Thu, 29 Dec 2005
This morning we rose at an ungodly hour, not even 7am, for a spot of fishing. I'd found a nice little spot, shady and quiet, almost a year earlier, as I was driving to footy. It was a fair hike out of town, on the river down at East Hills.
By the time we arrived, it was 8am, and the summer sun had already risen high in the sky. It had quite a bite, too, even at that early hour. The only other people around were a few people out on their morning stroll.
Despite our best efforts, the fish just weren't biting, and nothing we did seemed to encourage them to take a nibble at the bait. Quite the contrary; on at least three occasions, a fish would break the surface, leap and splash back down into the water, leaving concentric circles spreading lazily over the river. Almost as if they were mocking us.
The only thing that came close to being on the dinner table were three geese that decided that humans were a source of food, and stalked us until it became apparent that they wouldn't get fed after all!
We gave it almost three hours before dejectedly heading back home. However, the picnic lunch we took with us made the morning not a complete waste.
Plus, of course, no fish means no gutting and cleaning. And Kathleen doesn't much care for eating fish she's caught: some psychological thing, she reckons!
Sun, 25 Dec 2005
Christmases as a grown-up are certainly different from those as a kid. One major difference is that where we used to wake our parents up at the crack of dawn, it's now my mum who can't stand the tension of unwrapped presents and feels the need to wake US up! It's a strange feeling being away from family at this time, as though Christmas Day is just another day. I'm not religious, and we don't go to church, so the day doesn't even have a religious tone to it.
Kathleen and I did have a nice, relaxing morning, though, unwrapping the presents sent in the mail from friends and family back home in Hobart. Presents that had sat under the tree unmolested for at least a week, despite Kathleen's never-ending attempts to convince me to open them early ("They'll never know! We'll just tell them we opened them today!" she'd say.)
In the afternoon, we went, along with the brother and sister-in-law to her sister-in-law's family's place in Ryde.
That family has certainly got the Christmas spirit. It's imposed upon them by their three young children, Jack, Emma and Daniel! The three kids never stopped, never slept, and must have breakfasted on raw caffeine that morning. By the time we left at 10pm, they were still going strong. The same could not be said of their parents, nor of us, but that may have been more the wine than the kids tiring us all out.
The Christmas lunch turned into a Christmas dinner, with turkey and roast potatos that came out perfect, despite Kate's worries, a leg of fresh ham, and plenty of wine. Dickson and Lucy gave us an amazing framed picture from their recent African honeymoon.
These days, though, Christmas is more about eating and conversation with friends and family than presents - and I think that that's the biggest difference between being a grown-up and a kid at Christmas!
Wed, 21 Dec 2005
For my birthday, my sister got me a CD by Arauco Libre, a Chilean band who perform every Saturday outside Retro Cafe in Salamanca. Listening to it brings back a lot of great memories of lazy Saturdays spent with friends in the Hobart sun drinking coffee. This year, we're staying in Sydney, which means we'll miss out on the traditional catch-up with friends and family that we normally enjoy.
As I was walking up the hill to Crows Nest this morning, I turned my head to look at something and felt and heard a grinding from my neck. Aaaah! Now I can't turn my head to the left or look up and down with pain. Hoping it goes away soon, though, because it really, really hurts!
Mon, 19 Dec 2005
The project schedule has been changed. Rather than returning to Australia on December 24, I came back on Saturday morning.
It's so nice to be back - the weather is nice and cool (bet that will change!), the city familiar, and of course, my wife was happy to see me.
There's nothing quite like sitting in the departure lounge, destination Australia, and re-setting your watch to AEST, and changing your phone's SIM card back. It's like shedding a new, uncomfortable coat and putting back on a familiar, comfortable one!
Wed, 14 Dec 2005
I've put some photos up of Kuala Lumpur from the three weeks I've spent here.
The work schedule has changed slightly, too, which means I'll be flying back to Sydney this weekend, rather than next weekend as originally planned. The extra week before Christmas will come in handy buying presents, though!
Anyway, the last week has flown. Here's what I've been up to:
Friday 9 December
Attended a pub crawl with about 100 other people from Accenture in the pub/restaurant strip at Kuala Lumpur's exclusive suburb of Sri Hartarmas. Brian and Steven (my colleagues here) and I weren't from Accenture, so didn't know too many people, but that didn't stop us from joining in. The alcohol helped a few people lose their inhibitions about talking to us, too! One thing I did notice though - here, most people start off with spirits, rather than beer. It certainly wiped out the tab a lot quicker than would otherwise be expected!
Saturday 10 December
After a drunken conversation with Brian and Steven the previous night, in which I conveyed the fact that I was missing out on pork in a Muslim country (hey - you try eating chicken for lunch and dinner every day!), they dragged me out for a drive that took an hour from the last train stop on the line. We drove for so long, I thought we'd reached Thailand. We went to a place that Steven knew about, where they served the most delicious pork crock pot soup. The decor was typical Malaysian roadside restaurant, but the food was fantastic. Was it worth the drive? It probably was.
Then on Saturday night, I got a buzzcut (and was given a souvenir comb, which was nice, if slightly redundant) and went bowling. As Walter would say, "F*ck it, dude, let's go bowling!"
Sunday 11 December
Decided to head to Batu Caves, out on the outskirts of town. The Lonely Planet guidebook suggested I could catch a bus, which sounded a lot more interesting than hiring a taxi at exorbitant rates. The receptionist at the hotel had other ideas.
"You should catch a cab," she'd say, no matter how many times I tried to insist that I could slum it like the locals and catch the bus. Obviously, the buses here have quite a reputation. In the end, she either didn't know or didn't want me to know which bus I needed to catch. So I headed to Kota Raya, near Chinatown.
Kota Raya is basically where every bus in KL passes through. Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense, given the streets are some of the narrowest in the entire city. I wandered around for all of five minutes before spying a bus that had Batu Caves on it's list of destinations, and jumped on.
And it wasn't so bad. It was air-conditioned, the seats were relatively clean, it wasn't packed, and I arrived at the other end, forty minutes later, only RM2 poorer.
The caves themselves are incredible. They're at the top of a steep set of almost 300 steps, which in the hot, tropical sun is quite a feat to climb. And when you reach the top, you're rewarded with a huge cave, with holes in the roof that let in beams of light, dripping with water. It is, however, concreted, since it's attracts a large number of Indians for religious festivals.
At the bottom of the stairs, and in the caves themselves, are a number of Indian carvings from mythology, and on the day I went, there was obviously some type of festival going on. Hundreds of people were here, getting their children blessed by Hindu priests. Most of the children had shaved heads, covered in chalk from the blessings.
At the back of the caves, it opened up into a small, open air cavern, ringed by cliffs. A couple of small boys near me started shouting, "Monkey! Monkey!", and I followed their line of sight - clambering down the cliff face with easy agility are a family of monkeys. They finally reach where everyone is standing, and start wandering amongst the crowd, taking the offered fruits and eating them. The small boys edge closer, and start to reach out to touch the biggest one.
They're in for a shock.
As soon as they get close enough, the monkey rears up on its hind legs, baring its fangs and hissing!
The boys jump almost 10 metres backwards as everyone starts laughing uproariously. Despite the hilarity, these monkeys are pretty damn scary, and I'm glad there's about 20 people between me and them. I only have to outrun them, you see.
As I'm returning back down the stairs, I pass a woman who, obviously exhausted and distressed with the effort, is climbing up on hands and knees. She collapses, and her family crowd around her, pouring water from a bottle into her mouth, as in a scene you might see from a movie, while she feverishly drinks. She seems to recover slightly, sits for a while and then continues her agonising crawl. When I reach the bottom and turn around, she's still going. Slowly, though. Devotion does some pretty amazing things to people.
Tuesday 13 December
Going to the movies here is incredibly cheap - most tickets set you back around RM10 (AUD$3.50), which makes it a cheap and easy option if you've got an hour or two spare. Tuesday night, I went along to the cinemas at KLCC and watched Perhaps Love, a Chinese movie I knew next to nothing about. And it turned out to be a beautiful and tender portrayal of a love triangle between an actress, her leading man and her director, as they make a movie in which the plot deals with the same device. At times, it's deliberately ambiguous which is the movie and which is 'real life', but the use of elaborate costumes, colour and musical numbers made it an absolute joy to watch.
Wednesday 14 December
Brian, Steven and I headed off after work to a Chinese hawker centre somewhere (a common theme of the past couple of weeks is that sometimes, I have absolutely no idea where we are!) in Putrajaya for noodles, beer and conversation. One of the things I enjoy so much about working here is that everybody has such good English, that it makes relating to each other, swapping stories and ideas, so easy. Steven and Brian're top blokes.
Thu, 08 Dec 2005
Ran into one of my colleagues at the laundromat on level 9 of the hotel where I'm staying. The project has a number of expat consultants from around Asia, especially Singapore, and a lot of them stay here.
As we were catching the elevator up to our respective floors, he asked, "So, do you have a view of the towers?"
"No, unfortunately I'm facing the other way."
"Really? No, you're lucky! I wish I was, too!" he exclaimed.
"Why's that? The lights are too bright to sleep?" I asked, puzzled. The towers are lit up at night, quite brightly, too.
"No, it's that damn mosque! Every morning at 6am, it wakes me up!"
I guess for the upside of a great view of the city, there's a downside!
The entrance to work is via the garage (which actually seems to be common practice at a few buildings!), and the security staff at the gate building require me to forfeit my drivers license in exchange for a floor pass which no one ever checks. On the floor, the staff are packed in beyond any sane level of occupational health and safety. I think that's more due to the consultancy firm involved than a standard Malaysian work practice, though!
I generally eat lunch with some of the people on the project at a food court in the other building. The food court is predominantly Malay food, and there's an element of surprise lurking within, as in "What the heck is that in your dishes?", that appeals to my adventurer spirit. There's also absolutely no Coca-Cola Amatil products, no sickly sweet carbonated drinks, unlike Australia, which is great. I had sugar cane juice the first day, lychee juice the next, and have started becoming addicted to sweet soybean milk to go with the Malay food.
Little ants are wandering around on my desk, and into my coffee and water cups - thank goodness they're disposable (the cups, that is), since I'm not drinking out of them again!
The toilets are disgusting. Two are squat toilets with a hose for a bidet, the other is a cracked Western throne with no seat. None of them have paper. All of them are leaking. The room smells. The other staff have raved about the toilets on level 2, to the point where these toilets have appeared to me in visions, all white and gleaming, a veritable Xanadu of bathrooms. But I checked it out yesterday, and the only thing different is that they are slightly better lit and the Western toilet has a seat. I've resolved to hold on until I get home, no matter what.
Work is around 9 stops away on the KL LRT subway (which runs on an elevated track for around half the trip and underground for the remainder), and the trip takes half an hour. The trains are small, only two carriages long, but frequent and clean. And they're quick, too. Why can't we have these in Sydney? They do tend to be rather packed in the mornings for about half the trip, though.
Tue, 06 Dec 2005
Brian and Steven, my two co-workers, laughed at me the other day when I told them I'd been eating at the Lotus chain of open-air restaurants near my hotel. I thought I was actually being quite frugal; after all, hotel restaurants are expensive at the best of times, and Lotus open some tasty hawker food at some pretty ok prices.
"That's actually the most expensive Lotus in KL, since it's right near Petronas Towers," they laughed.
"But it's only RM10!" (AUD$3.30) I replied.
"Yeah, that's expensive! We'll take you out for some authentic food, where the locals go," they promised.
I can't wait for their assistance. Lord knows I need their advice on good, cheap,authentic places to eat.
With their laughter ringing in my ears, I decided tonight that I'd give Lotus a miss. Poor Lotus, so conveniently situated, yet so lacking in credibility with my peers. I decided that, like Sydney and Melbourne, if I wanted good, good food at low, low prices, then Chinatown would be the place to go.
You would think so.
Unfortunately, Chinatown just happens to be where a lot of backpackers and tourists head to, enticed by the cheap, pirated DVDs and multitude of restaurants with outdoor seating and beer bottles in ice buckets. With these places, the decor's not much, but the ambience is everything.
And where the westerners flock, up go the prices.
I'd no sooner sat down at one encouraging-looking place when I opened the menu and almost had a heart attack.
RM15 (AUD$5) for a main!! Are they mad?! Brian and Steven would kill me if they knew how I was throwing money away!
I resigned myself to an expensive night out, even ordering a beer (hey! I was sweating fit to bust! I've no idea what happened to the cool humidity of last week - this week has been all about heat!).
"No small bottle, only big one!" smiled the middle-aged Chinese waitress. "But it comes with ice!" She had me and she knew it. She recommended a few things from the menu (all expensive! Ai yah!) and I picked the most exotic of them - Chinese curried chicken.
When it finally was placed in front of me, I had to admit, it wasn't the most enticing of all dishes. But the first bite was fantastic! I could actually almost taste the curry powder, it was that hot. A few more bites, and I was glad for the starchy rice to cool my mouth. A few more bites after that, and I was no longer uncertain that I'd finish the entire (large!) bottle of beer. A few more bites after that, and I realised something.
The chefs had obviously realised that their curry chicken dish was not hot enough with just curry powder. So the devious bastards had added green chillis!
And not just large, sedate, slightly hot chillis, but the small, angry, thermonuclear mothers!
By this stage I'd eaten a few of them without realising, and the back of my mouth was screaming in agony with every swallow. The beer didn't help, in fact, it damn near was evaporating as soon as it hit my tongue!
The waitress noticed my predicament. "Yes, you don't eat the chillis, every time I do, I cry! Tears come right out!" she told me gleefully.
"That's ok," I rasped. "I can take it. It's a challenge!"
Her face brightened. "Yes! A challenge! But I don't eat the chillis." She was adamant. And correct.
I persisted as best I could, finally gave up. And asked for the bill. The entire bottle of beer was gone, and the alcohol had not affected me in the slightest. I'd probably already sweated it out. My face and my neck gleamed with sweat, my t-shirt was stuck to my back as I staggered off back to the train home.
And that is how it came to be that I've decided to only eat at Lotus.
Besides, they call me "Boss" there: "Hello, boss. What would you like to drink, boss? Thanks, boss." In my opinion, a place where they call you "Boss" is a place worth patronising.
Sun, 04 Dec 2005
This week has gone pretty quickly. I've spent the first few nights (after I finish work and arrive back at the hotel, that is) just jumping in a cab or on the LRT and going to some of the famous KL streets.
Jalan Petaling in Chinatown is renowned for its restaurants and night markets. A cold beer and spicy food on a balmy south-east Asian night is very welcome indeed. It's also known for it's market, featuring cheap clothes and pirated DVDs - and I've seen a few movies that haven't been officially released in Malaysia yet! Jalan P Ramlee, where most of the bars and nightclubs are located (handily within staggering distance of each other). Jalan Bukit Bintang and Jalan Sultan Ismail, in KL's 'Golden Triangle' where most of the large shopping centres are.
Yesterday I went out without much of a plan. I spent some time browsing at Sungwei Plaza and Lo Yat Plaza, which are renowned for their quantity of computer hardware and cheap (pirated!) software, and then caught a taxi to the Suria shopping plaza at the base of the Petronas Towers, which is where all the upscale foreign shops seem to be. The plaza itself is incredibly busy with foot traffic going in all directions, and invariably I found myself running into people. Eventually it all got a little overwhelming, and I ended up catching a cab out to Jalan TAR, near Little India.
Running parallel to TAR is a street market with an Indian flavour to it, with hundreds of stalls, with flower shops and fabric stalls packed tightly together. It's almost impossible to describe the chaotic scenes of the markets here - the sights and scents, noise and activity is just overwhelming.
Saturday night was spent with a quiet beer at a bar on P Ramlee, just watching the Saturday night party crowd.
Generally, walking around is made difficult by the fact that I'm finding it almost impossible to find my bearings - north of the equator, the sun is in the south, rather than the north. So I'm finding myself slightly lost more often than I'd like to admit. Additionally, the streets never seem to go straight, instead preferring a more meandering route. And the traffic is incredible! Trying to cross the crowded roads is an achievement in itself. I think the secret is to wait for a group of people crossing together, and walk downstream of them. This assumes that drivers are more likely to slow down for a group of Muslim women than a sweaty westerner. Quite a safe assumption.
