Enough of England though, I'm in MALAYSIA! I spent nearly an hour trying to get through immigration at the airport, which is famously one of the slowest places in the world. From personal observation I can also conclude that you will see the most hideous array of ugly and inappropriate shoes standing in the queue there...I was going to take a photo, but there was a man with a gun nearby so I thought better of it. You could tell who the Brits were because they were generally wearing a sensible pair of Clarks sandals (with the obligatory socks if they were male). The Chinese women (everyone clutches their passports, so you can have a cheeky shufty at nationality) appeared to have chosen the highest, most uncomfortable, worst-fitting shoes in the shop, and did not pick their feet up to walk. Presumably this is because if they did, their shoes would fall off. And here is a picture of the most common shoe (the term being used loosely, of course) present at KUL: I think I have quite strong opinions when it comes to footwear, but I hope that the majority of readers will understand. The majority of readers being, almost certainly, solely my friend Laurah.
Our building, in the middle
Mum came to meet me at the airport (with tears in her eyes, as predicted), and we went straight back to the apartment for a nice cup of tea and a sit down. Mum and Dad's place is truly amazing, it's on the 31st floor in the middle of the city - you can just about see the Petronas Towers from the balcony. Dad's been working from home quite a lot, so there's a space at the end of the corridor that we call 'Mission Control' where he has his desk. It's usually strewn with phones, laptops and cables and looks very high tech indeed - although saying that, there's more computing power in a netbook than NASA used to send Neil Armstrong et al to the Moon. What a feat indeed!
That night we went out for a Tiger beer at the local Irish Pub, Malone's. It's a great place and we love it, but they do get some things a bit wrong - for example, all the posters have 'Top of the day to you' written on them (rather than 'Top of the morning'), and all the locals pronounce it 'Ma-lon-ez' which is why it took me a while to realise that the two are really the same place. It reminds me of Manchester United's golden days (Solskjaer/ Giggs/ the Nevilles/Schmeichael/ Butt etc) when mum was surprised that 'Dwight and Yorke are playing together again'...how we laughed....
Yesterday was a bit of a dozy day because I'd been wide awake all night with jetlag, and we had a little jaunt out in the car (the car! In Malaysia!) to get some official documents relating to said car and to see if it would be cost effective to put me on the insurance too. The guy was very nice and said he could do it for MYR10 (~£2), so we handed over my official documents, the guy disappeared with them for a little too long, and I was suddenly insured. That's how they do it here, and it's GOOD. We went straight from there to some sort of bird sanctuary for lunch, and played the geography game that Paul, Tommy and I used to play in the kitchen in third year. One person starts by thinking of a link between a few countries (e.g. French speaking nations), and gives an example, e.g. Ivory Coast. The next person, who doesn't know what the connection is, has to guess a country and will be told by the originator if they are right or wrong. Then the next person has to guess, and so on until every player has guessed once. The originator then gives another example of a 'correct' country to keep the players on track, and you keep going till your pasta has cooked or someone has guessed the connection. It's actually quite a good game, and is potentially endless because of the massive number of possible connections.
Mum stirring some imaginary rice
That brings us, in a roundabout way, to today. I went down to the pool for a swim this morning, and while I was lounging around afterwards I caught a glimpse (well, some may say more than a glimpse, he was wearing Speedos) of a man with the lowest ripped-to-old ratio I have EVER seen (very ripped:very old) - he could easily have been classed as 'ancient', but was literally MADE of muscle - shoulders, abs, legs - the whole shebang. It was an odd combination, I'll tell you that! I'll try and take a sneaky photo if I see him again. What a sight to behold!. Dad isn't feeling very well today so in the afternoon Mum and I went for a walk, peeped at the British Council, sat and watched some dancers having a break from rehearsal on a stage (very dull, they didn't really do anything), and tried to get a cup of tea at someone's wedding. To be fair to us, it was NOT clear it was a wedding, and we realised before anyone threw confetti or projectiles.
On that note, I shall leave you to your day - jumpa lagi!
The Petronas Towers, and some tourist
