Hypochondria?

Book of the Week: Turning Angel by Greg Iles

Woke up this morning with an image of Dirty Harry in my head, but for the life of me could not remember the name of the actor who played him. Clive? Hence the need to get online so early in the morning. I had to know. It’s been happening for a while now – my synapses are no longer firing connections I could once make in mere nano-seconds. Can’t name a tune, recall the last three books I’ve read, play put a name to a face, or even spell words correctly. I am not in denial that I’m getting older; I am simply absolutely terrified that my memory is going, or that a tumour is growing in my medula oblongata somewhere. I need to get my brain scanned or work it out more.

Factoids of the Week:
You expect me to remember?

Fear And (Self-) Loathing In New Zealand

Book of the Week: Not reading at the moment

Either I’m getting old, jaded and cynical, or travel just doesn’t cut it for me any more. I’m flying off to New Zealand in a couple of hours, so why am I not bouncing off the walls in excitement and anticipation of my three weeks there? I still love travelling and all the experiences it entails, that much I know. I still think anywhere I haven’t been to is a good place to go. So why do I no longer quiver on the inside like the Energizer Bunny on speed at the prospect of exploring the terra vel mare incognitum on my very own Mappa Mundi?

It used to be so different. London, June 1996: It was in the British Museum that I first understood what a mental orgasm was. My eyes greedily devoured the Tower, the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace. You name it, my jaw dropped on it. Greece, October 2002: I twitched like a nervous tic the entire train journey down from Bulgaria, all 14 hours of it – all I could think of as the countryside rolled past was that this was the land that gave life to the legends of Heracles, Perseus and Zeus. I couldn’t wait to see the Acropolis, the temples, all those glorious ruins. And let’s not forget Paris, Turkey (oh my God, Turkey), China, Australia... even the USA.

But something’s happened since. I can’t put my finger on it, but it worries me. Rome, June 2006 – a city I’ve been dying to see all my life, and when we get to the Colosseum – the COLOSSEUM, dammit – I go, “Hmmmuh.” (It was not exactly my best cow impersonation either.) It was awful, like there was this black hole inside me. I was just so relieved to feel amazement and awe when we saw the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel, I almost cried.

I don’t doubt New Zealand will be spectacular. But I don’t understand this lack of eagerness, this overwhelming insensateness. What’s wrong with me?! Why don’t I celebrate that little bit more or life lived now when I finally see something I’ve dreamed of seeing all my life? It’s like something inside me suddenly died. Do you get to a certain age, and then just stop caring? How do you keep alive a sense of wide-eyed wonderment?

Einstein said: “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.” I used to think that if I’d seen the Sphinx, Macchu Picchu, the world’s great pyramids, Uluru, I would die happy. But if I could visit Mexico, Peru, Egypt, or my wet dream, i.e. every UNESCO World Heritage Site there is, tomorrow, would I feel this deadweight of near-apathy? I am afraid to know the answer.

Factoids of the Week:
No time for this just now.

Happiness is a well-rounded guinea pig

Book of the Week: Ancient Angkor by Michael Freeman & Claude Jacques

The first video of Coconut is online!

It is just so cute. What strikes me most is how he doesn’t seem to be afraid or running away from her. He looks like he’s being his usual confuzzled but inquisitive self. And that’s just brilliant. Bethany’s been teaching him the alphabet, to read the world map and how to kick a small ball as well! Bonus. He’s not just with a loving new family, he’s also getting a good education!

Minni has been fantastic. She really understands how I feel about Coconut (“You really put a lot of pressure on your friends, you know!”) and has been doing little things like this to help. Two days ago I received photos of Bethany and Coconut at play. He was looking up at the camera like he was asking, “Forget Tajikistan, where’s the cucumber?!”

As for Robert – he was caught kneeling by the enclosure making little squeaking noises. He’s a softie! Apparently, he’s been talking about getting Coconut a friend, too. That really would be the best thing ever for him (Coconut that is, not Robert!). Guinea pigs are social animals, and I’d always worried about Coconut being an only guinea pig...

I miss Coconut a lot, but this is wonderful. For the first time since he’s gone away, my mind is at peace. And I’m happy. So very, very happy.

Factoids of the Week:
None. Coconut’s well, well-fed, well-watered, well-loved and well-rounded. That’s all that matters.

A Week Of Partings

Book of the Week: Cold Granite by Stuart MacBride

Coconut went to his new home yesterday. I was acutely aware that Friday was my last full day with him, and one of the last things I did yesterday was give him a bath and trim his nails. I was so relieved when I got the e-mail from Kin last Sunday informing me that Minni wanted a guinea pig for her daughter, but now that he’s gone I miss him so much. I started welling up when I gave him his goodbye cuddle, cried all the way home in the car, cried again when I saw the empty space in the kitchen where his enclosure used to be, and then some more when I went to put something in the bin and, almost by reflex, looked sideways, expecting to see him peeking up at me, but heard no paper rustling. It’s really amazing how a little creature can become so much a part of your life in just three months. As I told a very sleepy Gareth (in Adelaide) on the phone later that night when missing Coconut became too much, I really don’t know how people cope with giving their kids up for adoption.

But I’m trying to convince myself that it’s all for the best. I can’t take him with me, and should be happy that someone wants him. I can also see him any time I want. He wasn’t mine to have in the first place – I was only ever to be guardian angel for a little while until he found a permanent home. Still, although here I am trying to reason it all out through my writing and talk myself into believing the logic, all I really want is to have him back. I have my fears and misgivings (which stem from the fact that I think I am Coconut’s best mummy – I know I am) and have this awful nightmare in which I get a call two days after giving him away and am told that he’s broken his back and died due to mishandling. That would just kill me – I’d feel like I had sent him to his death. I don’t think I will go away with complete peace of mind, but I guess I have no choice but to have faith in my friends to take good care of him. I just pray Bethany will be gentle with Coconut, and Robert won’t decide to use the stair landing for floor time. And that he’ll get plenty of (good) attention, his nails clipped and perhaps even a friend.

After two wonderful weeks together (a disproportionate amount of which was spent exploring temples, eating and meeting my relatives), I saw Gareth off on Thursday night. I knew I’d get him to the airport on time, but there were split-seconds when I had my doubts. We both had farty jobbies and actually had to come up back to the flat again for a second round of creating Jackson Pollock-esque artwork on the toilet bowls. (And yet, for all our trouble battling dodgy tums and almost literally holding it all in, he still didn’t make it to Adelaide as planned.) We’ll meet up again a week on Tuesday, which is perhaps why I don’t miss him nearly as much as I miss Coconut. I don’t have nightmares about Gareth breaking his back because he’s big enough – in more ways than one – to take care of himself. Coconut isn’t, and that’s what breaks my heart.

I think, in a way, the three days I spent back home with Gareth earlier this week were also a parting of sorts with my family. I won’t see them for almost a year, two if I don’t come home next Chinese New Year. The meals we had together were a series of slow goodbyes. I’ll miss the dogs the most. I can always call home and talk to my folks and relatives, and vice-versa, but it’s not like Dusty and Lucky can just pick up the phone or learn how to use Skype. Dusty is already 13, and just like for Coconut, I have this terrible fear that I will get a phone call telling me that she is no longer with us. She’s looking healthy though, but I pray that day is a long way off. I really don’t know how I’d handle grieving for a loved one so far away from home. I’m the sort who needs, who wants to be there. I wouldn’t feel like I’d said my goodbyes properly otherwise and I think I’d carry a sense of not having closure for the rest of my life if I didn’t.

Cold Granite reminds me of Scotland so much. (But that’s really a stupid thing to say, because it’s a Scottish book, for feck’s sake. Set in Aberdeen and written by a guy who lives in the area.) And it also reminds me that I still have a lot of packing and writing to do. I should be panicking, but I’m not, for some (probably very scary) reason. Gareth says we can have another guinea pig when I go back. It won’t be Coconut, but it’s a start.

Factoids of the Week:
The average annual income in Cambodia, one of the poorest countries in the world, hovers around the US$300 mark. Over three and a half days ferrying us about the sights of Siem Reap, our tuk-tuk driver, Kim Soryar, earned just under 25% of what his less fortunate countrymen did in a year.

Dogs wag their tails in different directions depending on their moods. Vigorous wags to the right if they want to play; ditto, but milder, if they see a cat or human they like; to the left if they are upset or see a rival.

Just because someone mentioned it and I didn’t know anything about it, I looked up bipolar disorder. Untreated patients with Bipolar I Disorder usually have eight to 10 episodes of mania and depression in their lifetime, and an approximately 15% risk of death by suicide. It is the third leading cause of death among people aged 15-24 years, and is the sixth leading cause of disability (lost years of healthy life) for people aged 15-44 years in the developed world. Women with Bipolar I Disorder lose, on average, nine years in life expectancy, 14 years of lost productivity and 12 years of normal health.

Minni said last night she feels very strongly I am gifted. Ummm. I very much doubt it, but Googled “genius” anyway. Discovered that Thomas Jefferson invented everyday, take-for-granted objects like the swivel chair and pedometer, among several others, but never patented any of them because he wanted people to have free use of them.

Touchdown!

Book of the Week: Lonely Planet Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei and Lonely Planet Southeast Asia on a Shoestring (just a wee bit of revision before His Nibs gets here!)

Had difficulty sleeping last night – in part due to the amount of coffee I consumed at tea-time, and also the mini adrenaline rush I got counting down the hours until Gareth arrives. (“18 hours to go… oooh, 17 hours 53 minutes now…”) Didn’t fall asleep till about 4.30am but felt OK this morning, though. Must be an adrenaline hangover.

But anyway. Kitchen mopped. Floor cleaned. Toilets scrubbed. Clothes washed. Bedsheets changed. Guinea pig fed. Sleeping arrangements not totally fine-tuned yet but we’ll sort something out, nae bova.

Oooh… just one more hour before the flight touches down. That’s my cue to go!

Factoids of the Week:
Who cares! Though I’ve realized Coconut talks back to me if I squeak at him. And that I’ve just doubled my monthly post count!

Random Thoughts: One Day To Go...

Book of the Week: This is getting repetitive…

THANK YOU, BAYERN!!!!!!!

Stayed up late – second night in a row – to watch footie. Just as well I’m still in between jobs. Can’t imagine what it’d have been like had I not moved to Scotland and watched the number of World Cup games I did last year in this time zone. Getting too old for this. Man Utd v Lille, 1-0, Man Utd 2-0 on aggregate. Boring match with occasional heart-in-mouth moments, but it’s undeniable: Henrik Larsson is a bloody genius. Will be sorry to see him go at the end of the week.
Flicked in between channels when I couldn’t bear to watch the Utd match, and found the overall tone of play of the night’s four matches for the most part kinda cacat, not least for the local commentary. (Come on, you twats, it’s the last 16 Champions League, do you think we want to hear that pretentious moron Zainal whatshisface struggling with the names and trying to make sense of the offside rule???)

But a big thank-you to Bayern Munich for sending Real Madrid out of the Champions League! Brilliant first-minute goal by Roy Makaay. Fastest ever goal in the history of the competition, there’s a sporting factoid for ya. Loved how it seemed more like a game of pinball than football at times, the way the ball was bouncing off feet all over the pitch. So that’s the two cockiest, smuggest teams out of the competition. Bye-bye Real! Bye-bye Barca! Bye-bye Beckham!

Like the football, it turned out to be another up-and-down day. Got loads done (though it wasn’t like I had a to-do list the length of the Queen’s Birthday Honours). After flumping about most of the day trying to get hold of Priya for my doxycycline tablets, I met Kaynis – my very favourite insurance agent – at tea-time, and, over glasses of Milo and iced coffee and double portions of kaya toast, bought the insurance for my Cambodia and NZ trips. Very pleased with the excellent price quoted as well.

Then I wandered over to Ikano Power Centre and spent the next three hours looking at bed storage boxes (at Ikea) and pet cages (at Pet Station). Need to be ready just in case some angel of providence turns up and decides he/she wants Coconut. Not everybody is going to let a guinea pig go free-range, so he’ll need something reasonably big enough to run around in.

What annoyed me, though, was that the pet cages (“Create a fun, natural home for your rabbit / guinea pig / dwarf hamster!”) seem to have been designed by people who had no idea of the minimum amount of space needed by a small animal. Guinea pigs are supposed to have at least 6 sq ft of space, and the very largest cage available measured only 4.825 sq ft. Guinea pigs are supposed to be social animals – the best thing you can do for your guinea pig is get it a friend – so how the hell are you supposed to even keep them in that space? Huh? Huh??? The design for the water bottle was also ridiculous: a tiny little opening for the nozzle, a flimsy plastic strap and a huge bottle. I just couldn’t see it balancing. (Yes, I experimented. The shop assistants didn’t look too pleased.)

I was pretty damn depressed for a good hour afterwards – the only other option was to find some Coroplast and make a customized box for Coconut, but there didn’t seem to be any boards of any decent size on sale. Maybe I could poke around electrical goods shops and see if they have any fridge boxes they could spare.

Went to see Ah Giek to collect my spanking new pair of glasses. They are très chic, even if I do have some trouble fitting them new-fangled bendy rimless frames into the case. Ah Giek also gave me a couple of apples (“for Coconut”) and, despite my annoyed protestations, pressed some money into my hand (“for your trips – you haven’t started working yet!”). She is one fantastic aunt. If I ever win the lottery, she’s definitely getting a healthy percentage. Though a more realistic goal would be for me to pay for a trip over to Scotland sometime.

I’ve just realized that when I publish this, I’ll have gone one post more than I have in any other month since I started blogging. Score! Milestone! Oooh... and that it’s been 20 years since the release of U2’s Joshua Tree. Wow. Has it been that long. I remember that album only too well. Never bought the CD because I figured the tape was always lying about somewhere, but I can’t remember where now...

The best part of today was knowing that Gareth will be arriving tomorrow. Yay! In about 21 hours’ time we’ll probably either be tucking into some quality Malaysian street food (i.e. comes with enough E. coli to knock out a herd of elephants – if elephants can indeed be affected by E. coli, that is), or – considering that it’s going to be a long day for the both of us tomorrow – fast asleep. Though that’s no bad thing as we have loads planned for the weekend – taking him for a quick refresher course tour of KL on Saturday, visiting Malacca (his first time) on Sunday, and going to Kuala Gandah to see the elephants (a first for both of us) on Monday. But I get the feeling that during his time here he’ll more likely be tired out from eating than anything… when in Rome and all that. It is Malaysia, after all!

Oooh! Oooh! 20 hours 55 minutes now… can you tell I’m excited…

Factoids of the Week:
Almost said “Still nothing”, but then remembered a story (from The Sun – where else!) about an extremely overweight Russian boy. Dzambulat Khatokov, trumpeted as “the world’s biggest boy”, is seven years old, weighs 16 stone, and has been weightlifting since he was three. Gotta wonder what he’s been eating – or being fed – seeing as his mother is the one who seems dead set on him becoming a professional sumo wrestler (“Our hope is that Jambik will provide a secure future for our family – all we have is because of Jambik”) and insists that he loves taking centre-stage. Funnily enough, Dzambulat sounds like jam bulat, which means “round clock” in Malay...

Captain America has been killed off! AUUUUGH! Shot by a sniper while walking out of court! AUUUUGH!

This is scary – don’t know if this woman is insecure, suffering from body dysmorphia or simply a glutton for punishment. Sheyla de Almeida, 27, a model, had 14 operations and a total of 2.4 litres of silicone pimped in to have the biggest boobs (current size 34FF) in Brazil. She has now decided she wants another 8 litres of gloop so she can beat the current world record of 42XXX. Crikey. That’s eye-watering. And I thought Lea’s 40M footballs were creepy.

Random Thoughts: Two Days To Go

Book of the Week: See yesterday’s post...

It’s been a Scottish weather kind of day. Started off all doom and gloom, but brightened considerably towards the evening. Or does that usually work in reverse. Usually it’s a case of waiting five minutes if you don’t like the weather…

Anyway – I know I’m never going to be a domestic goddess but last night (or rather, very early this morning) confirmed it. OK, so my housekeeping skills need work, so to get hear from Miks that my efforts at scrubbing the bathrooms weren’t too bad was a compliment. But then he went in for a shower, and there was a very long, pissed-off, “What-lahhhh…” – Oops. He’d found one of my hairs draped over the toilet roll. Ah well. I guess I should know better than to leave even a fleck of kerastase anywhere within a 10km radius. Never going to pass Kim and Aggie’s clean tests this way. Now that I look back on it, it was actually quite funny (though it didn’t feel so at the time). Ended up arguing like two five-year-olds (YOU do it! No, YOU do it!), and wound up in the living room together, both of us in extremely bad moods and very huffy, not talking to each other, but with me watching the first half of the Liverpool v Barcelona return leg at Anfield.

(Lapsing into stream of consciousness here – a.k.a car-crash change of topic – although I can’t stand Liverpool, I’m glad they won. Lesser of the two evils! Man Utd v Lille tonight at 3.45am, hope the Reds bang three past the Frenchies. That’ll shut them up, whinging about Giggs’ quickie free-kick goal. And I hope UEFA comes down hard on them for trying to walk off the pitch too. Muppets.)

And then, when I woke up, terrified at the prospect of not having all my stuff boxed and ready in time for The Big Move next month, I did more than the usual today – and now, after cramming as many books as I could into another four boxes, I am not sure if actually finishing packing isn’t the scarier option.

My books already take up something like seven boxes, and I still have another two bookcases to go. And that’s not including the one-and-a-half tonnes of tomes I’m leaving behind, which have been squeezed into every corner of my folks’ house, in boxes under the bed, in crevices between cupboards and corners of wardrobes (before I left for university, my Dad suggested that I donate my books to the library... any damn library). I’m sure there are plenty of people out there with shedloads (literally) more books than I have, but I’m beginning to realize that it’s really rather frightening the number of books one can amass in a lifetime. Perhaps, instead of saving up to buy my own little flat, I should instead be looking at warehouses and/or storage space for rent.

On the upside, I worked up the courage to e-mail a total stranger today. Actually, that isn’t really a first because I did it all the time (still do) in my line of work, but it was usually a request for an interview, clarification or press stills. I e-mailed this person for a personal favour, and as I have problems asking that of people I don’t know, I just had to tell myself face wasn’t as important as Coconut’s well-being. This person might be able to help me find a home for Coconut – fingers crossed. She seems to network quite a lot – if she puts the word out that there’s a guinea pig for adoption, she’ll be able to reach a lot more people. It’d be like Coconut’s very own PR campaign. I hope something good comes out of it because Coconut deserves a good home.

Norlin e-mailed to inform the rest of the YABC (that’s Yogi’s Angels & Bitches Club – of which I am a proud member – it sounds kinky, but alas, it’s not!) of the barbecue on Saturday. It was a very sweet e-mail – “we’re having a barbecue for May and Gareth”. Awww! It’s like a hello/goodbye party. I secretly hope they all come because they’ll miss me and don’t know when we’ll have another YABC Bitch Fit at Fasta Pasta again, but I’m sure they’ll attend because they all want to see the ang moh and give him the third degree… I do love barbecues at Norlin’s – they are extremely fun, feel-good events. (We’ll have to do the washing up this time, though, as her maid ran off with the boyfriend a couple of days ago.) Can’t wait.

Ken’s also added me as a contributor to his New Zealand blog, no idea why, but in all probability in anticipation of the experiences (and travel tips!) Gareth and I will very likely have after our trip next month. We’ve both never been so far south of the equator before, but anywhere I haven’t been to is a good place to go. Like I said a couple of lines ago: can’t wait.

Factoids of the Week:
I haven’t read anything today, so nothing. Yes, I’m slacking. Sue me.

Random Thoughts: Three Days To Go

Book of the Week: I ain’t really reading – most of the books are in boxes now and the Pending Shelf is empty!

Earthquake in Padang today. Ah Giek called Dad to say people in buildings downtown KL had felt the tremors. Dad got me on Skype to ask me about it. Of course I hadn’t felt anything. Immediately checked it out on BBC and in turn got Dad freaked out – kid sister is on assignment in Singapore just now and apparently the earthquake had caused a few skyscrapers in the CBD there to sway. So of course he was worried. It’s all right, don’t bother asking about me, I’m only on the 10th floor of an apartment block!

Letter came today from the university – graduation’s in June, mind you mortgage the house now or you won’t see the back of your scroll! Write Stuff people sound like they’re getting kinda worried as well. They probably think I have no intention of returning the trophy now that I’m back in Malaysia.

Lunar eclipse on Sunday. Saw bugger all. Always seem to be on wrong side of world at right time. Judging from comments on BBC, it was pretty damn clear over the UK.

Can’t wait to see Mukhsin. Opens this Thursday and it looks good. Very Malaysian. Might even take Gareth to see it. Special Mention at the 2007 Berlinale. That should impress him.

Got a fair amount of stuff done today. After numerous phone calls this week (will see the total cost of damage when this month’s bill comes) to Emirates, I finally heard a human voice and managed to sort out my frequent flyer miles. I’m still a long way off from qualifying for a free flight or upgrading to business class but hey! At least now I can fly for free within the Middle East or from Peru to Central America on United, go on a day safari or stay at a Marriott (Cairo, Maida Vale or Frankfurt).

After lunch, I cleaned the flat, mopped the floor and scrubbed both bathrooms (the amount of dirt we’ve let accumulate is really appalling!) in preparation for Gareth’s arrival on Friday. Man, I’m a slob. It’s probably the most exercise I’ve done in ages and I’m absolutely knackered. Bathrooms aren’t as pristine as I’d like them to be, but at least now I know we won’t find the cure for a headache on the grouting. Can’t wait to see Miks’ eyes pop out when he gets home from work today! Especially as my housekeeping skills could be considered the bat signal for Kim and Aggie.

I really should do more packing if I want to alleviate these panic attacks. I’m so sick of seeing my books lying about like shattered glass, but at the same time I get exhausted after doing just two boxes. At this rate I’m never going to sort everything out in time for the big move to Scotland. It’ll be really amazing if they do get sorted in time. I also think I’m going to do something that I’ve never done with any of my books before: I might actually give a few of them away. There are a few titles I think Sue Anne might find interesting. The kid doesn’t appear to read enough anyway. Or at least, I haven’t really seen her with anything that has impressed me.

Thumbed through the NZ guidebooks again and beginning to wonder if Maori and Malay (the languages) belong to the same language family, or have the same proto-language stem. “Death” is mate in Maori; mati in Malay. “Fish” is ika in Maori; ikan in Malay. “Cloud” is ao in Maori; awan in Malay. “Land” or “country” is whenua in Maori; the world – lots of land! – is benua in Malay. “Water” is wai in Maori; air in Malay. I bet if I could speak Iban or Dayak I would find this exercise even more interesting. I don’t have a background in linguistics, but I love comparing and contrasting different words and/in different languages.

Phek Kin and I are in touch again. She rang me yesterday – asked if I wanted to come over for dinner and sleep over – but because the mobile has been on the blink for the last one week (I can’t even switch the damn thing on now – stupid battery!), I had no idea she called. She suggested that I give Coconut to the National Science Centre if I can’t find him a home. That’s not a bad idea… except that I don’t know a) if they have labs there and if their rabbit and guinea pig enclosure supplies them their test subjects (EEK!); b ) if the rabbits and guinea pigs are kept separately; c) even if they weren’t, if I’d want Coconut to be subjected to a lifetime of being prodded and squeezed by tots who wouldn’t know the first thing about handling guinea pigs; d) what the living conditions are like for the animals there. It’s a government facility. Not any government facility, but a Malaysian government facility. Would you trust them?

Factoids of the Week:
The Taupo volcanic zone on the North Island of New Zealand has the two most productive caldera (or crater) volcanoes in the world (Taupo and Tarawera). For the geologically disinclined, a caldera volcano occurs when a volcanic eruption is so immense that the ground surface collapses into the hole left behind.

This next factoid is from the BBC – gotta love them. Characters in Shaun the Sheep move 25 times per second, which means animators have to reset scenes 1,500 times for just one minute of footage. They capture an average of seven seconds of footage a day. And that’s considered breakneck speed, compared to Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of The Were-Rabbit (three seconds of footage a day) and Chicken Run (two seconds was considered a good day’s work).

OK, I did my homework. Maori and Malay belong to the Austronesian language family, which encompasses 1,246 languages and 311,740,132 speakers across 38 countries. In comparison, the Indo-European language family has only 430 languages but has the largest number of speakers: 2,562,896,428 in 59 countries. The largest of the language families is the Niger-Congo, which has 1,514 languages and 358,091,103 speakers in 40 countries.

Gong Xi Fa Cai

Book of the Week: The Rough Guide to New Zealand and DK Eyewitness Travel: New Zealand (wahey, not one but two books!)

Happy Chinese New Year! We’re 11 days into the Year of the Golden Pig now, and, being the glass-half-empty person that I am, I am only too aware that I have fewer than 350 days left before I reach the end of my third cycle of the Chinese zodiac. Such thoughts usually get me all depressed, but dammit, my life will be heading in a completely new direction this year (or so I hope!), so I really should be less of a grump and look forward to all that promises, instead of moaning about how old I’m getting and how I haven’t done half the stuff I had planned to do by 35. (Come to think of it, I still haven’t done half the stuff I had planned to do by the time I was 30...)

This year’s Chinese New Year was rather Dickensian – by that I mean it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was brilliant in that in the one week I was home, I managed to see most of my relatives again (and a few I hadn’t met before – like my quarter-Chinese cousin and his family) after a long year away in Scotland. We also saw a lion dance performance in the house next to my uncle’s (it’s been ages since I’ve seen one) and I had decent ang pau takings. There was plenty of merriment and camaraderie, the sort you get when families who haven’t got together for a while do so and there’s plenty of free-flowing food and drink at hand.

And I’m not just saying that. Chinese New Year is a time to pig out. Eating is Malaysia’s all-time favourite pastime (perhaps “obsession” is a better word), and nobody does it better than the Chinese. My relatives, whilst lacking the funds to throw 300-course dinners of Dionysian proportions, usually put on a pretty good show with at least 10 different dishes on the table every night for the first week of the New Year, and this year was no different. We had our traditional annual Chinese New Year’s Eve reunion dinner (we broke with tradition and had a “steamboat” hotpot this year) and Auntie Liang treated all of 21 of us to a family (or is that more like clan?) lunch at a posh restaurant on the third day of the New Year. Auntie Chai threw a dinner at her place that same night, followed by another hotpot dinner three nights later – during the course of which I promptly broke my lovely, absolute-best titanium specs. The frame just broke into two, just like that (I usually have to sit on it first), and dangled off the bridge of my nose. This, of course, annoyed me no end: firstly, it meant my ang pau money would be going into some optician’s pocket, rather than to New Zealand; and secondly, what the hell happened? It’s titanium, dammit! TITANIUM! One of the coolest materials available to man, corrosion-resistant and having the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any metal, and they can’t make a decent spec frame out of it?! Typical. Spend a quarter of your salary on specs which turn out to have the shortest lifespan (18 months) of all the specs you’ve ever worn. Huh. Not very reassuring. What freaks me out is that I have a not insubstantial amount of titanium bolted to my fibula and tibia... crikey, maybe my ankle’s supposed to go all bendy any day now...!

The best part was the announcement at the reunion dinner: my cousin is pregnant. I’m going to be an aunt. The baby’s due at the end of June and whilst it won’t be the first of the next generation, it will be the first “Lee” baby, i.e. the first one born to a cousin bearing the family name. As there are only four of us Lees in this generation, and all of us are girls, the baby itself won’t bear the family name, but the fact that my uncles and aunts will be get to be called Ah Pek Kong, Sar Chek Kong and Kor Poh, instead of Ku Kong and Ee Poh, means a lot to everyone. It’s all very exciting, and I think I could make some money playing bookie and taking bets on the sprog’s sex.

But the New Year was also awful, in a quiet, “we know what’s happening but we’re not really going to talk about it” sort of way. Not very healthy emotionally, but I don’t think anyone wanted to say anything to dampen the gaiety. Uncle Leong’s absence was felt and noted, especially at the dinner at Auntie Chai’s. My aunt – his widow – was cheerful, but tears welled up in her eyes every few minutes. No doubt she was missing him and thinking of the last New Year we were all together (with me propped up with a broken ankle). All of us felt the same way, but nobody broached the subject. But then again, I don’t suppose words were needed. I just kept quiet and raised a glass of wine to his memory. (I also watched Kung Fu Hustle two nights in a row because the skinny mustachioed good guy reminded me of him.)

There was also a wee personal crisis for me. At times – actually, a lot of the time – I felt rather unwelcome and unwanted, like the extra cog duct-taped to the side of a machine already chugging along perfectly. Paranoia? Perhaps. Self-absorption? It’s likely. There were times when I simply felt desperately down, and all I could do was cry. I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it lest I looked like I was oversensitive, depressed and whinging over nothing. The best I could do in those moments was text Gareth, who was incredibly supportive and encouraging. Funny how problems so close to home can sometimes be solved – or at least made better – by someone halfway around the world.

Speaking of Gareth, he’ll be here in just over a week, and when he comes through arrivals at KLIA, the first thing I’m going to do is give him a big thank-you hug. It’s been a little over two months since we last saw each other, but time has really flown – when we last said toodle-pips, it was exactly 80 days to our meeting up again, and as of today there are just nine (or closer to eight by the time I post this). I’ve missed him absolutely hunners and hunners, so I think it will be a pretty long hug. (And while I’m at it – suggestions on how to best be an SPG will also be much appreciated. He is an ang moh, after all!)

I must admit that excited as I am, I await March 9 with some trepidation: there’s so much I still need to do, and Gareth’s arrival only heightens the urgency with which I must do them. I still haven’t finished packing my crap – and even if I had, I still haven’t decided how I’m going to send it to Scotland. (“Packing” makes the process sound so Martha Stewart; in my case it is more like sorting through 15 years of accumulated rubbish, mostly objects of sentimental significance and paperwork I never really bothered to file away, and now I’m paying the price for my lack of organization. If there was ever an argument to be tidy, this is it.) Also, I still haven’t got my malaria tablets (for Cambodia), a thorough health check-up (people I know seem to be keeling over from high cholesterol and blood pressure), and flight ticket (to Glasgow). And most importantly, I still haven’t found a home for Coconut. That’s especially worrying because I really don’t want to abandon him, and I don’t want to give him to someone who won’t give him every opportunity to be a fat (the little bugger is really putting on weight), happy, free-range guinea pig. (I like to think that I’m the best thing that ever happened to Coconut, even if Dusty did get into the house and into his enclosure last week, and would have made piggy pie of him if he hadn’t been blissfully snuggled inside his favourite paper bag.)

What I have done, though, is get a major hurdle out of the way: on Monday afternoon, I picked up my passport from VFS. Inside it, on page 11, was the newly minted Fresh Talent visa, a page-sized sticker signifying the culmination of a long, exhausting journey (and that’s just the application process) that has taken the better part of the last four years. I can finally work in Scotland. I am going to work in Scotland. When I ran my fingers over the embossed lion and unicorn, I didn’t know whether to shout “YES!!!!!!!” or cry – all I knew was it felt like a little bit more of life lived, and that I had achieved something I had dreamt of and worked so hard at for so long. (OK, OK, fine, I admit it – I was really more pre-occupied with checking that all my official documents had been returned with the passport…)

However, I’m beginning to wonder if moving to Scotland is what I really want, now that I’ve read two New Zealand guidebooks as part of my preparation for my trip there in April. (Hey, I’m hard to please! And fickle!) I usually devour guidebooks like potato scones before a trip, but I’ve broken that rule this time. I’ve been looking at the gorgeous photos instead – the ones in the DK guide are especially jaw-dropping. (That reminds me, I really need to catch up on my reading in general. I’m woefully behind in my resolution to read a book a week this year.) Another travel rule I’ve broken is the one about the Lonely Planet guidebook. It doesn’t even feature on this trip. Instead, we’ve opted for a balance: the Rough Guide (info-heavy, crap on visuals) and DK (crap/inadequate info, lush visuals). Unfortunately, this particular DK does not have the exquisitely detailed city maps we know and love, so, obviously, we’ll need to get a mini road atlas or something. (The typos in the DK are also quite appalling - “new zealanders” in lower-case? – I mean, who proofreads these things???) The third rule I’ve thrown out the window is the to-do list. I usually have a list of must-sees, but for New Zealand I say the hell with it, I’m there for the rush and just want to take in everything. There’s just so much in New Zealand I’m looking forward to, I don’t think two weeks will be enough. If the photos are anything to go by, I can totally see myself returning time and again. It’s a good jump-off point for Micronesia too… not been there yet…

Other stuff I want to remember from this week: I saw a documentary which featured capybaras, and damned if they don’t look like gigantic guinea pigs. And I watched the entire first season of Prison Break. Can’t wait to see the second. I’m also losing handfuls of hair. The thought that I might be forced to abandon my Sadako impersonations is rather depressing. Got new specs (bye-bye ang pau, sob!) – I collect them this weekend and am trying out rimless frames for the first time (and no, they are not titanium). Will be interesting to see if I end up looking even more geeky (or is that geek-ier?) than usual.

But enough observations. Let’s see what I learnt this week.

Factoids of the Week:
Not sure if this is apocryphal, but it’s a great story nevertheless. The two-finger “V”-sign supposedly dates from the Hundred Years War. English longbowmen who were captured by the French in battle would have their index and middle fingers cut off, to prevent them from ever firing an arrow again. (Large numbers of French knights were killed by the arrows of English longbowmen at Crécy and Agincourt.) Hence, when the English won, the bowmen, in buoyant nerrr-nerrr mood, used the “V”-sign to show defiance to the French in battle.

I love this factoid for its cuteness. One of the first settlers of Milford Sound in New Zealand’s South Island was Donald Sutherland, who arrived with his dog – named John O’Groats.

With a population of about 40 million sheep, New Zealand has 10 meh-mehs to every person, down from the 1980s, when there were 20 meh-mehs to every person. Despite the decline, New Zealand still corners 50% of international trade in sheep meat.

Auckland is purported to have the greatest number of pleasure boats per capita of any city in the world.

New Zealand was the last major landmass to be populated, with Polynesian settlers arriving over 800 years ago. Until 80 million years ago, it was part of the supercontinent Gondwanaland, and was still attached to Australia. Even today, as the continents continue to drift apart, New Zealand is still moving northwards towards the equator at a rate of 30mm a year.

Like Australia, New Zealand’s flora and fauna evolved in isolation, into forms unseen on other continents. Due to the lack of predators, New Zealand birds somehow thought, right, we don’t need wings no more – and became flightless. They also developed into monsters like the giant moa (now extinct), which stood over 2m (or seven feet) tall.

(I read lots of cool factoids in the two guidebooks but I can’t remember many – more may be posted here as I thumb through them again.)

Of Captain Marvel, Coconut and Copernicus

Book of the Week: Galileo’s Daughter by Dava Sobel

This is the blog that should have been, in more ways than one. It should have been posted over a month ago, but wasn’t – in the saddest and most unfortunate way possible, I found a much, much worthier subject. It should have been posted three weeks ago, but wasn’t – I couldn’t think of anything to write about, or make myself think of anything to write about. And when I finally roused myself out of my mental sluggishness, I couldn’t log onto Blogger – either my Mozilla Firefox or TMNet Malaysia’s broadband service was/is screwed. (And incidentally, is it log-on to, logon to, or log onto? Hello, Grammar Gestapo?)

If a day is a long time in politics, a week is like two months in the blogosphere. (Though that would sound about right to dogs, given the 1:7 human-canine lifespan ratio.) So many things change, so much more fodder for posts. Although I (and I’m sure a fair number of my friends) think that I sometimes run on a 286 processor in a wi-fi world, something I’ve become acutely aware of since I started this blog (particularly in the first week afterwards) is just how much actually happens in a week that I notice, take in and react to.

Perhaps it could just be me looking for interesting subjects for my posts. Or that the period Jan 4-11 2007 – before I got lost in my memories of Uncle Leong – was particularly interesting news-wise. But I’ve noticed that, for me at least, time seems goes a little slower when you bother to pay attention, be absorbed, and, most importantly, remember. (Admittedly, I don’t remember as much as I used to, but that may be due to the onset of Alzheimer’s... or my synapses being busted by that brain tumour I’m always so worried about...) Because, most importantly, this blog serves as a pseudo-journal – a snapshot of a period of time in my life, for what it’s worth.

And happily, I have remembered a lot from the past month, especially the last couple of weeks. It might be too early on in the year (and blog) to say this, but in the future maybe I’ll think a little more carefully before answering, “Oh, the usual” when asked how my week was. My first post feels like such a long time ago now, when it used to be that weeks became months in the blink of an eye. I won’t go as far as to say having a blog is a paradigm shift, but it does seem to be achieving what I had hoped it would when I started it: forcing me to think, and then write about it.

Before Uncle Leong, my post was going to be about Bryan Robson, ex-Manchester United and England captain, turning 50. FEEF-TEE. Good grief, haven’t the last 25 years just flown by. Like I needed another reason to be depressed. This year I will be the same age Bryan Robson was when my dehydration as a loss of oral fluids every time I saw him started to peak. My classmates had Rob Lowe and Simon Le Bon; I had Captain Marvel. He was, so to speak, my first older man, and I adored him for the better part of 12 years. At the height of my obsession, I could spout Bryan Robson trivia like the Trevi fountain gushes water. I’m not going to repeat them here, but there’s a pretty good selection on Wikipedia. Crikey, he’s an OBE now, too.

I loved Manchester United way back then, but Robbo gave me more reason to do so, and as a result – deep dark secret coming out – supported England for a bit. But, mind you, this was in the era of maestros like Gary Lineker and hard men like Terry Butcher, long before pretty-boy poseurs like Beckham came along. Robbo was the reason I crawled out of bed at 2am on a school night to turn on the TV, once a year in May when RTM magnanimously decided to telecast FA Cup semis and finals. I’d yelp, cheer, groan, heart thumping all the way (Manchester United v Oldham, 1990, comes to mind), then crawl back under the covers for another 90 minutes before getting up for school. It’s probably just as well that Astro only arrived in Malaysia in the mid-90s, as a) I’d have driven up my folks up the wall begging them to subscribe, and, had they relented (not on your life), would have led to b) my exam results being even more rubbish.

He was the reason I yearned to go to the UK – but alas, watching him play was not to be. And whilst my reasons for going to the UK are a little more mundane now, it still feels like it is not to be, no thanks to the good folk in charge of visas in Malaysia (I shan’t name them). The application process for my Fresh Talent visa is driving me nuts. I understand if you are being very thorough with my application because there has been an alarming rise in the number of forgeries, but what drives me crazy is being asked jobsworth questions like, “How do we know this offer of work is genuine?” (Um, it’s official company stationery with a phone number and address – maybe you could call the undersigned?), “How do we know you lived at this address?” (Er, my bank statements, university correspondence, and even my pap smear results carry that address – what do you mean, that’s not proof?), and “How do we know you were actually in Scotland and attended this university?” (Oh, I don’t know, I guess those two letters from my supervisors and official formal recognition from the university don’t count – I suppose you think I skived off home to Malaysia every weekend...) I swear, sitting there with the interviewer feels like a practical session in the cognitive theories of deduction at times. And another thing – why they couldn’t have told me about their 89-day policy on any one of the half dozen times I called them to check if I could forward-date my visa is beyond me. Nett result: a whole month wasted. Bureaucratic efficiency at its best.

But the good news on the UK front is that, firstly, I now know I AM HOT. The editor of the local rival newspaper sent me an e-mail on Friday offering me a job. Had to turn him down, not least because I’ve already signed the contract with my employers, but also because my employers were so keen they were willing to wait six months for me. But still, at least now I know what it must be like to be wooed and fought over. Sigh. Life is so difficult when everybody wants you.

Secondly, my cheapo regional budget airline of choice has gone international. Air Asia X will launch its KL-London/Manchester service in the middle of the year (at least, that’s what everyone hopes), and for a good little tight-fisted Hokkien girl who will start work in ang moh land in May (if her @#$%!!! visa comes through, that is), that news is akin to the satisfying clink of coins in the piggy bank. If I book quickly and far enough in advance, I might only need to pay £210 return to KL, in comparison to at least £500 on Emirates (more on MAS and SIA, the pirates). Entertainment and food aren’t included, but that’s what books are for, right? Feed the brain... and, if really hungry, maybe the tum... But seriously, with prices starting at £9, it’s tempting not to care what the green campaigners say. I might even cut up my Emirates frequent flyer card (they still owe me 12,050 miles anyway).

And speaking of books, the one I have just finished reading would be exactly the sort I would bring on board an Air Asia X flight. To read about daily life in 17th-century Italy when Copernicus’ idea of a heliocentric planetary system was heresy, whilst circumnavigating eight time zones, would be just too delicious. What I loved about Galileo’s Daughter, was how, whilst hammering home how stifling and repressive religion can be, it was also a gentle reminder how faith and science need not necessarily be mutually exclusive. Sobel weaves the contradictions and cohesion of the arguments beautifully and seamlessly. What bugged me was realizing that the attitude and spirit of the Catholic church towards Galileo’s discoveries is still alive and kicking in the 21st century. Sobel wrote that Galileo’s trail was one on so many levels: “the suppression of science by religion, the defence of individualism against authority, the clash between revolutionary and establishment, the challenge of radical new discoveries to ancient beliefs, the struggle against intolerance for freedom of thought and freedom of speech.” What’s tragic is that ideas don’t even have to be “religious” or “heretical” to be accorded the same treatment. To some, even the notions of democracy and sexual equality are abhorrent and alien. When new, exciting scientific discoveries are made some people actually scoff at them, because they are “breakthroughs”, are “too new and still need to be tested”, or simply because they go against the conventions and ideas they are familiar with. And that is what I don’t understand. You’d think people would be excited about the possibilities of discovering worlds, things, facts yet unknown.

Actually, that’s probably how my Mum felt last week. I finally got around to teaching her how to use a computer and get on the internet, from plugging in cables into ports and switching off the PC (“Click on the green square labelled ‘Start’ in the bottom left hand corner of the screen...”). Mum’s nearly 63 and, while not exactly technophobic, has always been worried about using the PC – but only because she doesn’t know what to do. It was really quite challenging trying to compile a very detailed step-by-step guide in a register she would understand. The entire exercise made me realize how much we actually take our PC knowledge for granted: “double-click” became “click twice in quick succession on the left mouse button”. It was a learning experience for the both of us, but a very satisfying one, and I’m so happy that Mum is gaining confidence daily – I’ll probably teach her how to Google and log onto (log-on to?) websites over Chinese New Year.

I love Chinese New Year, and this year I have an extra-special reason to look forward to it: just five days after the full celebrations are over, Gareth will be here for two weeks, and two weeks after he leaves, we’ll meet up in New Zealand. I bought my ticket to Auckland on February 1 at the MAS travel fair, and booked my domestic flight (Auckland-Christchurch) online on February 9. The travel fair was crazy. It started at midnight on February 1, and you could only book online, by calling the MAS call centre, or at MAS travel agents. I couldn’t get onto the website, or a free line, despite waking up and trying four times during the night (1am, 2.30am, 4am, 5.30am). No chance. In the morning, I rushed to the MAS office – only 15 minutes from my folks’ place, but it felt like it took forever getting through traffic – only to find that it had closed down. Managed to find a travel agent with a very competitive fare (RM2662, or about £380) and picked up my ticket later that afternoon. Gareth has booked all our transport and accommodation in New Zealand, which means I only need to get my dorm room in Auckland for April 2 and we’re all sorted! I can’t wait!

It’s really just too bad Gareth won’t be here for Chinese New Year – I think he’d enjoy it. But ah well, 2008 might be better. It’ll be the Year of the Rat – a new cycle marking the end of my third full one. I’ve already convinced him to come back with me next February – that is, if the family doesn’t scare him too much on this trip. He’ll be here in exactly 25 days (cannae wait!), and to help me make sure that the Malaysia is the best leg of his round-the-world trip, Miks and I went out on January 7 for a little drive. It didn’t really start out that way – I wanted to go to The Curve to exchange a Christmas present of bedlinen (wrong duvet size) – but the traffic at the turn-off was backed up a mile, so we wound up at Batu Caves instead, gaping at the world’s tallest Lord Murugan statue (140ft). It makes for a pretty cool photo, and Gareth does love stuff like that. Miks and I also debated the merits of our favourite eateries, as we plan to pump Gareth full of local food – the last time he was in this part of the world, he was your typical frightened ang moh who survived on Oliver’s Super Sandwiches and fish and chips.

And if I’m lucky, Gareth also won’t get to meet Coconut, a cute little (but not for long the way he’s eating) guinea pig. I met him at my cousin Sue Anne’s, when we congregated there after Uncle Leong’s funeral, and have had him since January 14. The poor darling had already been dumped by two owners – one allegedly only after a week, because the family didn’t like cleaning up the poo. That’s your average Malaysian pet owner for you: Shock! Horror! It pees! It shits! It comes with an asshole! (And no, I’m not referring to the previous owners...) So poor Coconut was “given away” to Sue Anne (what really makes me mad is that the family made it look as if by giving Coconut to her, they were doing her a favour). But my aunt objected – and so Coconut ended up with me. Coconut is just the name Sue Anne and I gave him – if he had a name before, his owners didn’t think it was important enough to pass on. They didn’t know his sex either, but then, neither do we. I’m not exactly an expert at sexing guinea pigs – I’m just going on the two not-too-pendulous protuberances between his legs. There’s no willy immediately visible neither...

Coconut is just so funny and friendly, I really don’t know how anyone could just have chucked him out. He’s still not used to being carried and fussed over, but he is used to both Miks and me now, and comes up to sniff us when we approach instead of scampering back into a hidey-hole. I like to think that he’s having the time of his life with me – I’ve made him a GPAC (guinea pig activity centre) out of shoe boxes, paper bags and tins, so he has plenty of places to hide, explore and rest in. I read up loads on guinea pigs but Coconut has only displayed atypical cavy behaviour: he hasn’t yet “popcorned”, or stayed awake during the day. He just sleeps, plays and eats when he’s bored.

And he never stops munching! Dad noticed it when I went home last week – he watched Coconut and said, “That’s all you do. Eat! Eat! Eat!” Dogs are so much easier to take care of, but guinea pigs are fun in their own way, too. Coconut’s arrival has made me so much more aware of what new parents must go through: x number of feedings at regular intervals throughout the day, changing soiled newspapers (even his droppings are cute – they look like uniform little sausages!), and coaxing the stubborn mite to eat something that’s good for him. (Guinea pigs, like humans, cannot manufacture or store vitamin C, and so need an adequate daily supply of it.) He went through a “junk food phase”, refusing to consume anything but cucumber, but now also eats cabbage, carrots, coriander and apples, which he absolutely loves. Mum hit upon the brilliant idea of giving him sugar cane to gnaw on, and he chewed it all up in no time. Went to sleep lying on one, if I remember correctly.

I just hope I can find a good Mummy or Daddy for Coconut before I leave for ang moh land. I don’t want someone who will just chuck him in his cage and never play with him or just feed him pellets. Coconut’s a free-range guinea pig right now, and gets lots of veg and fruit and fresh water – the last owner obviously didn’t change his water for ages, and as a result the water bottle was choked with moss. Coconut needs someone who understands that he gets grumpy too, and will nip you if you don’t respect his space. I would bring him to the UK if I could, but I can’t. If anyone out there knows of someone who can give Coconut a good home, please do get in touch.

And thanks to Coconut, I now have my very first photo on the blog:

Isn’t he just adorable??? He’s a lot fatter now, though...

More new-look blog stuff: I’ve also decided to change Factoid of the Day to Factoids of the Week, just because I a) can; b) love trivia; c) don’t post on a daily basis; and d) think just the one fact is simply not enough. (Though Factoids for This Particular Blog would be more accurate, as I hardly post on a weekly basis... but we shall see...) There are just way too many cool factoids to be found in the daily newspapers, or floating about in cyberspace, to ignore (the BBC and The Sun Online come to mind – although sometimes the latter might have to be taken with a pinch of salt and a little more substantiation).

But back to Chinese New Year. It won’t be the same without Uncle Leong around. I shall miss him; it still doesn’t feel like he’s gone forever. I still expect to hear him pick up the phone when I call, and sometimes I dream about him. I guess that goes to show how much a part of my life he was. I didn’t have to write all that down but I felt I should, because I might read this post again in the future, and I want to remember how I felt about things that were important to me at this point in my life.

That said, on to the new-look bookend.

Factoids of the Week:
Thanks to fare hikes last month, the 0.26km Piccadilly Line journey from Covent Garden to Leicester Square – the shortest on the Tube – is now the most expensive train ride in the world. At £4, the one stop works out to be 1.5p per metre, more than 12 times more expensive than the London-Venice Orient Express (0.13p). In comparison, a subway ride costs £1.50 on the Tokyo metro (the second most expensive train ride in the world) and £1.07 in New York.

This is a bit stale, but oh, the delicious irony. In a survey published in May last year, Google found that of the top 10 countries searching for sex-related sites, six were Muslim, with Pakistan topping the list. The other Muslim countries were Egypt (2), Iran (4), Morocco (5), Saudi Arabia (7) and Turkey (8). The other (non-Muslim) countries on the list were Vietnam (3), India at (6), Philippines (9) and Poland (10). (From the Daily Times of Pakistan, May 17 2006)

The world’s first scientific society, the Lyncean Academy, was founded in Rome by 18-year-old Federico Cesi, the marquis of Monticelli. They sure don’t make teenagers like they used to.

Instant noodles were invented in 1958 by Momofuku (what a name!) Ando, founder of Nissin Food Products. He was inspired to develop the product after coming across a long line of people waiting to buy fresh ramen noodles from a black market stall during the food shortages after WW2. He died January 5 aged 96... which makes me wonder if instant noodles really are all that bad for health. I need to know because I am addicted to them.

Suor Maria Celeste Galilei (Galileo’s daughter) is buried with him in his tomb in the church of Santa Croce in Florence.

This one’s for those of you with problems controlling the thunder from down under. A US underwear company has given a whole new meaning to “farty pants”. Under-Tec have created undies, called Under-Ease, “a new generation of protective underwear for flatulence”, which they say eliminate pooey pongs. The undies are machine-washable, and can be worn anytime, anywhere, although they are not recommended for use in a hot tub or swimming pool. “Gas Eaters” and plus-sizes also available. It doesn’t say anything about the sound though – guess they’re working on the bum muffler next. I wish there were more photos on the website, too – will the Under-Ease, like adult diapers, make you look like you’ve had a shit in your pants?

I’m committing this one to memory just for all the guys I know. (Evil cackle.) There’s a vampire piscean called the candiru, or toothpick fish, which is small enough to get into teeny orifices... more specifically, the male pisshole. Once inside, it erects a spine and feeds off blood and tissue. (From, where else but the BBC – “10 Things We Didn’t Know” in the Magazine Monitor is fantastic!) Just the sort of mental image you wanna have to get you in the mood for Valentine’s Day.

Goodbye Too Soon

There were a number of subjects I had planned to write about for this particular post. Bryan Robson. Coconut. Galileo’s Daughter. The factoids that had made me go, “Oooh!” But I’m not going to. I’m going to write about something that’s painful and personal and, until yesterday, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to talk about.

But I feel I have to, because it was an important event for me on so many levels. But before I go on, I should probably say this isn’t meant to a eulogy or tribute; I don’t think I could do my subject justice. I am simply putting down my random thoughts.

Last Friday, I said my last goodbye to my Uncle Leong.

He would have been 67 in June, and was my Dad’s sister’s husband. He had been diagnosed with stage four lung cancer just before Christmas, and whilst we could all see how rapidly he was deteriorating, we still had faith in chemotherapy, in the doctors, in him to recover – quite simply, we were desperately clinging on to hope.

Sometimes that’s all you can do when you don’t want to face up to reality – yet. And I think that’s what I did. He’d been so much a part of my life – our relationship goes back over 30 years – that I couldn’t imagine him not being around. It was when I saw his portrait over the altar at the wake that it slowly began to sink in – and even then I kept expecting him to turn up with a huge grin on his face and ask, in his jovial, slightly cheeky way, what we were doing there. Even as I write this, I still find it surreal that he is gone, and that Chinese New Year next month will be the first of many family celebrations without him. It is just so difficult to believe that he died exactly one week ago today.

He was the first non-relative to register on my consciousness, and was, in that sense, the person who made me aware that people could marry into family, the first “uncle” I knew whom I wasn’t related to. We didn’t start off on the right foot – unfortunately for him, he came into my life just as I was beginning to have feelings of family, possessiveness and territorialism. All throughout his courtship of my aunt, I did my best to antagonize him the best way a pre-schooler knows how. Any other 30-something-year-old man would just probably not have given me the time of day, but he always laughed and accommodated me. Bribed me with sweets and cakes. Stopped to talk. Tried to be friends. He was nice when he didn’t have to be.

Of course, he could have done all those things because he wanted to make a good impression on Ah Mah and my aunts (at whose house I spent a great amount of toddler time), but, knowing him as I do now, I believe it that was just the sort of person he was. You see me looking like a right old grump in their wedding photo, but in the three decades since then we have had the most brilliant, laugh-a-minute relationship. He was a wonderfully good-natured and friendly man, whose only fault was that he smoked. We used to joke about how I would come visit him and yell “I told you so!” when he was dying in hospital from some horrible smoking-related disease – I wish I had known then how prophetic our words would be.

I wish for so many other things, too. I wish I could have seen and talked to him one more time before he slipped into a coma. I wish he could have made it for the Christmas party – our last family gathering before he died. I wish I had nagged him more aggressively over the last 25 years about his smoking. (I used to make a real show out of holding my nose when talking to him – even when he was without a cigarette.) I wish he could have had stopped smoking for good when he did stop. I wish he had been diagnosed sooner, perhaps more could have been done.

Above all, I wish he had never had cancer and that he were still with us. I wish that I had said more to him when he was alive, when I held his hand at his bedside in the hospital. I should have said thank you for taking me to my first football match. For your off-kilter sense of humour, funny remarks and silly jokes which always made us laugh. For teaching me how to armpit-fart. For taking us out for the best crispy fried chicken in town whenever we came to visit, even though you didn’t earn all that much money as a tailor. For your kind and generous spirit. For taking an interest in my life. For putting up with a bossy four-year-old brat who threatened to let the air out of your car tyres because she didn’t like you invading her little kingdom of Ah Mah’s house to spend time with her aunt. For simply being such a fantastic uncle.

But he always came across as old-school Chinese when it came to deep emotion, and I don’t know if it might have been too awkward for both of us to talk about how I felt. I wish now that I had tried, though. Instead, I treated him no differently than I would have on any other occasion. We had never told each other “I love you”, choosing to express warmth and affection in the form of good-natured insults, and so at the hospital I cracked jokes, which made him laugh (which in turn sent him into a coughing spasm, and made me feel horribly guilty that I had perhaps exacerbated his condition). He was always so happy to see any one of us at the hospital.

I last saw him alive on December 29. Would that I could turn back the clock. When the call from Dad came at 1pm last Tuesday, I cried for him, for my aunt and cousins, for my memories and for all I hadn’t said. I wish I had gone home one weekend earlier than planned – now I know that a goodbye too soon is better than never saying one properly. It’s true: the two saddest words in the English language are “if only”.

One thing I was painfully aware of as I looked back on Uncle Leong’s life and our relationship was that his passing is the first in his generation, the generation of my parents, my other uncles and aunts. The thought that it is this group of people I will have to say goodbye to in the not-too-distant future – what, the next 10, 20 years? – fills my heart with a cold, icy emptiness. When Ah Mah died, I grieved for her as a grandchild, a young person who has lost someone dearly loved. I now grieve as an adult, not only for the uncle I have lost, but for what I know must come. It just makes me try harder to build more memories.

I told him all I should have said when he was alive at the funeral and over three nights of wakes, adding, for good measure and in the spirit of our relationship, that if he had wanted to get out of giving me an ang pau when I finally got married, this was a rather extreme way to avoid it. But I’m sure Uncle Leong, who was always so low-maintenance, happy-go-lucky and fuss-free, wouldn’t have wanted me – us – to mourn. He’d have thought it too maa faan, or troublesome in Cantonese. Having had to bury his own father when he was courting my aunt, resulting in the wedding being postponed for three years in accordance with Chinese mourning rites, he knew how stifling and restrictive Chinese funereal traditions could be, and didn’t want to put my aunt and cousins – or indeed any one of us – through that. He knew he was going to die, and yet he thought of us, like he always did. All he said was that he wanted a simple funeral, and for us to cast off the sackcloth at the graveside – a symbolic gesture marking the end of mourning and getting on with life as normal.

Life will go back to “normal”, whatever normal means when you have to say goodbye too soon. I guess that’s when memories sustain you. I have realized, in the five days since the funeral, that I cannot remember what Uncle Leong looked like when I said goodbye for the last time. The peaceful face I saw in the coffin was at once one I knew and didn’t know. But I still see him clearly in my mind’s eye, alive, eyes twinkling, mouth open wide in the silent laugh we all knew so well. And that is how I think I want to remember him.

Uncle Leong, wherever you are, I’m sorry I didn’t get to tell you this when you were alive. But I’m sure you already know by now. Thank you for having been part of my life. I love you and will miss you very much.

Scribo Ergo Sum

Today is my parents’ 38th anniversary, and, as is the case every year, with the date nipping at the heels of the New Year, I was hit with the double whammy reminder that I will also be another year older.

It was a particularly depressing experience this time around, and it wasn’t just the thought of my parents’ mortality and the passing of the years weighing on my mind. This year also marks a milestone for me: I will be 35. Oh yeah, sure, it doesn’t have the significance of, say, 16, 21 or 50, but it means that – dear God – I will be officially middle-aged. Halfway to 70. A mere five years from the Big Four-Oh. Moving up a box in the “age group” section of random surveys. One year short of three cycles in the Chinese zodiac.

But, in between contemplating how many more New Years and anniversaries my parents would celebrate, Saddam’s execution and my advancing years, I suddenly realised that 2007 would, prospectively, be a very, very big year in my life. And that cheered me up immensely. (Hey, I don’t need to have PMS to have mood and/or thought swings.)

I started counting the things I could be happy about in 2007. I kicked off the year by graduating with an M Litt – achieving my up-to-now life’s goal of getting a postgraduate degree before the age of 35. Big deal for me. Then there was also all of the following to look forward to:

(1) Because I have the M Litt, I can now apply for a visa which will enable me to work in Scotland, which means that
(2) At the end of April, I’ll be making, quite literally, the Biggest Move of My Life and also
(3) Starting a new job and life in an ang moh country, or
(4) More specifically, being a journalist in an ang moh country;
(5) In anticipation of (1), (2) and (3), my friend Gareth, with whom I will be living in Scotland, and I have drawn up Gareth and May’s Big To-Do List to help us make the most of our weekends once I’m over – the experiences should be interesting;
(6) My Been There, Done That country count will finally hit 20 once I do Cambodia and New Zealand in March and April respectively;
(7) And of course, I’ll be turning 35. Have I mentioned that yet? Yippee.

And to celebrate what could potentially be the most exciting year in my life, what do I do? I start a blog. (I’m boring, what can I say.)

I held out for ages and ages, and still don’t know if I believe in blogs – private thoughts are meant to be kept private – that’s what journals are for. Blogs just seem to lack that intimacy. Also, most of the people I knew who blogged seemed to have started doing so for the hipness quotient: Oooh, look at me, I blog, therefore I must have very deep thoughts to share! I blog, therefore I am part of a larger web community where we have little tête-à-têtes and share private jokes! I blog, therefore I am important, so pay attention to me! I blog, just so I can tell my friend(s) while on a trip to KLCC on the LRT that I am a blogger, and hope everyone else on the train looks at me with new-found awe and respect!

Pish. Tosh. Shite. Bollocks. Pretentious pseudo-intellectual masturbation. See Oscar Wilde quote in top left corner. So if I ever start getting wanky in my posts – look no further than the premiere title – a swift e-kick up the bum would be most welcome.

I don’t know the direction this blog will take – hell, I only ever really read two blogs on a regular basis – but I figure (1) to (6) above will mean I will have some decent stuff to write about. But I do know I don’t want it to be wanky, and I know how I want it look. I’m going to have Book of the Week and Factoid of the Day bookend each post, which I reckon will spur me on to achieve this year’s goal of reading at least 52 books, and unearth some excellent trivia. (I did consider retitling them Helluo Librorum and Aude Sapere – but that really is just way too wanky. Still, you never know… I’ve yet to get to my second post…) No Book of the Week this round though, because I’ve just finished reading a Patricia Cornwell omnibus – which I didn’t really enjoy, I might add, but at least I am one book down – and am thinking about what to read next.

But even if this blog turns out to be total crap, the least it will do is force me to write on a regular basis. I have to start somewhere if I want to have something like J. K. Rowling’s bank account some day, right? And I’ve recognized that I don’t I write enough, often enough, probably because I don’t think enough. And I really should, and – fingers crossed – it’ll be a pleasurable experience. I just don’t think I could respect myself or take myself seriously as a journalist if I don’t write, and I haven’t done that for a long time. (Dissertations don’t count.) I think that was one of the reasons I (subconsciously) held out – I was afraid that not only would I not have anything to write about, but if and when I wrote about it, it’d make rubbish reading. And if I want an interesting topic to write about, well, I’ll just have to live a bit more, won’t I? Which means forcing myself to go out there, have more experiences. (Good thing I have (5) above then.)

Nevertheless, it’s finally happened. I have given in. Sold out. I now have a blog, although Gareth says it reads like I’m doing it with gritted teeth. Perhaps, like learning the piano, the first few tentative attempts sound the clumsiest. And perhaps, like learning the piano, I need to learn how to enjoy it first. I did conquer Chopin and Rachmaninoff in the end, after all.

Factoid of the Day:
The village of South Milford, near Selby in North Yorkshire, has 45 road signs in the space of half a mile (or about 800m for those of us who think in metric).
(I love stuff like this. It really is pretty cool what you can learn from the BBC Magazine Monitor.)

NB Good grief. I have just noticed what a very long first post this is. For someone who worries about what to write, I sure can waffle.