"Have you heard?" my American sister-in-law asks. "Malaysia has banned yoga."

Oh, great. Here we go again.

I'm Malaysian, born and bred. Six years ago, I married my American husband and moved to his hometown in the American midwest. Since then, I've found myself acting as de facto explainer of all things Malaysian to mystified relatives and friends.

This is not easy. After all, we Malaysians are still trying to figure out who we are (and who we want to be). Witness the current soul-searching and hair-tearing as we go through some of our most tumultuous political times since Merdeka.

No, really, I say, Malaysia is, uhm, a modern country. Really.

tourism malaysia When curious co-workers ask about my homeland, the easiest thing is to fall back on the romantic, Tourism Malaysia description: Malaysia is a land of ancient rainforests, talcum-powder beaches and glittering cities.

Or I take the comparative economics route: Malaysia's economic base is manufacturing. Also lots of oil palm. We're somewhere ahead of Vietnam and Indonesia and Thailand but behind Singapore and Taiwan and Korea.

Or there's always pop culture: Malaysia is home of the Petronas Twin Towers where they shot that terrible Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones movie a few years ago. Except they also put the Malacca slums next to it. And then the Malaysian government got mad. Anyway, moving on.

Growing tide of strange news

But I am helpless against the growing tide of strange news coming out of Malaysia.

When my American friends and colleagues read about Malaysia, the story usually has the word "sodomy" in it. Or blown-up Mongolian models.

I've been a journalist for 14 years and I know that around the world, newspapers gravitate towards sensational stories. But why does Malaysia seem to produce more than its fair share?

And now, this fatwa on yoga. And tomboys. TOMBOYS.

My sister-in-law wants to talk about this. Is this true? she asks. What does this mean?

I don't know what it means. Nobody ever knows what it means. We Malaysians try to read between the lines of the newspapers, but in the end, we can only guess.

Now I read that the prime minister says yoga classes can continue . As long as they don't chant. (But the National Fatwa Council hasn't backed down. Which leads me to an interesting question: in a fight between the PM and the fatwa writers, who wins?) Maybe now the issue will fade away, I think, hopefully.

This morning, I opened my local paper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, to find this on Page 2:

"A Malaysian technology conglomerate has repaid $900,000 to Bruce Willis after the actor filed a lawsuit demanding a refund of his investment. The Kuala Lumpur-based Petra Group said Willis invested $2 million last year in its subsidiary, Green Rubber, a developer of technology that can recycle rubber in old tires......"

CHEN MAY YEE is the author of ‘Born and Bred in Pewter Dust: The Royal Selangor Story’.