They wear shoes in the house. Can you imagine that? Like i'd go in and i try to take my shoes
off and her dad would be like "oh no no it's okay, leave it on" and i'll be like, no i want to take
it off. Like please let me take off my shoes. No no it's okay it's okay just walk on in.
There you go. Oh thank you. You're welcome. Tonight is date night and there's some banana bread. Oh yum
yeah and both boys are asleep, thankfully
So we can enjoy just a quiet evening together. Yeah so today we're gonna talk and share a little bit
with you guys about what dating a Malaysian versus dating an american look like. So you guys already
know, we are married. I'm Malaysian, Rachel's an American what we'll do is we'll share some of
our previous experience when we were dating, what the culture differences are and hopefully you guys
get some different perspectives there. So Rachel will share her perspective of dating a Malaysian
and i will share my perspective of dating an American. Alright you go first. Let me think
I think a big one is probably language. I mean we both speak english. Logesh speaks
perfect english, I only speak english however there's words that were just not the same
For example when Logesh asked me out on our first date, he told me he was going to come fetch me
Well i mean, so the reason is because we Malaysian, we speak British english
so wanting to fetch someone is a normal thing meaning that you want to go and
in american terms they say 'pick up' someone and so i guess she was offended. This was like the
first time i was gonna pick you up right and so i said 'hey can i come and fetch you' and she was like
'um fetch me'. I'm like yeah. Okay so in America we typically only use the word fetch to refer to
playing with a dog. You play fetch with an animal. You don't fetch people. Oh another good
one is dustbin. What in the world is a dustbin. I had no clue what he was asking me for the first
time he said dustbin. A dustin is where you put garbage or in america they would say trash. So in
america it's what it's called a... Trash can which makes sense because that's where you put trash.
You don't put dust. We also put dust there. I mean but you put trash in your bin so it should
be called a trash can. Yeah so there's a lot of like miscommunication initially. Even though we
speak english, both of us speak pretty okay. I mean I speak average english, she speaks great english.
Still there's a lot of miscommunication. But we've learned a lot over the past many years.
So while we're on the topic of language, one of the things i struggled initially when i was dating
Rachel was that Americans love to speak in idioms where else we Malaysians would speak literally.
For example i would say something like you know if someone has an upcoming game, I'll say 'hey good
luck in your game'. Where else an American would say.. uh break a leg. They would say like break a leg.
Crazy right? Is there any other example? uh i guess another example is 'I'm just pulling your leg'. See.
Like for us we'd say 'oh i'm just teasing you' or 'joking, joking lah' you know where else they'll say like
very descriptive idioms about certain things. So initially it was kind of difficult understanding
all those, but over time i think i've learned. I've learned some of it. I would say another
big thing about dating a Malaysian especially Logesh is the importance of food. Touchy subject
This guy, i'm pretty sure the second he wakes up he thinks about breakfast, lunch, tea time, dinner
constantly and i learned very quickly that if he had a bad meal, that could potentially ruin
the whole rest of his day. Oh yeah. I mean we Malaysians, we really love our food so
i usually do plan out like breakfast lunch dinner at the beginning of the day and also like if i do
have a crappy meal i'll be so pissed off. And the other thing is because that
in Malaysia, at least the food is a bit more affordable. In America eating out is expensive
and so when i go out and i pay so much money to eat food, i expect it to be good food
and sometimes know you just don't get good food and i get so mad. This really affects my mood man
Another thing too with food differences is that you would always tell me i don't season my food
Americans very rarely season their food. We use salt and pepper. Bland.
But the importance, i feel food is fuel to Americans where i feel like food is life to
Malaysians. Yeah so that's the other thing right. It's kind of a challenging situation because
you know when i was dating rachel like for me food is important and you know when
we wanna go on a lunch date or dinner date or whatever i would like pick up my phone look for like
the best place we can go to discover this new food or try something new. Rachel will be like
let's look in the fridge and see what leftovers we have. I'm like oh man like you know food wasn't
very important for her growing up. It was just more like fuel. For us it's like we need to go find good food.
like that is absolutely important for us. He'd be willing to drive up to an hour just to get
a decent meal and for me, there might be a just fine restaurant 5-10 minutes away, why not go there?
Rachel even back then wouldn't eat like a lot of different food. She really
enjoyed chicken and for example she wouldn't eat any seafood. Dude, that was so hard for me and
i want to go out to like a seafood restaurant or eat sushi. That was rough but i trained her.
Today she eats sushi. Proud to say that. She's come a long way. Yeah i think her willingness
to actually like open up and try different things over time. It was a long process but now she does
eat a lot of different things, including spicy food. I do eat spicy food. Actually fun fact, our
very first date Logesh took me to Malaysian food and i am very certain that was a test if i could
not eat malaysian food i don't think there would have been a second date. Yeah this is very true
It was really a test. The reason being is that again this is another cultural thing
There are a lot of americans that, they just can't eat malaysian food, spicy food, flavorful
food. Like that's just too much for them and food is so important for me that i felt that you know
if i want to date a girl or even marry a girl, if she can't enjoy malaysian food, it's not happening.
Like that's just not gonna work and so it was kind of a test and she passed. Obviously
So moving on from the food topic, the other thing that i kind of found challenging
dating rachel was PDA, otherwise known as public display of affection. So just for context we
didn't kiss during when we were dating. First time we kissed was on our wedding day. But while
we were dating you know we would hold hands and everything like normal but Rachel really
enjoyed or really liked hugging, cuddling in public and you know doing all these kinds of things in
public. For me i cringe at the thought of doing that public. In private that's absolutely fine
like i don't mind doing that but in public it's just that i just felt so awkward right doing it.
Just not used to it being an asian but it was completely normal for her. Yeah here in america
people hug each other all the time. You hug your friends, you hug your parents, you hug your siblings,
you hug your boyfriend. It's not a weird thing at all and it's really normal to go out and see
lots of people hugging. Not right now with Covid but it's very normal and so for me
to hug my boyfriend at the time just felt right. It didn't feel uncomfortable at all. Yeah but for me
like i'd hug her like when we were private but like out there when a lot of people are around
kind of rough. Even now you don't really like cuddling in public. Yeah even now yeah like i'll
hug you private though. Well there's probably thousands of people watching this right now
Dang it. Well i would say another thing about dating a Malaysian is how being on
time is not a priority. It's not that it's not a priority. It's more like sometimes i'm just late
and a huge part of this is just being a very punctual person in general but in america
typically if you make plans with someone at six o'clock, you show up at six o'clock
and that's it. At least i call her and say, 'i'm on the way, i'm on the way'. And
i'm pretty sure he hasn't even left yet. Well you don't know that i'm pretty sure
Even now though i'm always dragging him to try to be on time. He's like why do we have to be on time
what's the reason? But i like things to start when they're supposed to. Okay so here's another thing
Americans love to overdo their compliments and also sugar coat negative statements
Example, if rachel wears a beautiful dress and i like the dress i will say 'hey that's
a beautiful dress, amazing'. On the other hand.. If you just get dressed for the day. If i
just get dressed for the day, normal black t-shirt, all black t-shirts just like this.
Oh you look really handsome today. You look really nice and the next day if i wear no shirt, oh you
still look great. In the following day if i just wear a tank top, you look wonderful like
compliments after compliments after compliments. It's wonderful, it's a confidence booster for me
it's great and she means it in the most purest form. Uh she really means it, but over time
these compliments just gets almost like devalued. But on the other flip side, Asians we only give
compliments when its like, absolutely real right. When i really feel like whoa that dress is stunning
i'll tell her like gorgeous babe that dress is amazing. And it comes very far and few. About the
negative statements though you know like we asians we don't have any filter so if i
don't like something i'm just gonna say i don't like that. Oh i don't enjoy that. Well for Americans,
they say it in a very polite way. I mean we'd probably say.. I usually say it's not my favorite
Yep that's her favorite one. You know whenever if i say if i give her a snack or i make
something that she doesn't really like, she'd probably tell me like 'oh that's not my favorite'.
I'm like huh, if it's not your favorite there's still potential for it to be a favorite in the
future huh? No it means i don't like it but i don't want to hurt your feelings. He says that i
sugarcoat things which i think i've rubbed off on him though because that is very much an american
idiom right there. Yeah that's true. Another thing about dating a Malaysian is on our very first date,
when Logesh came to pick me up, he texted me to let me know he was there and i was not happy about
that because here in America you knock on the girl's door to pick her up. Well i did come halfway
I opened the door after he texted me and he's there in front of my door but he never
knocked on my door. Okay so here's the deal, here's what exactly went down. In Malaysia you know we
have gates. You know in a lot of houses there's gates in front so when you want to go pick
your friend up or girl up for a date or whatever you can't knock. There's nowhere to knock on the
door. You just drive up to the front and you text them and you call them to come out right
and so, i wasn't used to like going up to someone's house and knocking on the door, parents coming out
and like talking to the parents. I wasn't used to that. So i remember when first time i went to fetch
her, I didn't know what i should do. I remember like oh i've seen it in the movies, that they go up to the
door but i don't know if i should text her, like are we living in a different age, i didn't know
so what i ended up doing was i did a little bit of both. I texted her and i walked up to the door
but i didn't knock up the door. I was like i don't know what to do. And i gave him a hard
time about that on our first date and he explained to me that that's what they do in Malaysia and i
forgave him immediately. Yep and ever since then, i went up to the door every single time after that
Yes he did. So the other thing that rachel did when we were dating was that she really loved to like
label the stages of relationship. Like when we were courting and moved to dating, seeing each other,
I don't know they were like stages and for me, i felt like we were adults. We didn't need to label it.
So i assumed we were like at a point like we already seeing each other and we're like
exclusive or whatever. But apparently she had to have a conversation with me
about like 'hey you've never asked me to be your girlfriend'. I was like oh i had to ask
That's fair just to know that i'm your girlfriend and you're my boyfriend. Yeah yeah. Well thankfully
you did ask me to become your wife. I did yeah. I mean it was fair. I think it was she really want
to know where we are in the relationship and i probably wasn't doing a good job in like stating
that. So i did eventually ask her to make be my girlfriend back then. But yeah americans, they love
to like label the stages of relationship you're in so that they just want to know
where they are at. I would say another thing about dating a Malaysian is how late you guys eat dinner.
You guys eat dinner so early. They have dinner like 5:30 that's when we are having like tea time
Dinner at like eight or nine o'clock at night is way too late. That's very close to my bedtime
We'd want to go on dates and he'd want to eat really late and i'd want to eat really
early. Well now it's like right in the middle we eat about like six seven o'clock. So it's about
in the middle of both times. I think that's kind of in the theme of all these is that we find a
good middle ground. And yeah we've slowly like discovered the things that work for our family
mm-hmm but i really don't like eating dinner late. And I don't like eating dinner too early. This one is
an important one. This drove me insane. When we were dating and i'd go over to a house
they wear shoes in the house. Can you imagine that? Like i'd go in and i tried to take my shoes off
and her dad would be like oh no no it's okay leave it on and i'll be like no i want to take it off
please let me take off my shoes. He'll be like no no it's okay it's okay just
walk on in. I felt so uncomfortable like walking into the house, into the kitchen,
into the bathroom and everything with my shoes on and i just thought it was the grossest thing ever
In hindsight it is actually pretty gross. Most Americans do wear their shoes inside their homes
When we were dating and eventually you know got married and all that, I told her up from, like hey
that's not going to happen in our household. Like we're not going to wear shoes in our house yeah
And to this day we never wear shoes inside our house. We always take them off so anyone out
there is very concerned, don't worry we don't wear shoes in our house. So these are just a few
of our personal experiences with the difference of dating a Malaysian versus dating an American
If i missed anything important about dating a Malaysian, let me know in the comments down below
and if i've missed anything about dating an American, please leave it down in the
comments below too. As always, thank you guys so much for watching. It would mean
the world to us if you subscribe to our channel. Until next time guys, bye. Bye.