Neighbours (www.BorneoExpatWriter.com ) is a short story that presents us glimpses of Malaysian multicultural life.

1. What interpretations can we draw from the event and characterisation in the story?

2. What interpretations arises about Malaysia and her people?

3. What are some of the main concerns of the story?

I have not had any discussion in class yet about “Neighbours” but for now, these are things that come across my mind.

“Neighbours” tells us the story of Malaysian people with different races and cultures who lived in the same area. The people knew each others’ names and they were willing to take the extra mile to know what was going on in other people’s household. Some of them were quite caring while the others were just being busybody with other people’s lives.

The story portrayed that Malaysian people really love gossips and are quite blabbermouth about everything that sounds “hot” around them. The things that the characters talked about were not actually things that were concerned with their lives directly. They just liked to waste their time making gossips about others.

I think the main concern of the story is about the attitude of Malaysian people who mostly always want to know what other people are doing, like to investigate what is happening to other people and in short, try to be Mr-Know-All.

These are all basically my main ideas about the story. I am sure there are so many things to be discussed more than this.

Hi all!

From the story, we can see that Malaysians in general are gossip mongers and they like to dwell in things that do not really concern them. But the fact that the neigbours did help, albeit a few unpleasant complaints, still show the good side of us. That we are kind, helpful and tolerant towards each other. As far as I can remember from the reading of the short story, the real antoganist of the story is Mrs. Koh. She is shown to be selfish in the very first paragraph of the story where she berates her husband Mr. Koh for using their new car. Mrs. Koh is also the one who gleefully retells the story and adds in her own 'twists and turns' to spice up the story. She annoys Mr. Koh a few times when she adds a lot of unrelevant notes to her story.

Mr. Raymer did his best in potraying the characters through his experience of living in the same environment. There is Mr.Koh, who is the rational thinker, Mr.Tan, the seemingly innocent young teacher, Miss Chee, the also seemingly innocent young unattached teacher, who is trying her hard to impress Mr.Tan, Nathan, the Indian dentist that use every opportunity to promote his clinic and last of the bunch is Ramli, who has a little grunge towards Johnny for selling the motorcycle to a stranger when Ramli thinks that as neighbours, Johnny should sell it to him. They are the characters who are given the chance to talk in the story while the unwilling victims are Johnny (the suicidal neighbour and the main reason for the uncalled gathering), Veronica and Lily (wife and daughter of Johnny) and also the central suspects in Mrs.Koh assessment of Johnny's reason for suiciding.

This story is written in the point of view of an expat, a foreigner, who brilliantly captured the essence of the multiracial Malaysia. Although the title gives out positive vibe but the story is the complete opposite.

Raymer's depiction of the mini Malaysian truly captures the attitude and the habit of Malaysians today. Don't you all agree? There's the disatisfaction about life, the selfishness, gambling, the issue about children's respect towards their parent(s), materialistic, and a lot more.

Of course, not all are negatives. The fact that the neighbours did help show that Malaysians in general are kind and helpful. We do not ignore people who are in trouble. Not only that, Raymer also show us the one value that Malaysians are famous of - the tolerance between different races.

Notice or not, although all the characters, in one way or another, are creating rumours about the poor man Johnny, they do not even once mention about the different cultures they are from. They talk about Johnny in a worldly view, and they do not enforce their belief upon each other. Nathan do not, for example, say things like "Ah..the chinese are like that, like to gamble...no wonder..etc". No such dialogues are found in the short story. Which is what I like so much about the story, we are only human, and eventhough we come from different cultures, we are no different from others. It's our own uniqueness that differentiate us, not our race, cultures,and certainly, belief.

What I can deduce from the story for the main concerns are the bond between neigbours are deteriorating, our society getting more selfish and also more money minded. The story is a satire of the Malaysians' attitudes nowadays. Will add more later, this post is too long. Peace~~

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CARPE DIEM!

Truly Malaysian!

It shows how Robert Raymer understands the multiracial-cultural settings in our society. He had given enough examples of ethnicity and stereotypings in the story to match the picture of how the Malaysians see themselves. Staying long enough in this country (about 20 years now), he had seen enough. We also agree to the decription and accept that as a truth.

3 main ethnics in Malaysia living together in a neighbourhood; Malay, Chinese, Indian. I can see that all 3 ethnics were described based on these aspects:-
 economy
 social affair
 family relationship
 marital affair

I don't need to rephrase that here, but based on the points trhat I had given, I think that y'all can see it in the text, right? It was relatively balanced in the description, for example, chinese=business, mahjong, overspending, spouse conflict. malay=mat rempit, married early. Indian=dentist, true love hehe, etc.

A little bit of religion was touched. YES, hail to Robert Raymer.


More about Robert Raymer, please go to:-
http://www.silverfishbooks.com/Silverfish/Version4/Writing/shortstorydetail.asp?id=3

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Operator DVDSN

Hi room…..

Malaysia is a multicultural nation whereby people from different background, races and religion live together, a unique scenario in our nation. The story neighbours itself depicts these multicultural issues in our society today. The story was set in a neighbourhood with various racial people. It all begins when something had happen to Johnny, one of their neighbour, where Mr. and Mrs. Koh takes him to the hospital. After the incident, both of them started to chat with their neighbour. It was then everyone started to draw their own conclusion about what had happen to the family. Everybody tries to make up their own version of what had happen. Interfering others’ life is one of the concerns in this story. The neighbours started to create all sort of stories, various versions, bad version especially. The characterization of them depicts the interpretation of our Malaysian people today, being nosy and busybody, that is part and parcel of it. Maybe this is not totally true, but it does happen in our life though. Our people have tendency to gossip others, mostly negative gossips. That is what happens in this story after all. Just after the incident, everyone started to talk bad thing about the family without taking any action to approach them to get the real picture. It always happens that way. That’s the reality of our LIFE……
Thank you…..Bubyezz….

Hi there Misdy.....

Yea you're right..the story depicts the issue about the attitude of our Malaysian... Maybe it is not totally tr5ue but, gossiping on hot issue is one of the most popular activities among them....I guess it is some sort of habit...People like to exegerate an issue to make it hot.... Everybody want to emphasize that they know all the thing that happen around them..That's the reality..

Bubyezz.....

Hi, everyone here! As all of you know that, Malaysia is a multiracial culture, maybe there are different races around you, but the most important is, you can stay peace with them? Maybe some of you can, maybe not.

After I read this story, I really dislike Mrs. Koh character. I admit that Chinese people have many types of prohibitions, but why Mrs. Koh cannot even agree her husband fetch Johnny who almost died to the hospital first? Isn’t a car is more important than a life? Some more, Mrs. Koh is a busybody woman in this story, she like to spread the rumours, exaggerate what she heard from others and try to create the new story version. What I feel lucky is, Mrs. Koh has a good husband like Mr. Koh. Every time when Mrs. Koh gossips the other people news to Mr. Koh, he didn’t give any comments or exaggerate it. Besides that, Mr. Koh always tries to tolerate with Mrs. Koh.

From the story, I like the lifestyle of them because even though they are multiracial but they can stay together and have a peace life. They can also help each other if their neighbours are in trouble.

Anyway, we should always concern to our friends or neighbours even they are same race as you or different. Like what you all replied in the forum, gossips are one of the habits for everyone, but make sure that don’t just keep spreading the rumours and exaggerate the news that is not real. Then, we will have a peace life!

we all already know that Malaysian people always 'jaga tepi kain orang '
they will never stop talking about others.

that's what all the characters show from starting till the end of the story...

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ThaT’$ aLL f0r T0daY,,,, TQ wk@k@

[0][p][a][h][r][0][c][k].com.my

kik! kikk!! kikkk!!!

Hello pals….

As for me, the story was written based on the outsider’s angle. The story is about the black and white part of living in a neighboring residential. Our identity, trademark as Malaysia that build of three main ethnic groups, Malay, Chinese and Indian echoes from the starting till the end of story.

In Neighbour, the muti-racial community were sharing the nature among of them. Regardless of their faith, skin colour and racial , their still can have a short chit-chat in the afternoon. Well, that is why Malaysia a place like no other.

The setting was in the urban area where by people are more to materialistic and more to mind-your-business-life-style. People are more interested to a verbal-news and that was exactly happened in Neighbour.

People are more to listened to rumor stuffs that is one of the core attribute of our Malaysian community today. All of them the Chinese, Indian and the Malay will gather together as their have already got the natural-neighbour-bonding when it comes to rumor yet they will split and ignoring each other when it comes to a serious matter. It resembles the true pattern of living in urban area even if it is a bit stereotyping yet it is true. This is what we call the black and white side of living in that kind of life style.

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Frankly I don’t like this story because it’s a dull and bored. But, here is my view to fill up this sleepy afternoon and to kill my boredom.

For me this story is a cynical depiction of Malaysian. I don't know who Robert Raymer is, but obviously he is very sceptical on Malaysian society. ‘The Neighbour’s to me is an illustration on how outsiders (if he is an outsider) look upon us; view us as bad-mouthed society, greedy, superstitious and so on. In other word, this short story is an emblem to denote all the negative attitudes of Malaysian. But luckily there are some good characters in this story to denote some positive values conceal behind those materialistic souls, thus it makes this story more realistic in Malaysian neighbourhood. But here, I’m not satisfied with all the negativity that embodies this story. I’m not saying that we deserve to be bestowed as the 1st class society that possesses with all the noble values since lot of bad things still happening around us, but to me not all of us like bad-mouthed Mrs Koh, or greedy Dr. Nathan in the short story. So it’s not fair to take them as the resemblance of whole Malaysian.

Sorry if this view is a bit out of track, but I just hope that we can look on different dimensions conceal behind the superficial issues of the story.

So, what say you?

That’s all all for now, AriOs!!

(*_*)