Notes from Europe: Italy & the UK - April 2008

Salam semua,

I've just got back from Italy, attending an international event in Milan and tour guiding a group while doing some research around the Venice, Padova and Como area (incidentally where 'Casino Royale' was filmed). Flew north for a weekend in London before returning to Milan, then back to KL via Dubai.

For me, Italy is like 'balik kampung' as I spent time studying there and still speak fluent Italian. So much so that Italian Immigration personnel thought I was working there! But my Italian is put to good use because I promote Malaysia in my tour guiding for Italians and other Europeans.

This is in fact the first time I set foot in Italy after 21 years! It's a fascinating homecoming of sorts. Italy, like many parts of Europe, is both a land of storied past and dynamic present. And I'm glad I'm from an equally dynamic country with much to be proud of – no inferiority complex here.

I had kept in touch with a good ole Italian friend from Milan itself, Moreno. And he was so kind as to offer me and my fellow two Malaysian architects Surea & Chan to stay in his cozy apartment in the Corvetto suburb south of the city.

Our first day was at the sprawling Fiera Milano Rho for the Salone Internazionale di Mobili, an international design fair focusing on furniture – the best from the past and the latest for the future. Indeed, some of the most appealing and even exotic furniture can be seen here. People who are interested in design should be here as there's much to appreciate, especially if you bring me along as your Italian-speaking guide :-) , like I was for the Malaysian group I went with. We'd love to come back for next year's Fair.

We even met some Indonesians checking out the latest design offerings. It's nice to meet Indonesians; I always feel a kinship with fellow people of the Nusantara, sharing our related language and cultures.

In fact, I was in Italy also to do some research on the Nusantara for my upcoming book. Italians are very interested in history & heritage. Not surprisingly because they have a long history from the ancient Romans to medieval Islamic influence to the many European wars and interventions right through World War II.

Yet they're not interested in just their own history. Recently, Italian researchers studying ancient world historic links have found that there must have been connections between the Malay World and as far north of the Indian subcontinent as the Indus Valley - remember the ancient cities at Mohenjo Daro and Harappa, in today's Pakisan.

As an example, Italian tests on archaeological remains found in the Indus Valley indicate the presence of banana species that are originally grown only in the Malay Archipelago! This is 4000 years ago! It corroborates my own research that the Malay peoples of South-east Asia have long been seafaring traders since pre-Biblical times. Indeed, old texts from India confirm that ships of the "Malayo" have been sailing around the Indian Ocean just like the various Indian states have also been trading with the Nusantara. This Italian finding was also reported via BBC History in March.

When I arrived in London, the UK was going through a petrol supply strike crisis. On Sunday my brother-in-law Ben and I drove from one south London petrol station to another looking for a pump which was not filled with anxious buyers. By the time I left UK that Wednesday, car fuel prices had risen to £1.2 (RM7) per litre. As high as Italy's, yet isn't Britain (via North Sea oil) one of Europe's biggest oil producers?

Food costs were rising fast across Europe too, not just in both Italy andUK, but in France for example, bread prices have been raised three times in the last 6 months. The BBC reports food supply and price rise tensions in places from the Philippines to Egypt to supermarket shelves emptying of rice in even some Wal-Marts in the USA!

We are much better off in Malaysia, with petrol and staples better controlled by the Government (except rice in ironically Kedah the rice-planting heartland, I hear). And when I got home, I was proud to see that my family was doing its bit to help with food production. In my two-week absence my wife and kids had planted more kinds of fruits and veggies in our little garden, as I had suggested.

We can always do something, anything, for a better world, insyAllah.
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