Yesterday was Saturday and, aside from working and getting myself some seekh kebabs for lunch, I had decided to go to Midvalley, a mall, where (rumour had it) rashguards can be purchased. Midvalley is located in a sort of island with limited points of access and the traffic is always obscene on weekends. The only public transport is a KTM commuter rail, so that is what I decided to take. It took ages to get there; first the long wait for the monorail (which is still, a year on, running only 2-car trains coming every 15 minutes), then arrive in KL Sentral to transfer to the KTM where there was another 15 minute wait, extending to 20 because the train was delayed. Although it was only one stop, the actual journey took long enough that I wondered if it would have been better to get a car. Anyhow, I arrived at Midvalley with about 30 minutes before I would have to catch the return train in order to meet someone at KL Sentral.
Midvalley is huge (it’s actually 2-3 malls squashed together) and was extremely crowded with a particularly high proportion of very pregnant women. I found this rather odd, but it was explained as I dashed towards the rashguard shop: there was a a Baby Expo taking place, and there were queues and queues of pregnant women, young couples and harassed parents of toddlers on one side, and the same people pushing trolleys piled with nappies on the other.
The rashguard shop only had rashguards in mens’ sizes, and the lack of time meant that I glanced at them, thought a little and dashed back to catch the train as it was bucketing and the pedestrian access to Bangsar would leave me drenched.
Which, about 3 minutes after leaving Midvalley, stopped in the middle of the tracks. About five minutes later it started moving, jolted forward 10 cm, and stopped again. Another 10 minutes later the driver made an announcement. Only the first word was audible, so the anxiety level in the train soared. Twenty minutes later, all the children started crying. Ten minutes after that the film review podcast finished. All in all, we were stalled for 90 minutes so I called ahead to cancel dinner, contemplated using the emergency latch to open the door and escape into Bangsar (eating the RM 1000 fine), and finally just waited to leave.
I took the MRT back which, despite the greater risk of being drenched on the longer walk than from the monorail, and returned home. On the way I saw the ad in the photo – it refers to the ‘fake news’ bill that has just been proposed here in Malaysia.
Where, after dinner, we watched The Death of Stalin, which was excellent. It made me cross at the clickbait controversy that apparently surrounded its release, that it somehow minimised the atrocities of the time. It seemed the opposite to me.