Three cheers for being home!

A big day of travelling yesterday. Got into the cab at Mont Kiara at 4.30am and got back home to Annerley at 9pm. I slept well last night!

It's great to be home though. Today I worked from home and in the evening Liz & I enjoyed cooking together. Chia-seed bread, chia-infused burgers and a chia shot to wash it down.

The best thing was cooking for two. It's good to be home.

Hip hip.....hurrah!



Malaysian beer

Given that it's an Islamic state, Malaysia is very civilised in its service of alcohol. In Australia you need to go to dedicated 'bottle shops' to even buy beer, whereas Malaysia follows the UK / NZ / US model where you can buy beer at corner shops & supermarkets. Unless you're a Muslim of how course, in which case you can rely on the staff of the 7-11 to remind you of your religious obligations if you somehow forget

The major beer you can get is of course Tiger, a Singapore-based brand that is a light and slightly sweet tasting lager. Not my usual choice of beer, but it works well in this climate.

Although I've also become partial to its poor cousin Anchor, slightly thinner tasting and best enjoyed by the tallie in Chinatown as the world walks past.

It also provides endless comedy value when you have a camera with a self-timer

Both beers are slightly cheaper than you'd find in Aus (maybe $2 / can in the local corner shop), but the taxation over here must work in a different way because for less than a Ringgit more you can start hitting the strong stuff. For example Anchor Strong, an 8% Special-Brew tasting beer best enjoyed with local street food

I've also become partial to a glass of Royal Stout, an 8.1% brew that is dark, roasty and very satisfying after a hard day at work. If my Imperial Stout turns out as good as this I'll be happy.

I also found this the other day - its classy packaging only hinting of the subtle complexities of the beer that lay within

It was sweet but not sickly, and surprisingly palatable given the strength . And it knocked me on my arse when I had finished it. Which is a bit concerning given that I still have this to drink.....

Half a litre of a beer stronger than most wines for around $3 / can. What could possibly go wrong?

Sunday morning run

It's been a long hard week over here with long demanding days at the client, including going in on Saturday for 7 hours. I've pretty much had enough of it all, I'm mentally exhausted and just want the next few days to be over quickly so I can go home.

I'm not expecting much free time this week either so I thought I'd make the most of my barefoot run around the shopping centre this morning. I added an extra loop in which bought the distance up to almost exactly 3km (as mapped on mapmyrun), which is a km more than I've managed before. It took me around 20 minutes so my pace is 10km/h-ish, which is the speed I normally run in shoes. I'm pretty happy with that, although I have done something to my achilles tendon on my right foot as it feels bruised and painful to touch. Ah well, I've got almost a week to recover.

Putrajaya

Last weekend I needed to get out of KL so I visited a town called Putrajaya. This is about 20km out of KL, on the main train line to the airport, and is a new town that was built on the grounds of what in 1996 was only forested land and rubber plantations. It's mainly a government & administrative hub and has been designed to showcase the glories of Malaysia. Most Malaysians are less then happy with the amount of money that has been spent down there but it is a pretty impressive place, in a stark and empty kind of way.

I got down there at around 10am and caught a bus from the station to the centre. The whole place was almost deserted and it was good to get away from the hubub of the city

Ah the serenity.

The focus of the whole town is the main square, bordered by a mosque, the Prime Ministers office and a large lake created by damning the river

It's possible to go into the mosque, although of course you need to be dressed appropriately. Ladies must cover their heads and not display the shape of their bodies, and are provided with robes if they do not meet these standards. My shorts were also a little too short and my calves and ankles obviously too shapely so I was asked to where the same, much to the amusement of pretty much everybody else in the place.

It was a hot, humid and windless day and luckily I managed to find a coach tour that would take us round the main sites in air-conditioned comfort for the princely sum of 1 Ringgit. It was a good tour which covered a lot of ground in an hour and a half

The mix of architecture is interesting - it's like every architect has been allowed to design something in his or her favourite style. There are references to Hong Kong skyscrapers, New York brownstones, London banks, Australian bridges, Manchester redbricks, French boulevards and many others besides.

The other reason for visiting Putrajaya was that there is a mountain bike park there with a XC circuit, DH track, pump track, dirt jumps and impressive looking skatepark. The park was situated a little out of town but I thought I'd be able to get there with a combination of bus and walking. This turned out to be a mistake. My 'map' was only a schematic so I spent an hour or so wandering round half-finished housing estates and industrial parks in what must have been 33 degrees +, high humidity and with no shade and no shops to buy water. I eventually found the correct road but when I followed that out I found that I would need to cross a slip road and walk along the hard shoulder of a freeway. So I gave up and after another 30 minutes of wandering found a bus-stop and headed 'home' footsore, sunstruck and dehydrated.

Motivating your team

Had a big day yesterday, trying to present the weakest part of our system to a group of QS's that knew what they wanted, and knew full well that what I was showing came nowhere near fulfilling those expectations. In those situations all you can do is put together an 'issues list' to push further up the chain to the Project Manager, which is never a gratifying way to spend the day. Especially when you've been pointing out some of these issues for the last five years! Fortunately the guys I'm working with are pretty good humoured and willing to work with me. So whilst the days are long and exhausting (we left the office at 7.30 last night and I was 'on point' for the entire day), at least they're not antagonistic. 

The PM had a quiet word with me after we got back to ‘put my mind at ease’. He said he’d been speaking to the CEO and the CEO's view was ‘Why  is he talking to the QS’s? The management should be making the decisions, not them’. In other words the long days, late evenings and weekends I've spent banging my head against the wall for the last three weeks don't really count for anything and sometime next week (3 days before I go back) the real decisions will be made. Well, that inspires me tremendously.

The good news is that I get to work from 'home' today to put some stuff together. So I'm set up in the living room with a couple of my essential travel items -

• Sony portable speakers bought from Melbourne Victoria Markets 13 years when I was backpacking, they've been with pretty much I've been every time when I've been away since. Currently streaming 4ZZZ over the web via my phone, they're playing 'I Fink U Freeky' at the minute.
• Mont insulated mug / coffee plunger. Essential.
• Glass of urine (no, it's really Berocca. Honest.) 

Much more relaxing than being in front of the client, and one less shirt to iron before it's time to go home! 

The (almost) perfect Friday evening in KL

Kuala Lumpur is a bit of a party town, renowned from colonial days for its pubs & nightclubs. This is my third week over here now so you'd think I know where to have a good time. I've also been sharing the apartment with two colleagues, both of whom are away this weekend.

So what's a good time in party-time KL?

A take away curry (mutton tomato gosht), a bottle of S Australian wine (with the cork poked through as we have no corkscrew) and CSI Miami. Sounds dull but I was in front of the client from 9am to 5.30pm. Then during the post-work smalltalk we picked up a new topic that we thrashed out for an hour. By 6.30pm after a long week I managed to escape, but all the cabs were taken so I walked back to the apartment - 20 mins of sweaty but worthwhile exercise. After an hour of emailing it's dinner time. I could go out but for the first time in 3 weeks there is no-one here to talk about cost codes, revenue streams, sales plans or intended functionality. The next best thing to being home.......

Chow Kit wet market

Last weekend I visited Chow Kit wet markets on the north side of KL, which is apparently the largest wet market in the area. What's a wet market? It's a market that sells perishable goods such as fruit (these are lychees) 

(Edit - I am reliably informed that these are Rambutans. You open them by twisting off the skin and eating around the seed, they are a bit like lychees and are apparently very yummy)

    as well as meat & fish

It's not just seafood & poultry, it's not unusual to see the stalls displaying trotters and even cows heads.

Given that the stalls are all under corrugated iron roofing in 34 degree heat and with no air-conditioning , it was surprising how little it all smelt. Probably a testament to the freshness of the produce, although there were also some distinctly stinky parts and whenever something splashed your leg you didn't want to look down and see what it was.

The market was also in the shadow of a local mosque and it was very atomospheric wandering around the cramped streets surround by high-density housing and listening to the Imam calling the faithful to prayer.

However some things transcend all cultural boundaries and this lad wearing thongs rode past me on a very nicely put together brakeless track bike. He could barely reach the pedals but he was loving it, and as you can see he was very proud when I asked to take his picture.

There was a hawkers market in the middle of the market which is supposed to sell excellent local food. As someone writing a blog overseas I should of course be praising the best of the local streetfood and taking pictures of the deep-fried intestines that I was enjoying. But I have to admit I had no idea of what anything was, got scared and left without tasting anything. A short monorail ride later I was back in the Golden Triangle enjoying chicken wings & Tiger beer.....