Tue, 28 Feb 2006
Toyota have a great ad in the papers here in Malaysia at the moment, which has won a few advertising awards:
The byline is that with the minivan Toyota are selling, you'll always have space and won't have to leave anyone behind.
Today we went for lunch at Bangsar, which is an upmarket KL suburb. Tree-lined streets and houses with high fences and gates define it as a richer neighbourhood than the average. The area we went to is notorious for lunch-time traffic, what with all the little restaurants trading.
(I had the vegetarian hotpot, which was tofu, mushrooms and Chinese cabbage with noodles in a hot soy soup - not exactly the wisest choice given the heat and my propensity to sweat.)
As we were leaving, Steven had only just stuck one leg in the backseat of the car before Madelaine, in the drivers seat, started to drive off. Luckily she drives really, really slowly, so we were able to tell her before anything bad happened. She almost left him behind!
Mon, 27 Feb 2006
In most Western hotels, it would be surprising to open the drawer by your bed and NOT find a Gideon bible.
In Malaysia, the only thing in the drawer is a torch. Here, it would be surprising to NOT have a kiblat, an arrow pointing in the direction of Mecca, on the ceiling.
As I was walking back to the train station, I passed a young Western family - mum, dad and toddler - on their way back to the hotel. Dad was clutching a plastic bag of McDonald's meals.
I felt sorry that they can't appreciate the absolutely amazing food that is available here. It's cheap, it's spicy, it's so different from what I am used to, that every meal I have is something to look forward to.
OK, fair enough, you may want to occasionally have a break and eat a 'normal' meal every once in a while, but come on! McDonalds?
The Malaysian equivalent of the Australian cheap calling card is the delightfully named "ring ring card". It's cheap enough - AU$6 for an hours' worth of talk time to Australia. It certainly beats calling via the notoriously rapacious charges of hotel international rates!
Sun, 26 Feb 2006
I bumped into one of the Accenture guys in the lift on my way to work (yes, it's Sunday!). They're a strange bunch.
The project I'm on is so large that the KL office has had to get a whole bunch of people in from their Singapore and Thailand offices to maintain staffing. Most of these people have been here for months and months, and most of them are staying in the same hotel as me.
The funny thing is, I never, ever see any of them outside of work.
I never see them at breakfast in the hotel restaurant.
I never see them after work at Lotus, the cheap, massive hawker food centre next door.
Never see them on the train to or from work.
Never bump into them sightseeing.
I have absolutely no idea where they go to in the few hours of the day that they're not at work.
The project is in 'crunch' mode for a lot of people at the moment, which means long hours and weekends at work. Frustration and stress is at a high.
Anyway, the guy I bumped into is from the Bangkok office.
He hasn't gone sightseeing because there's nothing interesting for him here. He's tired from working too much, so just goes home and sleeps at night. He doesn't care much for the food. The disgusting state of the toilets depresses him. And the asthma he hasn't had for the last five years has made a recurrance, since the building is so old.
Looks like the international jetsetting image that the big consulting companies like to portray is wearing off for him pretty quickly!
I'd feel sorry for him, but turns out he's in the room next door, and likes to play music with a lot of bass late at night. The walls are thin in the hotel, too...
Oh, and working on a Sunday sucks here. There's no aircon, which means I sweated while I worked. Definitely not fun.
Sat, 25 Feb 2006
Brian and I went to Genting Highlands today, which is a casino/hotel resort 60km away from KL, perched on a mountaintop 2000m high. It's owned by the richest man in Malaysia.
I'm too tired to write anything tonight, and Genting definitely deserves a more eloquent entry than I'm capable of right now.
Thu, 23 Feb 2006
Every day for the last week, it has started to rain between 5.30 and 6.30pm, which is exactly the time that I want to leave work. And it's not just a gentle rain show, either. It's a torrential tropical downpour.
The train station is just 50m up the road from work, but it's on the other side of the road, traffic is crazy (unpredictable Malaysian drivers!) making it difficult to cross, and the footpaths are high, uneven and tiled, which makes them incredibly slippery.
"Do you want a lift to the train station?" asked Brian today as I was packing up to go, rain pouring down outside. He parks his car underneath the building.
I felt exceedingly lazy. "Yeah, that'd be good."
At least I didn't get wet today.
Remind me to pack an umbrella tomorrow.
Madelaine and Brian both came back from lunch separately with a bag of muffins.
Not just any muffins, of course. These muffins were from Kenny Rogers Roasters, which is a fried chicken chain inexplicably popular in Malaysia.
According to the paper bag they came in, Kenny Rogers Roasters are renowned for their fresh muffins.
Tue, 21 Feb 2006
One of the things about Malaysians is their fairly loose interpretation of the road rules. One of my favourite examples of flouting the rules is the common occurance of double parking.
Apparently, double parking is fine, as long as you are actually in the car at the time. And the seat has to be seat reclined. Even if you are sleeping, that's ok. Funnily enough, I hardly ever see Chinese or Indian Malaysians doing this. It must be a Malay rule.
The other country where I used to see this happen was Japan. There, though, the local custom was that the hazard lights must be on. Even if you are blocking traffic, even if it's a one lane road with no room to move around you, as long as you have the hazard lights on, you have diplomatic immunity from any traffic cop.
When I was in KL last December, we went to a restaurant street in Bangsar, near work. We made the mistake of going on Friday at lunchtime. This restaurant street just happened to be right near a major mosque. And Friday just happens to be the most important of Muslim prayer days.
The entire suburb went into traffic breakdown. As we finally nosed along the street in front of the mosque, we realised why the traffic was so bad. On both sides of the road, on both sides of the road, with only one lane in each direction, cars were double parked for at least a kilometre. There was only room on the road for one car to move in either direction.
And, of course, given the privileged status of Muslims here, no traffic inspector in the country would dare issue a single ticket to people who are too busy praying to observe the rules.
Sun, 19 Feb 2006
A Valentines Day window display at Times Square shopping centre.
Nasi campur, Malay-style food.
A row of historic, if slightly decrepit, shopfronts in Chinatown.
Sri Mahamariamman temple, Chinatown.
Sat, 18 Feb 2006
The Lonely Planet has this to say about KL's Coliseum Hotel:
Coliseum Hotel on Jalan TAR is far from hygenic, although people still come for the passable sizzling steaks. The place is quite a colonial experience and has scarcely changed over the years, with indifferent service and stained tableclothes at no extra charge. You're better off just having a drink at the bar.
That's actually a pretty bad review (I swear I actually read a better one, but I can't find the page), and doesn't really do the place justice. The better review mentioned planters' chairs and colonial stuff, and it sounded like a pretty passable place to have a quiet beer on a Friday night - visions of quietly swirling overhead fans, gin and tonics and pith helmets notwithstanding.
First off, it has to be admitted, that the place could do with a coat of paint. That's probably not the only thing it needs; it really needs a facelift.
I don't think I've ever sat at a laminex bar in a pub before. And the overhead lights don't dim, meaning the bright lights accentuate every flaw. The faded newspaper articles on the wall help to hide a few cracks, the shelf that the hard liquor is on slopes alarmingly to the left.
Somehow, in spite of all this, the place has a unique style that somehow grew on me. That might have been the beer, but listening to the banter of the young Indian bar staff and the older Chinese owners behind the bar made it seem almost like a KL sitcom. The wacky adventures of the bored staff of a crumbling hotel that's seen a lot of better days, maybe.
Meanwhile, the elderly waiters... well, they didn't exactly hustle between the tables... but they did manage to get the trays of drinks out to the customers in reasonably good time.
Sometimes with these places, even if they're old and falling apart at the seams, have a certain element of tackiness that makes them incredibly appealing. And somehow, despite the lack of clientele and obvious money, they manage to stay open year after year.
Even if the Lonely Planet guide is scathing.
Wed, 15 Feb 2006
The immigration queue wasn't too long. It was made shorter by the madcap antics of a young Pakistani man who appeared to have never travelled to another country. He wasn't sure what to do, or even whether he should be in the queue.
He attached himself to an older British couple in front of me. And when I say 'attached', I mean attached. He stood right up next to them, almost touching them, which made them more than a little uncomfortable. And when, at one stage, he pushed in front of them, they immediately pushed back in front. Never come between a Brit and their place in a queue.
I never got to see whether he actually made it through.
The train and taxi trip to the hotel was pretty uneventful. I will however note that Muslim women wearing headscarves driving little hatchbacks are the most aggressive drivers on the road. They Will Not Give Way in any situation. It's sort of cute, though, especially when your jaded taxi driver is forced back into his own lane by a little boxy car.
Because I was sick over the weekend, I delayed my flight here. I called the client here, but they didn't let the hotel know. When I didn't turn up on Sunday night as the hotel were expecting, they cancelled the booking. Not a major drama, but it added twenty minutes to my wait at reception. Lucky they weren't full.
There's no TV in the bedroom of my hotel room, which means I can't watch TV in bed. This is quite an unfortunate development.
Tue, 14 Feb 2006
It's amazing how the land in NSW's west is broken up into neat, square shapes, divided by long, straight fence lines, and occasionally by a meandering river, scarcely a tree in sight. It's hard to believe that anything can grow on the parched, yellow land.
And then the farmed land gives way to the desert interior.
Thanks to the wonders of airports with free power outlets, the two hours until the plane leaves aren't a total write-off. Things I've noticed today:
- The best time to fly, if you hate queues, is by far a weekday, and Tuesday at that. I've always flown on a Sunday afternoon prior to work on Monday, and the airport always seems to be packed. Contrast that with today, where I didn't have to wait at the check-in counter, or at outward customs. That rocks. Will be interested to see whether the one hour wait at Malaysia customs on a Sunday night from last time is repeated.
- If you have a ticket from Kuala Lumpur to Sydney return, and are an Australian citizen, the person at check-in will be confused and starting asking questions. Always helps to have the final ticket returning to Sydney as proof that you're not planning to secretly emigrate.
- Airport food sucks because it's the same crap served up at food courts all around Sydney. The big burger chains seems to always dominate. Not sure why anyone would dose up on an unhealthy amount of fat, salt and grease before sitting down for a period of hours in a cramped, constricted space, but there you go.
- You will never find a good coffee at the airport. Never.
- The process of taking the laptop out of the board to go through the scanner is a pain in the proverbial. It serves no purpose apart from making the airport look like they're doing something about security.
Wow, that time went pretty quickly. They're calling my flight now.
Flying out again this afternoon to Malaysia for a month for work. I'm packed, just need to kill a few hours until it's time to call a cab to the airport.
Will be posting from the northern hemisphere, where the text runs upside down.
At least this time, I know what to expect!
For Valentine's Day
via Waxy.org
Mon, 13 Feb 2006
When we first bought our apartment, there was apparently a bit of friction between the previous owners and their tenants.
Seems the tenants had been here quite a while, a number of years in fact, and they were not at all happy to realise that 'their' place was being sold from under them. Of course, this is the real disadvantage of renting - the fact that you are at the whim of the owner, and if they choose to sell, you can only hope that the new owners are willing to continue the current arrangement.
We weren't willing to continue the arrangement, since we actually wanted to live here ourselves.
So, the tenants became grudgingly used to the place being on the market. But when it actually sold, apparently they got really narky.
All this was invisible to us. We had no interest in getting involved, and quite frankly, we didn't much care. That's just the way it goes. Luckily for them, an opening appeared in one of the downstairs units in the block. So they didn't even have to move far!
But we're good neighbours, we're nice people. So even though there was no obligation on us, even though the post office offers a cheap mail redirection service, we continued to take mail addressed to the previous tenants from out of our letterbox and place it in theirs.
We didn't expect much in return. A simple 'thanks', a bit of a wave on the stairs occasionally, would have sufficed.
I tell you what, we certainly didn't expect to be still forwarding their mail 8 months later.
So now we're doing what mean, nasty, spiteful neighbours would have done from day dot, and we're writing "NOT AT THIS ADDRESS" on each and every bit of mail addressed to them that falls through the letterbox. But we're probably still helping them out, by taking them off a vast number of addressed junk mail lists that they're currently on.
We are truly nice people.
Sat, 11 Feb 2006
Urgh.
I feel absolutely awful.
Yesterday morning, I had the makings of a sore throat. It didn't help that most of yesterday's work involved teaching and instructing some of our newer people, rather than finding something that didn't involve any communication at all.
Then, in the afternoon, it just segued into the start of the flu, with a headache, an aching throat, runny nose... yeah, it was disgusting.
I came home, showered and hoped into bed, hoping to sleep it off. Unfortunately, my sore throat had other ideas, and eventually I kicked off the sheets in total frustration.
I was due to fly out tomorrow for Malaysia for work. Kathleen came home, took one look at me, and put her foot down. "There is no way that you are getting on that plane tomorrow. You ring them up and say you can't make it Monday."
Good advice, advice which I've followed.
Feeling a bit better today, but that's probably more because of Kathleen's jook than anything else. I'm still feeling clogged up, and short of breath (jeez, all these symptoms sound much worse when I write them down. I swear I'm not a hypochondriac!).
The rest will do me good.
Do you like pandas? Do you really, really like pandas? No, I mean do you really, really, really, REALLY like pandas?
Thu, 09 Feb 2006
There are a family of possums that live in the tree outside our bedroom window. You can occasionally see them crawling around the branches, or clambering along the telephone wires along the street.
Luckily, unlike our neighbours, we haven't been unfortunate enough to encounter one of them inside our place. They're outside, in the tree, where they're meant to be, rather than inside, where they would likely freak Kathleen out.
They are sort of cute, too. Two parents and a couple of babies. Not so cute, though, when they sometimes start fighting - hissing and growling - in the middle of the night.
A girl wearing a t-shirt with the slogan "Everyone Loves Greek Girls".
She was Asian.
Wed, 08 Feb 2006
I accidentally deleted Kathleen's favourite game from her mobile phone the other day. Whoops. Even though, in hindsight, I can't believe I did it, I still can't get over how easy it was to delete it.
I've spent a bit of time since then trying to find the game for download, but even the service provider doesn't have it on it's website. There's no reference to Nokia's site, either.
All we know is that it's one of those Tetris-y games with the coloured bricks and chirpy sounds. Not a lot of help, is it?
Tue, 07 Feb 2006
The Mercury has the news that Recerche Bay in Tasmania's south may be saved from logging:
The north-eastern peninsula is a privately-owned site of about 140ha, bounded by the 4280ha Southport Lagoon Conservation Area.
French admiral Bruny D'Entrecasteaux led an expedition of two ships, Recherche and Endurance, which visited the bay in 1792 and 1793.
The explorers spent several months at Recherche Bay, charting the remote region, collecting botanical samples, mingling with Aborigines at nearby Southport Lagoon and planting vegetable and herb gardens.
Expedition naturalist Jacques-Julien Houtou de Labillardiere wrote in his diary in 1772: "We were filled with admiration at the sight of these ancient forests, in which the sound of the axe had never been heard.
"The eye was astonished in contemplating the prodigious size of these trees ... whose tufted summits were cronwed with an ever verdant foliage."
The land belongs to the Vernon family, who have owned it for decades.
David and Robert Vernon have approval from the Forest Practices Authority to harvest 30,000 tonnes of woodchips and 5000 tonnes of sawlogs from their freehold property within the next three years.
Environmentalists feared bulldozing of a 4km access road through the area, to be logged by timber giant, Gunns Ltd, would begin this month.
One of Tasmania's prime historic sites, the place where the French first landed in Tasmania, was scheduled to be logged, creating the vast scars associated with some of Tasmania's infamous forestry coupes. Only intervention by Dick Smith, who chipped in $100,000 of his own money, and the Greens helped the owners to avoid selling off part of Tasmania's heritage to environmental vandals.
It's unbelievable how cheaply we Australians value our history.
A straight man's 5-step action plan for how straight men can go and see Brokeback Mountain, the "gay cowboy" film whose director doesn't want people calling a "gay cowboy" film, and avoid all that, well, gayness:
It's a strange phobia, considering that "Brokeback Mountain" may be the best date movie to come along in years. You have the potential to look so sensitive that you can probably get her to pay for the movie and a trip to Red Lobster. Add a few tears near the ending, and you might be surprised where the evening takes you. Think make-up sex is great? Try some you-just-took-me-to-"Brokeback Mountain" sex.
Mon, 06 Feb 2006
Oh wow, Matt and Kim are finally parents! And I was just a couple of days off the running in the sweeps picking the sex, date and weight. Actually, I got all three wrong. There goes any claim I had to psychic ability.
Looks like they're going nuts with photos, too - as any new parent would!
Good on 'em.
There's something disconcerting about standing next to someone on the crowded train to the Central Coast who's moving his head to the music coming through his headphones that only he can hear.
Sun, 05 Feb 2006
The Cross City Tunnel inquiry, which is going through the motions of an independant inquiry into the incompetant state government's handling of the tunnel debacle, received a number of submissions from companies, organisations and the general public. One of these submissions was from a mob called Aircar Industry.
Current work particularly by a number of universities, private firms and NASA aims to develop a new class of road going and flyable vehicles.
And that was the most legible sentence.
Flying cars within 10 years! Remember, you heard it here first.
Sat, 04 Feb 2006
On Saturday, we went to the Amazing Human Body exhibition out at Olympic Park, which was written up in the SMH last week.
The show has sparked some controversy over the ethical implications of putting real human corpses on display. While Castle disagrees with the critics, stressing the educational and health-awareness benefits of the exhibition, it is confronting and probably will upset some attendees. According to the organisers, all bodies that feature in The Amazing Human Body were donated willingly for the purpose.
Confronting? Absolutely. Especially for me, someone who decided that, due to not being able to stand the sight of blood or medical operations, a medical career was out of the question. I can't even watch RPA without hiding behind my hands during some of the gorier scenes.
On the other hand, there's something incredible about the level of detail that is shown - and that's something that can't be truly represented in textbooks or computers.
Unfortunately, since most of the displays have come from China, the level of grammatical and spelling mistakes is quite high. Given the attention to detail for the actual exhibits, it's quite distracting, to the point where after a while, you don't even read the description of the item, but just look.
I needed a bit of a sit down afterwards - I don't have much of a strong stomach, and just the thought bouncing around inside my head - thiswasanactualpersonthiswasanactualperson - was enough to make me really stop and think. Very confronting.
We went out to Juju's for a farewell dinner for Winnie. She's headed to Hong Kong to follow her boyfriend, who's working there at the moment. It'll be an exciting place to be!
She came up from Melbourne via an internal work transfer. She set aside three days to find a place to live up here.
Three days.
In Sydney, that's virtually an impossibility. Most agents don't even bother to show places on any other day than a Saturday morning, for a brief 10 minute window. Seemingly, the same 10 minute window.
Anyway. Kathleen mentioned a friend, Lu, had a spare room. And somehow, fate worked it out so that Winnie has lived with Lu for the past three years.
After dinner, we headed to karaoke at Capitol Square.
Most of Winnie's Chinese friends were very shy about singing. Very, very shy. Steph and I tried to get everyone pumping, but not even a trusty pub song could get them to have fun.
We didn't give up though. And eventually, they started to crack, first starting to watch the TV, then mouthing along, then actually singing!
My voice is paying for it today, though.
Thu, 02 Feb 2006
Kathleen and Lu, both of whom hate birds (and especially pigeons) will love this article:
A flock of pigeons fitted with mobile phone backpacks is to be used to monitor air pollution, New Scientist magazine reported on Wednesday.
The 20 pigeons will be released into the skies over San Jose, California, in August.
Each bird will carry a GPS satellite tracking receiver, air pollution sensors and a basic mobile phone.
Text messages on air quality will be beamed back in real time to a special pigeon "blog," a journal accessible on the Internet.
Miniature cameras slung around the pigeons' necks will also post aerial pictures.
Wed, 01 Feb 2006
Kathleen's Chinese New Year dinner was a success, even with a number of people turning up for dessert instead of the main course. That was more because of family commitments than anything else - a couple of people had parents from interstate who were up and had to do something with them instead. Whod've thought that Chinese New Year was an occasion to celebrate with your family than with your friends?
The only downside was that we had quite a lot of food brought over. Not a major downside though - almost everyone left with a container, mostly filled with char siu or crispy skin duck, or Hokkien noodles.
Steph and Eva brought over their karaoke machine (read: PS2), which was a bit of a hit. And that kept everyone up til about midnight when things started to wind down again.
Last night we took our friend Elaine to a restaurant Kathleen's been dying to get to - Green Gourmet in St Leonards. It's a vegan restaurant, too, so not what you're after if you feel like dinner should be meat and three veg.
Food was really, really good, service very understated - even though the restaurant was reasonably busy, there were only two people waiting tables, and you hardly ever noticed them. The food wasn't overwhelmed with flavourings, so you could actually still taste the basic ingredients.
When Colin Fung first introduced tofu dishes in 1984 in his first Chinese restaurant, Gourmet Inn, only 20% of his customers knew or heard about Tofu. Since then, Colin had persisted in bringing together a selection of fine vegetarian dishes.
It's very different to the famous vegetarian Vegie Bar in Brunswick St, Melbourne.
And of course, it was good to catch up with Elaine as well - it's been seven years since we first started together at our first job out of uni! And she's the last one standing of a graduate intake of 14.
