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.

Observing from within- language and conversation

They're all speaking Cantonese. I can tell they're having fun- the smiles, the good-natured banter, the back-and-forward exchanges are universal language for good times and friendship. I'm sitting in the hairdressers, as this friendly yabber ebbs and flows around me, my hair shrouded in plastic and clips as the potion works its magic on the silver-and-brown-and-blonde mess of locks. I don't mind that I can't understand the words, because the other language I can understand- I've heard it in Australian salons. They're speaking of their kids, of the weather, of current events and politics. They're sharing happy occasions and joking about the strangeness of life.

Cantonese sounds nice to us. It isn't as harsh as Mandarin, and sometimes it flows so smoothly, I have to listen carefully to make sure they're not speaking Malay. The lady's voice is louder, higher and harsher, but the young man has a deep, soporific voice, and at this late stage of the afternoon, I close my eyes drowsily. I haven't heard many deep voices in Malaysia, and when I do, my attention is always drawn to them.

There is only one conversation now, and as all three of them laugh, I wonder what was said. I'm enjoying my separation, the detachment that comes from not being able to understand, and am appreciating the privilege of observing from outside. They don't expect me to join in, and I make no attempt to do so.

The same observation from within occurs at netball. Even though I can't play until I have my knee repaired, I still go now and then to see my friends. I sit amongst them, watching and listening as they yabber in Malay about family and home, schools and community. Unlike the Chinese, I pick up snippets of the Malay, usually only an isolated word or two, and rarely understanding enough to follow the gyst of the conversation. Unlike the conversation in the salon, however, I don't sit and observe contentedly. I am trying to learn more Malay, and I want to join in. I get frustrated at the speed they talk, and annoyed at myself for not understanding more. These are my friends and I want to know what is happening in their lives, and I want them to take the time to explain slowly and carefully. It's not that I get left out altogether- Asma will explain  in English when I ask- it's that I want to be a part of the conversation, not an aside to the conversation. For now, I'll keep doing our twice-weekly English/ Bahasa Melayu lessons (I teach the lab ladies English, they help me with Bahasa Melayu), and I'll keep practicing and learning, and maybe one day soon I will surprise them all when I join in. Until then, I'll be the privileged outsider observing from within.

How the other half live

The more progress is made on the project, the sooner the invention will be off the ground, commercialised, being used, and ultimately, making money. So, we try not to take off too much time, and try to make the time that we have as productive as possible. To help the inventor focus his time on the technical side of things, I am now going to the lab 2 days a week, to help with organising the office and doing some of the simpler jobs. The inventor rarely leaves the lab before 7pm, and while he says his brain needs "downtime", can often seen in bed later at night reading articles with titles I couldn't even hope to repeat. He tries to work at the lab on Saturdays also, if we are at home. It's hard to devote weekends to work, though, when we are living in a new and interesting country with so many places to discover, and we are often away on weekends. He also loves to spend time on Saturdays with me, and I'm grateful that he's still as devoted to me as he is to his new project. Sundays are our day off, usually busy days in Ipoh, so he doesn't get many quiet days at home.

This month we have been away a lot. The first Saturday of the month, we went to Port Klang to meet up with my parents for the day while their cruise ship was in port. The second Saturday of the month, I had decided we needed some culture, and we spent the weekend in Kuala Lumpur taking in a band concert and two plays. We had a weekend at home, then the fourth weekend just passed was another weekend away. We left as soon as we were packed on Saturday morning, as our 28th wedding anniversary fell on that day. It took us four hours to drive to Berjaya Hills, as we stopped for drinks and fuel, then again for drinks at a cute Malay stall after we had left the expressway, and then for a delightful lunch at a Chinese restaurant, I think in Batang Kali. The driving component we estimate to be about 2 and a half hours, but we were in no hurry.

The Chateau, Berjaya Hills

Our room at The Chateau was ready for us when we checked in a little before 2pm, and we were thrilled that we didn't have to check out again until 2pm, giving us a whole 24 hours in our delightful spa suite. Often we do little more for our anniversary than a special meal at home or at a restaurant, so booking the spa suite was a real treat, and not a thing about this stay disappointed us. The whole anniversary celebration was brilliant, even matching up to our 25th anniversary which was spent at a castle-hotel (Parador) in Spain. In fact, it was particularly reminiscent of that anniversary, as The Chateau has been styled off a particular French chateau and is very castle-like. I was quite impressed with the architect's ability to blend the haphazard chateau style with modern, crisp finishes. Our room was lovely, with a spacious bathroom, and doors from both the bedroom and large sitting room opened to a large deck where we had our own lounge chairs and spa bath. I had plannned to make it to the pool for a swim, but with such a wonderful private space right at our door, we didn't see the need.

 

We did, however, leave the room for dinner, where the brilliant, attentive service was even more pronounced, as we were the only guests in the restaurant. A number of treats "compliments of the chef" made their way to our table, along with the duck and poussin we ordered, and our dessert, raspberry souffle and a chocolate dish. Despite the lovely piano entertainment and wonderful food, the highlight for us, somewhat ironically, were the bread rolls. Fresh and soft with a crispy crust, we have had nothing as superb since we landed in Malaysia. The Malaysian bread never fails to disappoint us. Often sweet (especially the white loaves) and usually dry, even the bread we have bought at specialist bakeries and patisseries has been disappointing. The two things that set apart this hotel from others we have been to were the polite and always available service, and the bread.

A lovely little treat that appeared in our room!

Breakfast was equally thrilling, not just for the made-to-order omelettes, waffles and pancakes, but because the same bread rolls were served. It is the first buffet I have attended where I did not need to leave my seat once. My coffee cup was not empty for more than 30 seconds, and even when I tested the staff's attentiveness by sending away my cultlery on a used plate, the clean cutlery appeared immediately. My only complaint of the hotel would be that we were not able to get any exercise, for when we mentioned we would go to the nearby Colmar Tropicale, a busier, livlier hotel complex where there are shops and more restaurants, they insisted on driving us and also magically appeared with a car as we were walking back. I did, however, manage the complimentary yoga class at the hotel, for which my shoulders are still suffering.

On "our" balcony

We've stayed at 5-star hotels before, but this level of personal, attentive service is not something we have experienced before, and being looked after so well is something we could get used to!

The disappointing smoke haze courtesy of the Indonesians this weekend. Straight ahead is Colmar Tropicale, The Chateau is to the right.

Progress report

Some of you are wondering how things are going with the inventor's project, so I thought it would be good to fill you in a little on progress to date.

Work on the invention continues to go well, and results have been pleasing. However, I worry about the Malaysian partner's impatience to see results and the inventor's lack of capacity to fully explain to him the requirements of the project and projected timeline. Progress was bound to be slow, given that the total manpower hours input on the project cannot exceed the number of hours the inventor has in a week. This will change soon, as I have committed to spending two days a week at the lab helping with office tasks, and the inventor has been given the go-ahead to hire a part-time research assistant. We may also soon be hiring a qualified Malaysian as Director of Research, which will really improve the pace of progress. Of course, between January and April, the two weeks we had our son working here with the inventor, the three weeks he employed an engineering student for vacation practice (called "internship" here) and the 6 or 7 weeks our daughter was working there were a lot more productive times.

The other major factor that is slowing us down is the painfully long time it takes to get any parts here. We had hoped that in an industrial area we would have access to a range of competent, experienced manufacturers, however this has not been the case. It is very difficult in Malaysia to find specialised businesses, and being new here, we don't have access to a range of contacts and prior knowledge, which unfortunately is the mian way Malaysian businesses seem to attract customers. Internet and phone searches are useless, as is asking someone (as you would in Australia), "If you can't do it, do you know someone who can?" One major breakthrough came when our dear friend Desmond took the time to introduce us to a client of his, and we found a major business in Ipoh that we hadn't realised even existed. It took us many months to find the biggest and best hardware store in Ipoh, the only store in the entire district that would come within 50% of the stock range of Bunnings. Stores don't necessarily stock the same things that they would in Australia, either, and stores don't necessarily come in the same specialties that they do in Australia, so the store you are searching for might not necessarily exist.

Another problem is getting the correct thing made when we have found the manufacturer that seems to be right for the job. The first issue might be a case of "Malaysia, boleh!" Malaysians love to please ("boleh" means "can"), but I do wish a company would either admit to not being able to do what has been asked, or if they are concerned about the amount of work and the cost, tell us outright that it's going to be expensive. Because the fact is, sitting around for a month waiting for a part that isn't coming is also expensive. It's frustrating and really slows down progress when we are told a part is being made and it isn't. The inventor spends inordinate amounts of time ringing to check, driving to Ipoh to check, re-explaining, sitting at their plant and demonstrating. To some extent, asking for one-off pieces that have never been made before is going to be tricky, but it doesn't need to be so slow. Communicating with people in what is their second or third language is difficult in person and even harder on the phone, and people avoiding his phone calls or hanging up when they hear an English-speaker only makes the communication difficulties more frustrating.

After all this whinging, though, we have some equipment working and the inventor is working on the next stage of the prototype now. The application for Malaysian government funding has been completed, and now we wait to see if, or how much, financial assistance will come from this development fund. Initial contact has been promising, and they seem keen to be involved. Even a small amount of extra cash injection will speed things up, but we are hopeful to get enough funding to get many things happening simultaneously. He is also getting some vauable regular assistance from one of the senior managers of the partner company, and things seem to be rolling along faster, so the future is looking busy and promising.

The inventor often works on a Saturday, though not every Saturday. We are enjoying seeing the country and try to get away somewhere at least once a month, though this month is busy with three weekends away, so next month will need to be more subdued. Sundays are ours for leisure, and if we're not away somewhere, we drive to Ipoh for church, then usually go out for lunch with friends from church. Lunch often doesn't finish until 2pm, but then we might go and see a movie, or go shopping, or both. Ipoh is big and there are a lot of specialty stores, and even the supermarkets stock a wider range than our little Tesco in Kampar. Occasionally we do some sightseeing around Ipoh. When our daughter was staying here and working with the inventor, one Sunday we did some driving around and had a closer look at the marble mine, and another we went with swimming gear to a delightful creek we had discovered. Even in this popular swimming spot, we were able to enjoy a swimming hole to ourselves.

Promising, exciting, successful and frustrating. I think that sums it up.

Not-so-feverish rantings and more family

Today I'm finally feeling quite a bit better, after days and days of feverish blur. My mind has been a little lost without a body to take it places, but even my thoughts have tossed and turned as my body took on the ominous charge of killing the millions of viruses that came and stayed like unwanted houseguests. With my inpatience, three days in bed seems like a month, so today I am feeling somewhat cheery that I have been able to do some things.

The ship docked in Port Klang

Now I am left hoping and praying that the vigilance of the inventor and myself was sufficient to keep the germs to ourselves, because many weeks before we had arranged to meet up with my parents on Saturday. They are travelling on a big cruise liner around the world, or, as my father puts it, "going from Brisbane to Sydney on a boat". It's more than 100 days, and the second port of call was Port Klang, the port for Kuala Lumpur, last Saturday. We'd stayed the night in KL, having been there a good part of the previous day sorting out things in the office, so we just did the one hour drive to Port Klang to be there at the pre-arranged meeting time of 10.30am. They were ready and waiting, though not, as I had assumed, to go sightseeing. Their shopping list included shoes for my 80-year-old father and a glasses chain for mother, coffee, beer and a few other essentials. There was also the drama of my mother's tooth, as she had lost a sizeable filling and needed a dentist. The difficulty was compunded by the fact that it was not only a Saturday, it was a public holiday, so I suck my nose into my ailing Galaxy S and started google searching and phoning to no avail. Imagine our surprise and delight when the inventor suddenly pulled the car into a u-turn and suggested, "Let's try this dentist", then our further delight when he wandered back out to the car two minutes later and announced, "He can do a filling right now".

Not the day I was expecting in Port Klang, though we did manage to fit in all the sights I was hoping to visit, as the entire list of things worth seeing, all three of them, were within a few blocks of each other, and there really was little point getting out of the car to look at them. It left us time to fit another saga into what was left of the afternoon- the saga of the ice blended. I'd had a coffee ice blended for breakfast earlier in the morning, and my mother decided she'd like one. She also hadn't eaten lunch, so we pulled into a shopping centre and found a park. The four of us hobbled in, the 80-year old with the injured back, his elderly wife (perhaps the most sprightly of the group), the red-nosed and sniffly inventor, and me limping, my injured knee stirred up from the morning's shopping escapades. The shopping centre eventuated to be smaller than it had promised, and there weren't any specialty drink stores. From the meagre selection of food outlets, though, we did find one with ice blendeds on the menu, so in we went and found a table. Unfortunately, today they weren't serving ice blendeds, in fact, they only had juice or coffee. Up and wandering again, our searching led us to the first floor where we found another place. Yes, they were serving coffee ice blended. Yes, please, she'd like a one, we'd like Tiramisu ice blendeds, and also and a plate of chips. The tiramisu blendeds came first, and the inventor and I had only just put our germy lips to the straws when the waiter reappeared. He was sorry, but the machine had broken and they couldn't make the coffee ice blended. My mother settled for an iced coffee. I hope she managed to find a coffee ice blended in Langkawi, which would be their stop the following day, after sailing through the night. In our hot climate, ice blended is the most refreshing culinary highlight of Malaysia.

The Sultan's Palace, Port Klang. I wouldn't mind living there!

This mosque, which we just happened upon, was far nicer than the dull one that my DK guidebook said was a "must-see".

We enjoyed each other's company despite me using half a tube of antispetic hand wash. It has only been a few weeks since we saw them in Brisbane, but bonus day was a delight, as we probably won't see any family now until Christmas. It was a more relaxed and enjoyable way to see family than having 11 of them come to visit at once! For Christmas we are planning to head back to Brisbane, though our life is so unpredictable and uncertain right now, I will not say we'll definitely be there, even though I have booked the flight. We will all have to wait till later in the year to know about that!

 

We drove home via The Blue Mosque in Shah Alam, a truly beautiful sight in the late-afternoon sun.

 The minarets are said to perhaps be the tallest in the world, and

The mosque is the one of the largest in southeast Asia.

Like irritating ants

It doesn't matter where you travel to, life has a habit of following you. You can escape momentarily, but sooner or later, it will find you...

Since I got back home two weeks ago, I have been catching up on life. What a multitude of jobs there are to be done, regardless of where I am. They itch and irritate like ants inside clothing- scratch as I might, they can never all be brushed away, and the multitude soon enough find me when I move.

There was a bit of a backlog because of the break, and it was also time to move on some house maintenance, on our rental house in Cairns and our own home in Smithfield. Then there were the usual bills, and messes that are the result of lost and late mail. There were insurance policies to renew and to change, and new ones to investigate. The bags full of goodies from Australia had to be emptied and sorted into their new homes. Rent spreadsheets had to be updated, body corporate matters voted on, and one tenancy wrapped up and a new one started. Some upcoming leisure moments had to be organised too, like our wedding anniversary weekend which we will spend at a lovely, quiet spa hotel in the mountains at Bukit Tinggi, and this Saturday, which we will spend with my parents who will be in Port Klang for the second stop of their round-the-world cruise on the Dawn Princess. The list I was using was on a piece of paper, because the app in my phone just wasn't allowing me to see the whole enormous picture. The list was terrifying, but I think at last it has been tamed. You know you've made progress on a list when it's time to transfer the unfinished jobs onto a fresh page and discard the tatty mess of crossed-out achievements. It feels good.

The last two weeks I have formulated a new life-timetable for myself, but I haven't as yet been very successful in sticking to it. This is mainly the fault of life as summarised above. Next week, however, I hope to have more success with my new life arrangement. I plan to go with The Inventor two days a week to work with him in the lab. My forte is not lab work or scientific knowledge, but hopefully I can free up more of his time to work on these, while I handle office and managerial tasks. I have also been toying with the idea of doing some further study, because there are some areas that I can see I would be able to help in managing the project but don't feel I have sufficient knowledge to do so adequately. Instead of formal study, however, I have decided on some self-led study, spending the time in advancing my knowledge in areas I feel would be useful. The first area I've started to explore is Project Management and Quantitative Business Analysis, and then I'd like to look at business finance and some economics. I know what you're thinking, and I, too, am wondering if I have just gone a little crazy. But I'm enjoying it, and I love the pursuit of knowledge.

So, that's all from me for now! Back to life!

On being Australian

You can take the woman out of Australia, but you can't take Australia out of the woman.

It's corny, but you know it's true. There is something about one's homeland that is etched into their identity, a part of their very being, the essence of self. I know this is the case for me, at least. I love my homeland, I'm proud to be Australian, proud that the people and nation I identify with are strong, tough, honest and friendly. Even though I no longer have a home here, Australia is my home.

We have a friend who escaped from Vietnam. He has never been back, and has no desire to. He wouldn't accompany his wife when she went there on a holiday, because he doesn't want to go. In a way, I find it strange that he doesn't want to “connect with his roots”, but in another way I understand. He is Australian. He might look and sound Vietnamese, but this is his homeland, the place he identifies with. I appreciate that.

We have been in Australia for nearly two weeks. But as with all breaks away, it doesn't feel like that long. The time has been a rushed and stressful scurry from place to place, crossing tasks off the long list as each was achieved.

Besides the 21^st birthday party for our son (the primary reason for this current pilgrimage to our homeland), we have visited family and friends in both Brisbane and Cairns, and made visits to banks, solicitors, accountants, tenants, stores and businesses to organise services and products that we can't access readily by phone or internet from home. In between, we have continued to manage the visa application process in Kuala Lumpur, and it seems that we have finally been approved for a working visa, though it has been a drawn-out and somewhat pointless bureaucratic exercise, and approval was not granted before we had already paid yet more money to Air Asia to extend the stay. Our bargain $500 tickets have ended up costing us twice that, as we also had to change the flight leaving Malaysia so we could leave two days earlier than originally booked. This was necessary because our most recent “visa trip” was not entirely successful. We had left Malaysia before the expiry of our visas with the plan of gaining a new three-month visa on our return, however the immigration official at the desk the inventor approached was reticent to allow him to return at all, and eventually only granted him 28 days. We have heard of many people who leave and return regularly on visitor passes, and believe our difficulty was the result of previously being granted a one-month extension on our visas at the immigration office in Ipoh.

So, we had an extra day at the start of our trip and a few extra days at the end. This has given the inventor time to see his electro-cardiologist and time to complete jobs that he hadn't managed to finish. He returns tomorrow, but I won't follow for another week, staying behind here to do more jobs and help the number one offspring to pull together the pieces of her life after a relationship break-up and a few months living with us in Malaysia.

It's lovely to be here with family and friends and Australia is so home-ey, but Malaysia is home for now. I miss my home and look forward to fiddling with the awkward padlock, entering the leather-scented lounge room, strggling up the narrow stairs, turning on the aircon and collapsing into our delightful six foot square bed. We have work to do, a life to get on with and great things to achieve. As we leave our daughter to start the next, exciting chapter of her life journey, we too must go and finish what we started.

Return of the prodigal blogger

I'm sorry. I have been away for a long time, but I have been pining for my blog like an absent friend, so I am back. Life has become more complicated than when we first arrived in Malaysia, and certainly more busy, so finding time to write has become somwhat of a challenge. Finding topics to write about is less of a challenge- life is so interesting, there is always something to be said, and for those who know me, if there is something to be said, I'll say it.

So, hello again- I hope we maintain our acquaintance this time!

Observation

Since moving to Malaysia, I have noticed that I have become a more observant driver. I spend more of my driving time looking out for other drivers and motorcyclists. I see things happening on side-streets and on the footpath, and am generally more ready for the numerous surprises that constitute the daily lottery that is driving in Malaysia.

Yesterday morning I drove from Brisbane to the Gold Coast, and I realised something. My aware and alert state of driving is not the result of extra effort or new skills attained since my feet hit Asian shores. Neither is it the result of being less occupied with other matters, which I had previously thought might be the case. Rather, it is the result of having available the majority of my “driving brain”, my conscious and unconscious mind that scans for possibilities, makes decisions and reacts accordingly while I manoeuvre one or two tonne of steel around obstacles on the road. In Australia, I don't have this luxury, and as a result, I don't see as much around me. Why is this? After driving to the Gold Coast yesterday (to take the inventor to a cardiologist appointment and then this morning to the airport), I realise that I spend a good deal of my attention on rules. Especially speed. Instead of scanning for cars changing lanes or vehicles stopping unexpectedly, I spend nearly half of my driving time glancing at my speedometer and scanning for speed limit signs. I'm also continually scanning the sides of the roads and bridges for police cars and cameras, because despite my attempts to follow the rules, I do make mistakes. In Malaysia, almost all of this energy and visual awareness is spent gauging the traffic conditions, predicting problems and making myself and other drivers safe on the road.

This isn't to say that it is safer driving in Malaysia- far from it. Each year, five times more people die on Malaysian roads than Australian roads, despite the populations being very similar (26 million in Malaysia, 23 million in Australia). The Malaysian people on the whole appreciate the lack of enforcement on the roads and while they begrudgingly pay the bribes to avoid fines, prefer this to following the normal course of the law. Many embrace the lawlessness on the roads, travelling at 160 on the expressways, weaving across roads without regard for other vehicles, and doing what they please. Malaysia is spiralling in peril with no law enforcement, while Australia has made and enforced rules to the extent of oppression. 

If only there was a happy medium.

Kuala Lumpur

I have been up the Petronas Twin Towers now. It's one of those “must do at least once in a lifetime” things, and despite visiting Malaysia in 2010 for a holiday and then living here for another six months, I still hadn't managed it just that once.

Yesterday, we rode to the Sky Bridge and then to the 86^th floor observation deck with our son and his girlfriend. It's not cheap, especially when paying for four, but it was a good experience, and we can now say, “been there AND done that”. The first stop is the Sky Bridge, which joins the towers on level 41 and 42. I actually found that the most thrilling, as you are standing in a suspended corridor, with nothing underneath. The guide who welcomed us was on the deck when the movement joint closed by 5 inches as a result of the tsunami earthquake. I think the year was 2002. The people on that day felt the movement, though we thankfully had an uneventful visit. The lifts sweep visitors at an astonishing speed, though to get to the 86^th floor, we had to disembark the high-speed main lifts at the 83^rd floor and enter two slower ones that go up the final three floors. They seemed frustratingly slow after the ear-popping ascent to the 83^rd. The 86^th floor observation deck affords 360 degree views of KL and the opportunity to photograph the other tower, though it was disappointing that the afternoon had become typically KL-hazy and cloudy, after a bright and clear morning. Still, we could see for miles around, as far as Batu Caves and the mountains. 

 

After the towers visit, we visited an exhibit called “The Sultans of Science”, about Moslem contributions to the Sciences, then drove from the KLCC Suria shopping complex to the nearby Pavilion Shopping Centre so we could all experience TGI Fridays. We created our own tapas menu by sharing a number of plates of appetisers and mains, probably the last western food we'll get at a restaurant for a while. The kids were thrilled to discover a shop that sells nothing but DC Comics merchandise. I was not thrilled that we took more than an hour to drive home, a result of a nasty chance collision of all of the usual KL driving calamities- traffic jams, difficulty getting the GPS software to run on my phone, and mistaking one of the numerous expressway exits for another, which as usual resulted in a 20-minute round-trip on another expressway and back again.

On Saturday we had also managed an exhausting dose of sightseeing, covering the wonderful technology shopping centre Lowyat Plaza, KL Bird Park and Petaling Street Markets. Having a car in KL does add driving and navigating stresses to the day, but an advantage is being able to pop back to the hotel for an hour or two rest, which the kids appreciated after their big day of travel on Friday.

In two weeks' time our daughter and her boyfriend arrive here, and we hope to be able to do some trips with them also. We have booked a few days at Genting Highlands for the six of us. How lovely to have family time together. No doubt you will be hearing more of our family adventures as our eleven Aussie guests start arriving in Kampar for our mega birthday celebration.

The cycle of life

The gaps betweek my blogs are becoming far too large. As we get more involved in various activities here, are lives are becoming busier, and it is harder and harder to set aside a few hours to write a blog. Also dominating my time of late have been the plans and organising for the imminent visit of 11 Australians who are arriving in bunches over the next four weeks. Mainly members of my family, our offspring and their partners, they are coming over for the combined celebration of the inventor's 50th bithday and my father's 80th, which both occur within days of Chinese New Year. We have numerous parties and sightseeing planned. I hadn't realised just how much work would be involved in finding accommodation, fitting out guest rooms, transporting and feeding this many people, but the main arrangements are now all sorted, and I can calm down at last.

Do you remember the old man with the bicycle piled high with boxes? I see him often, pushing the heavy, old machine up a slope, or crawling along patiently beside the hurrying traffic. Day after day he heads out on ricketly wheels and unsteady legs, in search of old boxes that he can exchange for a few coins to feed himself and his wife. Life is very different here. Poverty is different, and needing is different. One day when I have more time, I might join the thousands before me who have shared their thoughts on poverty, on life, and on humanity in general. For now I look forward to our visitors' arrivals, starting tomorrow with our son and his girlfriend. We hope that, like us, they can sit back and watch with appreciation and fascination the endless stream of humanity come and go, round and round, on this endless cycle they call "life".