storm sewers here, right next to the road, where
pedestrians walk (there aren't any sidewalks, or very few).  How long before
Natalie falls in one?  How long before I find a Bob Dylan song to listen to?
How long before one of us gets well ill?  How long before...we had others, but
I forget them now.

The people here are pretty kind.  Talking to strangers is not as weird here.
Actually, after the boat ride, Natalie and I got rides back with these people
we met on the ferry...on their motorcycles!  Neither of us had ever been on
one before.  The guys rode very slowly and were very nice (ie. don't worry,
mom and dad! - yes, we had helmets too!).  Motorcycles here are everywhere and
more of a transport method; back in Canada and the US, they are more of a
symbol, a punctuation leaving its mark.

Another type of punctuation: the mosque (the masjid).  In Singapore, there was
this very mournful (my interpretation -- as is ,of course!, this whole email)
sound from the mosque.  Then, here in Malaysia, they broadcast over
loudspeakers the prayer time (Muslims pray five times a day facing Mecca with
differing number of prayer cycles within that): they do so by having who I
assume is the imman singspeak some Arabic prayerphrases for a few minutes.  It
sounds again to me mournful, but stunningly tearyeyed beautiful.

But now these words are too long in my eyes.  My I's long for those other
words out there.

- eb