More blackouts

Here is another page from the New York Herald Tribune. You can see from the photos what the censor tolerates and what immorality invokes his anger.

The other day we made monkeys of ourselves when guests were here. The electricity was out and I cursed corruption, inefficiency - the whole string of usual curses. We waited 4 hours and yet the air con still remained silent. Our neighbour was out so we couldnt check with her. Then we phoned to complain and the woman at the other end said they had not received any complaints. That should have alerted us but I think we were so full of prejudice that we blamed Tenaga for everything. Then one of the guests noticed that the fuse box switch was down. Should be up she said. Yes the washing machine had indeed done the blackout. The air con came one again.

Car repairer Ah Aun told me that his customers have discovered that when they went to the dealers workshop for servicing the workers in fact did not change the engine oil but charge him for the oil which they stole and sold. So they go to him for servicing which he is reluctant to do.

I saw the gardener at one of the houses on the hill opposite throwing rubbish into the garden of the house No 3 opposite and told him about it. He says he knows who the man is – he is a lawyer.

The censor's brush

The censors are so busy (overworked?) they have even blacked out the chest of a male dancer in this photo from an issue of the New York Herald Tribune.

Very busy with visitors from US, Italy, Johore, Malacca and Singapore, hence the delay with this blog.

Lucky May came from 40 degrees in Rome to our rain soaked 26 and was delighted. It was a great feeling with these few cool days when one slept without the air con. And it was really chilly by the sea at Northern Beach hawkers complex.

KH came back with a lot of Laurel and Hardy. It was amusing to see the beautiful lady in the 1936 car armed with a parasol; I saw the girls carrying parasols in Thailand in a new light, gutsy things braving a speed much faster than Laurel’s open carriage and not being carried off.

My dinner at Nyonya Breeze was spoilt by the din created by much shouting augmented by the very low ceiling. The following night we went to the other Nyonya place at New World Park thinking we would have a quiet dinner but, alas, a fellow giving a lesson in hip hop to some girls and boys at the theatre next door had his amplifiers on full blast.

I have just finished reading Tash Aw, When his book first came out it was cooly received then it stunned the world when it won the Whitbread first novel prize. I thought it deserved the Doris Lessing endorsement of him as a good story teller. He has an inventiveness for fantasy. But it is less close to realty than Han Su Yin’s ‘And the Rain My Drink’.

I am glad they are reprinting Anthony Burgess’ great ‘Malayan Trilogy’ which originally came out as ‘Time for Tiger’. It was from one of the stories that I learnt that Chinese are “shits in the head” because they ate prawn heads. Another great book reprinted is Farrell’s ‘Singapore Grip’. I have introduced these two books to many friends. I am now reading Xan Ran’s interviews with Chinese in China, a fascinating, free of propaganda series of very detailed interviews which gives one some idea of life in China before and after the Cultural Revolution.

Eric Came with a bottle of 30 year old Glenfiddich. A great gift!

The exercise bicycle broke down the other day and we rang the shop. A man came round. He was a free lance and repaired exercise machines in hotels and sports centres. I was pleased to see that he was a young Indian and also he knew Malay but not English.

Rose came from Singapore the other day and was very pleased that in Penang the young called their elders Uncle and Auntie. In Singapore, she grumbled, the women would be offended if you said “hullo Auntie “ to them.