I have just returned from the second play that I have left during the interval. The last one was Macbeth in Malaysia, uncut and performed in full, very poorly, with some nods to Chinese opera. It was dire and, at the interval, the GF and I realised that we were only two hours in and […]
Facing west
Profoundly unimpressed by Tan Twan Eng’s The gift of rain. I read his second and more famous novel shortly before going to Malaysia and didn’t care for it but remember almost nothing of it, while this one, his first, is excruciating. It’s very much a first novel, for one: he’s lovingly put everything he wanted […]
Bangkok new year
It is blessedly quiet here after Hanoi, and even my last stay in Bangkok where the sound of traffic was relentless, except at dawn and dusk when all the dogs in the neighbourhood howl for about 5 minutes. I arrived in the middle of Thai new year, Songkran, which includes, aside from visits to monks […]
Longing for laksa
Took a car down to an old haunt, to Limapulo in Chow Kit, which was once a step away from my flat. I arrived just as it opened and placed my favourite order, a bowl of their nyonya laksa with barley water. There were were any number of other things I’d have liked to have […]
Ill-gotten gains
Met someone who works in the palm oil industry and is very dismissive about biodiversity loss – not that it’s unimportant but that it doesn’t happen. Not so sure myself. They had just returned from a reception hosted by a major European palm oil user and returned with two large gift bags full of their […]
Back to Bangsar
Went there for a quick lunch with my host, an excellent dosa and average ice cream. It looked more or less the same, did Bangsar, though I got a bit confused as we approached it from a different direction. The old DVD shop is long gone, I’m sure, but I couldn’t work out where it […]
Hornbill
It was a very busy Sunday. We were supposed to go for dosas, but I kept having meetings piling up, from an early morning one which needed over an hour of post-meeting work, onwards. I didn’t get to really leave the room except for meals. I fell asleep working, woke up long enough to turn […]
Back to KLCC
This afternoon, my hosts drove me down to KLCC, itself a dislocating experience as we, the GF and I, went about it on foot so nothing seemed quite recognisable, even aside from the five years away. The Petronas towers themselves were instantly familiar though – among my favourite, perhaps my favourite skyscrapers, and well positioned […]
Back to KL
I landed at 3.15 in the morning at KLIA2, which in itself was unfamiliar as these early morning arrivals had always, in the past, been to KLIA on my trips back from Pakistan. Familiarity returned, though, with the passage through immigration, collecting the luggage (as always arriving commendably fast) and walking out of the terminal […]
International style
Today, we went to Nisantasi with the intent of going on to one of the markets. Unsurprisingly, it was closed, what with it being a lockdown, but on the way we explored some interesting new streets, including one lined with cake shops. Finding the market closed led to a minor crisis as the GF was […]