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".