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...

Back on the Blog...

Well, folks, I'm back after spending the week marking my exam papers. Yes, it's that time of year again where the education industry briefly goes into battle mode: the exam season.

In Malaysian universities, final exams are held once every semester, and we have two semesters per year. So that's an awful lot of exams, and an awful lot of fear and anxiety! And that's just the lecturers!!

But seriously, you have to feel a bit sorry for the students at this time of year. They have a lot of obstacles in the way of their studying hard for the exams. For one thing, they only have about two weeks to study after the end of the semester. And they only have fifteen weeks of classes before exams, because we follow the Semester system here in Malaysia. This may be fine for some content subjects but for English, it doesn't exactly give students a great deal of time to improve their proficiency much. Ah well...

I remember back in the UK, where we have Terms, our finals were at the end of the academic year, around June. Lots of time to study and learn (though bear in mind Parkinson's Law that work expands to fill the time available for its completion!) But here, the finals are at much shorter intervals. I wonder how my little charges manage to learn all that stuff and keep it in their fevered brains long enough to spew it out onto paper again for the required two or three hours.

Thank God I don't have to sit exams myself, that's what I say! Mind you, life isn't quite a bed of roses. I still have to mark loads of scripts crammed full of essays and comprehension passages and other English exercises of varying quality. Forests of poor handwriting (mind you I can't talk!) and of course the curse of all language teachers everywhere: bad grammar and spelling.

It's a professional vice of mine but I can't help collecting examples of what we linguists euphemistically call 'Learner English'. I actually do this for my research, but a few real howlers cropped up among my marking this week. Allow me to share them with you. The first two are from essays on road safety, while the last one is from a passage on workplace interaction:

Howler No. 1: "For me, safety is more important than beautiful"

Howler No. 2: "Death in accident is wasteless"

Howler No. 3: "...to take certain actions which will help him to overcome his unsatisfied feelingness in a right way..."

I mean what were they on?!?!

I was commenting to a colleague this afternoon that looking at the English produced by learners is like reading the lyrics of a David Bowie song. Apparently, Bowie used to experiment with cutting up words and phrases randomly selected from newspaper articles. He would play around with the order of the words until he got the right LSD-induced effect. This means that my students are far from ignorant about language. They are just playing around with words, just to make my life interesting!!!

But seriously, I do care very much about my students, and admire them for tackling advanced studies in a language which is not their own. I really support them and hope that they have all the success in the world. Here is a picture of some of them sweating in an exam:

Can't you just SMELL the fear and sweat!?

But enough of this blatant sadism. My dear wife has just made a cup of tea. More blagging on the blog tomorrow, if you are good boys and girls!!

Class dismissed!!!