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...