Zoning

This air force building stands defiant in a two storey building zone

This is our rule of law

Unbelievable

There was a woman at the filthy wc of Song River coffee shop cursing and swearing while her little girl was peeing. I couldnt get what she was angry at but there was something about "hurry up". A very impatient woman I wanted to slap
Night before H Lay again displayed her powers of attraction again, the little hawker boy coming up to her and talking to her. She got him to wash his hands and taught him to speak up and order ice cream the proper way. The boy even guessed the man with her was her husband and followed him like a faithful dog when he went to a hawker to order something to eat.

ADICHIE

I have just finished Chimamanda Adichie's Half of a Sun At first it was reluctant reading having just finished the towering Wolf Hall but as I read on the book started to grip me with its terrifying and moving story about people involved with the Biafra war and hoping for its victory.
Its starting to rain but remains suffocatingly hot. Have not been out because I am just recovering from a cold and there is a lot of flem in the chest which slows one down
Sad news with JIng Quee in hospital and unable to walk

Second home

At a talk the other night I learnt to my astonishment that Chinese headed the list of second homers followed by Bangladeshis There some 19,000 here cf to Singapore's 100,000

Attraction

I marvel at the way some people are blessed with an attraction for children. Lay beckoned to the little boy the other day and he came rightaway and talked to her for a long time sucking the ice cubes she got for him (it was past midnight and there no more ice cream to be got) He is ill treated by his hawker father but never comes when we call to him to give him chocolate. I wonder whether it's her long black hair that attracts him. All my other friends have tried but he never comes to them.

Frogs

Frogs used to sing me to sleep every night - mostly the high notes ones. Now with this drought in its 3rd month accompanied by killing heat they have disappeared. I often wonder where they are now

Help

Thanks to Hooi Lin I ve got this blog going again!
More later!

Swindles

Swindles never end. You often get "off duty" Blacklabel whisky adulterated. Now when you buy cigars loose and not sealed in a box you find one or two empty casings among those that you bought

Tukukor

I was pleasantly surprised when I went to have my glasses fixed - one lens had dropped out when the specs slid off to the floor She fixed it and said nothing I only tied it up she said when I offeed to pay

The tukukor has also come to the rambutan tree to sing his sad song. He sings while I weed the garden

Did you know that crabs are kept covered because mosquitoes have a habit of stinging them in the eye which kills them and so makes them uneatable. I was the only one at table who didn’t know this.

Enjoyed Thai laksa at One Stop plus a helping of delightful coconut ice cream Inevitably there was pulot rice right at the bottom fo the pile. This place is sadly neglected and I llearn that at some floors allyou have to do to use a space is s to promisee that you will keep it clean no rent paid

I am now reading Wolf Hall, a Booker prize winner. The wealth of detail simply takes one’s breath away, you can actually smell the period and feel the pulse of those times. .

Bandoeng

The other day I saw someone drinking iced milk with red syrup. A rare sight indeed! Later at a Mar Vista stall we learnt that the drink is known as Bandoeng

You must have read about the politician’s car skidding in heavy rain. It’s amazing that drivers to day still do not know about the aquaplane effect, which is that at above 50 mph in heavy rain your wheels float as on water like a motor boat and you are in danger of being swept aside by a gust of wind.

A son meets a student from China studying in the UK. The chance meeting is in Boston where a mutual friend is doing IT. Her aunt is a doctor in Beijing. Yes, her aunt will arrange for a liver transplant. It is done. And the father is back, happy and recovered in Penang. A story boook come true!

Albert has returned Xinran’s marvellous interviews with people in China and told me John lliked it so much he has ordered this and her first book for himself.

We were eating the flower crab - ch’i - when I discovered I was the only one who did’nt know that mosquitoes would sting them in the eye and kill them instantly.

It’s good to learn that the famous pomelo growers of Tambun have at last received grants to their land of 99 years.

Of all the well known bloggers I find the MP Teresa Kok the most honest with her figures. While others boast of millions of readers she publishes a modest honest count of only 775. Such honesty is rare indeed

sex and china writers

Chinese writers are obsessed with showing off their sexual prowess. The latest is the Nobel Prize winner, One Man’s Bible, pages and pages of his exploits with women in various beds. It seems that a Chinese ant-Mao writer must not only show his eloquently stated anti-Mao credentials but must tell of his hot sex life to get the Nobel Prize.

The Johore Sultan has just died. I used to visit his father when was living in Singapore and later when I visited for polo. He was a very kind man, absolutely without malice. His son was always respectful when speaking to me and called me “uncle” He was rather erratic (born like that) but kind hearted like the father. He was a great friend of Tony Wee of Singapore, once a boxer and a DPP.

The oriel is back gurgling his deep whistle on the old rambuttan tree.

I would recommend looking at the amusing blog cheeseburgerbuddha.blogspot.com run by a journalist artist, a very entertaining fellow who has been all over the world.

The former minister Ghazali Shafie’s orbituary in the papers do not mention that he was in the British secret service then became head of Malaysia’s MI5. Amateur pilots were suspicious of his version of the air crash in 1982 which killed the co-pilot but which he survived. He was the one who changed the treatment of political detainees after arrest. Instead of being just asked to accompany the detectives the lock up, political detainees were handcuffed and even blindfolded as if they Viet-cong. And they were not even given water to drink for a long time after arrest

Bulgarians never smile

13 January 2010

I told Peter about the Bulgarian restaurant, the complaint that the woman never smiled. Though beautifully redone in wood we avoided the place. Oh! Peter said, Bulgarians never smile. I once asked the manager of the Bulgarian airline why their air hostesses never smiled. What is there to smile at? He asked. So in we went to this restaurant and the woman actually came up to Peter and smiled. Yiong got hold of a booklet from her desk and it was full of jokes about Bulgarian stinginess. Substitute “Penang” and it could have been all about Penangites!

We were at Kroh late one night with a group of enthusiastic visitors I had brought to Betong and were looking for a place to eat - it was past 10 om and surprise. surprise, a Malay woman directed us to a Chinese coffee shop at the corner
unsmiling bulgarians

I have in the car Divakaruni’s Palace of Illusions which I read whenever I wait for KH in the car. I thought it highly entertaining and thought the kings and gods in her story were surely from Indian legends. Now I have received the Penguin Mahabharata and discover that hers is a very ingenious version of a story simply told of the Mahabharata but through the eyes of Draupadi, the doomed princess and very feminine.

At Telok Bahang at a restaurant the owner said to me dont come this way Thursday to Sunday the traffic jam sometimes stretches back as far as here. She complained the place was now full of gangsters and illegal structures.