BEING AN INTERNATIONAL PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OBSERVER IN SYRIA AND MISTAKEN FOR AN ACTOR FROM SOUTH KOREA…AND WHAT BEING A NOT SO TYPICAL MALAYSIAN IS…

By Mansor Puteh

I have grown up to take what I experience being a not so typical Malaysian as some kind of a joke with the so many funny experiences I had had all these years. 

I have always been mistaken for being a Chinese; the bit of Chinese blood that flowed from the long line of Chinese ancestors on my mother’s side, who had come from China caused this to happen. 

And no wonder when I was still a young boy I could recognize how some of my aunts were speaking in Malay but in a different accent than that the other Malay women had.

But I did not have any strain of Indian blood to show anyone, but some of my other relatives had a lot of that with my uncle whose name was Pakcik Hashim had a lot of that so my brothers and sisters called him Pak Itam, as did some of my brothers who were also dark. They got a lot of the Indian blood or DNA from my father’s side although my father was very fair, so no wonder his father called him Puteh.

I did not imagine how when I was invited to be a member of the international observers team to monitor the Syrian Presidential election of 3 June, 2014, that I could be mistaken for a famous actor from South Korea.

So most of the time I was in Damascus and later sent with a team to the City of Homs, about four hours away from the capital city, that I would be mistaken for a famous actor from South Korea.

No wonder I was stopped by the boys and girls who asked to pose with them, and because of that I was the last person in the retinue of observers from other countries, with the guards having to push away the locals who wanted to pose photos with me.

I didn’t realize what was happening at that time, until we got back to Damascus later that night and bumped into a former Iranian diplomat in their embassy in Kuala Lumpur who I had befriended who on his own said: In Syria, you will be very famous!

Before I could ask him why, he went on to tell me about a famous actor from South Korea who had appeared in an Arab film, and who said how I looked very much like him.

I felt embarrassed not because it was my fault but because I did not know earlier that this could be an unusual experience I had earlier and continued to experience until I left Damascus to return to Tehran, Iran for a few days before returning to Malaysia.

In all the forty countries I have visited thus far, I have always been mistaken for Japanese; not many thought I was Chinese or worse, Malay!

In the three years I was in America living mostly in New York City and a few months in Boston, I was always Japanese to the Americans on campus at Columbia University in New York City and elsewhere I was at.

Maybe, many thought because of the weather our skin color changed a lot so many Malays would have the Japanese look.

But I did not expect to get the same experience when I was in Japan a few times when many thought I was one of them. I was approached by a local film crew when I was participating in the Yamagata International Film Festival in the City of Yamagata, and a man asked me a very long question in Japanese, a word of which I did not understand. When he was done, he put his microphone at my mouth and probably asked, what do you think, for which I said, ‘No Japanese!’ He seemed startled.

And often times when I am walking about in Kuala Lumpur or in Melaka where I came from the locals who did not know who I am thought I was a tourist from Japan, from my looks and mostly from how I would record video and take photos of everything and sometimes looking alien to the place, even when I am back in Melaka for a brief visit. 

In one ‘pasar malam’ or night market some Malay boys at the burger stall were heard saying in Malays: ‘There must be no such markets in his country…’ when they saw me recording video of the place. And when I speak with them in Malay, they lauded my proficiency in the language.

I was off-boarded from a plane in Xiamen, China once, where the plane had landed, and the airport staff spoke to me in Mandarin that I did not know what they were saying, although I speak a bit of Hokkien that they did not use very much in what used to be a Hokkien area in China, and with another one of them handing my luggage. 

They then realized that I did not know what they were saying and started to use the translator app in their phone by saying that, I had asked to be left in Xiamen and not proceed on to Los Angeles! 

I ended up being left at the airport for half a day and was allowed to catch a connecting flight to Los Angeles from here the next day.