With Love, From Malaysia

"With Love, From Malaysia" is an intimate look at Malaysia in the 1970s, through a series of letters home by a young Canadian mother. With two toddlers and her Malaysian surgeon husband, she adjusts to life in a new country and strange culture. Karen E. Musa chronicles the challenges of tolerating a stifling bureaucracy and accommodating "how they do things differently." "With Love, From Malaysia" narrates the young family's rich and varied experiences, from their royal audience with the Sultan of Johore to visits to the kampong. For Karen Musa, the warmth of her husband's large extended family considerably eased her culture shock of "enjoying" the "luxury" of household maids, her continuing "saga of the telephone," and other tribulations in dealing with Third World officialdom. The family's adventures in the mundane chores of daily living, which the natives take in stride, make for entertaining reading. This is the Malaysia that natives and foreigners alike rarely experience or appreciate.