Malaysian Odyssey...

Anyone who has read this blog may get the impression that this writer is a miserable old ungrateful curmudgeon who needs to get a life and lose a bit of weight. No arguments there, so allow me to fill you in on some recent blog-worthy experiences which have largely re-charged my happiness batteries.

Now it's the Gawai season, I'm enjoying a well-earned rest after a couple of weeks of relentless travel. Yet two weeks ago, I was off to Kota Kinabalu, that jewel in the Sabahan Crown, for a one-day training workshop at my university's Kota Kinabalu campus. These things are regular gigs for me, and allow me to meet up with colleagues from different branches of my university as well as to earn some extra income...

I was giving a training workshop on how to write research articles, and my small but willing audience consisted of junior lecturers who for the most part had no idea what I was on about. That's life in the education field. Deliver your material, soak up the feedback, then make your escape....

Nothing particularly exciting happened in KK. The flyover which is supposed to reduce KK's traffic problems is still under construction (after about five years!), yet there is still a rather good fish and chip restaurant in the Warisan Square shopping mall where I managed to treat my niece and her friend to dinner. I was once again put up in my favourite hotel, the Promenade, and I felt like James Bond (your usual suite, sir!), as much as it's possible to feel like James Bond in Kota Kinabalu!

Luckily for me there were no belt buckle strain incidents, as I was travelling Business Class with Malaysian Airlines (bigger seats and marginally better food than Economy!) Lucky me! As Bond says in Casino Royale when he sees his new Aston Martin: 'I love you too, M!'

After that brief but pleasant trip, it was off to Perlis in Northern Malaysia for my next gig, accompanying my debaters for a week to a big debating contest in Arau, not far from the border with Thailand.

All went well at first on the day I departed for Arau, via KL and Alor Setar. I got seated in my Bizz Class seat on the plane at Kuching, no belt issues at all, with my boss and some of his bosses sitting in the row in front of me and a glamorous Chinese lady in the seat next to me. However, just as we were handing back the cold face towels and readying ourselves for the safety demonstration, the Captain told us to leave the aircraft while they fixed a problem with the batteries!

Now, I was under the impression that planes flew on jet fuel, not batteries, but what do I know! So we all trooped back to the departure lounge for nearly an hour, and I was sweating like a horse because for some reason the operators of Kuching International Airport don't seem to know how to turn the aircon up to a humanly acceptable level. Maybe it's a plot by the Health Ministry to make everyone look like they have H1N1 flu so that they have to spend a night in the airport's swanky emergency Swine Flu ward...

Anyway, eventually, we were allowed back onto the plane, and the whole rigmarole started again - cold face towels sir, orange juice or water sir, safety demonstration, then finally a lovely flight over to KL, with some superb Bond-like food, arriving about 5.30 in the afternoon.

I needn't have worried that I might miss my connecting flight to Alor Setar, because the plane was held up by another flight to Labuan that was supposed to have left three hours previously, and eventually filled up and crawled out of the airport at 6.30.

Finally, after a lot of waiting around, our plane arrived and we boarded. The flight to Alor Setar in Kedah state was just under an hour and I couldn't see a thing out of the windows because it was of course dark by this time! But it was nice to see what food they give you in Bizz Class on a short flight. Little pieces of French bread I think it was with some presence of salmon or strawberry or something. And some spicy peanuts which made me cough so much I was afraid they might quarantine me for having Swine Flu...

Part Two tomorrow....

Below the Belt

It’s bad enough having to pay extra for a seat that comes nowhere near big enough for a man of my size, and it’s humiliating enough trying to fit my butt and gut into the little square padded bucket they call a Hot Seat. But when you have to use the dreaded Air Asia Seat Belt Extension (Mark III), then you know that something has gone drastically wrong somewhere....

Luckily, when I went on a conference trip to KL last week in one of those sparky red Air Asia A 320s, I just managed to avoid having to ask the flight attendant That Embarrassing Little Question that goes something like ‘excuse me, can I please borrow the extension?”

But only just. You can imagine me, squeezing myself into my ‘hot seat’ at the front of the plane (RM 25 extra for the privilege of suffering marginally less thrombosis and crushed diaphragm), with a grandstand view of the shaved grey hair on the back of the Captain’s neck, thinking ‘I bet he doesn’t have this trouble...’

Once I am inside my new Hot Seat, I think of what it must have been like for the brave fighter pilots of World War Two. Did they always manage to fit into their tiny little seats in the cockpits of their dashing Spitfires, or furious Messerschmidts, or did they sometimes experience a little bit of pushmepullyou whenever they had consumed too much rice pudding in the Mess? I suppose it would have been Bratwurst for the Germans, but...

Anyway, anyway...

Back to the present - there was me tightly ensconced in my Air Asia seat and optimistically pulling the existing red seat belt to its furthest extent to see if it will accommodate my gut. Now at this point, usually one of two things are bound to happen. Either the chasmic gulf between belt and buckle is so uncrossable that one just has to say those magic words to the flight attendant, one of which rhymes with ‘pension’.

The alternative, the oh so happy alternative, is that the buckle and the belt meet together as effortlessly as train carriages at a siding. Just like they do on Malaysian Airlines planes, I’ve noticed, but that’s another story....

But last week, I navigated a middle course between these two points. I discovered that, with considerable contortions of my stomach and my face, and a lot of holding of breath, I could actually get the seat belt to fasten properly and safely. But in order to do it, I had to wrap the belt buckle round my gut to meet the fastener which seemed to be buried somewhere deep inside the left hand side of my seat.

The strain of doing this (with one hand) was akin to that experienced doing handstands in a toilet cubicle, and I had to manoeuvre the belt so that it only covered my lower stomach near to my lap.

But I tell you, the ecstasy of eating a 150 g bar of Cadburys Dairy Milk in one go is nothing, NOTHING in comparison to the sheer exhilaration and sense of triumph and joy that I experienced when I finally felt the belt buckle emit that utterly satisfying metallic ‘clunk’ that signified Victory!

Ah, such sweet sweet pleasures.....

In a Saucy Mood

It’s just amazing just how much a plate of roti canai and curry sauce can ruin your day. Normally, this delicious local repast will set me up for the whole day – the crispy, thin and utterly delicious flat bread smeared with pungent curry gravy and a chunk or two of curried chicken always provides me with the positive kick start I deserve.

But, last Monday, everything went pear-shaped. On the way to work last Monday morning, I stopped off at the nearest branch of J & J Cafeteria – another one of Kuching’s best kopitiams. As usual, I sat at a table facing my car in the manner prescribed by all good spy manuals, and I ordered my usual two pieces of roti canai, accompanied by curried chicken drowned in J & J’s signature curry sauce which can strip the paint off any wall you choose to throw it at.

Now, everything was groovy, for a sweet moment or two, as I sipped my ginseng coffee, and tucked into the roti, cutting it up into stringy, crunchy pieces and dipping said pieces into the sauce. I felt a bit like Hemingway, or Somerset Maugham, or any of the famous expats who lived life to the full in their chosen countries of exile and felt Pretty Damn Good doing it.

But, seeing as it was Monday, I was wearing my lovely white shirt with the blue stripes. And, I received a sudden and brutal lesson on the effects of curry sauce on textiles. Yes, I got industrial quantities of curry sauce all over my lovely pristine smart business-like shirt!

All it took was one simple accidentally spastic backwards flick of the spoon on my part. It was a spoon which was loaded with sauce which was meant for my mouth. The result of this was that the entire left side of my shirt, as well as some of the fingers on my left hand, became be-speckled and peppered with little humiliating islands of brown, rich, and definitely not stain-free curry sauce.

After I had finished effing and blinding very quietly to myself, I struggled to my feet, and went over to the wash-basin. Water. Water. Water. Dab dab dab. Rub rub rub. Rinse. Dab. I managed to get the curry sauce itself off, but my shirt was still decorated with sickly-yellow patches which hardly got any less yellow with further applications of H2O and soap.

I was at this stage faced with a choice. Do I drive all the way back home and change shirts, which would make me late for work? Or do I brazen it out and walk with my left arm folded just so in the perfect position to cover the stains?

And you know what? Being a lazy sonofabitch, I opted for the stains. And the stains stayed until home time, staining my self-respect, and making me thoroughly depressed for the rest of the day.

I now know why Mafia bosses never wear bright-coloured shirts. Ever noticed? They always seem to wear dark shirts? The reason is now obvious. It’s to hide the stains from where they spill spaghetti sauce all over their shirts. So from now on, when I eat roti canai, or spaghetti for that matter, I’m gonna wear a nice black shirt. Just like the Sopranos.

KK Again...

Just returned from another debate trip to Kota Kinabalu, that gorgeous ocean-side city in Sabah. Once again, I took some of my students to participate in the Borneo Cup debate (or was it Borneo Open debate? Can't remember!)

This is an annual debate competition which was originally set up as a showcase for student debaters from Borneo universities (i.e. Sarawak, Sabah and Indonesian Kalimantan). So far, it has been a very successful event (well, my university has won it twice!) but I can't stop myself from commenting on a disturbing new trend that has started this year - opening the competition to teams from the Malaysian Peninsula.

As anyone who has taught English in Malaysia knows, it is generally the case that students from the Peninsula universities, such as University of Malaya and Multimedia University, tend to have a better command of English, as well as better access to debate training and competition opportunities, of which there are many over there.

Also, it is often the case that many of the students in teams from Borneo universities, such as UNIMAS (Sarawak) and UMS (Sabah), are also from the Peninsula! So, what happens? You get a Borneo debate competition which is in reality a Pan-Malaysian debate competition!

It's rather like the English Premier League, where a great deal of the players and Managers are not English!!

So, to address this anomaly, the organisers are re-branding the Borneo Cup as the Borneo Open. Yes, it's Open, but the only thing Borneo about it seems to be the location!

I've got nothing against Peninsula students, and I'm not trying to get political with this, I just want to see more debate competitions and training opportunities in Sarawak and Sabah for young debaters to cut their teeth.

I would so much love to see the standard of English rise this side of the South China Sea, and debating is one of the best, and most enjoyable, ways in which this can be achieved.

What Goes Around...

Let’s face it, folks, there is nothing romantic about being overweight. None at all. You don’t get any street cred points for being a gut bucket, at least unless you are one of those comedy actors who appear in American family movies.
And I don’t fit into that category. In fact I don't fit into much these days...

So I have come to realise that it’s about bloody time that I stop making excuses and do something about my health. Or rather my rapidly increasing lack of it.
So, on the advice of one of my colleagues who is in a similar situation to me, I took myself off to a local doctor who specialises in heart illness, and asked for a check up.

The doctor was very nice and kind, and took some of my blood, asked me to give a urine sample (“what from here?”) and put me on light medication for my somewhat high blood pressure.

The results come back next week. God knows what they’ll say, or what action I might have to take, apart from a massive diet and more exercise. But at least I have decided to take my first feeble, heavy steps on the road to recovering my health, before it is taken away from me forever.

I have decided that there are still many things I want to do before I go gently into that good night from which there is no awakening. I want to carry on with my blog, write more articles, become a bestselling author and retire to somewhere nice with my wife.

I want to keep on experiencing things and writing about them so that you, my gentle readers, can carry on enjoying them!!

It’s That (BANG!)Time Again!

Bang!

Bang bang bang!!!

Boooooooooooooooooooooom!

Bang bang whooooosh ...

BANG!!!

Yes, dear readers, it’s Chinese New Year once again. This year will be the ninth time that I have experienced what is perhaps the most colourful – and the loudest – of Malaysia’s pantheon of cultural festivals.

Despite a month or so of almost continuous monsoon rain, the firecrackers, rockets, bangers and ‘bunga api’ (fire flowers) are out in force, to celebrate the coming of the Lunar New Year of the Ox.

Well, I say ‘in force’, but I can’t help noticing a slight downturn in the amount of firecrackers lighting up our sky last night, nor could I avoid the impression that the decibel level and duration of the cannonades was somewhat reduced compared to previous years. It just goes to show what the economic slowdown and the credit crunch can do to sales of firecrackers for the Lunar New Year season. Or perhaps the authorities have been a little bit more successful in confiscating illegal fireworks this year. I don’t know.

But whatever the truth is, it is heartening to see that tradition and culture still triumph despite the vagaries of economics, and rain. Long may it continue (though next year, give me some cotton wool for my ears, ah!).

So here’s wishing all my Chinese friends, colleagues and neighbours a hearty Gong Xi Fatt Chai and much prosperity and happiness for the year of the Ox. I have a feeling that we are all going to need it....

2008 - a Retrospective

This one has come a bit late because of an irritating computer failure which meant that my dear PC had to be taken back to the shop and reformatted! Luckily for my dear reader(s), my computer is perfectly well now, so I thought I would look back on the year that just was.

Most newspapers every year publish predictions for the coming year, predictions about political events, the economy, you know, just the very things that are totally impossible to predict but which make great copy and sell papers. So, last year, just before 2008 started, I did just that - I made a number of (totally safe) predictions about 2008, just for the hell of it.

Let's see how many of them I got right!

Now as I said earlier, my predictions for 2008 were of course totally safe, so effectively they were bound to come true. But you never know, in these turbulent times, anything can happen! So let's see....

Here is the first prediction I made about 2008:

1. A lot of people will die in 2008, and a lot of people will be born too.

Yep. Got that right! 2008 was an absolute bloodbath, with the usual atrocious numbers of people being butchered and slaughtered in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur and of course the good old U S of A. Also, there were plenty of sad losses of famous people, notably Heath Ledger, Paul Newman and more recently Harold Pinter. And Eartha Kitt...

As for lots of people being born, on the positive side, yep indeed, there were plenty of births to replenish the species, though I don't have the full figures for you offhand....Welcome to Earth, little ones...

2. In 2008, some people will make a lot more money than they did in 2007, while unfortunately others will not be so lucky.

Well, true I suppose, unless you are in the property markets, where a lot of people unfortunately lost their shirts due to the collapse of the US sub-prime market and the financial tsunami that followed. I guess the usual suspects will have done alright, such as arms dealers and manufacturers, funeral directors and people who write books on how to get rich.

3. Sometime in early February, there will be a lot of firecrackers going off in Kuching and other parts of Malaysia.

Yep. Definitely happened! Though I detected a slight reduction in the noise levels during CNY in 2008. Let's see if it gets any quieter this year what with the slowdown!!!

4. By the end of the year, there will be a new President of the United States. And it will not be George Bush.

Well, yes, though technically the Lord and Saviour Barack Obama takes over on January 20 this year, but we definitely knew he was the annointed one by the end of 2008!

5. The President of Russia will, in 2008, be of Slavic extraction.

Yep. Both of them!!

6. It will be very hot in most parts of Australia, South East Asia and India.

Oh yes!! My bottled sweat could fill a couple of olympic sized swimming pools by now I'm sure...!! (Grosss!!)

7. Computers will mostly run on electricity.

Though I'm sure the Japanese are working on a sushi-powered laptop AS WE SPEAK!!

8. The Moon in the night sky will change its shape slightly every day.

True, though it would be nice if you could actually SEE the process in action once in a while!

9. The Pope will be a Catholic.

Is the Pope a Catholic? Do Bears do their stuff in the woods?!?

10. The price of petrol will go up in Malaysia.

WRONG!! Well, actually right also because of the steep hike in petrol prices which shocked me when I returned from my holiday in Spain back in June. But then they just kept going down and down like a ski slope. When will it end?!?

So, as you can see, folks, it is easy to make predictions that will come true about the coming year. So, here's my safe predictions for 2009, though this time there is a touch of irony. Read them and weep with mirth....

1. 2009 will prove to be a very different year from 2008.
2. The Guantanamo Bay concentration camp in Cuba will be closed down. And sold to Disney.
3. Someone will have a pop at the new US President (then again, I said the same thing about Bush!)
4. Former President George W Bush will record a hip-hop album with Beyonce and Kanye West.
5. Aliens from another planet will make contact with us. And immediately regret it...
6. Michael Jackson will play the Joker in the next Batman film.
7. Someone will finally make a movie about World War Two without any American soldiers in it..
8. Osama Bin Laden will publish his memoirs and they will outsell Bush's autobiography...
9. President Obama will order an investigation into what REALLY happened on September 11th 2001.
10. The price of petrol will go up in Malaysia....

That's it!! Happy New Year!! Happy Happy Happy!!