blog

Junk food diet

For some reason Joe Millionaire popped into my mind. This was one of the earlier reality shows, the setup was that a number of carefully selected young American women were invited to the chateau home of a young millionaire on the look out for a bride. The question was, whom would he select, and how […]

Troubling weekend

Well, troubling is not quite the right word. It was a bit restless, I think I’m now close enough to the move to be both overwhelmed by what needs to be done and it’s still too early to take any action on it. Today I was very restless indeed. First we met the Woodland Creature […]

Shoplifter

I had probably my final char kway teow today – no longer my favourite Malaysian food, but still very delicious. On the way back I went to Pavilion to get groceries as the GF returns from his working week in London today, and first went upstairs to Daiso to look for specialised cleaning supplies that […]

Face of defeat

I’m watching Najib’s press conference. He looks a wreck. He has conceded defeat while saying, basically, that ‘we might have lost but no one else won’ – presumably this is due to a technicality in that the opposition PH coalition is not registered as a coalition and none of its component parties by themselves form […]

Things change

I started following the election results from around 7, with the Star newspaper’s live feed in a background window. Later I added Malaysiakini, which had less conservative estimates, as well. Through the evening, as I had dinner and did some work, the numbers kept ticking up, mostly the ruling Barisan Nasional to begin with (there […]

Election night

I went to sleep around midnight. There was still traffic on the roads, and when I looked out of the window towards one of the city’s main roads, I saw motorcycles and cars zooming past with party flags fluttering. I watched for a few minutes and counted dozens flying the red, blue and white Pakatan […]

Recapturing the castle

I reread after a long time I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith and was struck by just how sensual the book is. Every single sense, and a lot of sex, sex everywhere. Cassandra, the narrator, is one of the great voices in 20th century literature, the grandmother in some ways of the teenaged Alison […]

Masters hunt

Woe is me, the psoriasis is back. I should perhaps have not stopped using the medicine. In better news, I got a small contract, a rush job that I hope will lead to more work in the months to come. It also has me looking for education masters degrees. Sadly, having lived outside the UK […]

Morning mee

Another breakfast excursion today, this time to Pudu, one of the old Chinese parts of town known for especially delicious Chinese food. It’s about a 40 minute walk but I decided to take the trundling old monorail to Imbi and walk 10 minutes from there. It was around 9 on a Sunday so very quiet […]

Brunch

A pleasant morning, having brunch with Maitreyi and the Woodland Creature, the two people I shall most miss in KL. We talked about Chinese and I tried to understand something I’ve long wondered about, ie whether to a native Chinese speaker fán sounds more similar to fàn or to fén, but couldn’t really get a […]