The Last Post of 2007

Well, it's the end of another year and all I can say is "Thank God for that"!

It's such a pity really because 2007 started so promisingly. I began the year with a determined resolution NOT to make any New Year's resolutions, because I know I would break them before the end of January. So I can say with all confidence that I have done brilliantly on the resolution front, because I didn't make any in the first place!

The year 2007 was great and dandy right up until about June when my wife's cancer diagnosis threw a Stage Two spanner in the works of our normal lives. As I speak, in case you're asking, Annie is just about to start her radiotherapy. She is still a bit zonked from her chemo, but she is a bit better than she was before....

The second half of this year has been something of a bummer, to be honest. In fact, overall, the best thing that has happened to me in 2007 is that I have started blogging, and getting my writing muscles in shape for the book of short stories I am planning. Unfortunately, my physical muscles remain atrophied and jelly-like, which means I should this year make at least one resolution, to do something about my hideous waistline!

Now we have reached the end of it all, then, I thought I would try to put a line under the past, and think about the future, which is usually a good idea, psychologically. And because all the newspapers and web sites are full of people making predictions for 2008, I thought I would jump on the bandwagon, and provide a few predictions of my own for the coming year.

So, gentle readers, here are Prof. Madder's Totally Safe Predictions for 2008 - see 'em here before you see 'em somewhere else!

1. A lot of people will die in 2008, and a lot of people will be born too.
2. In 2008, some people will make a lot more money than they did in 2007, while unfortunately others will not be so lucky.
3. Sometime in early February, there will be a lot of firecrackers going off in Kuching and other parts of Malaysia.
4. By the end of the year, there will be a new President of the United States. And it will not be George Bush.
5. The President of Russia will, in 2008, be of Slavic extraction.
6. It will be very hot in most parts of Australia, South East Asia and India.
7. Computers will mostly run on electricity.
8. The Moon in the night sky will change its shape slightly every day.
9. The Pope will be a Catholic.
10. The price of petrol will go up in Malaysia.

The beauty of these predictions is that they are almost certain to come true, so I cannot be accused of talking crap come the start of 2009!!

So, here is my New Year wish, which is the same as the one I sent round to all my friends via SMS, so sorry for any duplicates:

Here's to the blood of your health,
Here's to the health of your blood;
If your blood isn't healthy,
Your health must be bloody,
So here's to your bloody good health!!

I hope my readers (all three of them!) have a wonderful 2008 and that your lives will continue to be so much more fulfilling and meaningful, just because it'll no longer be 2007!

Cheers!!!

Final Thots from Tawau

Well, folks, it's my last full day here in Tawau, Sabah, before returning to the hustle and bustle of Kuching. What can I say by way of an epilogue to my short little holiday in this short little town?

Maybe I should say some more about Tawau itself, and Sabah in particular. Well, the state of Sabah is situated to the North of Sarawak and is very roughly shaped like a dog's face in profile. That's not to say anything disparaging about the place, because it is actually quite lovely and scenic.

When you fly over Sabah, particularly between Kota Kinabalu and Tawau, you immediately see the difference between Sabah and Sarawak. Sarawak is a vast field of green encrusted by smoky mountains, and shot through with seemingly endless tea-coloured rivers that curl around and around each other like a nervous system shaped like an Iban tatoo. Sabah, on the other hand, has all these things but most of the green is taken up by agricultural land, particularly acres and acres of regimented oil palm trees.

Sabah has always been far more of a plantation state than Sarawak, where agriculture is far more mixed. Perhaps as a result, Sabah is somewhat less developed than Sarawak, which probably explains some of Tawau's quirks mentioned in previous posts.

But in Kota Kinabalu - KK - the state capital, things are rather more civilised. KK is a bustling, tourist friendly city situated gorgeously close to the South China Sea. When you come in to land at the airport, you will have the blue, blue ocean on one side and the shining city, airport and lush hills on the other.

I remember humming the tune to the 1970s TV series Hawaii Five-O when I first landed at KK. It still has some of the aspects of an Oceanic paradise like Hawaii - heartbreaking beaches, hot, tropical sun, great places to eat and drink and some superb shopping areas. You can take boats to visit islands in the sun and go snorkeling and wind-surfing and parascending and all those things I wish I could do but don't because I'm a coward!

I could say a lot about KK - perhaps I'll save it for a later post...

Now, Tawau, well that's a different story. Surrounded on three sides by mountains and palm oil plantations and on another side by the sea, Tawau is basically a seaside town which has grown up, become fairly prosperous, but cannot get any bigger because the roads are too narrow.

On the sea front there is a fishing port where the daily catches coming in fresh every day make Tawau one of the best places to eat seafood in the whole of Malaysia. It's worth going there just for the seafood alone. Ignore the overcrowded roads and marketplaces, the heat, the dust and all the negative things people say about Tawau. Just focus on the fish. It'll blow your mind, and leave your wallet fairly intact too!

In terms of shopping - there's not much really for the tourists apart from the Philippine Market, situated next to a mosque and a stone's throw from the Marco Polo Hotel. This market is the place to get some of Sabah's famous cultured pearls and crystal ware, though I would advise you take a local guide who can haggle for you.

Another tourist favourite to be found at the Philippine Market is sea-shell products - bead curtains, table decorations etc all covered in sea-shells from the Philippines. And of course Indonesian wooden craft goods (which are truly stunning) as well as gold, Islamic craft items and plenty of local textiles and clothing.

Tawau is a meeting place for many different cultures and is often referred to as the immigrant capital of Malaysia. It is true that immigrants from many other places have made their home in Tawau - Buginese, Bajaus from the Philippines, Cocos Islanders, Timorese, Indonesians, as well as the more native-born Chinese and Malays. Not all of these people are here legally, and the government regularly deports large numbers through the port (Indonesia and the Philippines are just across the Sulu Sea from Tawau). But despite these crackdowns, Tawau remains a racially diverse cultural mongrel of a place, situated as it is at the lower jaw of the dog-shape that defines Sabah.

Tawau is also the place where my wife's family have their home, and I am grateful to them for the opportunity to visit this place. Most mat sallehs usually come to Tawau only for the diving and snorkelling, and the pearls. Well, this mat salleh already has a lovely pearl in the form of his Sabahan wife! So, he has come to Tawau to see his dear wife's family, and have a much-needed rest from the madness of an academic's life in the tropics.

Happy Landings....

When I first came to Tawau, Sabah in 2000 to see my wife’s family, it was quite an unforgettable experience. In those days, Tawau International Airport was situated very close to the town, with squatter smallholdings at one end, and a huge mosque with its sprawling graveyard at the other. Now my advice to Malaysia Airports Sdn. Bhd. is this: Never build an airport with a graveyard at the end of the runway! You might give the pilot the wrong idea!!!

Of course, the authorities had no choice – they had to put up with what they had available. I daresay the airport dated back to the 1950s or even earlier, and it looked like the sort of place where Allied (and perhaps Japanese!) warplanes may have landed during World War Two.

This element of danger and adventure could be experienced to the full each and every time one landed at the old Tawau airport, especially if one was flying in a Boeing 737. You see, the thing about the old airport in Tawau was this: the runway was perfectly fine for handling turboprop planes like Fokker F50s and De Havilland Twin Otters. That’s because these aircraft had relatively short take-off and landing runs.

But the Boeing 737, that’s another matter entirely. The runway was just a little bit short of the ideal length for a 737 to take off and land with assured safety. I think the technical term for this in the Air Force is something like “barely within the safety margins”. So what this meant was that landing at the old Tawau airport was quite a ride. If you approached from the North, you had a small mountain to one side of the aircraft, a residential tower block on the other (where, ironically, we were staying!) and a runway ahead of you that wasn’t quite long enough. Or maybe only just long enough.

So, after a final approach that took you just a few metres over the rooftops of some houses, you touch down. Now remember I said that the runway was rather short. So the pilots, who must have had arm muscles like Olympian gods, would pull back so hard on the brakes that your back pressed into your seat, threatening to crash backwards into the row behind.

During this nerve-wracking gravitational pull, all kinds of things flash through your mind, like “I wonder if my life insurance policy is up to date?” or “I hope I’m wearing clean underwear” or “when is this bastard going to stop?” And then, just as violently as it began, the horror ends, and the plane stops, and everyone on the plane is thrown forward into the seat in front like cabbages.

And this was considered a perfectly safe landing.

It is amazing that there has been only one accident at Tawau Airport, as far as I know. There was a fatal crash at the old airport back in the early 1990s, involving a Fokker F50 that ran out of runway when trying to land. But that wasn't a Boeing 737, so it was well within the safety margins... Tell that to the poor victims.

Nowadays, of course, these romantic, heady days of travel in the Far East are no more, and the government has sensibly built a swanky new modern airport about thirty minutes' drive outside the town. The new airport can take 737s with no heart stopping take-offs or landings. I daresay that it can take even bigger planes but I haven’t seen anything bigger than an Airbus A320 so far.

But somehow it’s not the same. The old airport now stands fallow and empty, its only users being Malaysian Air Force helicopters, and radio-controlled car enthusiasts. The old runway which was not quite long enough, or perhaps just long enough, has grown over into a grassy expanse, nothing now but a landing strip of memories.

Driving a Borrowed Car in Tawau...

Whenever James Bond visits a new place, he never seems to have any trouble with transport.

He either hires the latest Ford Mondeo from Avis at the airport, or slips silently into a sleek Aston Martin provided by Q Branch, or, if he is really lucky, he gets a lift in an open top Ferrari driven by a half-naked girl who he later sleeps with or kills because she’s an enemy agent.

But look what happened to me when I went to Tawau last week with my dear wife, for some much needed RnR. Waiting in the blistering sauna that is the Kota Kinabalu International Airport, Annie got a call from her sister Anita to the effect that a cousin had lent us the use of a Pajero four wheel drive for the week, and that it will be waiting for us at Tawau airport. This was great news, and even though I had never driven such a beast before, I psyched myself up for an interesting and rewarding drive to our house.

Well, to cut a long story short, we arrived at Tawau and managed to get the keys to our Pajero. It was parked in the airport car park and turned out to be a nice white colour, albeit rather old and battered-looking.

Trying to open the thing was the first challenge. I am used to those keys with a little button that you press that goes ‘beep’ to open the car. But this one had a bunch of ordinary metal, bog-standard keys from the 1970s. As two of them were longer than the others, I reasoned that one of them would open the door. I was right, although I couldn’t open the door because for some reason, the key only turned when my wife did it.

Our next task was to get the bags into the back of the car. The rear door would not open – we tried every key on the bunch, my wife constantly warning me not to turn the key too much or I might break it and me swearing bitterly because it was hot, I was sweating and I was supposed to be on holiday not struggling to open a bloody car with a faulty lock...

We gave up on the rear door and managed to open the side doors and with great dexterity threw our bags into the back over the rear seats, after realising that putting them on the rear seat would stop me from moving the driver’s seat back.

So, with our luggage safely stowed, we proceeded to try the ignition. First of all it didn’t work but eventually, we managed to bring it to coughing, rumbling life. The loud ticking sound told me straight away that the car ran on diesel.

My wife kept telling me to make sure I understood all of the controls before we started off but I had to get into the bloody car first. Annie had no trouble because she is so much smaller than I am but I discovered to my horror and irritation that even when I moved the driver’s seat back as far as I could, I had about a millimetre of room between the steering wheel and my gut. But I squeezed in, closed the door and managed to adjust the mirrors, feeling like an overweight astronaut. The pedals were just too close to the seat, but I thought I would be able to use them, with effort and a few yoga exercises....

I then tried the gears and they all seemed to work like any other car. So I put her into reverse, pumped the gas, brought up the clutch, released the hand brake, and....we weren’t moving. God, what had I done? Annie was being helpful as usual, telling me I was in the wrong gear, even though I wasn’t. The problem seemed to be the biting point. I had to put more power on the accelerator, and release the clutch earlier. When I did this, we slowly slid backwards.

When I had straightened the car up to leave the car park, I made an annoying and potentially dangerous discovery. There was a big plastic sunshield across the top of the windscreen and it was obscuring my forward vision. I could only drive the car safely by bending my head down like a tortoise to look through the windscreen.

Well, to cut another story short, I managed to get us out of the airport compound and onto the expressway leading to Tawau, without killing anyone. The journey was Ok-ish, though I had to be constantly reminded by the wife to slow down, because it was a very fast road full of bends and steep rises and falls and I had never driven on it before. I also found out that the passenger side wing mirror kept moving, leading my wife to stick her hand out of the window from time to time to adjust it to my frantic directions. Also, the steering was a bit slippery, forcing me to be extra careful when changing lanes.

Eventually we entered Tawau town, and I learned that the stopping distance on a Pajero is much greater than on a Matrix, and nearly ran into the back of another car. But, with lots of vigorous encouragement and prayers from Annie, we finally managed to pull up into the drive of our house.

I slid down from the cab like a survivor in one of those air crash movies, just thankful to be alive. My right leg and my neck and shoulders were killing me, because of the cramped driving conditions and the windshield. Annie, on the other hand, was too busy hugging her mum and sister to notice, bless her.

Thoughts from a Rain-Bound Cybercafe

Sitting here in this rather jolly but slightly warm cybercafe in Tawau, Sabah, I am attempting to write my blog in a thunderstorm. Well, I suppose it had to happen some time.

They say that thunderstorms and Internet connections do not mix and I just had a practical demonstration. Suddenly, completely without warning, there was an almighty crash and bang that sounded like the gods had thrown a titanic thunderbolt right into the street outside.

Of course, all the Internet connections in the place went dead, which was a good thing as I had just sent off my latest article to the publishers by Yahoo, and was about to go to my blog page. While the net connection is settling down, I will write this post in Word and post it later.

This is what happens when we rely too much on technology. You might be asking yourselves: "go on you old skinflint, why not invest in a wireless laptop when you go on holiday?" Well I agree with this, but you see I have heard so much about bluejacking and wireless eavesdropping lately that I have my doubts. Bluejacking is where someone else sends illicit files to you when you are using a wireless bluetooth connection. Wireless eavesdropping is the same thing, only people can use your wireless connection without your permission, if their PC is within your wireless footprint.

So you can be innocently using a wireless connection in Starbucks, or at home, and some other bugger may be using your service to connect to porno sites or to some terrorist web site.

So, I am forced to use cybercafes while I am away from base because my house in Tawau has no Internet connection. Yet. So here I am. It’s glutting down with rain outside and I’m basically twiddling my thumbs waiting for my sister in law and her daughter who have gone to the cinema to see some film about chipmunks. Each to their own.

Tawau is an old town that has rapidly outgrown its skin and is starting to burst at the seams. As a result, using a car in Tawau is a bit like using toenail clippers to mow a football field. Short journeys take on epic Oddyssean proportions, because firstly there are too many cars, and secondly most of those who drive them are raving bloody lunatics. Don’t get me started on that old chestnut or else I’ll need my pills!!

So, compared to Tawau, Kuching is a model road safety town! I mean, Tawau hardly has any traffic lights, and most of its roads are narrow, built for the 1950s yet choked with modern 4-wheel drive jeeps. So after I finish at this cybercafe, we will be driving home, which is a 10 minute journey that will take almost an hour.

Thank God I’m not driving, but that’s another story....

A Tale of Two Weddings, Part Two

In my last post, I gave you fifty percent of the story of how I became a married man. Well, as promised, here is the other half.

After the Islamic wedding ceremony in Lancaster, we all trundled down the M6 motorway to my home town, Reading. There were absolutely no coca-cola cans tied to the rear bumper of my battered Nissan Sunny, nor were there any "Just Married" notices plastered on my bonnet or anywhere else for that matter!

When we got back to Reading, my new wife, my mum and I set in motion the well-planned military operation which is the British Wedding. There were cakes to order, invitations to send, clothes and hair to get ready, and hotels and restaurants to book. Basically, lots of fuss and faffle. Now, I know my mother was now in charge of events, but I absolutely insisted that my "British" wedding be a simple affair. No bridesmaids or pages or maids of honour all decked out in co-ordinated little suits and fancy dresses with silly frills and corsages. No huge marquee wedding reception with deafening disco and people getting pissed out of their brains and acting silly like you usually see at weddings in the UK. And definitely no stag night.

Stag nights are a sign of the decay of civilisation, in my opinion. They have come to signal all that I deplore about so-called British ‘culture’ and I was having nothing of them. So instead of spending a dreadful evening getting drunk with a bunch of so-called friends who would probably tie me up naked to a lamp-post and covered in red paint ‘just for a laugh’, I was determined to have a much more peaceful and civilised final night of ‘freedom’. In any case, I didn’t have enough male friends to make a decent stag night!!

The plan of attack in the end was simple, just as I like it. There was to be a civil service in Reading Registry Office, followed by a reception lunch at a very nice hotel near our house who threw in a room and breakfast for our wedding night for free. After the reception, there was to be a nice family gathering at my parents’ house.

So, the big day came. As per tradition, Annie and I were not supposed to see each other until the day of the wedding, so when I went for my pre-wedding (non-alcoholic) drinkies with my friends the night before the ceremony, I had to pretend that Annie was not around. This was odd, seeing as we were already married, as far as Annie was concerned anyway.

So, after meeting my mates Mick and Jon (the Best Man) for a drink in the bar of the hotel where the reception was to be, I went home and mentally prepared myself for the next day’s trial.

The day of the wedding was a cold December day but luckily there was no snow. The house was a blur of activity and eventually, I made my way with my best man to the registry office, stopping on the way to puke my guts out with fear. Fortunately, my nice hired suit wasn’t affected. We arrived at the registry office ahead of Annie, who was being driven in a fancy Mercedes driven by a neighbour and accompanied by my parents. When she arrived, I could see that Annie was gorgeous, wearing a golden lacy creation that she had brought over from Malaysia, her hair done up with flowers and a lovely floral corsage in her hand. Even though I wanted a simple wedding, I wanted my wife to look a million dollars. And she did!

Well, as soon as all the guests, friends and family had arrived, we all trundled into a big room that looked a bit like a magistrate’s court, where we were asked to repeat the civil vows. After that, we had to go into a small anteroom to sign the register. When we were alone, Annie scolded me for ignoring her the night before and I had to explain the bit about us not being supposed to communicate before the wedding. She still brings that one up to this day, bless her!

So, after the regulation photos, our procession made its slow way to the hotel, where we had an excellent lunch and of course, no alcohol for me! And after that, home for a brief rest followed by the best party I have ever had – my friends, friends of the family, extended family members and of course Annie and Simon, husband and wife for the second time in a week.

The only sad thing was that none of Annie’s relatives could be there, but at least we managed to phone Malaysia to inform them that we were now married. The wonderful day was finished off by Annie and I being whisked off to the hotel for our wedding night, which was the icing on the cake. I now felt truly married, and was loving it.

Although our marriage has lasted this nine years, not everything from that wonderful day was happy. All of the friends who were there at the wedding are gone now – I lost touch with most of them when I left the UK. I regret that more than I can express here. Also, a week after our wedding, Annie had to leave me and go back to Malaysia to start her teaching duties in Kuching, while I went back to Lancaster to finish off my PhD. Despite visiting Malaysia three times that year, I still felt as if a part of me was missing. I never want to go through that again.

And one final sad postscript was the death of my grandmother, who died just 6 months after my wedding, at the age of 92. At least she lived to see me finally hitched, and I know she loved Annie, despite being a bit jealous at first.

So that is the Tale of Two Weddings, gentle readers. May I wish you all a blessed Hari Raya Haji and a very Merry Christmas. And if you are getting married at this time of the year, wherever you are, may the blessings of Prof. Madder be with you!

A Tale of Two Weddings, Part One

Yesterday was our ninth Wedding Anniversary. Amazing to think of it, but the last nine years have rushed by like a blissful, sometimes hectic roller coaster.

We celebrated our "ninth birthday" with a visit to the Kuching Hilton, to sample their excellent buffet. I haven’t been in the place for at least three years, and was shocked to see how crowded with newness the hotel is now. A lot of the old lobby is gone, especially the water feature in the middle where I once took pictures of my Mum and Dad. Also, the coffee bar on the lobby level has now been completely transformed and the piano player removed. Another innovation was that half of the lobby has become a brightly lit jewellery shop, complete shining diamonds and a security guard armed with the regulation pump action shotgun which probably isn’t loaded.

But that’s not what we went there for, and we glided downstairs to the Riverfront Cafe past bright Christmas decor and a giant gingerbread Santa’s Grotto where the sushi bar used to be.

The interesting thing about our anniversary is that in fact, we have two wedding anniversaries. This is because we had two wedding ceremonies. This is quite a story, which I don’t mind sharing with you, seeing as it’s Christmas.

We met each other in the UK at Lancaster University, when I was finishing off my Doctoral studies and Annie was doing her Bachelors in TESL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language). To cut a long story short, we got married twice, once in a Muslim ceremony and once in a Civil service as British law required. Because I married a Muslim, especially one from Malaysia, I had to become a Muslim myself. I might write about this in a future post. But suffice it to say that I had to get married in the local mosque in Lancaster, which was a pretty mind-blowing experience.

The particular mosque where my married life began was the same place where I was officially welcomed into Islam a couple of months previously. And this mosque was predominantly Pakistani, and they do things differently compared to the Malays, even though they follow the same religion.

It went like this. On the appointed day, 11^th December 1998, I made my way to the Masjid An Nur (Mosque of Light) in Lancaster, and performed the evening prayer with a large group of bearded, be-robed Pakistanis and a few Englishmen who had converted like me. I felt extremely awkward and alone and unsure if I was doing the right thing, or if I was doing something wrong.

I never forget one particular mosque member who helped me to learn some of the basics of Islam – we will call him Kassim. He was a tall, turbaned and bearded man who owned the best curry house in Lancaster. I don’t want to sound politically incorrect, but he was the spitting image of Osama bin Laden, although of course I wouldn’t have known who he was then. He was a peaceful, smiling and knowledgeable man who spoke excellent English and was an expert in mobile phones.

Anyway, after the prayers, all the men in the mosque sat in a circle and I didn’t know what to say. I was dressed rather incongruously in a white baju Melayu (long Malay shirt worn outside the trousers, and a songok (Malay pillbox hat) decorated with a little jewel. I probably felt that looked very Islamic at the time!

The Pakistani way of performing a marriage ceremony as I have said is very different from the Malay way of doing it. In a Malay ceremony, the bride and groom are together while the rites are pronounced by the cleric. Usually, all the close relatives, men and women, are seated nearby. However, the Pakistanis in Lancaster separated the bride from the groom, which made me feel somewhat nervous and apprehensive. My wife was waiting in a friend’s house a few blocks away from the mosque, with my mum, my Malay friend (representing Annie’s family) and my old landlady Josie in attendance. A pair of Muslim clerics went to the house and asked the bride-to-be three times whether she wanted to accept the groom as her future husband. When she agreed, the clerics went back to the mosque to present the answer to the Imam, the leader of the prayers.

So after a considerable time waiting in the mosque, chatting to Kassim and generally looking at the pattern on the carpet and counting the number of tiles on the ceiling, I was relieved to see the two clerics enter, and pass a piece of paper to the Imam. Then the real ceremony began. The Imam took my hand firmly in his, and asked me to repeat after him everything that he said.

Only it was all in Arabic!

Never mind, I tried my best to repeat his excellent Arabic words, all verses from the Holy Qur’an, making only a couple of mistakes along the way. Then, after a few verses uttered by the Imam (which I didn’t have to repeat thankfully!), he told me that I was now married. Just like that!

Something of an anticlimax, especially as there was no bride to kiss, but there you are!

After giving a gift of sweets to all the men in the mosque and shaking everyone’s hands and receiving plenty of blessings, I then went to claim my new wife. I remember one of the older men, a very dark and salubrious old gentleman, saying to me before I left: “congratulations. Now you can go to a hotel!”.

After a short walk up the road with my Sudanese friend Salah, I was reunited with my new bride, resplendent in a magnificent blue baju kebaya, looking as if she had been crying, and very nervous because she missed me. I performed the ceremony of placing the wedding ring on her finger and we all made our way to dinner at the restaurant owned by Kassim, which was a converted Church and made the best curries and Indian food that side of Bombay! Later on, I went back to the mosque to collect my Islamic wedding certificate, which was elaborately printed in English and Arabic. The evening ended with a family gathering at another hotel, then home to bed. The next day, we were to drive back down to my home town for the second wedding ceremony, which I will talk about in the next post....

The Customer is Always Right, Right?

I have never really understood why customer service seems to be a challenge for some eating establishments here in Kuching.

I mean, I was under the impression, correct me if I am wrong, that the customer is always right. Right? Well, in some cases, wrong. Let me give you a little example from a recent bad experience.

As you have probably worked out by now, my family and I like to go to the Kuching International Airport sometimes to treat ourselves to a nice bite to eat. Now there are two places we have frequented at the airport - one is a branch of a well-known fast-food chain whose name starts with the letter K, and the other is a famous coffee outlet whose name starts with S and rhymes with 'Tarbucks'.

Just a week ago, I experienced just what customer service means in the fast-food joint at the airport. Now don't get me wrong - up to that point, there had been no problems with the staff, who have always been friendly, if a little robotic. You know the routine:

Fast food staffer: Good eveningsir, havinhere or takaway?

Me: Having here, yes. I'll have two sets number three, original, one burger meal, one set cheesy wodges, one regular fries, four regular pepsi...

Fast food staffer (after a lot of clicking and whirring of the cogs): OK, I repeedurorder, two set nummer three..............

and it goes on. Eventually, we get our food and sit down.

But last week, it all went wrong. When we sat down to start eating, we noticed that the girl behind the counter hadn't given us many tissues. Seeing as there were five of us, and we only had three tissues, this was a serious logistical problem. So, my dear wife asked one of the staff girls if we could have some more tissues.

And that's when it all went pear-shaped!

The girl returned, and slapped down a theatrically large wad of tissues onto our table, then walked off. I mean the wad of tissues was about as thick as a paperback copy of Lord of the Rings, and to my mind signified sarcasm and annoyance on the part of the girl. Annie picked up on that right away, and proceeded to go ballistic.

She called the girl back and threw the tissues back at her, screaming in indignation. With my son and I following behind, my poor missus then proceeded to the Manager's office, where she complained to the manager about the bad customer service she had received. The girl who had delivered the tissues, obviously in shock, disappeared round the corner, and after a few more stern words from my wife, and some calming down from my son and I, we brought this ugly encounter to a close, with apologies all round.

But the damage is done. My wife, being on chemotherapy as she is, sometimes gets a bit sensitive, and the rotten attitude of this serving girl set my wife off. Also, as Annie pointed out to me later on, it's also a matter of how you are dressed. Sometimes, if you are dressed simply, as my wife was that night, you get less respect from shop staff in Malaysia.

The serving girl had no way of knowing it I suppose, but my wife was only wearing a simple track top and slacks because she easily feels cold as a result of her condition. Maybe she should have been wearing a full baju kebaya with gold-laced tudung and bloody matching shoes and bag!

So the Kuching Airport branch of that famous fast food chain whose name starts with the letter K has been added to the list of eating places that will be permanently boycotted by Prof. Madder and his family, forever and ever until the sun turns into a red giant and dies.

The coffee joint whose name starts with the letter S, on the other hand, is the diametric opposite in terms of customer service. Every time you go there, you are greeted by a genuine smile by well-dressed staff who seem to be really nice young people. One of them is a former student of mine, who always likes to practice her English on me. I feel that going to this place is a genuine pleasure, and you are treated as someone special, even though you are probably the ten thousandth person they have talked to that day.

The staff of that coffee place know that every customer who enters a restaurant or cafe is special. They are more valuable than gold, and as precious as air and water. Their patronage pays the wages of all the staff who work there. The livelihood of the restaurant owner or manager depends on whether or not these customers come into their shops, and pay out their hard earned cash to sample the food or drink on offer.

So, eating place owners of Kuching and Malaysia, remember that you should respect your customers, regardless of what they look like, or how they are dressed. If they have money in their hands, hunger in their bellies and thirst in their throats, then they should be cherished like precious gems.

Malaysia, being a country of so many different eating places and food stalls, offers customers plenty of alternative choices, and they will take those choices if what you offer them is not up to the mark. And that includes customer service.

So I will only patronise the coffee bar whose name starts with S from now on, whenever I go for something to eat or drink at the airport. The extra cost is worth it, because their staff have never been rude to me or my family. They have what it takes to provide excellent service to their customers.

Now I'm sounding like one of those business books!!

Chemotherapy Diary #4: Cycle Four

Well, this is the last one, but I'm not sure whether to feel relieved or anxious.

Annie's final shot of chemotherapy poisons was delivered on Wednesday. Not much to report really, except this time there was a much longer wait, caused it seemed by the shortage of nurses who could locate the veins with the intravenous needle!!

So, Annie came out after over three hours feeling as sick as a parrot. And wouldn't you? We took her straight home and as I write she is still having the vomits and feeling weak.

She has one more hurdle to go in her cancer treatment - radiotherapy. Now, I have no idea what radiotherapy involves, but apparently they aim some sort of radiation source at the place where the cancer tumour originally was and they zap it with radiation. Don't know how long or how much, but some people I have spoken to say there will be some blistering of the skin.

Sounds pretty scary, in the light of some highly disturbing reports I read recently from France, where the government is investigating a number of cases of radiation overdose that go back over twenty years. Some patients died because they were given too much radiation, and others are still suffering great pain to this day.

As you can imagine, I hope to God that they don't microwave my wife's mammary too much. The thought turns me cold! Or hot, as the case may be...

Just to let you know, Prof. Madder and his darling wife will be taking a holiday from 15th to 29th December. As we are going to a place without an internet connection, it is most probable that I will not be able to provide you with the usual morsels of delight that you have been accustomed to. Don't worry, after 29th, normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. In any case, there are still 7 days to go before I go away, so I'm going to cram as much in before the end of the year as I can!

Don't get too excited now!!

Snow Joke...

There are two industries that must be doing a roaring trade at this time of the year. The first is whoever it is that makes that fake rubbery snow that shopkeepers spray onto their shop windows to make it look like it’s snowing. I’m pretty sure the makers of this stuff don’t sell any of it during the rest of the year then suddenly BOOM! It’s going faster than pieces of cake that have had heat applied to them! And all because people want to make Tropical Malaysia look like a Winter Wonderland.

The other highly lucrative business at this time of year is the cotton wool industry. Yes, cotton wool – just imagine, how many tons of cotton wool every year at this time are diverted from their true calling in the cosmetics and healthcare sectors to be used to make snowylooking window displays, tree decorations and fake beards?

And why is all this fake snow being produced? 'Cos it’s CHRISTMAS!!!

Now, I love Christmas and have many happy memories of it from my own childhood back home even though I’m no longer an official Christian. But try as I might, I cannot get my mind around Christmas in a tropical country. It just doesn’t compute. I have been programmed all my life to associate the Season of Goodwill with winter – big coats, woolly hats, snowy landscapes, snowmen, sleigh rides in the snow: snow, snow snow!! Definitely not tropical heat and monsoon rains...

So when I see all this faux snow and winter kitsch being created all over town, I can’t help feeling somewhat bemused by it all. It’s just another cultural juxtaposition that doesn’t really have the right to exist in this context.

There are so many examples of this kind of weird juxtaposition in this new, globalising Malaysia. Like transplanting Valentines Day to Malaysia every year. Very Asian Values. Or what about this: Muslim ladies wearing baseball caps over their tudungs and Western style blazers over their baju kurungs at formal meetings. I have seen this, honest! Or finally, the huge numbers of Malaysian women (and some men!) dying their hair orange (mistakenly called blonde!) to look Western, or something. And I thought they had got their independence from foreign rule in 1957!!

Moving focus a bit to another Asian country that has been polluted by Western influence, I remember reading some time ago about what happened when a department store in Japan decided to have its first ever Christmas window display. The result was a schizophrenic and highly offensive tableau that featured a Santa Claus crucified on a cross!! Talk about mixed messages!! I expect they did not repeat that cultural snafu the following year!

So, ladies and gentlemen, as an outsider looking in, I can’t help but feeling somewhat jaded when Western influence disguised as fashionable cultural practice becomes an established part of the local scene here in Malaysia. I have in fact coined a term for this phenomenon – ‘cultureference’, or cultural interference. It’s not that I’m against influences from other cultures – they are perfectly natural should be encouraged, when they bring positive outcomes.

But I have seen what Christmas has become in my own culture – a glorified excuse for spending money that you haven’t got on presents that people don’t need. Christmas in the UK has become an orgiastic, booze-fuelled homage to excess and frivolity where the true meaning of Christmas – good will and caring for others less fortunate than yourselves - has become blurred and illegible like a scribbled message on a wall after a rain storm.

I just hope and pray that this is not the future of Christmas here in Malaysia. I hope that Malaysia’s traditional values of family, religiosity and common sense will hold back this swelling tsunami of cultureference.

So, I would like to wish a Merry Christmas and a decidedly jolly New Year to all my Christian friends.

Just One More Before December..

In my last posting for the month of November, I thought I would be a little bit phatic and talk about the weather. We seem to be getting rather a lot of it at the moment here in Kuching, probably because it is the rainy season and there’s a theatrical amount of water falling out of the sky.

You can have sugar shortages, you can have petrol shortages, but one thing Sarawak is definitely not short of is water. It is everywhere – in the bathroom, in the rivers, in the drains and in the air we breathe. It’s the main reason why we have such a humid climate, which can make life fun sometimes for part-time asthmatics like me!

I remember my first serious encounter with a tropical, humid climate. It was at the Butterfly House, in Lancaster’s excellent Williamson Park in the North West of England, more than fifteen years ago. Williamson Park was built by a Victorian philanthropist who, to keep his factory workers in employment during an economic downturn, set them to work building a park. The result is one of England’s best-kept secrets – a gorgeous rolling park with lakes, forest walks, floral gardens and a spectacular Victorian folly, the Ashton Memorial, that looks like the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral in London. And of course there’s the Butterfly House.

If you have ever been to Lancaster, you will know how bitter cold and windy the place can be in the winter – most of the ancient city is built on a hill, and the Butterfly House along with its surrounding park is built on the highest and windiest hill in town. So to keep warm at the Williamson Park in Winter one has two choices – the coffee shop or the Butterfly House. The latter is an enormous greenhouse that recalls London’s Kew Gardens. It houses a wide range of tropical and sub-tropical plants, trees and enormous butterflies. I also understand that there are some tropical spiders there too and some snakes.

Entering the Butterfly House is like abruptly passing from one climate to another, or like being transported from one world to another in the blink of an eye. Upon entering the main structure, you pass through enormous clear plastic rubber doors and you are immediately and intimately involved in the cloying, superheated, steamy interior of a tropical rainforest. If you were wearing winter clothes before you went in, they’ll not be on you for very long. Within seconds, your hair and face and body will be soaked with sweat, and you will feel like you are in a sauna – though fully dressed!

That’s just what it feels like for me every day here in Sarawak. Only here, the greenhouse is the whole planet, and the enormous butterflies that were prisoners in the Lancaster greenhouse are here flying around free here in Sarawak. When I first came over to Kuching, I felt the need to drink ice cold drinks all the time, because my body was not programmed for the heat. Eventually, I learned that it was best to take hot drinks like coffee or teh tarik, or warm water because you can catch a cold if you drink too much cold water.

You can imagine how I reacted when my wife told me that I could catch a cold. I mean, how can you catch a cold when it’s so hot and humid everywhere! But of course, if I had a fifty ringgit note for every cold or flu bout I have had since I have been in Sarawak, I could probably buy an Apple iPhone. Or two!

That’s because the body slowly adapts to minute changes in temperature which are undetectable if you are not used to them. Here in a tropical climate, the change from a hot, sunny and humid season to a hot, wet and rainy season means a considerable drop in temperature, especially at night. At first, this difference hardly meant anything to me, as I could only feel stifling heat all the time. Sarawak was either hot and dry or hot and wet, when I first encountered the place.

But now, I really have to be careful to wear something in bed at night, especially during this rainy season when the air is cooler and you don’t need to switch on the fan so much at night. And now that I have a spanking new air conditioner at work in my office, I have to keep drinking warm drinks to stop the icicles forming! By body has gradually switched over and become sensitive to the temperature ranges in this tropical greenhouse we call Sarawak!

So we are now in what I call the Sarawak Winter – the skies are cloudy, it rains Biblically all day long and you can sleep at night because it isn’t too hot. I wish that Sarawak could be like this all the year round, but as they say, if the weather was always the same, we’d go mad with boredom. And the flu pill manufacturers would probably go out of business!!

Where you from?

Just the other day I went for a coffee at Starbucks again and was subjected to a friendly interrogation routine by the barrista (barman) which has become very familiar to me after nearly 8 years in Malaysia.

It went something like this:

Barrista: Where you from, Sir?

Me: I’m from the UK

Barrista: Oh! Which part of the UK is that sir?

Me: Reading, between London and Oxford.. South East England

Barrista: Really? We learn most of our geography about the UK from the EPL! Do you follow any of the EPL clubs?

Me: (pretending to know something about football) ..well, I think Reading have done very well lately but I don’t really follow any of the clubs. I only follow England and Italy during the World Cup.. it was a pity about Steve McLaren getting fired as England Coach…..

Barrista (serving my coffee) OK sir thank you! Please come again!

This is a perfect example of the kind of conversation routine which I have to go through time and time again here in Malaysia. Everyone thinks I am a football lunatic just because I say I am from the UK. So I have to pretend that I know something about the game, just to maintain social cohesion.

This is what linguists call ‘phatic communion’ – the use of meaningless bits of chatter to maintain social ties, just for a few moments until the need for the social tie is gone. Then, the conversation instantly pops like a balloon.

In the UK, we talk about the weather – “nice morning isn’t it?” “Let’s hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow” etc etc… There is no real communication or desire to know each other’s deepest inner feelings about it, just the need to fill in those unpleasant silences while we wait around for something more meaningful to happen, like a bus.

The conversation I had with the Starbucks employee had a mildly noteworthy and equally phatic sequel. Just as I was picking up my coffee from the barrista, there was a well-heeled Malaysian Chinese man also picking up his order. He said that he overheard that I was from Reading, and informed me proudly that he had studied in Brighton, that quaint remnant of 19^th Century seaside hedonism on England’s South Coast.

So we shared a brief phatic exchange about the British weather and Brighton fish and chips (the best in the world), which was finished off by the obligatory “what do you do for a living?” sequence. It seems everyone is faintly surprised that a professor in a local university drinks in Starbucks. Especially at the airport. They all think I’m in town waiting for a flight to somewhere else. Very embarrassing.

So next time I get asked where I’m from, I’m thinking, I’ll pick a different part of the world, just to mix things up a bit and make the conversation a bit more meaningful and genuine. I won’t say I’m American, because I might get my coffee thrown back at me, I won’t say I’m Australian, because the barrista might start talking about cricket and his auntie who lives in Sydney, and I won’t say I’m from New Zealand, in case they start talking about Rugby.

I know! I’ll say I’m Italian. With my new goatee, I could pull it off and my stepfather is from Lake Garda so I can talk about Italy a lot without sounding stupid even though I’ve never been there. That’ll work nicely.

As long as they don’t ask me about football!!

The Beautiful (?) Game

Contrary to everyone’s stereotypical image of Brits, I actually do not like football.

I’ll give you all a few moments to recover from the shock. There. OK now? Good..

Call me an old-fashioned snob if you like, but I have always considered football to be a rather rough game played by over-paid primadonnas with a massively over-inflated image of their own importance in the world. Football, in my humble opinion, is not something that should be followed by intellectuals like me. Probably why I am here in Malaysia, not home in the UK where football and evidence of its worship are stuffed down your throat all the time.

I think my ambivalence toward Britain’s Second National Religion goes back to my childhood when, being the only big boy in the class, I was usually put in goal during school football lessons. Now imagine the lack of logic in this management choice. You put the biggest boy in the class in goal. Now why would you do that? Because the ball won’t go past his body? Well think again, because I am pretty certain that I let in more goals than, well, the current England goalie!

Thing is, I couldn’t dive. You need to be able to dive, as well as having twenty foot long arms, to be a successful goalkeeper. And, seeing as I had none of those attributes, my goalkeeping days were short and bitter and humiliating.

So, gentle readers, my love of football nowadays only runs to the World Cup. And that’s only if England or Italy are in it. I don’t support any club in the English Premier League (which everyone in Malaysia calls EPL) and couldn’t give a flying fig whether Arsenal or ManU or Chelsea are top of the table because to me they are all the same, with different coloured shirts.

Anyway, I happened to be surfing the web on the phone the other day when I stumbled upon quite a shocking story on the BBC website. It concerned the sudden sacking of the England Manager (not Coach please, this is England!) Steve McLaren because, it seems, England failed to qualify for the Euro 2008 tournament.

Now, even though I hate football, it doesn’t mean I can’t discuss it like any other topic – after all, I am a responsible blogger who respects his audience! So, I started thinking about why on Earth England think they have an automatic right to qualify for the European Cup when the British government can’t even make up its mind whether or not to join the EURO currency. Surely, if their players aren’t up to the mark – which seems to be the case – then they deserve to be left out of the draw. Work harder – get it right next time!

Then, I thought of how utterly stupid it was to fire the manager who after all had only been in the job for 18 months. Wouldn’t it be better to give him a chance to improve his own management techniques, learn from his mistakes and motivate his players to stop thinking about how much money they are making and how many yachts they are going to buy next week or how many models they are going to sleep with, and actually PLAY BETTER FOOTBALL!!

But that’s not how the world goes these days is it? How naive and stupid of me?

Facial Growth Shock Horror!

With all the excitement going on in my life at the moment, I thought I would do something really radical and out of character. I have decided to grow a beard!!

For the last two or three weeks, my upper lip and chin have become the site of a wondrously bushy, black and white goatee. The moustache is black, while the tufts of hair either side of my chin have an Amitabh Bachhanesque whiteness.

Why grow a beard, especially in this climate, you might ask! Well, beards and me have crossed swords many times before. The last time was about ten years ago in Poland when I grew a similar goatee to go with my Byronesque long black hair of the time, and one of my American friends told me that I "looked like a hood", which can't be good I suppose!

Further back than that, much further back, I had grown a beard while an undergraduate. A full black sea-captain beard that would probably these days get me a part in a Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Fat Cap'n Madder! In fact, my degree graduation photo has me standing there all grand in my cap and gown, with my facial fungus making me look older then than I am now!

The thing is, I actually hate shaving. It's such a time-wasting chore. Also, it's quite a dangerous time-wasting chore because I use a wet shaver, and no matter how hard I try, I always manage to draw blood when I shave in the morning. Once, when I was at a conference in Kota Kinabalu, I almost cut my nose off because I was shaving in a hurry. The only safe shave I have ever had was with an electric shaver, but my old trusty Philishave died just after I came over to Malaysia!

Of course, the unkind among you will say: "well, that's what you get for being such a fat bastard! Round faces are harder to shave than thin ones!" Well, I've had enough of feeling sorry for myself - I have decided to change my appearance and look more professorial and serious - hence the beard! And, the amount of shaving I have to do in the morning has been halved, because I only shave the cheeks and neck!

Well, so far the reaction to my metamorphosis at work has been largely positive. So far, nobody has burst out laughing, but then again, Malaysians are so polite in that way! Some of my Malay colleagues (who like to have little goatees but often complain that they cannot grow beards) are mightily impressed with my facial fungus. One of them the other day actually said that I look more Malay now.

My students think I look cool (or did they say I look like a bloody fool - must be going deaf!) and my dear wife, who has lost nearly all of her hair, seems to be warming to the fact that I now have a little more.

So I will keep my beard for a while, as an experiment in personal presentation and to be in sympathy for my wife's temporary hair loss. Besides, I want to look more intellectual!

But, sorry folks, it's against blog policy to show you what my new beard looks like! You'll have to come and see for yourselves!!

Chemotherapy Diary #3: Cycle Three

While I was sitting waiting for Annie's blood test results the other day, it occurred to me that the hospital I was in was probably the best place in the world to have a heart attack. That being the case, I made absolutely sure that I didn't laugh too vigorously.

It was Annie's third chemo session (just one to go!!) and we were all squeezed into the crowded little waiting room where Annie had just emerged from having her blood test. Her face was crinkled in pain and her arm bent upwards to keep the cotton wool from falling off the puncture wound she had just been given. "Adoi, sakit bah" she said ("ouch it hurts!") and she took her place between my son and I at the back of the room.

We had arrived at the hospital hyper-early to get the blood test done (7 am) and the blood testing lab waiting room was already filling up with young and old. We had already established our slot in the wonderfully bureaucratic system by which health care is administered in Malaysia. It's so simple. You go to the front desk, hand in your appointment card, wait for fifteen minutes, they call your name, they give you a number, you sit down and wait for your number to appear in bright red letters on the wall monitor.

This kind of system is used widely in banks, some shops, most government departments and is, I suppose the best way available of managing queues in a culture that doesn't understand what a queue is. Some of these ticket based queuing systems have robotic voices that periodically announce things like "satu dua lima kosong, kaunter empat" (one two five zero, counter four), usually accompanied by a slightly off-key beep.

Well, in the hospital, there was no beep or robotic voice, just a harried-looking lady with a microphone. Perhaps she had been up all night dreaming of beeping robots and wishing that they could do her job for her so that she can get back to her card game on the computer. Maybe...

So anyway, Annie's test results came back, and we all trundled off through the Harry Potteresque labyrinth that is the Sarawak General Hospital. After stocking up on nibbles and drinkies, we made our way to the oncology department, for Annie's third dose of medical poisoning.

The oncology department is located in a different building and the way you get to it is worthy of Kafka. From the blood testing laboratory, it's a short couple of hundred yard walk to a set of elevators. You take the elevator one floor up to the first floor (usually it's quicker to take the stairs!). Then, you turn right and walk along a covered walkway which is actually a bridge linking the two buildings.

Across the bridge, you find yourself in the cancer ward, where patients and their visitors are arranged for all the world to see. I always feel slightly uncomfortable walking through a crowded hospital ward. It's a bit like walking through someone's bedroom while they are still in bed eating their breakfast.

Anyway, you turn right through the ward and you come to another set of elevators. Take the elevator down to the ground floor and then turn left (or is it right? can't remember!) and you arrive at the chemotherapy waiting area with the water feature and the room with the stained glass!

Phew!! I feel like sitting down. And I'm not the patient!!

This time, Annie's chemotherapy has taken its toll just a bit. The second session featured very severe mouth ulcers - sometimes she couldn't eat, swallow or talk properly, and understandably her mood, and that of my son and I, was a bit subdued this time. But, luckily, she was taken into the chemo salon quite early, after being weighed, and took her place once again. Two and a half hours later, Annie emerged, with some new drugs and something to help her with the mouth ulcers. She was happier, because she had made some more new friends, including one of my work colleagues who is recovering from throat cancer.

You see, gentle readers, cancer is a disease that must be handled, and treated, with the support of others. Nobody should have to face cancer alone. Stress and worry and anxiety can cause the immune system to be suppressed, and that's when cancer thrives. So one thing we try to do in our family is to make Annie as happy and stress-free as possible (even where there are painful mouth ulcers, headaches and vomiting to contend with!). And that means going with her to the hospital and holding her hand when necessary.

So if you have a loved one who is suffering from cancer, undergoing cancer treatment or who is facing death from cancer, it is your duty to keep him or her smiling and happy. Happiness spawns hope, hope leads to well-being and well-being can bring recovery.

So spread the word. Be happy. Support your loved ones. Keep reading this blog!!

Why Motorcyclists Die...

In my last post, I described the funeral wakes for two young boys who had died in a motorcycle accident only the previous night. I would like to continue the story here, and to add some of my own insights.

Nobody knows how the boys died, except that they had gone out on their motorbikes the previous evening, and were found dead at the side of the road at six this morning. At the post-mortem, it was found that one of them had a broken skull and there was dirty water in his lungs, suggesting drowning in the roadside ditch. Although I'm no detective, I would surmise that they were riding their bikes together and may have been hit by passing traffic, ending up in the ditch. But we will probably never know.

One hears of deaths like this all over Malaysia. Youngsters, usually, on motorbikes, hit by a car or truck, falling onto the road at speed or colliding with another vehicle, ending up dead or badly injured. I once saw some photographs as a safety exhibition run by the police. One photo showed a policeman holding what looked like bloody human brains in a crash helmet, at the scene of a motorbike fatality.

The Malaysian Government has for many years now been organising increasingly hard-hitting and gory safety campaigns on the television and radio, showing us the importance of road safety and highlighting the human consequences of road accidents. Yet despite all this commendable official effort, these deaths and injuries keep happening time and time again, and they seem to be getting more frequent.

Is it because the riders don't wear helmets? No. Most of them do wear crash helmets. Is it because they ride too fast or too madly? Well, probably not, despite the well-publicised Mat Rempit illegal racer incidents in Peninsular Malaysia. Is it because the police don’t enforce the law? Well, it seems that the police are constantly stopping motorcyclists for various offenses, including riding without helmets. So there must be some other causes...

To me, as a fairly neutral observer, there are indeed other causes. After seven years in this country, I have been able to identify three factors that may cause the deaths of so many motorcyclists. These factors are the attitudes of road users, the state of the roads themselves, and the street lighting conditions at night.

Let us firstly deal with the attitude of other road users towards motorcyclists. Quite simply, motorcyclists don’t seem to get much respect from other motorists. You see, most people who ride motorcycles, especially in Sarawak, fall into two groups: young students, and the poor. Young students will include school kids, and university and college undergraduates. The poor, for this analysis, will include low-income groups such as farmers, factory workers, soldiers and junior-ranking office workers.

Now, young students ride motorbikes because it’s cool and convenient to ride them, plus that’s all they can afford. The poor just ride them because that’s all they can afford. And you will frequently find that many who have a motorbike will use it to carry the whole family – mum, dad, and often two or more little kids. Because it’s all they’ve got, and all they can afford.

Now, many people on the road, driving cars and trucks and vans, are not from these groups, or work for people who are not from these groups, and they seem to treat those who ride motorbikes like low-class scum. After all, they don’t pay much road tax lah, they are just poor people lah, who cares about them lah? They have so many bloody kids lah, whose gonna miss another one lah?

So it’s OK to turn left straight in front of a motorcycle without signalling, or to knock one over without stopping, or to drive too close to one, forcing the rider into the kerb, or to hit one from behind. So, the riders of motorbikes are not even on the respect radar, and as a result, they become victims of bloody-mindedness and sheer snobbery. They are so small lah!

Now the second reason why, in my analysis, motorcyclists die so frequently is the road surface itself. Now let me throw a scenario at you, dear readers. Imagine you are travelling at 60 kilometres per hour in a car and you hit a small hole in the road. What will you feel? At worst, a slight blip in your suspension.

But what if you are riding a motorbike at the same speed and you hit the same hole? If you are lucky, your bike will buck upwards and you may be able to land in the right direction, and carry on riding. At worst, even if you are not going very fast, you may come flying off your bike like a thrown steeplechaser. I wouldn’t fancy your chances, to be honest!

Now no matter how we may deny it, in some parts of Kuching, some roads have potholes, especially the smaller secondary roads. And not just potholes, but the whole road surface is in some places so uneven and bumpy that driving can be akin to sailing in a speedboat on choppy seas.

Indeed, certain roads in and around Kuching seem to have surfaces with the consistency of chewing gum. Perhaps because of the heat, the surface has warped, and one of the results is that the edges of the road are very uneven indeed. So usually, to avoid being struck from behind, motorcyclists have to ride at the edge of the road.... where the potholes are at their thickest!

Ironically, one example of this kind of road is the very road where the two dead boys lived.

Now I know the authorities have been repairing and improving the roads a lot in recent years, and I applaud them for that. They have done a great job in the seven years I have been here in this town. But it is still the case that potholes and uneven road surfaces exist.

Now, as a car driver, I experience potholes and uneven road surfaces merely as a bumpy ride, little more. A minor inconvenience that keeps me from falling asleep at the wheel. But imagine if you are a motorcyclist. It means that every few metres, you have to make split-second decisions at speed (with a visor partially blocking your vision) as to which part of the road is safest to ride on. Sometimes you may have to ride all over the place just to avoid being thrown off your bike.

So the road isn’t exactly a friend to motorcyclists either....

A final factor which may contribute to the deaths of motorcyclists is poor road lighting. Now I have never been able to understand why the street lighting, where it exists, is so dim after dark in Kuching, the State Capital? It's a complete mystery to me, but then again, so are UFOs and ghosts.

So, imagine you are a motorcyclist. You have to both see and be seen. Not always a problem if you are in a car because you have big headlights at the front, and bright shining red fairy lights at the back. But remember, motorcycles have very small front headlights, with a narrow cone of light, and even smaller rear lights. And on top of this, motorcycles present a small, narrow profile in the dark compared to a car, and this is made even worse when the street lights, where they exist, are so dim. Not only is it difficult to see in front of you, it is also that much more difficult to be seen in turn.

Now I realise that many motorcyclists make it harder on themselves by wearing dark clothes and even sometimes neglect to fix their broken rear lights. Yes, this is a serious problem which must be addressed by the authorities concerned. But, if the street lights were brighter in the first place, I am certain that most car drivers would be able to see any motorcyclist more clearly, and in turn the motorcyclist would be able to see in front more clearly too.

So, gentle readers, I wonder how many more grieving families will have to endure the loss of their future heroes and heroines? How many more agonized screams of relatives and loved ones will have to ring out from the nation’s homes at the news of a death? And how much more blood will need to be washed off from the roadsides?

Not much more, I pray, not much more...

Here today, gone tomorrow...

My grandfather used to say this, whenever we discussed death: "here today, gone tomorrow". Of course, in his broad Berkshire accent, it came out as "ere tudday, gone tumorra". But the meaning remains the same however it is rendered.

Today, I was reminded of just how absolute this seemingly trite observation can be. Being a Saturday, the day started off in a pleasant, relatively trouble-free way, with a nice late breakfast with Annie and our nephew at the Tun Jugah Food Court. I had something I haven't eaten for almost five years - Cantonese fried noodles: a plate-sized round pillow of crispy noodles with a pool of eggy, chickeny sauce in the middle into which the hard noodles slowly sink and become soft and wet. Ah, the childish pleasures of life!

Later on, I took our nephew off for a book hunt, firstly stopping off at the excellent MyBookstore.com and its neighbour Sinar. We didn't buy anything, it was just a pleasure to look and browse and remind ourselves that one of the greatest things about being alive is being able to read, and learn.

After this, off to the only second-hand bookstore I have encountered in Malaysia, Book Castle, on the Jalan Zaidi Adruce near the hospital. Lots of old paperbacks and hardbacks, but not arranged in any thematic order, forcing us to search through the whole lot to see any gems. My neck hurt from constantly bending down to look at the lower shelves. And, there was nothing I liked. Slightly miffed...

Then, on the way home, we received orders from the General (Annie, who we had earlier dropped at home) to get some bananas on the way home. Went to get the bananas, then decided to eat (the torrential rain having a big role in forcing our detour). Then, more orders from HQ diverted us to the BDC shopping centre near home where we went looking at books again, then got soaked to the skin running back to the car.

Then, finally, we drove home. Wet, tired from all that shopping and running. And me looking forward to enjoying the rest of the afternoon reading with a nice warm cup of tea. But it wasn't to be...

When we arrived home, Annie was fully dressed. Apparently, two of her students had been killed that day in a road accident and, as Annie was their teacher, we were to visit the homes of the dead boys to offer condolences. So, off we went in the driving rain, to the kampung area near Annie's school where the boys lived.

The first house was a pitifully simple place, bare walls with jungle at the back, full of people of all ages, mostly from the Iban group, which meant they were Christian. The dead boy was laid out in an immaculate wooden coffin with bright shining brass handles, surrounded by relatives and friends. There was a sudden up-swelling of wailing emotion, which always gets my eyes watering, but I controlled myself. We sat on the floor, and offered a small envelope with money to the mother, a local custom.

I remember noticing how peaceful and still the boy was, laying there with cotton-wool plugs in his nose, indicating a recent post-mortem. And I thought to myself that this young boy, killed the day after the end of school, was alive and running around just twenty four hours earlier. As Oscar Wilde once wrote, "those whom the Gods love, grow young".

After making our respectful exit, we drove a quarter mile up the road to the house of the other boy who had died. This next house was accessed by bouncing our way across a stream on a rickety wooden walkway. It had a similar sad tableau as the previous one, but there were more relatives and friends this time, old men smoking, the remains of food on the table outside the house, the same dark, simple bare interior of the house, hot, sweltering, crowds of brown-skinned youngsters on the floor, with another young boy laid out in a beautiful coffin as a centrepiece, below a faded picture of Christ.

At the feet of the coffin, a dark old man was tending a small brazier where a pungent wood was burning, sending a strong, musky smoke up to the ceiling. Later, Annie told me that this is to mask the smell of the corpse, and perhaps to ward off the flies. We stayed there for a respectful period, then gave the requisite envelope of money to the mother, who was oddly calm I thought, and left this second scene of sudden death.

Here today, gone tomorrow. What a way to finish off the day....

Coffee and Violence...

Let me ask you something. How many times have you injured yourself while paying for a cup of coffee? Probably not that often, I would guess. But that's exactly what happened to me this evening. Don't worry, dear readers, it wasn't really serious, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the coffee itself!

Celebrating a sudden windfall, I took the wife and one of the kids to that emporium of earthly delights, Starbucks, at the Kuching International Airport. When they opened a Starbucks in Kuching, I was particularly pleased, as up to then there wasn't really a decent place to find really good coffee here in the cat city, unless of course you are counting that place in Sarawak Plaza that rhymes with "Toffee Wean"!

Starbucks is a great place to relax, and the chairs are actually built for people of my size, so I will never die from Deep Vein Thrombosis while drinking coffee at Starbucks!! You can just while away your time sipping excellent coffee and watching the world go by. If you have a laptop you can wirelessly plug into the Net, though I don't do that yet. I've only just learned how to use Bluetooth!

Starbucks thoughtfully offer a wide range of coffee-related products for sale, such as coffee beans, coffee mugs, and of course umbrellas and soft toys. And there are tempting little extras such as sweets, sandwiches and perhaps the biggest chocolate coins I have ever eaten.

But it was the coffee I was there for this evening. So, I went up to the counter and ordered my usual latte, plus vanillas and food for the others, and thought I would treat myself to a Billie Holiday CD they were selling. Then, when the smiling girl behind the counter (a former student) asked me if I had two sen change, I awkwardly poked my fingers into that little space in my wallet reserved for change, and instead of finding the requisite coins, came out with a small cut on my hand.

Now you might be asking, how on earth did you manage to cut your hand fishing for change in your wallet? Surely, Prof. Madder, you are truly a Cursed White Man!!

Well, to be honest, I am not naturally accident-prone, despite recent events. And this time, my little wallet-based incident was caused by my Swiss Army credit card. This is a James Bond tool which I keep in my wallet. It's small and blue, and the size of a thick credit card. It has a magnifying glass, tiny pen, scissors, flashlight, pull-out screwdrivers, ruler, tweezers, little pin and, of course, a dinky little Swiss Army blade.

And it was this blade that had somehow slipped out of the credit card and punctured my hand as I reached in to retrieve my coins. So this handy little device which I had kept for emergencies had found its first victim: its owner! But never mind, no blood spilt. Well, not much anyway...

But I must say the latte was excellent, for all that. My wife and nephew had a hot vanilla each and shared a sandwich and some crisps. We sat, chatted and watched all the fashionable young things of Kuching posing and chatting on their mobile phones and playing board games.

The cut was nothing, and will go away very quickly. But the experience of Starbucks is one I will cherish forever. At least until the next time I go there...