Always respect local religious customs

One of the first rules of being overseas is that you should always respect the religious customs of the place that you're staying.

The accidental triathlete

This morning I thought I'd take advantage of the clean, clear streets around Publika shopping centre and go for a barefoot run. I walked up to the mall, stashed my shoes under a convenient flight of steps (watched by some bemused security guards over the road) and did a lap of the centre.

I ran almost 1 1/2 km, which I'm pretty happy with given the heat, my mild hangover and the lack of exercise. It did get some odd looks from the staff as the crazy mat salleh jogged past but nobody seemed to mind, the surface was pretty smooth and best of all my shoes were still there when I got back.

As it was Wheelie Sunday I was also able to hire a bike and so I gave myself a 'half hour of power'. You'll be sad to hear that this time they didn't give me a pink girls bike, but on todays bike the rear brake didn't work & the tyres were half flat. Never mind - braking is for wimps and the resistance from semi-flat tyres just mean I get a better workout. I put the bike into the biggest gear and went for broke.

Hillclimb corner is two ramps that take you up to the top level - tough work in the sun. Then there's a  sprinted along the top driveway, attempting to bunnyhop the speedbumps on the way (hard with cheap flat pedals and trainers on!). A few downhill corners test body positioning and cornering technique and then there's a cruise along wobbly child alley - partly to recuperate and partly because the 5 yr olds don't seem to hold their line however loudly you shout 'track right!'. I managed 6 circuits this time around, something to aim for next weekend.

After dropping the bike off and having breakfast I wandered back to the apartment, picking up some shopping on the way. By the time I got home it was 11.30 and humid, so I went for a dip in the hotel pool to cool off and to stretch my calves out. It was then that it struck me - a ride, a run, a swim....my god, I'd accidentally become a triathlete! Fortunately it doesn't seem to be a serious case as I still have the ability to smile, I haven't timed myself putting my shoes on and I haven't suddenly found a pair of budgie smugglers in my suitcase. I think I was saved because one of my transition stages included eggs Benedict and a long black.  The true test will be next weekend - will I still be able to ride a bike within 4m of another person without randomly veering in their way?

Booze bus

Jumping nations slightly, this is one I've been meaning to post for a while. A VW Kombi converted to a mobile bar and set up in Patong on Phuket Island, Thailand. This ones for Gordy!

World Champions!

A couple of my friends (one an irregular commentator on this blog) have just been to Italy to compete in the World Enduro Mountain Biking Championship. They kicked European butt and over a single 24 hr period managed to ride over 270km each on a rough & rugged mountainbike course to win their respective categories - beating off the finest that the rest of the world could offer. Congratulations Rach & Matt, you mad bastards.....

Unlucky 4's

Malayisa is an interesting mix of indigenous Malay, Chinese, Indian / Punjabi / Tamil* and Western cultures and it has inherited some of the quirks of each one. The building I'm working in at the minute was built by a Chinese-heritage company and when they labelled the floors they considered the Chinese view that four is an unlucky number (it sounds a lot like the Chinese word for 'Death' - never a good selling point).

Look closely and you can see floors 4 & 14 have been replaced by 3A and 13A. Incidentally floor 2 is missing because the bottom of the building is a two-level shopping centre. It would be silly to miss it for any other reason.

Conversely, eight is a lucky number as it sounds like 'Prosper'. When I was in Hong Kong I read about a hotel that had a floor '88' (doubly lucky) where the apartments were priced far higher than in the rest of the building. There were only 69 floors in the building, they'd just relabelled the top one as floor 88.

*Apologies to any Indians, Punjabi & Tamils for lumping them together so casually.....

A message from the Gods

The variously-aligned spirits of Malaysia intervened tonight with a message. The internet at the apartment was down when we got back which meant I could not follow my usual routine of work at the clients, come home, work, eat with colleagues (generally discussing work), work some more, shower, sleep, repeat. It seemed to me that deities of all pantheons were looking down and shouting ‘go for a run you fat bastard’, so I strapped on my Five Fingers and headed off.


This was the first time I’ve run in Five Fingers and it’s an interesting experience. As you’d expect it’s pretty similar to barefoot but the extra coverage makes you feel impermeable to small stones, cracks in the pavement and the like. You find yourself running over patches of gravel just because you can. But I can also see why so many people injure themselves starting out ‘barefoot’ running in minimalist shoes – if you’re not careful it’s easy to run further than you intended and injure your calf muscle or Achilles tendon. And I noticed when peering at my form in a shop window that it was allowing me to heel strike slightly without really noticing it. I ended up running probably 1500m (plotting it on a map later showed it to be just over 2km), which is a bit further than I usually run barefoot and I’m sure my shins and calves will punish me for it tomorrow (waking up later shows that assumption to be correct).

I cunningly planned my route to end up next to a shopping centre so after some stretching outside cooled by wafts of air-con I wandered around the supermarket stocking up on groceries and relishing the chilled air. I definitely prefer the feeling of going barefoot – it’s so much quieter for a start - but that wouldn’t be wise where I am now. Publika shopping centre seemed much cleaner and well maintained so I might give it a go there next ‘Wheelie Sunday’, if I can find somewhere to stash my shoes without them being tidied by an over-vigilant cleaner.

Incidentally for the barefoot nerds out there (I’m looking at you Marin) I’ve also been checking out the prices & availability of ‘minimalist’ shoes. Merrell Road gloves & Trail gloves sell for about 380 MYR retail ($120ish) in the sports shops. Adidas five-finger copies are a bit cheaper. Nike Frees are just under 300 MYR or around $100. You could probably get them to reduce those prices a bit if you weren’t as hopeless at bartering as I am. You can also get Nike Frees in Petaling St markets, for I’m guessing around 160-200 MYR (I’ve been to scared to ask). They’ll be knock-offs, but what are they going to do – skimp on the padding?

The internet is due to be down all night and will apparently be fixed at 10am tomorrow*. Without the 3G on my phone it feels a bit like it used to feel when there was a powercut and you would put the kettle on to make a cup of tea and wait it out. My first thought was ‘excellent – I can give Liz a skype’, then I tried to use the internet radio, then I picked up my tablet and tried to hop on-line. I could write up some visit notes but that seems far too much like hard work and I think I deserve a soak in a hot bath and an early night. Unfortunately I’d arranged to work from home tomorrow morning to get a bunch of coding-type stuff done, which is much easier when you can listen to music, swear freely and not have to wear a tie. I’ll probably have to go in tomorrow morning instead as their anticipated fix date will be 10am Malaysian time. Who knows when that will come around?

*In case you’re wondering I’m writing this in the evening on a word doc and will transferred it over to blogspot when I get the chance.

Wheelie Sunday

Most shops don't open 'til 10.30 or so over here, and so the local upmarket shopping centre takes advantage of this and runs a 'Wheelie Sunday' every week. They close the access & service roads off to traffic and open it up to the public to ride & skate around the centre from 7.30am until 10.00am

Better still they have free bike hire - only for 30 minutes, but time on a bike is always a good thing. And it was a fine machine too!

I thought about the stairs, but it wasn't my gods looking on from the distance

It was mainly kids on little bikes & scooters, but I wasn't the only adult making a fool of myself - yes, that's a track bike being ridden by a guy in full Malaysian strip and trainers

I reckon that in half an hour I could give myself a decent workout by leaving the bike in the highest gear and doing some 'ramp-climb' repeats, but I was having more fun trying to bunnyhop the speedbumps and working on my cornering technique. Attack attack!

Downtown KL

I had a wander around downtown KL yesterday. I was last here a year ago so I have a basic knowledge of the layout, and I thought I'd visit some of the places I went to last time and see if anythings changed.

Unsurprisingly, not a lot. The shopping centres are still huge and ostentatious

with anything tried to distinguish it - this one had an inside 'market green' that sold the same stock as everywhere else, but with an Avatar style makeover

I even found one with a funfair on its top three floors

Yes, that is a roller coaster shoehorned in. And not one that delivers a a gentle rumble around - this moves fast

 and even includes a loop

although it's not one to be enjoyed if you're tall - the tolerances are pretty tight in places. And a little bit suggestive as well

For those of a less adventurous disposition, the monorail is still cool

and for those less active, there's always plenty of opportunity to sit down

After a few hours I tired of shopping centres I headed over to Chinatown, where my favourite people-watching bar / cafe was still going

and the reggae bar was still serving Long Island Iced Tea for a fiver a glass in happy hour (sorry GGT)

The fish at the fish spa were still hungry too, although after my recent flaky peeliness I think a few had eaten their full by the end of the half hour

 Petaling St markets were still as chaotic as usual, and I even got told off by a DVD seller for telling him I downloaded. "No no no - it's illegal!"

If anyone wants a knock off bag or watch this is the place to come. Just like last time I wandered through thinking I should buy something, but not really needing or even wanting much that was there. I was tempted by this singlet but I heard Liz's voice in the back of my head saying 'a t-shirt with a picture of a bike on it - how unusual!'

The street vendors still produce fantastic food at the side of the road for very little money

each stall specialises in one dish - pick your favourite, settle down at a table, summon the 'beer boy' to bring Tiger and enjoy! And if you fancy squid-on-a-stick, well, this is your place. This is dusted in flour and spices, deep-fried and served with a spicy chilli sauce - yum.

Eventually it was time to go home so after a quick barter with the cabbie I got dropped off in Mont Kiara, but looking back you could still see the twin towers glittering over the city.

The picture's a bit wonky because I was standing in the middle of the road - that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.



Can you spot the mobile phone tower?

Or is that just a random giant redwood that's taken seed in the city?

Selamat Pagi!

And hello from Kuala Lumpur.

It's been a long hard week. I spent most of each day standing in front of a bunch of Quantity Surveyors discussing ways in which they can use our software to improve their business and most of each evening trying to figure out how the hell our software can improve their business. The irony is I've never been a Quantity Surveyor or done anything resembling that role, so I'm constantly expecting someone to stand up and call me a fraud. So far I've pulled it off, although that may be more because the people I'm working with are generally very friendly and polite.

The apartment we're staying in is in the Mont Kiara region of KL, and we have a 3 bedroom 'Penthouse Suite' overlooking the suburbs

The views are great if you focus in the middle - long distance, however directly behind the hotel (and my bedroom window) is a multi-lane highway with a toll booth. This can get pretty busy in the evenings

and a local hobby for the lads in hotted up Protons seems to be seeing how fast they can get away from the toll booth. It can lead to entertaining viewing from the balcony. Luckily the sound insulation is pretty good so I can convince myself that the traffic sounds more like the washing of the surf when I'm trying to sleep.

The apartment itself is large, clean and pretty swanky - I wish I'd bought out some kind of wheeled toy. Although it has the squeakiest floors known to man.

It even has a maids room where a poor unfortunate maid could be installed (there is a tiny bathroom next to this room so you only have to see them when you call for them)

There are three of us sharing the apartment, although bizarrely they only gave us two sets of keys. My Australian colleague & I were just going to get another set of keys cut, but our colleague from the Singapore office went nuts and starting shouting about not following the correct procedures, how two keys was enough and how we had to follow correct procedures. After a fairly taut standoff we persuaded her to get another set of keys for us, but I think it will be begrudged for a long time!

I haven't had a chance to get out much. We eat at a local shopping area where the food is great and incredibly cheap ($2 for a main course),  and so far that's all I've managed to do. Work, eat, sleep. No exercise as yet, but now I'm settling in that will need to change. Today is the weekend so I've got some 'me time', and the first thing I did was get internet radio sorted so I can listen to 4ZZZ. After this I'm off to KL central for a wander around, to check out some old haunts and to find some new. The heat & humidity is a bit of a shock after the cool weather we were having in Brisbane so I'll need to be careful to keep my electrolytes up. Time for a nice soothing can of Pocari Sweat!

Another day another airport

Off to Malaysia today, and won't be back until mid June. Hopefully I'll get the chance to have a mosey round some of the areas I missed on my last visit, but the sad reality is that the next month is going to be basically work focused.
Not happy about being away for so long - we're trying to think about it as a couple of couple of weeks - but I guess it is what it is....

Imperialist takeover

My Imperial Stout is living up to its name and making a land grab within the garage

 The combination of a well-filled fermentor and a multitude of sugars has caused the yeast to go a bit mad  and the wort is trying to escape through the airlock

The garage smells fantastic!

A mixed bag of breakfast bikes

At breakfast this morning we had the usual mix of breakfast steeds -

A custom made Baum, hand crafted in Melbourne to exactly fit the owners requirements. And a 1991 Peugeot King Canyon mountain bike.

A Surley Long Hall Trucker set up for distance cyclo-touring / Audax. And my trusty singlespeed Roadrat

The Peugeot was in beautiful condition with almost entirely original componentry. It looked like it had been taken off the shop floor last week. Probably by someone on a hyper-colour t-shirt.

Could vintage mountain bikes become the new fixies? Maybe. I wonder if the guy I sold my 1991 Hardrock Sport when I emigrated is interested in sending it over?

Pizza Extreme

A national Pizza chain* is offering a chilli rich pizza with the tagline 'Australias hottest gourmet Pizza - can you take the challenge?'. Obviously that sort of advertising is designed to appeal to gung-ho lads who feel they have something to prove, and obviously I fell for it hook line & sinker.

The pizza comes with some nice marketing - a warning logo and a 'survival bag' with an ice-cream and a bottle of water

The pizza itself looks pretty tasty - don't be scared of the chillis on top, they're not that hot and taste more like roast capsicum than hot chilli.

 
It's hot, there's no doubt about it, but it's not killer hot. It's also not that flavoursome - it tastes like a couple of 18 yr old lads have made a pizza and then decided to go crazy with a bottle of hot sweet chilli sauce. I had to peer at a chunk of meat to see if it was chicken or prawn. I prefer the 'chicken & chilli' pizza I used to get on Oxford Rd on the way back from the Ritz in Manchester, but to be fair that was generally at 2am after a few beers.

And no, I didn't finish it in one go. But that was because I was full (honest!), and the other two slices were a nice addition to dinner the next night.

*Which will remain nameless to prevent this getting picked up by their marketing 'net scans - you can figure it out from the picture