Kota Kanabalu

I know it's been a long time. There are various reasons for this, but if you appreciate my blog, let me know- the feedback might spur me on. I have a couple of other ideas for blogs in the pipeline, so keep your eyes open for something else soon.

The weekend before last we went to Kota Kinabalu, as we had three days off in a row. We'd promised our friend Norbert that we'd come and visit him after he was posted to Sabah from Ipoh. He caught the bus across from the other coast of Sabah, we drove to KL and caught a plane, and in Kota Kinabalu we met up for a weekend of renewed aquaintances, sightseeing and experiences. The rest of the story I will tell in photos...

This cute little boy and his brothers had been trained well. When I picked up my camera to photograph them selling cheap Indonesian cigarettes, they swept the box up as swiftly as an African dealer under the Eiffel Tower tidies away his illicit paintings. This was one of the surprises we encountered on our Friday morning visit to the "Philippine Markets" (craft markets) in Kota Kinabalu.

Norbert is one of the few people I know who can match the inventor for generousity, intellect and sheer capacity for stimulating conversation. They enjoyed making up for all the missed opportunities.

Norbert took us to Shangri-la Tanjung Aru Resort just before sunset so we could watch the sun set over the ocean. There was a small crowd gathered on the beach, and we weren't to be disappointed.

As the sun dropped towards the horizon, the sky burned with an ever-richer orange, and the silent ripples of the darkening water flickered with the last of the sun's dying brilliance. The silence was only disturbed by the gentle conversations and the sound of shutters collecting the moment for eternity.

I love the silver-lined clouds just after the sunset, a promise that the sun will return tomorrow from under the horizon.

As the sun slips off to rest, the people drift away in small groups, to eat, to party, or to rest themselves. Soon we are the only ones left in the silence, the strains of Simon and Garfunkel drifting over the water to remind us that the day is done, and the night's revelries have begun.

I had read about the musical fountain in Perdana Park, but as it's a little out of town, I had figured it would be difficult to get to and we had resigned ourselves to not seeing it. What I hadn't figured on, however, was Norbert driving us all around town in his brother's borrowed car. It also just happened that we were driving past the fountain just before 7pm when the "show" starts, on our way back from watching the sunset. We were fortunate to be there when it started and watched the 20 minutes or so of dancing water timed to various musical pieces, especially as the fountain is advertised to go from till 9.30pm, but it seemed to stop when it came to the end of the repertoire that we watched. We don't know if it comes on later, but 7pm seems the best time to catch it, and a considerable crowd were gathered around the edges of the pond waiting to watch the pretty display.

There was a food festival the weekend we were in KK, being held just a few minutes' walk from our hotel. I had hoped to see a little more (they had cooking demonstrations, cultural dancing and flair demonstations), but we ended up only making it there for a short while. There were small displays of foods from various cultural/ ethnic groups from Sabah, but disappointingly, the food for sale was the usual greasy standard fare. Instead we chose to try some fresh Sabah seafood at a Chinese restaurant.

On our second day there (Easter Saturday) we took a boat like this to the island of Pulau Mamutik. The day was lovely, relaxing and hurry-free, and the only disappointment was that the company that was meant to pick us up (Beach Bums was the name of the company, which appealed to me, but I won't recommend them now!) were nearly an hour late, so we ended our time on the island getting sunburnt and stressed, rushing to every boat that landed on the jetty (and there were many of them) to see if it was our boat.

This is Mamutik Island from the water. This view doesn't give any indication of the sheer numbers of people that the marine park management allow to land on the tiny island each day.

We got a bit of a fright when we looked in the water after landing on the island, as we saw what looked like a baby crocodile gliding in to the beach. It turned out to be a small water monitor heading back to shore after its breakfast. It just goes to show, once a north Queenslander, always a north Queenslander. We've been well-trained to spot and avoid crocs and snakes and other creatures with venomous and sharp bits.

And speaking of creatures we usually avoid, it was somewhat perturbing to swim with so many jellyfish in the water. Jellyfish are yet another animal that north Queensland supplies in the most dangerous form, so brushing past these harmless little creatures with my bare skin was akin to bungee jumping in the measure of months (or years) taken off my life. You can see some of the cute little fish in the photo, though, and there were a lot of pretty species, despite the coral being somehwat unimpressive. It's actually the first time I've seen a clown fish outside of an aquarium, and I saw three different varieties just in a one-hour snorkel off one beach. They are obviously hand-fed, as they will rise from their anemones to your outstretched hand- one cheeky one even had a nip of my hand as it was the only thing being offered. I watched an eel crawl out of its hole to go and find some lunch, saw a pretty clam, and lost track of the different species of fish we observed. There are designated snorkelling and swimming areas, roped off to keep the endless string of motor boats out, but nothing could keep out the equally endless stream of rubbish that floated in on the clear water. The islands are just opposite the city of Kota Kinabalu, and while we found KK cleaner than Kampar, the Malaysian propensity towards dropping litter wherever it is convenient still prevails.

A "selfie" on the beach. The hotel had beach towels to rent.

The lovliest thing about our trip to Sabah was the blue sky! We don't get a lot of clear, blue skies around Kampar, and it is surprising how deeply we miss something that most Australians take for granted. Kampar, due to its geography, has a very high cloud cover, and most days there is at least a little cloud greying out the blue of the sky. Add to that the  "haze" of the latter part of the year, a Malaysia-wide phenomenon caused by fires in Indonesia laying a fine layer of particulates in the upper - and often, lower- atmosphere, and we don't get many clear, really blue skies.

Saturday night we went to Mari Mari Cultural Village with Norbert and a friend of his. The village is a well-organised set of displays of the traditional way of life of five or six of the indigenous cultural groups of Sabah. Here, a lady demonstrates the making of Dusun rice wine, in a Kadazan-Dusun house. The houses weren't that strange to us, this one in particular being very similar to the huts built by the Orang Asli in our area. What was strange, though, was wearing our shoes inside. And the strength with which the floors had been engineered. With our church, from time to time we visit the OA villages that we support in the Cameron Highlands an hour or two from Ipoh, and the inventor and I, being taller and in every way heavier that our church colleagues and OA hosts, need to carefully plan a route across the bamboo floor and settle ourselves down somewhere solid-looking to join the worship or eating.

I just thought she is beautiful! She was showing us an instrument that she obviously doesn't know how to play.

The inventor is modelling a one-size-fits-all vest made from bark that is beaten to make it tough. They also demonstrated making rope, starting a fire, cooking, and we all got to try using the blow-pipe to shoot a dart at a coconut! After the guided tour, we were served a buffet meal of traditional dishes.

These, our guide assured us, are plastic skulls, but the one up higher is a real one! Some of the Borneo tribes were head-hunters till quite recently (I say this under the assumption that the practice has stopped, an assumption that not all would ascribe to).

This was great to watch and fun to try. The sprung bamboo mat is suspended under the floor and when the boys get a tempo going on the trampoline-like mat, they can launch one member of the group up to the rafters to retrieve a suspended item.

I've wanted to try this stick dance since some of the Orang Asli folk demonstrated it at the church Christmas celebration last year. It's quite tricky, and very entertaining to watch.

My henna tattoo didn't turn out very well- the ink ran, as I think he was rushing it a bit, because I was last. But when I was downloading the photos, I noticed he has some tattoos of his own. The one you can easily see has a bible verse: Philippians 4:13. The Malaysian government last year confiscated a load of bibles because they were written in Bahasa Malaysia, their claim being that the bible society were trying to convert Malays from Islam (this is illegal in Malaysia and any Christian doing it is breaking the law). What they did was take bibles away from indigenous people like this.

On Easter Sunday Norbert and his mother took us to church at the Sabah Seminary. I was especially excited that the ladies had baked hot cross buns, and someone had also brought a pack of mini easter eggs. I had resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn't get either this year! Not being able to get foods that you normally eat is inconvenient and at times annoying, but the hardest to adjust to are those times of the year (like Easter and Christmas) when Australian ritual and customs can't be followed. We did, however, make a host of Australian foods, including Anzac Biscuits, to take along to cell group the following Friday.

After church, they took us sightseeing around KK. We also managed to find a few geocaches and introduce Norbert to geocaching. The photo above is one of the big mosques in KK, the "Floating Mosque". Unlike the rest of Malaysia, Sabah is acually minority Moslem and I think Christianity is the predominant religion. Sabah and Sarawak are the only states that take Good Friday as a holiday- in our sate, the only Christian holiday on the calendar is Christmas Day. The small number of Moslems is not seen as a reason for the government to skimp on the cost of the mosques, and this one became especially dear to us, as from our hotel we could clearly see it over the rooves of the slum that surrounded our hotel.

Norbert thought that the slum was illegal immigrants- there are millions of them throughout Malaysia, and they don't qualify for government support so they often live in squalid conditions. His mother, however, believes that this slum is actually "locals", Malaysian citizens. I wonder what they think when they see the mosque over their rooves (it's just to the left of my picture)? The raised walkways are the only way to get from house to house, as under the houses is swampy and filled with rubbish.

Bumblebee was getting into the lift in the hotel at the same time as us. He's even taller and wider than the inventor, and had quite a time getting through the doors of the lift. We were just arriving back at the hotel for our late checkout before heading to the airport.

We left Sabah with some beautiful photos and fond memories.

Possum

It was late June, I think, not long after our weekend away for our wedding anniversary, when a little black cat wheedled her way into our busy lives. We'd noticed her a few times in the neighbourhood. There are lots of cats around here, but this one stood out, not because she was quite black. What we noticed was the magnificent tail, bobbing up and down jauntily amongst the rubbish tins. A full, long tail on a cat is rare enough around here, but a long, fluffy tail is a sight to behold. At least half of the cats have inherited some genetic disposition to a pitiful, stunted tail, and all around Malaysia cats with half-tails, bob-tails, bent tails, and even no tail, can be seen.

We have to admit to being both fascinated and a little drawn to the little cat whose movements you could follow by watching the end of the fluffy, black tail, held high. When she made it to our door looking for food, we gave her something. She saw no reason to move on, and was again waiting the next day, hoping for some more kindness. We guessed from her scrawny little frame she was only a few months old, and she weakly picked at the kitten kibbles we gave her. We arrived home late that evening and as I picked up the hose to water my ailing pot plants, I noticed the movement in one of the pots as she stirred from her slumber on the warm potting mix, safely hidden behind the leaves. Overcome with totally illogical compassion, we took her inside and she became a part of the family. We named her Possum, a reference to her magnificent tail, the name borrowed from Dame Edna.

If I look cute, can I stay? Please?

After a few weeks at our home, Possum went into heat, and we realised that not only was she not a male, as we'd thought, but she was probably quite a bit older than we had originally believed. Her constant yowling, urinating and unhappy prowling around the house led us to finally make the planned trip to the vet's, who preferred to treat her many other ailments before doing the surgery to relieve her of the hormonal urges that ravaged her tiny body. We returned home with a yowling cat, antibiotics and flu medication, ear mite drops and multivitamins. The lice were treated with a single injection. Because she was on heat almost continually, we pushed the vet to do the surgery a little too soon- though Possum had stopped sneezing and had put on a little weight, the bones were still visible under the thin coat. She succumbed to flu again while still recovering from the spaying, and was quite sick over the four-day Hari Raya long weekend. The only vets in Kampar are a Moslem couple, and they were closed for the entire weekend and then some.

The fur that was shaved for surgery has nearly grown back now.

She's had more antibiotics, multivitamins, drops and other tablets since then, and lots of food. She's put on quite a bit of weight, and though she's still small, she looks healthy now as she prowls around in her thick, soft coat and sleek, muscular body. As her coat thickened, we noticed that she is only black until her shoulders- from a definite line below the shoulders, she is dark brown. Her “feather duster” is still quite magnificent, and is either held high, or bent in such a low arc, it almost touches her head! With her new-found energy, she eats her food enthusiastically and plays for hours. She has become quite devoted to both of us, and keeps us company in whatever part of the house we are in.

A great place to nap, or play with tassels...

Having a cat creates complications when we go away, but we have tried a few options and Possum seemed happy with the arrangements. We are pleased to have found a “Pet Cottage” in Kampar, and while the owners are “dog people”, they got on well with Possum and seemed to enjoy the challenge of looking after a cat for the weekend. She had a room to herself!When we are both in Australia in late October, hopefully Keenan will look after her, as he is already living with us while he is working with Tony at the lab.

Possum's favourite game is fetch, though she only brings the toy back when we play the game in the bedroom. She always plays with the toy spider for a minute or two, tossing it, biting and kicking it playfully, before she returns it to be thrown again. She'll play this game for an hour or more, though unlike a dog, she gets a little distracted at times, stopping for a scratch, a lick, or a sniff at an interesting smell. She is a funny little feline. 

We didn't ever think that adopting a weak, lice-ridden, sick little cat could bring us such joy, but Possum has made herself a place in our hearts.

The cat that got the cream...

Brown from the shoulders down. Strange.

Sleeping kitties are so cute. Playful ones are exhausting.

Married to an inventor?

Although my blog is called, "On being married to an inventor", I do spend precious little time talking about what that is really like. While few ever get the extraordinary opportunity to be a full-time inventor as mine currently has, there are a lot of part-time inventors out there, constantly creating, thinking, and stewing over solutions to the problems of the larger world, and their own little world. Some even make it to patent stage, and the diversity of patents that My Inventor runs across in his day-to-day life give some sort of indication of the tremendous diversity of interests and ideas out there.

I think most of us have sparks of creativity and we all have good ideas now and then, but what seems to set apart one as an inventor is the dogged determination (or happy circumstance) that sees an idea blossom into a reality. We know of one inventor who spent twenty years of his weekends, holidays and free time working on an idea for a bicycle helmet. From the original idea, he tested, built prototypes and refined, until he was ready to appear on "New Inventors", and from there his idea took off into commercial reality. Unlike so many others, at least this man won't be seeing his idea appear on a shop shelf and saying, "Hey, I had that idea twenty years ago!" The vast divide that many ideas never seem to cross is the limitation of time and money. Spending twenty years in your garage is one thing, but then finding the tens-of-thousands of dollars to register your patent is another massive commitment, and requires a great deal of faith in onesself and ones' idea.

The faith in a person and an idea is difficult enough to garner from an outsider, but having it followed up through financial support is another thing entirely. I pray every day that The Inventor's work will bring great financial gain, not just because that would be very nice for us, but I believe that D deserves financial reward and kudos for the faith he has placed in an idea which offered vast promises- but nothing more-  for the future of the earth and the environment.

Faith in one's idea is paramount, and some people just have one great idea which they work on relentlessly. Other inventors are like mine. Their minds are possessed by the constant churning of ideas, and often they need guidance to stay on one path without too much wandering. Life is just one long journey of possibilities, and they love to explore them all.
Once, when we went away for a weekend, The Inventor said to me, "We must do this more often".
"Ah," I thought to myself, "he likes to spend time with me, relax and get down to my level".
"Yeah," he continued. "I get so many great ideas when we go away, but the trouble is, then I can't wait to get back to the lab to try them out".

The idea The Inventor is currently working on isn't a new one. It is actually just one of the many things that have bounced around inside his head, and this one has bounced around in many forms for years. This idea has emerged from amongst the others because technology has now become capable of supporting the process and environmental awareness has grown to a point where the process is desirable and worthy of funding from private individuals and government bodies. (We are hoping to gain some government funding in the near future and have spent a great deal of time preparing a submission, and I am now volunteering my time in at the lab a few days a week to help speed us through some of the more mundane tasks, until the arrival of the new staff that we have been promised.) The Inventor's obsession with mankind's responsibility to the environment, and his involvement with environmental groups, led him to pluck and nurture this idea in preference to so many others.

The choice was a good one. Time after time, he finds solutions to problems and the science and engineering of the project leap effortlessly over the hurdles. With the extra staff, progress will leap forward and we look forward to the new challenges this will hold. To quote the Hash House Harriers, "On, On!"

Touring Perak- A Photo Show

 Recently our young friend Katrina came for a short visit- she was on her way to England where she will study on exchange for a year, and thought she'd like to stop in and see us, and a bit of Malaysia, on her way. She arrived just before Hari Raya, the celebration for the end of Ramadan, and we decided to go and meet her in KL, do some sightseeing there, then drive back with her. We'd been told KL would be deserted, with everyone (certainly every Malay) having gone back to their home towns to visit family, but obviously other people thought, like us, that leaving their departure till the Thursday afternoon would be a good way to avoid traffic. There are two lanes on the North-South Expressway, but that obviously insn't enough for the impatient Malaysians, who make a third lane by driving in the emergency/ motorocycle lane. You'll see in the picture that the polite ones who stay in the lane are so polite, they drive to the right to make plenty of room for the impolite ones. The red and blue sign says "kecuali kecemasan", or "except for emergencies". Apparently getting home for Raya is sufficient emergency. The madness and family rituals surrounding Hari Raya are something akin to our Australian Christmas.

Katrina and I did some sightseeing together on a few days when the Inventor had to work. I had been to this waterfall near Chenderiang before, but no-one in the family had wanted to venture up the steep stairs, so I had no idea how beautiful the falls are. Katrina, with her energetic enthusiasm, wanted to explore everything, and we found this rope bridge and the very attractive falls at the top of the many stairs.













It was late in the day and we were hot from all the climbing, so despite having no swimming gear, we decided to have a dip in the clean, cool waters. The pools are only shallow, but so refreshing




Just as we were getting out to leave, we heard multiple screams, and turned to see a body hurtling down the waterfall. A number of teenage and preteen boys had clambered up the rock face at the very right of the picture below, and one of them, while either attempting to swim in the pool at the very top of my picture, or, more likely, to traverse across, had lost his footing and been swept over the edge. We all stood in silent horror as his body was swept and battered over the rocks, Katrina noting his last, futile attempt to grab at the last ledge before plumeting into the miraculously empty pool below. Not one of us watching this dramatic twist to adventurous stupidity thought for a minute that after a face-first landing and such a fall, that he would manage to pull himself, with some help, out of the shallow pool and then walk unaided down the steps to his shaken but grateful family. But by the grace of Allah, he did, and I hope he will use his bonus life to tell other young men of the dangers of overestimating one's capacity, or underestimating the power of water.



Katrina and I also did a girls' day trip to the Cameron Highlands. There are two advantages to living in this area: 1) Some of the sights are so beautiful, it really is no bother to go back there, and 2) there are so many things to see, there is always something new that we haven't discovered. I was keen to go and see the Mossy Forest atop Gunung Brinchang, and we weren't disappointed. Nestled right under or amongst the clouds, at around 2000m it is cool and damp here. The boardwalk has been built over the original track which actually picked its way through the roots and branches of the strange, moss-covered trees. At the end of the boardwalk, Katrina and I picked our way for a little further through the roots, as we had been promised by some mud-covered French visitors that we would see some pitcher plants, which we did indeed find. I will be returning there one day with The Inventor in tow, to show him the amazing views and eerie plant life of this extraordinary place.

I've been to both of the Boh Tea  Plantations on the Cameron Highlands before, but the spectacular scenery is worth a revisit. In this photo, Katrina is resting on a rock enjoying the view after failing to find a geocache, though after this we disappeared deeper into the plantation (whose tea bushes seem to stretch forever) and after a precarious drive along narrow tracks that hug the sides of the steep hills, we did manage to find the next geocache on our list. This is the first cache find I have managed to log since arriving in Malaysia, as we seem to have lost our GPS and the phone is proving to be a most unhelpful GPS.


There are entire towns within the BOH Tea Plantation, where workers live, their children attend school, and all manner of activities take place. Mosques, temples and chapels all exist here, and the workers probably have little need to ever leave.







 We'd decided to go somewhere this past weekend with Katrina, before she left, so I chose a large Lake in the north of our state of Perak called Lake (Tasik) Temenggor. She had been in Penang the day before and caught a bus across to meet us, so we drove up on the Saturday morning after dropping our cat (more about that in another blog!) with a friend to be looked after. I included this picture for family who visited earlier this year, in case they think they have covered the Malaysian experience. Here we are eating "roti tisu", the first time we have had it and a must-try for any sweet-tooth or anyone who likes roti chennai. Crunchy, sweet, warm, yum. Enough said.








The hotel room at Banding Lakeside Inn did indeed offer the 180 degree views of the lake as promised. It was a lovely change from the view of dirty apartment buildings that we have from our house.

We stayed overnight at the lake, and had planned to take a boat trip on the lake on the Sunday, to the famous Belum National Park, our main aim being to see a Rafflesia flower. However, when we got to the jetty, we were to discover that there were no Rafflesia plants in flower (it's just a matter of chance, there is no special flowering season) and we decided that the RM550 was a lot to hire the boat to see other things that we were somewhat indifferent about (an elephant salt lick, a waterfall, and an orang Asli village). So instead, we decided to go and find our own things to sightsee.

Ironically, the first thing we decided to look for was an "elephant crossing" sign. Ironic because we drove for some way across the lake and further west, before turning back, only to find this one right outside our hotel! It says, "Warning, elephant crossing area 500m ahead". A guard at the Tenaga Nasional site across the road assured us that elephants cross there every night. Yes, every night, at 6pm. Enam petang, every evening, even when it rains like it did the previous evening at 6. Great. We weren't impressed to discover this when it was too late. These are wild elephants, some of the few that still live in the more remote forests of Malaysia, and we all would have been very excited to view them.

As we drove back southward, there was a surprising number of tourist signs along the road- brown signs announcing sights and the distance. They were unfortunately not followed up very well, and we didn't find the waterfall we were looking for when we discovered this rubbber plantation. Surprisingly, some of the trees are still being tapped. I'm not sure if you can see the tapping marks on the trees, or the cups for catching the latex, but if you look very hard you will see the blue shirt of The Inventor, and look even harder and you will see Katrina. She is making a series of "Where's Wally" photos of her trip, though I suggested they might more appropriately be called "Where's THE Wally". She made it particularly difficult on this day by wearing one of her father's old army khaki shirts.

 

 

We had only just been talking about the ancient human remains that had been found in Perak, nicknamed "Perak Man", when we came across a series of signs to caves, some of which indicated one was the origin of "Perak Man". Though we didn't actually find the cave that Perak Man was found in, we did find this series of four caves, one of which still has achaeology strings marking out the floor. The one pictured here was the most impressive, though it did involve somewhat of a clamber to get to it, as you can see in the picture of Katrina and The Inventor making the descent.

 We had a wonderful time discovering new places, particularly nice as we shared these places with no other tourists. The only people we met were locals in villages along the way. There is so much more to be discovered here, if only we had more time. Perak is a fascinating state, and Malaysia is an interesting and varied country, and I hope we find more opportunities to discover new things.

Moving Along Rapidly

The project (as the invention has come to be known) is moving along rapidly at the moment. A few months ago, it became obvious that with the sheer bulk of administrative tasks to complete, The Inventor was making little progress with the actual tasks of inventing (which actually, at this stage, is running various additional bench-top tests and designing equipment for the small-scale plant, for which a shed on the property has already been allocated). So, I decided to accompany him to the lab twice a week to assist with some of the more mundane tasks in the office, and aside from organising his filing cabinet, office space and paperwork, I am doing some regular communication and financial tasks and assisting with various jobs that are numerous in the early stages of a new company, like creating a website and various procedures and forms. He has also had invaluable assistance from an engineer from our partner company, a man with 30 years' experience in plant design, who regularly comes to assist The Inventor with design and system modelling issues. We are also rushing towards the employment of various additional staff, the first of which started today. By the end of the year the planned staff will total at least five, from engineers to a driver. With these additional staff, progress will grow exponentially, and The Inventor will need to learn new skills as his role moves from “Jack-of-all-trades” to managing a team of professionals, all devoted to making an idea from his head become a commercial reality.

I know some of you would like more information about the science and how it's progressing, and I apologise for being so vague at the moment. With a lot of things “up in the air” and my blog receiving numerous visits from total strangers, I must be intentionally light on facts. Hopefully as we become more advanced in the work The Inventor is doing and as we draw closer to the stage of commercialisation, I will be able to divulge more about the project, what has been achieved and where we are headed. Until then, please be content to know that everything is steaming ahead at almost uncontrollable speed, results are pleasing and we are managing the pace well.

Sunday Exploring

Today was a very different, relaxed and enjoyable Sunday. We decided to stay home rather than driving to Ipoh today, as I have been getting quite tired and a little run-down. We have been quite busy lately, and we also haven't been getting a lot of sleep, so a quieter day was in order. The lack of decent sleep has been in a large part due to the adoption of our little black cat, which we have named Possum. The name, courtesy of fellow Australian Dame Edna Everage, is a reference to the spectacular fluffy “feather duster” on her rear end, a tail which for a Kampar street cat is unusually complete, long and possum-like. She was starving when she landed on our doorstep, but after four weeks here is now growing well though still small. The lack of sleep is the result of the vet not wanting to spay her until she is healthy enough for the general anaesthetic. She is now in her second round of being on heat in two weeks, the yowling and unsettled behaviour being very disruptive to our sleep (and probably everyone else in our neighbourhood, as we live in a townhouse).

Having decided to skip church and Ipoh, we got up fairly early so we could have a bike ride before the heat of the day. Bikes loaded into the tray of the D-Max, we drove a few kilometres up the main road and parked by the bridge over Sungai Kampar (Kampar River). From there, a dirt road leads along the river, and I had explored it once before for a short distance. Our goal today was to continue along the road until the end, and we had a delightful time exploring the kampongs, tin-mine lakes and farms along the green, quiet road. We called “pagi” to all and sundry, raising smiles and replies from the friendly Malay women and men who worked or relaxed outside their homes. After some weaving and turning and agreeing with little concern that we were probably going to become lost or at least well off-course, we emerged at a major road we knew, and interestingly very close to where we had expected to emerge, despite the road we had traversed being unmarked on any map we have access to. After more weaving, exploring, side-tracks, pedalling and “pagis”, we found ourselves back at the car with surprisingly few hiccups. Getting off the beaten track and into nature for the morning (actually, only about 80 minutes, as it turned out, though we had been prepared for longer) was so relaxing and enjoyable, after a rest, a nanna nap and a late lunch of Japanese-style pancakes, we decided to do some more exploring in the D-Max. For three hours we drove here and there, discovering a new development at the back of Bandar Baru which looks like a new city and will house thousands, and then a short-cut through more farming land that will offer an alternative route to Gopeng once the roadworks are finished. Our curiosity, always active, led us down a number of green, shady side-roads and we discovered parts of Malaysia that we never knew we right behind our home. The most interesting were a large fish farm, and a Chinese kampong that we suspected to be one of the “new towns”, fenced villages which were established in the 1950s to house Chinese inhabitants during the communist threat known in Malaysia as “The Emergency”.

The last exploration of the day was to finally explore a road that we have been interested in since a “land for sale” sign appeared some months back. We wound up a rough dirt track, thankful for the high clearance and four-wheel drive, until I dared drive no further, then we clambered on foot up the weathered and eroded remains of road through the wasteland of the of the forgotten subdivision. Now on the market again, we dreamed of building a house there high on the hill looking away from Kampar towards the solemn hills cloaked in deep, dark rainforest, hills that reminded us so much of the dearly-beloved ancient neighbours which hang over our home in Smithfield. As we completed the drive home, the panic returned as I remembered the long list of jobs that I had allocated for Sunday, but this was a day of outdoors, relaxation and exploration in which google had no place, and for that I am happy. Tomorrow life can crowd me in once more.

The highs and lows of visa acquisition

I know that I told you about our trip to Singapore in late October, when our first tourist visa expired after three months, but I have failed to add any updates since, including the exciting news that we now have visas until June 2015, the inventor on a working pass and me on a dependant's pass. The process was slow and frustrating and consumed a lot more of the inventor's time than it should have, but finally we have the pass and can concentrate on the work that should be done. 

The three-month visitor's pass that we obtained in October was due to expire in late January, which was bad timing for us, with so many visitors coming to see us for the big birthday celebrations. So, instead of dashing to the border for a short trip again (a new three-month visitor's pass is usually issued on your return), we decided to visit the immigration office in Ipoh and paid 100 ringgits each for a two-month extension to our visitor's passes. It seemed like a good idea at the time, though we were a little dismayed to have the pass take up a whole page in our brand new passports. Later, we decided it was a bad idea, as it was to prove problematic, and we know a Canadian lady who also had problems returning after having an extension pass in her passport.

The extension allowed us to stay until late April, when we once again had to leave the country. Our daughter Timeka was staying with us at the time, working gratis for the inventor, helping him every day at the lab. We decided to make a nice trip with sightseeing, and chose Siem Reap in Cambodia. The trip was delightful, and we found the Cambodian people friendly and the food lovely. We only had two days there, but managed to have our fill of ancient temples, as well as a sampling of culture, silk weaving, massage and shopping. The most famous temple is, of course, Angkor Wat, but we also enjoyed Bayon Temple with its hundreds of Buddha faces, and especially Ta Promh, exotically entwined in the roots of enormous fig trees, mysterious and exciting. The trip was more expensive that we had anticipated, and twice we visited the ATM to get more US dollars for our transactions there. The local currency is mostly used for lower-value transactions and to give change for less than one dollar (US coins aren't used). Transactions under one dollar US aren't common for tourists- cheaper items will be offered in multiples for a dollar.

Resting briefly in a cool doorway at Ta Promh- it was an exhaustingly hot day.

An alarming number of disabled people hang around Siem Reap, drawn by the opportunity to work for tourist dollars. Few of them beg, preferring to play in small orchestras like this one, or sell books or other nick nacks to tourists. Many are the victims of Khmer Rouge landmines, which are still claiming lives and limbs.

Cambodia is so close to Malaysia, but worlds away culturally and developmentally. While airconditioned taxis exist, tuk tuks are also prolific and cheap.

We landed back in KL airport just before midnight on the Sunday night, after an enjoyable weekend away. We had hoped that the immigration officials would be tired and happy to stamp our passports once again, but this was not to be. Timeka had no problems getting a new tourist pass, and I also was granted one after a brief discussion on the topic of the whole-page pass. The inventor, however, was not so lucky, and the lady that he approached was reticent to allow him passage into the country at all. He was marched off to another office, and returned not too much later with a 28-day pass. Immigration had figured that if his working pass was imminent as he claimed, 28 days would be sufficient to complete the necessary paperwork for this. As the 28 days ticked past, however, it became obvious that we were not going to have the paperwork and bank account for the newly-created company ready for his employment pass. Company registration was complete, but we still had job descriptions, company structures, job offers and numerous other paperwork to create, and each visit to Putra Jaya by the office girl resulted in new information and new list of papers to procure.

21 years goes so quickly!

A rare mothers' Day with my Mum, daughter and sisters.

The inventor's pass would expire mid-April, just days before we were due to fly to Australia for our son's 21st birthday party. We decided that the easiest course of action would be to fly a few days earlier, especially as the inventor was achieving little work while being consumed with the task of acquiring a visa. We flew to Australia and had a very busy time visiting family and friends in Brisbane, Cairns and the Gold Coast, then paid yet more money to alter the return flights, the inventor to stay a few extra days for a specialists appointment and me another week to help Timeka move house. It was to be almost another month before everything was completed for our long-term visas, which arrived in Kampar with little fanfare but great excitement on our part. The very last problem we had with the visa acquisition was in offering our original wedding certificate at Immigration Department. The original was not sufficient, and the poor girl from KL office had to travel across town to the Australian Embassy to acquire what immigration wanted, which was a copy of the certificate, stamped to verify that it was a true copy. Malaysians are certainly fond of "chopping", the term they use for a rubber stamp.They've obviously been taking lessons from either Australia or Great Britain in the refinement of bureaucratic procedures and paperwork.

We now have no good excuses for another international trip, though we would like to take a short trip to Vietnam, so maybe will break with tradition and actually take some of the public holidays that are coming up after Ramadan. The Moslem month of fasting will start on the 9th July. Hari Raya is the celebration at the end of Ramadan, and the four-day weekend will be in mid-August, so for now we will be looking at some hard work and hopefully some good breakthroughs in the lab.