Last night, one of my best gal friends in Malaysia, Natalie and I decided to further explore KL’s expat scene by mixing it up at KL Expat Magazine’s launch party hosted by Twenty-One. Between the two of us, one Korean and one American, we cover a pretty good range of expat-ness. We also love speculating about the true nature of the expat community here. Although diverting, our speculations are somewhat starved for material. Most of our interactions with other expats have been through frisbee, the hash, or language classes. These encounters have generally led us to theorize that the expat community is older, predominantly male, and living in either Bangsar or Mount Kiara. But we were excited about the prospect of new fodder (aka data!) for our ruminations.
When we strolled up to Twenty-One there was already a line forming. Before long, the place was packed. This is where in normal party reviews one would write “the dresses were gorgeous and the dancing was hot, hot!” Unfortunately, my immediate impression from being surrounded by expats for the first time in a long time was “oh no! I’m short again!!” The only dresses I could see (yes, they were gorgeous) were the ones on the two towering must-be-models women standing behind me. Rumor has it that there was a dance floor on the other side of those two, but I was beginning to remember the visibility problems that come with no longer being on the tall side of normal.
Natalie and I were surprised by the sheer number of women at the launch. Of course, free cocktails for ladies all night long in a country that taxes alcohol like it’s a sin probably biased the sample. Nonetheless, it was exciting to swap stories with other women and hear what brought them to Malaysia. As for age, there were a number of twenty-somethings in the crowd, but the crush was definitely skewed to the over 35. And lots of people were from out by Bukit Kiara. (Which is a beautiful area for a road run if anyone is interested . . .)
The best part of the night, for me, however came when I was explaining to Alex, the Malaysian manager of MAP, a new arts space in KL, that despite the obvious titulary contradictions North Carolina is still part of the South making me a bonafide Southerner. Without missing a beat or sloshing his beer, he exclaimed “but you don’t sound like my friend from Georgia” and stomped off to find her. Before long he returned with his friend from Atlanta in tow. One sentence in her lovely southern drawl was enough to send shivers of home down my spine. She’d only been here six weeks, but already diplomatically proclaimed Malaysia “interesting” a phrase that prompted a spontaneous look of shared understanding. A short, blue-eyed dirty blond, I can only imagine her experience as a beautiful, tall black woman in Malaysia, but I can sympathize. After a quick hug between Southern gals and a hurried exchange of contact info she returned to her group on the other side of the bar, but it was definitely a highlight of my night.
No anthropologist, I’m new to this whole participant observation thing and cannot come to any conclusions about the social rituals of Malaysia’s expats. All I can say is that the party was fun, the dancing was presumably hot, hot! And the dresses – what I could see of them – were gorgeous.
