Showing Up

Published August 2008


Freelance writer and independent journalist Jen Pinkowski made a stop in Sabah recently on one of her many travels and I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to sit with her and pick her brain a little. New York Times contributor and world traveler, Jen aims to experience as much as possible and share her thoughts and opinions with others.
I could go on about her globetrotting accomplishments but I think the following introduction on Jen's website does a far better job :


"Egypt answered her questions about the cult of a boozy, lion-headed goddess. Thailand scared the mosquitoes off her with an entomological smack. China hosted Jen's look into ancient bronze technology; squat toilets and street food; and ways to stay two steps ahead of Ed Norton while hiking. Kashmir simply grabbed Jen by the shoulders and gave her a damned good shake. And that's just part of the reportage.

Closer to home in New York City, Jennifer has written about the post-9/11 crackdown on illegal immigrants; Pluto, paleontology, and poetry; homeless veterans and teenage prostitutes; censored books and freedom of information; and how infomercials are the epitome of American televangelism.
Jennifer has devoted 2007 to a solo global reporting adventure through a dozen countries in Asia and Europe, and then sorting through it all back home in NYC."



THIS IS YOUR FIRST VISIT TO SABAH. WHAT MADE YOU DECIDE TO HEAD OVER HERE?
An old friend invited me. She said she had plans to come here and I think that was a good enough reason for me.I've been to China, Vietnam, India and Indonesia but never to this part of Malaysia.I think Malaysia is my 20th country to visit. But there are a lot of places that I still haven't been to.


YOU CONTRIBUTE TO THE NEW YORK TIMES, ARCHAEOLOGY MAGAZINE AND DISCOVER MAGAZINE AMONGST A LOT OF OTHERS. WHAT WOULD YOU BE WRITING ABOUT WITH REGARDS TO SABAH? ANY BROAD STROKES?
Archaeologically speaking I will be writing about ancient coffins that have been found around Sabah. I would also like to write something about scuba diving that would incorporate ecological issues such as unsustainable fishing. Another thing would be my recent trip to Danum Valley. I'd like to write about the unusual wildlife there, particularly ants. There is this ant behavior that only happens in Sabah and in the Amazon jungle, just these two places in the world. It's basically two different ant species sharing the same nest.It's a phenomenon called parabiosis. It's sometimes called mutualism. I'm still in the exploratory mode and I'm still trying to process everything.



TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOURSELF - YOUR BACKGROUND, HOW YOU STARTED
I've been living in New York for half my life so I'm a qualified New Yorker now. Someone told me it takes eight years before you can call yourself a true New Yorker. I don't know why but it's a very arbitrary number. I graduated from a small liberal arts college called Sarah Lawrence. My degree was in Fiction Writing and Photography. I then went to the Columbia University Graduates School of Journalism. That was in 2001 and I had already worked for some small magazines and publishing houses. I've been a staff writer, editor and also a freelancer in various magazines. From Cosmopolitan to Discover, Business Traveler and Archaeology to name a few.
I'm married. No kids. Three cats.My family is very water oriented. I grew up by a lake and now my parents live by the ocean. That is what I've really enjoyed about being in Sabah, everything is so coastal and I enjoyed being by the water. And even in Danum Valley there was a river there which was great. I also do photography, of nature more than anything else. I would like to pursue photography more as a professional but it always takes a backseat to the writing as I have more experience in writing and editing.But I have certainly gotten some wonderful shots since I've been here, mostly of the natural beauty.



ANY TIPS FOR WOULD-BE WRITERS?
I guess it depends on deciding what kind of writer you want to be. I still like to write fiction sometimes but it's extremely difficult to make a living as a fiction writer. That's probably the first bit of advice; have a day job.
Also just keep writing. Write stories that compel you, that entertain you in some ways. Read a lot. That was one of the reasons why I wanted to be a writer, because I love to read. And it's the best way to learn how to be a writer, learning about structure and how to tell a story, which is probably the most important thing.
Learn how to tell just one story because there are so many stories that it's easy to get off track, which is something I'm always struggling with. That's part of the process of defining your narrative. And that applies to both fiction and non-fiction writing.



WHAT'S A FAVORITE TRAVEL STORY? 
There are so many, I'm trying to think. My favorite story is maybe a little inappropriate but I've been entertaining people with it lately.This has to do with a Hungarian anesthesiologist I met on a train to Budapest. We were drinking some wine and he started to hit on me. He had his hand on my knee and after I explained I was married he grabbed my foot. And shoved it in his mouth. I guess he liked feet. I extracted my foot from his grasp and told him I had to go. That's not really illuminating about traveling though.

I could tell you my favorite story about Sabah from being on this trip and that was in Danum Valley. My friend and I were going to a limestone cave when we came across some large elephant prints in the mud. One set of prints were small, so they were from a juvenile. And elephants are known for being very territorial and protective. We did not want to get in between mama elephant and baby elephant but there was this excitement of following that trail, whether we were going to encounter these elephants or not. We were excited to be doing it and we did not know what was going to happen, even though we were a little terrified. It was so much new stimulus, of the experience of dodging leeches and the heat and the humidity. I think travel for me is about not knowing what is going to happen and being excited by it. A bit scared sometimes and unsettled but getting through it and testing boundaries.



YOU MENTIONED THAT YOU ENJOY TRAVELING ALONE
When I'm with another person, my focus is on them. When I'm traveling alone, I don't really have to talk to anybody. And maybe I don't really want to compromise what I want to do. Traveling alone makes me far more approachable to other people. A lot of people start conversations with me, adopt me for a little while and take me around. I think partially that has to do with being a woman, which can be a really good thing or a really bad thing. It has its own set of challenges as well. Particularly being a western woman in non-western regions, there are certain images about who western women are, what they do. But for the most part I think that traveling alone makes me more approachable to other women who would be less inclined to approach a single man because that might be problematic. This has given me a lot of experiences that I wouldn't have had otherwise.

Sometimes you can learn the most about a culture simply by figuring out the bus system and getting on one and getting lost. Like here in KK I took the wrong bus and got lost. Somebody helped me out and pointed out the right minibus for me to take. I observed minibus life and that was okay. It's better than having somebody put me on a bus and direct me to the site that they think I should see simply because I'm a foreigner here and that's what I'm supposed to see.



AND YOU'RE WORKING ON A BOOK ABOUT YOUR TRAVELS, "SHOWING UP"
Well Woody Allen once said that ninety percent of life is just showing up and I'm a pretty firm believer in that. You don't have to have a plan all the time and you can't control everything. I may not know what's going to happen and I may not have a firm plan about it but you never know where things are going to lead to and you couldn't have anticipated it. The whole world is connected and there are various relationships that can be made. There are so many options.

"Showing Up" is a working title of my book and it's based on the idea of me being a long term resident of New York city and I felt that I was at a crossroad in my life. I wanted to travel and just shake up my perspective. I wanted a new perspective. I wanted to show up at the rest of the world and that's pretty much what I did. I took a four month trip around the world from New York to Reykjavik and spent most of my time in Asia. So the book is basically a travel memoir of the past year and a half and the effect a place can have on a person and how that forms an identity. I think that's a question we're all kind of asking ourselves : "Why am I here?". And I wanted to know what that meant for other people so I tried to explore that with others and also explored that within myself, how I defined myself. I think we're always looking for our identities and over time they change, not necessarily drastically but the experiences and relationships that we have all form our objectives and how we see ourselves. 

Ideally I would be a free floating brain without a body or cultural attachments, not just an American journalist, so that I could be culturally immersed and truly see how people think and feel. We have different cultural manifestations of who we think we are but everybody is essentially the same. Anger, sadness, excitement and all of those things. And around the world how these emotions manifest is different a lot of the time and is interesting but it all comes down to the same thing. Utter difference and utter similarity for me is one of the most fascinating things about travel.


.jenpinkowski.com