K-K-Kuala Lumpur!!

Kuala Lumpur is another planet, all right. Whenever I go there I feel I am in a place where the rules change drastically. Especially when it comes to driving. When my wife and I went over the South China Sea last week to visit our son in KL we immediately knew, minutes after being picked up in our boy’s white MyVi, that things are done very differently over there.

The first sign of trouble came as soon as we hit the expressway. It became apparent straight away that everything is done in hyper-fast motion on KL’s roads. Now I’m no coward when it comes to speed – but over here in Kuching it’s impossible to drive safely at a speed greater than 100 KPH simply because the roads are too bumpy and not wide enough. But in KL – ah that’s a different story.

For instance, it seems that the way to go is to drive as fast as possible, as close as possible to the rear bumper of the car in front. You should have heard the screams of panic coming from my dear wife in the back seat: “Sunny slow down! Stop stop stop!! Adoiiiiiiiii! Careful the bike! Careful the taxi!! Don’t go too fast bahhhhh!” I must admit, even I was gripping the floor of Sunny’s car with toes that cut into the metal floor like the talons of a bird of prey.

It was arguably even more scary when Sunny took the car round a sharp bend. Doing 90! My face must have left a permanent imprint in the glass of the passenger side window as my body was shoved by centrifugal force outwards towards doom. My right hand nearly forced the safety handle out of its mounting. And that was with a seat belt!

But all my son could say is “don’t worry mum, don’t worry dad, no problem” as he took one hand off the wheel and narrowly avoided a taxi before coming to a racing halt at the first toll booth.

Once we neared the silver towers and concrete canyons of central KL, I also noticed that my son’s digital fuel gauge was blinking urgently, something which I rarely allow to happen when I am driving back home. I suggested he look for a petrol station and pronto. This scared, hungry and overweight orang puteh didn’t feel like pushing a Myvi for miles and miles along KL’s murderous motorways in search of a petrol station thank you very much!!

But before we could get to our quarry we had to endure that most ubiquitous and compulsory of Kuala Lumpur driving experiences: The Jam. Now traffic jams are natural features of cities all over the world – you should see London! But in Kuala Lumpur, jams are something special. For one thing, they are pronounced ‘jem’ by locals, not that that makes them any more comical. Furthermore, they can and do happen absolutely everywhere. They can hold you up for hours and hours. And they are frequently caused by stupid things like rain, broken down trucks on the side of the road, people stopping to look at accidents and, in the case of our ‘jem’, the police conducting a check, presumably for road tax dodgers.

After an hour or two in a KL traffic jam, I really understand why most Malaysian drivers prefer driving automatics over manuals. I personally am a lifelong manual driver, as I believe that driving an auto is like driving a go-kart or a milk float. There is no real skill in it – you just put your foot down and the car does the rest. James Bond, for one, definitely would prefer the power and control one has over a manual car but I bet James Bond has never dealt with KL traffic jams.

You see, in jams like those, if you have to keep changing gear with your left foot on the clutch, your left foot will very soon turn to jelly and need amputating. Anyway, automatics allow the car to move off quicker and more smoothly than a manual. Maybe I should think of converting my car to automatic transmission when Kuching’s short jams become as bad as those in KL....

Finally, one very dangerous thing about KL jams is the frightening way that all drivers have of constantly changing lane. You really have to be on your toes, and allow absolutely no space in front of you whatsoever, because if you do, if you allow a micromillimetre of space in front of your bumper, some bike or car or truck will barge in front of you. I remember one hair raising experience, just after we filled up the car with petrol, when we were in a jam not far from the Petronas Twin Towers. There was a stream of cars to the left of us, a humongous car transporter filled with colourful Honda Jazzes to the right and even more cars and bikes in front, all jockeying for position like Formula One drivers and honking their horns like each honk brought them money.

Suddenly, a van came out of absolutely nowhere on our left and loomed up right next to me, trying to push his way through in front of us, even though the way was clearly blocked. I swear that if there had been one more coat of paint on our car, he would have hit us! You can imagine the language that slipped out of our normally civil and polite mouths as this crazy lunatic tried to kill us. Luckily, he fell back and we didn’t see him again...

So the long and the short of it is, KL is one hell of a ride, with an emphasis on the hell part! You need eyes in the front, back, sides and top of your head and nerves of steel as well as a well-tuned automatic transmission. But I must say, our son proved himself a very capable driver in such conditions and I would gladly ride with him again, though maybe next time I will bring a crash helmet!

Travel Broadens the Mind...

Travel Broadens the Mind, they say. Well, it certainly does something, especially if you've had rather too much of it...

The last seven days or so have been, to put it mildly, rather hectic, and as a result, I have come down with my annual flu a couple of months early. Never mind...

It all started on 23rd August last week when my university was the host of the annual Yayasan Sarawak World-Style Debate tournament. For those of you reading this in a cybercafe in downtown Manhattan, or wherever, Yayasan Sarawak is a public body dedicated to funding and developing all kinds of educational activities for young people in the Malaysian state of Sarawak. And every year, since 2003, Yayasan Sarawak has been kindly helping to organise a debate competition, which involves university and college teams from all over the state.

This year, it was my university's turn to host the event, and as one of the main organisers, I was quite busy with the debate for a couple of days or so. Then, in what must have been one of my least finest hours in terms of scheduling, I had to fly off to Kota Kinabalu, just before the preliminary rounds came to a close.

So there was me, jetting off to KK in my business class seat feeling like a traitor instead of the globe-trotting flying professor that I really was. You see, debates produce a certain camaraderie. You really get involved with the action and come to care very much about the students who take part. You desperately want to know who is winning, and who is not. So as soon as I got to KK, and reached my hotel, I was furiously SMSing my colleagues back in Kuching to find out how everything was going! My body was in a suite in my favourite KK hotel the Promenade, yet my mind was still in Kuching! And I felt like I was letting the side down for not being there.

When the little letters started appearing on my mobile phone screen, they told of far off wonders in another land, a place I really wished I was in. I found out about our university team getting into the finals like it was news of the discovery of another planet with intelligent life. Yet I couldn't share in the celebrations and the inevitable partying because, the next day, I had to give a seminar on research methodology to a group of lecturers.

Not that Kota Kinabalu is a bad place - far from it. In previous posts I have sung its praises but this time the calm beauty of the place largely passed me by as my stay was so short. Is this what those globe-trotting business types feel like when they are going from meeting to meeting in different cities?

Anyway, after flying back to Kuching it was off to Kuala Lumpur the next day with the wife, to attend my son's graduation. That was quite a trek - I think I'll dedicate my next posting to it - but the long and the short of it was that I spent three days in KL sweating, being driven around, going to bed late and waking up early, going to bed in cramped conditions, and sweating.

And then, back to Kuching last Tuesday, and a taxi straight from the airport to attend the final of the debate. Our team did not win, by the way, which was a bit sad. And by the time I got home that evening, my nerves were shot to pieces and I sunk into an early and welcoming bed.

So no wonder the nose started to run, my body to shake and I felt like I had been run over several times by a truck. I don't know, is it because I'm getting old, or is it my chronic obesity? Or is it because I don't drink enough orange juice? All I can say is, thank God that Monday is the start of the holy month of Ramadan aka my annual diet. Maybe, just maybe this time I will lose some weight during the fasting month and keep it off.

Some hope...

She's Got It Good.

All this depression and silliness on my part has distracted me from updating my army of readers about my dear wife. Most of you will know that just over a year ago my wife Annie was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer. At the time, we were all pretty scared, and I must admit that I was more frightened by the thought of losing my wife to cancer than she was herself!

Last August, Annie went into the Sarawak General Hospital here in Kuching to have a left-breast mastectomy, a small but brutal price to pay for your life, I suppose. After that, my wife went through four painful and sickening doses of chemotherapy which caused her hair to fall out, and finished back in December last year. And to add incident to injury, just as the hair started to appear again like a faint tattoo on her scalp, there were 25 blasts of radiotherapy, spread out over five weeks from February to March this year.

All of this made Annie as sick as a parrot, yet like the little fighter that she is, she got through it with prayer, fortitude and a few hugs and kisses from yours truly.

In April she had an ultrasound and chest X-ray to see if all the cutting, poisoning and zapping had been successful. And you know what? No evidence of cancer tumours or any metastasis (spreading) so far. Just a rather fatty liver!

Now, in August 2008, more than one year after the first treatment began, Annie is doing great. Her hair is now a bushy, curly black mass on her head, and she is back at work teaching on light duty at her school. She still gets very tired, and her system is not completely free of the effects of the chemo - these can persist for years afterwards.

But we are hopeful, and thankful to God, and to all the dedicated hospital staff at the SGH, to Dr. Beena and her magnificent crew in the oncology and radiology department. You are all heroes. Thank you so much for letting me keep my dear wife...

Here is a picture of Annie taken in the garden of my parents' place in Spain, back in June this year:

Not bad for a cancer patient, eh? Remember, breast cancer is not the death sentence it used to be. You can get through it with a positive attitude, good diet and above all the love and support of others. I even know of the sister of a colleague who had stage 4 breast cancer, just about the worst it could possibly be, and I heard that she also responded well to the treatment.

So take heart, folks!

If You Can't Change the World...

As I get older, I become increasingly aware of that painful and humiliating truth that they don’t teach you in school or university, and which your parents certainly don’t warn you about. And it is this: NO MATTER WHAT YOU TRY TO DO, YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO CHANGE THE WORLD.

This truth recently soaked into me like the black ink of a permanent tattoo, when I finally understood the sheer futility of any attempts by myself to teach my students how to improve their English. When I first came to Malaysia, I was full of enthusiasm and positivity and all of those prized classical virtues that are supposed to make teaching and learning a noble activity. I came here with my little bit of knowledge and genuinely tried to help my students to become better communicators in the English language.

I corrected their grammar and pronunciation errors. I spoke to them like adults, not children so that they might gain confidence. I advised them never to read from the script and always to maintain eye contact with the audience when giving presentations. I told them that the only way to really improve their English was to practice, and to read regularly. I even told my students not to call me Sir, like in school, but to address me as Professor or Doctor, like in university.

I also told them how important it is to be punctual for class, to attend all classes and not to keep getting up and leaving the class without permission. Useful skills for the workplace, I would have thought. Yet I have never seen any need for harsh, schoolmasterly discipline, as I feel I am a university teacher with a brain, not a school teacher with a cane. An imparter of knowledge, a man of letters, a scholar, etc etc etc.

But...

No matter what I do or say, it seems that my dear students still make the same mistakes in writing and speaking that I have taught them not to make, they still read slavishly from the script when doing a presentation, and most of them don’t practice speaking English because they will be made fun of by their friends, or they lack self-confidence.

Most of them still say ‘hello Sir’ when they pass me in the corridor, and so many of them seem unable to arrive for class on time, and still mysteriously start to miss classes after the seventh or eighth week of semester, and still have that irritating habit of getting up half way through the class without so much as a by-your-leave.

So I can only conclude that virtually everything I say to my students falls on deaf ears, or at best is mis-interpreted. I am wondering if anything I do in my classes is making a blind bit of difference.

So what can I do? What can I do?

There is a wonderful pop song I heard many years ago from the 1990s group The The. I believe the lyrics have an urgency and a poignancy that cannot be ignored by a man facing what I am facing. One line is particularly pertinent:

If you can’t change the world, change yourself....

Wow! What a concept... You know, that actually might work, if I put my mind to it. Let’s see – stop getting upset and depressed about all the things I can’t change and instead focus my energies on changing all the things about myself that cause me heartaches. Where have I heard that before...?

So, that means I will have to do something about my weight problem. Stop eating chocolate and ice-cream in industrial quantities. Do more exercise. Smile at people more often. Go back to the Toastmasters. Trim my beard. Learn how to become a better teacher.... And, yes, maybe even write my blog more often!

And if that doesn’t work, what then? Well, the next line in the song provides the answer:

And if you can’t change yourself, then, change the world!!