Over Here

Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer

martinbradley — Thu, 4 Jul 2013 12:51:00 GMT

It was the summer solstice and, coincidentally, the first actual day of summer here in these heat blessed lands. I had been having all sorts of weird dreams and awoke with a start. I gave up, I did, didn’t I? I’m sure I did. Then why does this place still smell of smoke.

My newly awakened brain could not cope. I struggled to come to whatever senses I still had left in my severely advanced years. I gave the last fifteen years a quick run through. Yep, I did give up. I remember all the cursing and swearing and the delusion of addiction, and distinctly remember the craving and the ‘Ok just one last one, then I will quit completely”. I also remember that I quit completely so many times that I had to quit quitting completely to enable myself to quit smoking. In my awakening state I swore that I gave up smoking and have not had a cigarette in all that time. Then why did everything smell of smoke?

‘Oh, my godlet we are on fire’. I dashed the duvet off, dived out of bed and ran through our minuscule flatlet, rebounding off the piano in the hall - because the hall is small and the piano is not. The tiny kitchen was not awash with flames, nor were the storeroom, the office/studio or the second toilet. I slid into the bedroom across not so cool tiles, again, and burst into the cupboard we laughingly call an ensuite bathroom (minus the bath of course). No fire, just a cockroach which, incidentally, also was not on fire.

I distinctly remembered that old idiom - where there’s smoke there’s fire, but I couldn’t find the fire, but the smoke was everywhere. A dingy grey haze hung over Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur. Everywhere was ‘misty’, half hidden and reeked of burning, including our tiny apartment. Online news informed that the ‘haze’ as it is officially known - not ‘that reeking bloody stink’ as some would have it, came to us courtesy of Indonesia. Thank you so much Indonesia, you may have your haze back now, we have done with it, I silently groaned. Silently, because I was alone indoors and really didn’t want to open my mouth unnecessarily, and gulp in countless atoms of scorched peat.

The smog, for that is what is really is, reminded me of those winter school days in the UK, when we would all be sent home early because of rolling, smothering smog. We prayed, or rather the more religious children prayed, the rest of us just hoped that their prayers would be answered and we wouldn’t have to commit to any religious dictatorship, that smog would come. It wasn’t that we hated school, but that we were children and preferred anything apart from school - even smog! With the later affluence of central heating the smogs died away and I escaped the motherland to bask in the equatorial sun of Kuala Lumpur. Only today there was no sun, just smog.

So that was it. My morning burning smell came with thanks to a smog caused by bloody peat forests in Sumatra. Sumatra, no less! Singapore was suffering its worse pollution levels - ever, and asthma sufferers in Malaysia have become homebound, even though without double-glazing it was rather pointless to sit indoors as the stench was insidious, and crept through doorways and window frames etc. And there was not a bloody thing I could do about it except for to blog - hence this diatribe.

So, as we equatorial dwellers cough our guts up and mime curses at international smoke plumes, and I say mime because our throats are far to sore to utter said curses, some are reminded of dusty blighty, fog, smog and other hazy days.

June is a long way from November. Bonfire night, in dear Albion, is 5th November with memories of gunpowder plots and although escaping a rapid change in government ala Guido Fawkes today, in KL, it would seem that every night is bonfire night, and every day this month is bonfire day.

We not only have evenings, but days, of swirling mists, fog and smog enough to expect an Asian Spring-heeled Jack to pounce. And perhaps pounce he would if he were not also coughing up his lungs somewhere in a Kuala Lumpur gutter. So maybe that's a blessing in disguise.

Horror aficionados wait anxiously for John Carpenter’s The Fog to roll down Putrajaya, some with thoughts of seeing Jamie Lee Curtis, some just waiting to groove in the sheer mayhem, but alas and alack as yet it has not happened.

While going out into the city reminds me of glitzy, or painfully real, TV series set in hospitals, with nearly everyone wearing paper masks as if going to, or returning from, operations of a medical variety, I remember someone saying that a standard surgical mask is of little use against many environmental contaminants. Perhaps people prefer the psychological assurance, like one KLite, who yesterday faithfully wore his mask right up until the point that he needed to smoke a cigarette. Curious.

It is said that a surgical mask actually offers no protection against ozone, nitrous oxides and only some limited protection against fine particulates. A mask may prevent some pollen exposure, but to be effective it must be very tightly fitted and not removed. A N95 style mask may offer some protection against is dust, but not over long periods. Smog is curious enough without people hiding behind thin sheets of paper.

Back in the land of my birth, face masks were only popular during Halloween, and then only lately because they were seeing far too many American TV shows or, more recently for cyclists in the Big Smoke (London). In cities, certain masks might be deemed to be advantageous due to diesel and other noxious car fumes, if you are a cyclist, but probably not if you are a pedestrian. Even mask protected cyclists have to change their mask pads frequently, for them to remain effective.

I hope that this mask phase, and the smog, will clear soon and that Indonesian peat fires will be better controlled next year - if we all survive this pollution that is, and if Spring-heeled Jack, perhaps wearing a cheap paper face mask, doesn’t get us first.

Hats Off

martinbradley — Thu, 4 Jul 2013 12:48:00 GMT

I usually have little trouble with children. They know their place and I know mine. In rapscallion moments I have been called a ‘dinosaur’, a ‘mountain’ and things in Chinese I have not the wit to translate. Over time I have acquired a twelve year old stepson, whom I think the world of and, in my folly, I attempt to teach creative writing to a group of 11+ years olds, once a week. I also volunteer in Cambodia, frequently in schools with young children, and visit homes of impoverished Cambodian children. However, those children, no matter how monkeyish, ebullient and gibbering they appear to be at times, are not the issue here.

Some days past I was on a working holiday, in Cambodia. I was giving Art talks and reading poetry to students in Siem Reap, as well as visiting the aforementioned impoverished children who, incidentally, were all tucked away down barely beaten paths in the most rural of rural places in the Cambodian countryside. They smiled their dirty faced and most glorious of innocent smiles to me and I reciprocated, while simultaneously trying to dash coconut water from out my drowned beard - with thanks to one village parent who had organized fresh coconut juice - straight from the coconut.

No, it was not the charming children in the rural villages, nor the insistent but nevertheless endearing children in the towns with their baby milk scams, that had me all wound up and virtually fuming at the ears, but one singular urban child. He was a Malaysian tyke whom we had brought with us. He was a jackanapes of a male child, who had, perhaps somewhat reluctantly, accompanied his mother on our saunter into heaty and dusty Cambodia.

The fun had began on the plane. The boy’s voice could be heard above all others on the silver cigar tube slicing through sufficiently fluffy clouds of South East Asia. It was heard right up to the moment of disembarking and through into customs and into the baggage hall. That unmistakable demanding and simultaneously whinny voice was no less silent while we waited for our transport to whirl us away to our hotel. Joy upon joy upon joy - we were to be staying in the same hotel, which rapidly became hot hell.

Other guests complained. The boy was given a warning to be silent at night while other guests wanted to enjoy the peace of Siem Reap and soak up the Angkor atmosphere. To no avail. I kept my distance, not wanting to be drawn into remarking upon that individual’s behaviour, unfortunately, fate decided otherwise.

Our small group went shopping in the local day market. We trundled the lanes, browsed the stalls and lit upon a stall selling material goods - T-shirts, shirts, blouses etc etc ect. Being somewhat tired due to my size in a hot country, I sought to rest on a chair opposite. My good friend was on one side of me and my wife was occupied buying goods for us both. The chair on the other side of me was empty save for my wife’s hat - exactly like mine but a tad smaller and brown. I had bought both in John Lewis before departing to live in Malaysia, eight years since at a cost of￡35 each.

The child, who was rapidly becoming someone out of a Hilaire Belloc Cautionary Tale, was continuing his obnoxious behaviour with no respite. Nerves were on the point of fraying, teeth were grinding and all thoughts of Buddhist philosophy had flown back to Angkor Wat and Bayon. The child then did something quite unimaginable. The frowning, grumpy child, awash with his own thoughts, and giving little thought for others, grabbed my wife’s hat from where it rested on the chair and threw it onto the dusty, dirty floor. Without a moment’s consideration, my right hand clipped the back of the boy’s head as my wife’s hat touched the filth of the ground.

My friend leaned across and whispered “Good, I have been wanting to do that all day”. The boy stood stock still. His lips trembled, but no sound was emitted. He stood, inwardly sobbing, for some seconds, then moved to the comfort of his mother. From behind her, he screamed at me “I’ll, I’ll, bash you”. He had not learned a lesson, but I had - not to allow myself to be in such situations with obnoxious small boys ever again. Now I have to practice Right Thought and Right Action even harder than before. My life journey continues.

Bussing Singapore

martinbradley — Thu, 4 Jul 2013 12:41:00 GMT

OMG, WTF good grief and maybe even WOW, the wasp coloured double-decker bus to Singapore stung my sight. It was so posh that even had a Captain instead of a bus driver, boarding passes instead of tickets and those little screens in the back of seats that you sometimes get on international flights. My wife said – “Cool”. I agreed.

It had been many, many years since I had taken a bus to Singapore. The last time was a seedy looking rat trap of a bus from Klang (Selangor, Malaysia). That bus had partially working air-con and a driver who stopped every so many miles to deliver packages, take smoke breaks and generally delay my arrival to singular Singapore. This new bus was a whole other creature – sleek, shiny and straight down to Singapore with only one (small) stop for a little leg stretching. I was duly impressed.

The speedy bus was a little early as it arrived at Singapore Harbour front. I had a few hours before my performance that evening, and we had to find a hotel to rest weary heads. It was Easter, not Christmas, but still we got the no room at the inn scenario. We trudged around the old Arab Quarter looking for lodgings, getting wearier with each step. Five hours on the bus had left me a little groggy. The Singaporean humidity made the air into treacle with each footstep. You would have thought that eight years in Malaysia would have acclimatised me – it hadn’t. Underneath the mild tan I was still the very same Englishman who had stepped off of that twelve hour MAS flight back in February 2005, only older and heavier thanks to all that good Malaysian food.

The only ‘reasonably priced’ hotel available in the Arab Quarter was found. We ignored the stains on the ceiling, on the carpet and the trail of micro-ants to and from a slight residue of sugar on the aged dressing table. We breathed in to enter the room; for fear that we would not be able to u-turn once in. Later I quipped with the desk clerk “is that the larger of the two rooms”, “Yes, the other is much smaller” she said with a straight face. If the room had been any smaller we would have been spending the night half in and half out of Narnia, I thought.

That night, Arab Street was plagued with night cyclists glistening with sweat, their hard hats pointing backwards for Christmas. Those self-righteous cyclists smirked the smirks of the newly fit - all fitter-than-thou and scornful of our shovelling humus with pita bread into cavernous hungry mouths, swaying gently to the soothing Middle Eastern vibes.

My much-better-half and I sat at one of the myriad Middle Eastern themed restaurants. We were confronted by slyly spiced yoghurt, gleaming green and overtly jet olives, curious coriander and stiffly squared feta cheese amidst an array of lettuce leaves, cucumber and a mixed mezze squirted with freshly tart lemon juice. At that moment we were free as proverbial Beatles birds, lounging in a Singapore un-beset with meetings or other imposing necessities. My small performance was over, my Southern Comfort drank and we had exited back into the Singapore night unmolested by fans ( of which I have none) or any other even mildly interested party.

The Singapore Arab Quarter seemed to host a number of streets going by the vaguely exotic names of Kandahar Road, Orphir Road and Sultan Gate. Somewhere, nestled in there, was Kampong (village) Glam which, despite its name, was not a nest of 1970s, sequinned, aging rockers whose mascara had run for the last time. The morning eventually claimed us. After greeting the hotel room’s line of small ants with an enthusiastic ‘Good morning line of small ants’, we checked out – for you can have too much of a good thing, and strolled under a mild sun, past the vaguely Art Deco school of art and sought breakfast. We had forgotten, again, that Singapore – much like an ageing actress, does not do mornings. We grabbed a nondescript Nasi Lemak and instantly longed for Malaysia. But Malaysia it was not, for Singapore has not been part of Malaysia since 1965, and there we were roaming that Arab Quarter on a very quiet Good Friday morning.

Amidst German tourists, Chinese tourists who seem to spend an inordinate amount of cash on large cameras and Americans with curiously cropped hair we skirted the Sultan Mosque and its compound. Outside that compound, eager merchants had gathered to ply their trade without the white lines seen in Egypt – to demark limitations for merchandiser and tourist interaction. Away to one side of the selling frenzy, two white-haired women sat. One was of Chinese descent, the other possibly American. They were imbibing coconut water, through plastic straws, direct from the weighty cut coconuts – “Isn’t it refreshing” the Chinese lady said to the other, her eyes shielded by oversized sunglasses. A conversation ensued over the merits and demerits of coconuts and their uses. It was obvious that the Chinese lady was a little proud to be able to impart that knowledge to her friend; maybe she was a little proud of Singapore too, smiling as she spoke.

We left the Arab Quarter, travelled across Singapore on the spotlessly clean MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) and arrived in Little India as did the rain. Little India has become somewhat of a haven for authentic Northern and Southern Indian food, hence our opting to stay in that area for the majority of our time in Singapore. Once again accommodation was hard to come by unless, of course, we wanted to share a room, barracks style, with eleven other people of the same sex. I had no desire to do so. We trudged on until we eventually found a reasonably priced hotel. We later discovered that it was a hotel chain which had been infamous for selling rooms by the hour, sometime in its recently lurid past. But, on the day of our arrival, there seemed to be Chinese families and hordes of Malaysian tourists crowding out the hotel – no obvious hookers or johns evident.

The problem with hotels is that you are not at home. In your unwisely chosen hotel room you are constantly at the mercy of other people’s behaviour. When neighbours arrive, noisily, at 1am, shout and wish each other good night in their various languages you are at their mercy. When the very same neighbours awaken at 7am, you are still at their mercy. Your sleep pattern, or lack of it, becomes guided by the thoughtlessness of others. Groggily, you lay awake to their stories unfolding - the children running along corridors, their banging on doors – and sometimes the right one. You hear, because you have been awoken by them, the grandmothers yelling at the children in foreign tongues, the children’s and their parents’ responses, the slamming of doors and the unnatural quite as the entire party is transported down to the lobby, in the lift. It is the quiet that disturbs more than the noise - the anticipation laying in wait within that quiet.

My much-better-half joined the Singapore Urban Sketchers for a morning’s sketching. We travelled across Singapore, on smartly on time buses, to arrive at Gillman Barracks, vaguely on time, to sketch until luncheon. Gillman Barracks was named after the British General - Sir Webb Gillman, a former General Officer Commanding-in Chief for the Eastern Command (1931), based in Singapore, he died in 1933. The barracks was built and named after him in 1936.

The posh art galleries which have claimed the old British Gillman Barracks didn't open until midday. There was no chance to gain succour there while my much-better-half sketched, so I skirted the closed galleries and headed for the sanctity of ARC (Alexandra Retail Centre). The one Gillman gallery to be open, as I passed, held an exhibition of psychogeographic images. I did a little head scratching and later ‘Googled’ to discover that, in this case, psychogeographic images meant road and footpath markings made in construction work. I was a little baffled and went to ask the young lady seated at a desk what it was all about. She was intent on watching a soap opera on her laptop, earphones plugged in. I wanted to ask if it was intentional that some of the postcard size images were peeling from the walls. Was it a statement on contemporary curation, or on the ephemeral nature of such markings, but I could not gain her attention and left none the wiser.

While others sketched away in a heat, nearing the noon day (when only mad dogs and other Englishmen are abroad), I was biding my time in coffee@room in the ARC mall, somewhere in Singapore. I was unaware that Saturday was live band day at ARC. My relative peace and quiet soon disappeared, as did I after finishing my tea. It is no doubt an age thing. But I just cannot fathom why live music, or entertainment, is necessary in a place designed for shopping. Singapore, and no less so the ARC mall, is a land of enigmas. Fusion mixes to the extent that if becomes confusion. Food and drinks are no longer bound by strict cultural rules. Rowan Atkinson's Mr Bean becomes a soft drink emporium, Vanilla becomes a muffin shop and the aforementioned live Chinese band plays pseudo prog rock into a mall distinctly lacking people – quite possibly due to the smallness of the mall and the loudness of the music.

Having at least partially sated ourselves with Indian food, good Art and good company it was time to climb aboard the yellow and black caterpillar and dash back to Kuala Lumpur. I say dash, though in reality it was a seven hour slow dash - due to it being the Easter weekend, raining and dark. Singapore by bus was an experience – more luxurious than ‘coach class’ in an aeroplane, cheaper but much, much slower. The trip was nice for fun, but probably not on a regular basis due to the huge amounts of time it consumes. We (mentally) waved fond farewell to the wasp coloured caterpillar and earnestly considered driving down to Singapore in the future.

Making an Exhibition of Myself in Makati

martinbradley — Thu, 4 Jul 2013 12:37:00 GMT

It was back to that old ex-US military base at Clark, Manila, The Philippines. And it was for no other reason than there was an available flight. On this, my second trip to Makati City, one of the accumulated cities which comprise Manila, a Dutch tourist injured his forehead on the door to the bus luggage compartment. Bright, foreign, blood sprayed over the wood and metal passenger bench, over that unfortunate man’s shirt and over the Filipino pathway. To all intents and purposes it was a superficial wound, yet it drew much attention and slightly delayed that bus from Clark airport to Makati. It was an interesting beginning to our two hour journey returning to Manila city.

This time we approached Manila in broad daylight. We had the dubious delight of witnessing the traditional city traffic jams. We neared the spot where we had been dropped off last time and, understanding that our hotel was but a walk away from where the bus dropped us that afternoon, we decided to walk. We were right, and thanks to the guide book embedded in my 7 inch Android tablet and we were able to navigate past over-dressed police guards – presenting badges, guns and curious smiles. We passed, or were passed by over-dressed jeepneys and Filipinas, seemingly all the same age, with long dark hair, brandishing either film star enigmatic sunglasses or eyes fluttering unbelievably false eye lashes.

That night's party was courtesy of one of Manila's upcoming conceptual artists. As parties go that would have raised the roof, were it not staged outside the Ayalal Museum. In that tropical heat, hot and cool jazz thrumbed through Makati's pleasantly floral Greenbelt eco-mall, and our bodies. Even hotter dancers cavorted to pounding drum beats and sexy saxophone sounds. We over-age and under-fit pedestrians gazed on in a red wine fuelled awe, wondering what had happened to our youth, and where and when we had mis-spent it.

My new chums from The Philippines gave us a night to remember amidst the brandishing of donuts and/or bananas, pulsing beats and celebrity portraits. The small ArtistSpace gallery, an adjunct to that Ayala Museum, fairly rocked that night. It was in true bohemian fashion, while Manila’s conservative elite tut tutted and urged for an early end to that party’s cavorting. Despite killjoys, the artist proved that there still was fun to be had in old Manila, and also in Art.

The very next day, amidst shopping which came in brown paper bags - yes in The Philippines you can still receive groceries in actual brown paper bags; we wandered the early morning Manila streets in search of jeepneys. There was, maybe, an hour to go before a day of meetings. I wanted to get a little closer to those big chrome-plated beasts, pat their shiny hides and remember my own jeep beast languishing in rural Malaysia. Wandering around the outskirts of the Greenbelt complex, we did manage to spot one of two of those mechanical dinosaurs as they dashed past our hotel, too quick to shoot (with the small cannon), and decided to lay in wait near a stretch of cooling buildings. Sightings were poor. The business meeting, replete with stuffed, preserved bull’s heads on the walls, swallowed half a day. It only finished in time to allow us to rest before I was to read my poems at that night's performance. There was no further time to stalk the infamous, elusive, jeepney.

It had been two days and I was still to find coffee that tasted of coffee. It was a quest left over from the previous visit to Makati City. Was I searching in the wrong places? The restaurants and cafes I frequented only seemed to proffer the weakest, most insipid coffee - worthy only of England and the dourest of cafes, in the most insalubrious of places. The best coffee I had in Manila, up to that point, was that which came in a 3-in-1 packet. Even that Spanish restaurant, bedecked with wall hangings of real, stuffed, bull's heads, only offered coffee with powdered milk. It was a shock. No small jug of fresh cream, or container of full-fat milk worthy of blocking the elitist of arteries - no, instead I was confronted with two small pots - one of sugar and the other - powdered milk. The contents of that meagre pot looked like finely powdered parmesan cheese. Luckily the very next day we were due to travel out of the city and towards fields where Robusta coffee beans were grown. My hopes of finding a decent cup of coffee were high.

That new day dawned. We were hustled into awaiting cars to undertake a journey out into the countryside adjacent to Manila. It was a one-hour bumpy journey – bumpy because Filipino roads were becoming as ill-maintained as their Indian cousins, and we were approaching the town of Tagaytay. The digital guidebook hinted that Tagaytay was a great place to eat. We didn’t eat there. Instead, we drove up a hill, atop of which was a fruit small market and a large car park, rapidly filling with all means of transport from buses to cars, motorcycle and sidecar combinations and those elusive jeepney beasts. I was delighted in finally tracking down a herd of jeepneys and, camera at the ready; I was all set to pounce. Pounce I did. I snapped away until the smiles of patient jeepney drivers turned to laughs of derision at the sad, and quite possibly mad, tourist and his ageing camera.

I lowered my Canon and took stock. Just why did I need so many photos of one jeepney. The answer was, of course, that I didn’t. I sobered up from my frenzy, calmed down and began to accept those part-jeep, part-bus vehicles in all their vehicleness. I had satiated my desire to be up close and personal with jeepneys, but decent coffee remained as elusive as ever.

Bananas and pineapple appeared to be the favourite fruit of the market. Women of all ages and sizes reached out weathered hands, proffering tantalising morsels of sweet fruit to entice the unwary traveller to buy. We didn’t, instead we climbed the rest of the hill, on foot.

Atop that hill was The People's Park in the Sky, which was badly in need of repair, love and maintenance. It reminded me of Clacton-On-Sea (UK) on a bad Sunday in July, only the crowds were Filipinos and Filipinas, not chapatti munching Punjabis. Having spent an inordinate amount of time on that hill, and getting no closer to coffee, we eventually sped off for what had become a late lunch. It was Sunday, family day, and restaurants were full. In a state of near hunger the decision was made to stop at a burger joint. But it was no ordinary burger joint. The name on the sign, looking suspiciously like an eastern rendering of McDonalds, bore the legend – MUSHROOM BURGER. That proved to be very literal, for the burger I received was a bun containing oyster mushrooms, and only oyster mushrooms. It was as advertised on that signboard.

A Filipino market came next, replete with stalls of a myriad dried fishes, luscious fruits and vegetables, and even a cow’s head stripped of its skin. The meandering rows of stall were clean for a market, as if an inspection had just taken place and the stall holders had not yet had time to get back to normal. I bought bags of dried fish of all types and sizes, and one packet of smoked fish smelling for all the world like Great Yarmouth Kippers (or Bloaters). I was getting nostalgic for the Yarmouth ‘Rows’ of my father’s boyhood, and the Tinapa (smoked Filipino fish) helped in a very small way. But there were no coffee beans evident. No piles of freshly roasted beans, no wafts of ground coffee, no coffee in evidence at all. I sighed a coffeeless sigh, and resigned myself for yet another trip to The Philippines and returning with no local coffee. And I did. To this day I have not tasted an authentic Filipino coffee, which I am certain must exist, if only to tease me. Perhaps, one day, there will be another trip, and another search for that Scarlett Pimpernel of all coffees, the home grown Filipino coffee. I await that day.

Taken for a Ride

martinbradley — Thu, 4 Jul 2013 12:31:00 GMT

I was still nursing a dehydration headache from the flight. It had been somewhat of an experience - the journey from Puchong to Clark International Airport (Manila). The flight was slightly delayed, as low cost flights frequently are, and we arrived in Clark at one a.m. along with two flights from Korea. We were faced with long queues for immigration and also for customs, which wore our lethargic selves down even further.

In a sleepless daze we inched forward in the Philippine immigration queue. We hustled into Customs, where humanity of all sizes and nationalities elbowed and jumped queue. Smiling I noticed that queue jumpers finally got their comeuppances on being stopped by immigration officers and asked to open their luggage.  It was then that all varieties of personal and intimate clothing were revealed to the clear plastic-glove wearing, broadly smiling, Customs men, while my wife and I were waved through with grins and a most satisfied air.

Early morning may not be the best time to visit Clark International Airport. However, our low-cost carrier only gave the most reasonable rates if we emulated non-too-wise owls and stayed up all night, bleary-eyed. This may not have been the wisest decision in the history of aviation but, eventually, having escaped the confines of what can only be described as one of the tiniest airports in the world, we were faced with the further adventure of finding transport for our two hour journey into Makati City – an adjunct to Manila proper.

I might explain here that, having booked our air-tickets on-line, and imagining Clark airport to be the airport for Manila, we were sorely disappointed and a tad annoyed that no one had pointed out to us that Clark was in fact a separate city, and had been a United States Air Force base, on Luzon Island, from 1903 to 1991. Though the American involvement was none of our business, Clark was a low cost carrier airport stuck out in the Philippine wilderness, some 30 miles from Manila.  It was therefore a further shock when we realised that we would have to navigate a path to the distant Makati City, which itself was on the fringes of Manila, and every bit of two hours away.

The dark Philippine early hours brought a scarcity of available transport.  After a significant amount of thoughtful head scratching, a worried frown or three, and looks of utter puzzlement between my wife and I, we managed to exit that miniscule airport and just miss the only vehicle we could have identified as a bus.
The time rapidly approached one a.m. and, after some debate about personal safety and thoughts about what could possibly happen if we bundled into the back of a local non-descript van - we were roughly bundled into the back of a seemingly non-descript van, and thus began our cramped journey towards Makati City.

Sitting in knee-touching intimacy with a mixed group of Filipino locals, I began to empathise with Mexican illegal immigrants and how they must feel on their illicit journeying towards El Norte (the North of America). One half of an hour later, the van stopped at something which might be identified as a bus terminus – mostly due to the number of buses. One smiling, kind, but firmly heroic Filipina guided us into the terminus and volunteered to find a suitable bus for our onward journey into Makati City (Manila). That smiling Samaritan suddenly bolted from our side and dashed in front of a bus. It was not a suicide attempt, but a dash to hail transport for us. Seemingly the first bus was not headed in the correct direction, so she tried a second with more success. Our saviour insisted that we board the bus and reasoned that it would take us to within half a kilometre of our destination - and it did, within a half kilometre in some direction or other.

On an adventurous two hour journey through the early morning streets of Manila, accompanied by dishevelled, sleeping humanity, we witnessed Call-Centre slaves crawling from their phone tied desks, fruit merchants piling mountains of dappled green watermelons and elongated jeepney taxis disgorging and being filled with all varieties of Filipino wage slaves. That shabby, but nevertheless welcome, transport edged its way along dimly yellow lit streets and inched its way towards Makati. The journey seemed every second of its two hour length, and as the time approached four a.m. - the bus stopped. The not unhelpful bus conductor lifted our luggage from his aromatic comfort zone, and finally we stepped down onto an almost deserted Makati highway.

The bus ambled off, leaving us, literally, stranded on a Manila main thoroughfare in the middle of a quarter-moon night. We innocents were without a clue as to how we were going to find our hotel. Suddenly, butter-yellow taxi after butter-yellow taxi emerged from the saffron twilight. One driver after another tried to entice us into dark air-con depths, offering fares ranging from 250 to 100 pesos. However, now being a tad cautious, none of those prices seemed at all genuine - so we began to walk. Yes, yes, I know – dark city, night, strangers, danger – I was well aware of our situation and had been in that situation once before, in Goa (India), and survived.

My beautiful, but somewhat trusting, wife walked up to the first stranger she witnessed, just off that taxi bestrewn highway. He was a well-armed, handsome young guard in a tight fitting khaki uniform. Within seconds of hearing of our plight, and no doubt because of the sweetest smile from my wife, that gun toting security guard flagged down a taxi and encouraged the driver to take us to our hotel - on the meter. There was a sense of 'or else' about his manner, as he noticeably rested his hand on his holstered gun stock. The cost - 54 pesos, we had been right in our suspicions. Sleep eventually caught up with us in that brown-themed mini-suit sixteen stories above the wakening street, and we slept fitfully, in preparation for an afternoon of business meetings.

Penang Christmas

martinbradley — Thu, 4 Jul 2013 12:27:00 GMT

“Ihachew” “Ihachew” “Ihachew”, those four-year-old’s words still ring in my aging ears. Until this very day I have no idea what I had done for that small child to stand, at three feet nothing tall, purse her cupid bow lips, place her hands on her hips and repeat (ad nauseum) “Ihachew” “Ihachew” “Ihachew” (I hate you). Having done with the verbal barrage, that diminutive critic turned and stomped off up the stairs in the biggest huff she could muster. It was Christmas in Penang or, to be more accurate, it was my first Christmas in Bukit Mertajam (BM) and my first ‘real’ Christmas for nearly seven years.

BM has become one of those places that people are very happy to escaped from, and even happier to return to on high days and holidays. It has ceased to be a place desirable enough to return to permanently due to ever changing politics and other divisions. Those of us who return to Bukit Mertajam as spouses, or other appendages of loved ones (or attempting to become loved ones), sooner or later have the profound desire to sidle across the bridge into Penang proper, and onto Penang Island. For years I have preferred the antiquated, aging, Butterworth to Penang chain ferry, its jellyfish infested waves and retrospective view of the mainland I was happy to be leaving for all sorts of personal, political and religious reasons. There is something about that grinding and clanking of that limping ferry which strikes me as being vaguely romantic. Perhaps those sounds speak of another era, a happier time when the Malaysian races were more integrated than now, or maybe they just remind me that I am very much a stranger in a strange land, with all the feelings of alienation that entails.

The enterprise of returning to your spouse’s home is, ostensibly, about going back to family. As with any Malaysian, or half Malaysian, family there is always, and underline always, the issue of food. Balik Kampung or the return home is just as much about having the comfort foods of home as it is about seeing those family and friends who you have long since left behind - in all senses of the term.

I was sitting in a petite coffee shop in Bukit Mertajam market. My spouse who was eating, or is that drinking - soup noodles. For some bizarre reason I was thinking of Frank Zappa, Mothers of Invention and all kinds of hip and not so hip, watching Chinese eat long sugarless donuts - Char Kuey, dunking them, Spanish style, into their thick black local coffee, and I was wondering.

I was wondering just what the hell I was doing there - approximately seven thousand miles from my Colchester homeland, amidst the strangest of strangers and thinking that it is a very long way from there to here, with decades gone, friends gone, heroes gone and just the sound of an old beat reverberating and the twang of a half-remembered guitar cord to keep my few remaining brain cells company. I was reminded that Christmas, and its following New Year, appears to be times of retrospection. Family, friends and past lives all swept through my memory - some partially, few wholly remembered, like some Scrooge nightmare, flash and those images, thoughts and reflections were gone - leaving nothing but the afterglow on my eyelids.

Brown shoes no longer make it, or do shoes of blue suede - they are far too hot for these equatorial climes. Cheap (Chinese-made) pseudo-rubber flip-flops rule the day. They are slipped on and tripped over, sliding on Bukit Mertajam market discards and debris as I exited that crowded market awash with coffee and some soupy noodle that just could never feel like the breakfasts that I was used to. Where were the croissants? Where the toast and Tiptree Marmalade? Where the Earl Grey tea of my homeland and the Irish butter to spread upon whichever scones, muffins or pastries I should desire. It was a very good question.

While in Europe, and other more temperate lands, gentlemen of girth were donning red and white suits, mothers were putting out mince pies, sausage rolls and a small glass of something alcoholic; in the Malaysian outback Christmas was being sidelined. The Christmas near idyll was marred by the local market belting out not Christmas carols, and all things seasonal, but the direst of dirges known to modern man. For the entire length of our stay the hastily erected tannoys sprayed us (from 8am to 12 midnight) with Darling Clementine (in Malay), Gangnam Style and songs ranging from the sheer awful to the just plain painful. Christmas was under siege. While I cooked, cleaned and wrangled with chickens and other assorted Christmas fair, my in-laws’ kitchen was besieged by ‘music’ loud enough to drown out the children’s TV viewing, and the Chinese relatives talking – and that is some feat.

A man is not judged by his roast chicken alone, but by his stuffing, gravy and by his custard. My custard, on that BM Christmas, being the first custard I had made for some considerable time, and taking into consideration that I was tired from the lack of sleep, was lumpy. I made amends by whipping quite innocent cream, covered my sins and my red Chinese wine flavoured trifle too. The meal, when eaten, was accompanied by a quite comfortable red wine and a passable rosé.

Christmas on the equator – burning heat and monsoonal rain, tends to erode notions of warm log fires, hot toddies and warming toes and hearts around the hearth. The lack of snow, and any form of genuine cold nags like a nightly mosquito; for air conditioning is simply no substitute for chilling snow and leg-breaking frost. I had to keep reminding myself that it was December, and not June or July, time for Christmas pud and not beach barbies. Christmas in Bukit Mertajam was very interesting indeed.

Cameron Highlands

martinbradley — Thu, 4 Jul 2013 12:20:00 GMT

Cameron Highlands was founded as part of the British love for escaping heat. The British, in their infinite wisdom, tended to invade hot countries and then proceed to complain about the heat - and thereby establishing Hill Stations to escape from that very same heat. Thus was Cameron Highlands created. Of course in those far off colonial times, Cameron Highlands was infamous for its cooling climate, insurgent communists and, later, disappearing planters (Jim Thompson). With the advent of global warming those cooling Highlands have simply become Highlands, with a temperature marginally cooler than the green, equatorial, lands below.

When I had my own Durian orchard, and lived in Perak, I visited Cameron Highlands on a fairly regular basis. In my ancient Kia Rocsta I would saunter up the winding road from Tapah, careen around the sheer drop bends, drive past indigenous sellers of local wild bee honey, and sidle towards the home of the festering wound smelling raffelasia plant and that establishment entitled - The Smoke Lodge (established 1937). In those days I had neither the money nor the inclination to sup at the pseudo-Western Smoke House, keen as I was to meld into the background of my adopted country, and wishing to sample not the delights of Brighton or Hove, but rather of Perak and Pahang. Times change and people change. Once in the Cameron Highlands I would buy the odd nicknack, copious amounts of honey and indulge in a few dozen strawberries - and regret that indulgence on the emetic drive down. Now it was Christmas. My first real Christmas for 7 years, and it was time to indulge in those Western delights.

Unfortunately we, that is my wife, children and I, were staying in the insalubrious Dahlia Apartments at Cameron Highlands, which in no way lived up to its floral name. The entire building seemed to suffer from a damp problem and our apartment, upon opening the rickety door with no bolt, smelled musty. Mental warning bells had began to sound when we had noticed the septuagenarian receptionist and piles of discarded furniture littering the building - those bells rang in great abundance on exiting the lift (on the fifth floor) and upon observing a threadbare settee - oozing stuffing. We navigated our way along that mould-stained landing and, as we did so, encountered several other seemingly war-torn items of furniture, no doubt casualties from the ongoing tourist skirmishes. The apartment was ample enough for the four of us, but the mould induced fragrance seemed to permeate everything. Bed sheets, blankets and carpets all smelled of mould. It was all we could do to try to sleep amidst all that dankness.

We exited that apartment in the damp evening. We left the kitchen tap, with its persistent, and damnably annoying drip, dripping. We bade farewell to the set of tablespoons so thin that Uri Geller could have used them in his spoon bending act, and wished to regain some of that initial excitement we had upon our arrival in Cameron Highlands.

In a newly born naivety we sought to seek solace in some kind of sumptuous repast, and to hell with the expense. The fact that it was raining was not the fault of The Smoke House, but the misunderstanding regarding the lack of Earl Grey Tea, was. Simply put, Lady Grey Tea is not Earl Grey Tea. Earl Grey Tea is flavoured with the oil of the bergamot plant. Lady Grey Tea - a newly fabricated invention by the Twinnings company, is flavoured with the Mandarin citrus. They are not, repeat not, interchangeable, despite the waitress insisting that they were one and the same - they are not. That was my first disappointment with The Smoke House. Admittedly it was a small matter, but it rather set the scene for the further disappointment.

Being Christmas time, The Smoke House was bedecked, not with boughs of holly but with a sufficiency of natural greenery, dried flora, mock topiary Bambis, mock blue Delft plates, mocking Tibetan tea pots (which in all reality had never rubbed shoulders with a Yak) and - poinsettias. The latter adding a welcome familiarity to the pseudo-Victorian museum version of Christmas which The Smoke House had chosen the emulate. Gazing upon those red and green poinsettias reminded me of those years in Clacton (On-Sea), when I would hasten to Sainsbury’s emporium of all things middle-class (and slightly exotic) in Colchester, to purchase the elegance of poinsettias to grace my Christmas dinning-table. With my mind firmly back in Malaysia, Pahang and Cameron Highlands, I gazed a little in awe at the mixed metaphors of The Smoke House Christmas presentation. Mixed metaphors and wrangles over tea do not bode well for a forthcoming dinner, especially one as expensive as The Smoke House Christmas dinner.

Ostensibly, the meal was set to explode, like a Malayan Emergency hand-grenade, with all kinds of sumptuous gourmet promise. Turkey was on the menu, accompanied by Cranberry jelly and Bread sauce. We also opted for Cod and Chips - the first time that I had seen Cod on the menu in Malaysia and, to round off my longing for nostalgia - Cauliflower Cheese, there being four more than hungry people at the dinner-table that night. The food was delivered in an appropriate style, with due deference to serving etiquette, but the portions fell far short of the promises the cost of each item had made. We were crestfallen. The paltry size of each dish, were as if Dicken’s Scrooge himself were eecking out the portions at the back of an impoverished kitchen. There was barely a spoonful of carrots, a minuscule amount of potatoes and hardly four slices of turkey on the overly small Christmas Dinner plate. The Cod was little better, in a strange batter, and the Cauliflower Cheese, I was convinced, was but a child’s portion. One bread roll, each, was proffered - not, you might notice, a basket of bread rolls and there was no butter knife to use with the meagre yellow curls. This all badly let that eatery down. Overall, the size of the meal was a great disappointment. It was right then, as we tried to savour the few crumbs of food we had been served, that all thoughts of breakfast at The Smoke House the following morning, disappeared. Instead, we had the remains of the Christmas fare I had cooked and we had brought with us, for breakfast.

Later, a customary drizzle mimicking London rain accompanied a jaunt to the Bharat, Cameron Valley, tea plantation, where meandering rows of tea bushes disappeared their green way into the distance and fresh light green leaves sparkled like lights in the occasional sun. The emporium designed to trap the unwary traveller was not surprisingly called The Tea Room. It boasted of scones (plain and blueberry) apple pie and cream and cheesecake. Liquid refreshments consisted of a variety of teas sold by that company, with the Malaysian sweet Teh Tarik taking preference, for local visitors, over the elusive Earl grey.

A barrage of wannabe photographers had descended upon the tea room shortly after we arrived. Their subject matter was not the grace and beauty of the plantations rows, but each other and themselves. Cameras with short, long or wide focal distances, ipads, iphones and tablets of all descriptions snapped the ubiquitous Facebook photos, jamming the free WIFI system which slowed to a crawl. Fingers pointed to cheeks, chins rested on hands, men posed manfully with or without cigarettes, children posed with the two finger ‘bunny ears’ salute and elderly relatives looked on a little dazed at all the flash photography directed at their children, grandchildren, nieces and/or nephews. After the obligatory photo sessions, young energized children sped away to play, slightly older children engaged themselves with Facebook or Twitter on their tablets, while older children and adults resumed their love affairs with their smart phones. The wonder of the scenery was all but lost on all but one woman who was sitting sketching, then capturing the sight, for posterity, in watercolour - my wife.

Time must have a stop and, after two nights of mustiness we eventually ambled our way back down those hills and headed back towards Ipoh. Lunch in Ipoh brought a most amazing roasted duck at the Sun Yeong Wai restaurant famous for its roasted duck – and with good reason too. We travelled on, back to Bukit Mertajam and our temporary home with the in-laws. The following day, an inexpensive Dim Sum repast followed at Huang Zuo in BM and all was well with the world, and that expensive Christmas meal in Cameron Highlands all but forgotten.

Battambang

martinbradley — Thu, 4 Jul 2013 10:50:00 GMT

The desiccated rat lying under the restaurant dining table was, probably, not the worse experience of my life, but it was, nevertheless, an eye opener to the northern Cambodian city of Battambang (pronounced battenbong).

It had been a not unpleasant journey from Siem Reap to Battambang. The sun perpetually glinted into the aged bus. Practically clichéd ladies in straw hats rode by on even older bicycles and mid-aged ladies proffered dried chilli fried insects – with curry leaves, which they held aloft, in rattan baskets, to bus travellers. As we ambled past rural Cambodia on roads evidently not used to speed, rice was being harvested in miles of paddy fields and small tractors, with long trailers, heaved weighty loads of rice sacks along the side of the ever dusty Khmer road.

The four hour journey (from Siem Reap to Battambang) was laced with intermittent sleep, fields, small villages, the ever-burning bright sun and glimpses of the tastiest baguettes outside of France, or so I was led to believe by one traveller just returned from Paris. Neither the sleepiness of the countryside, the oddness of the cuisine nor the seeming calm everywhere were to prepare me for the under-table deceased rodent, nor for the snub given by a workshop who had forgotten to close their classroom doors.

It was a time of learning. It was a time when mindfulness was tested to its limits. However, that mindfulness eased me through minor confrontations without my more natural recourse to choice English words and colourful phrases honed and hammered into shape by the wilds of my not-so-dear Essex (land of white ladies shoes and sparkling white handbags – for dancing around). I resisted the call to use that 15^th Century vulgar expletive beginning with ‘F’, or raise my whole bowman’s hand or, indeed, give the one finger salute when one American harpy commanded me and my students to exit from their workshop at Phare Ponleu Selpak. True, and in retrospect, she was only protecting the sanctity of her workshop, but there were no signs to indicate a workshop was taking place, nor their need for privacy. That female had a most rude and offensive manner but, in the fullness of time, we sailed beyond her turbulent maelstrom, past her harpy-clad rocks into the calming waters of that near serene charity art school.

One day past the harpy and dead rat incident and I was back at Phare Ponleu Selpak, this time giving my own talk about Art History, or rather a truncated version of 150 years of modern Art condensed into two hours. The student crowd could not have been more attentive as they sat cross-legged on the wooden floorboards. Shafts of light coming through wooden walls gave the room a fantasy ambiance, and made it entirely conducive to the sharing of visual delights. It was a little surreal, however, to be talking about Surrealism and having to stop after each sentence so that my translator (himself an artist and one of the founders of the charity Art School) could relay my thoughts. My gesticulations got lost in the translation process. There was I - all full of gusto and wide gestures, and there was my friendly translator calmly wrangling my meaning into Khmer. I have no idea if the travails of Andre Breton or the Gaudi inspired Salvador Dali actually reached those polite and intense students, I hope they did.

When not being translated, I headed to the San Puoy mountain temple and trundled my way up God knows how many steps, past just as many monkeys and eventually was awarded with a stunning view over the flat fields of Battambang. I was lucky. It was nearing sundown, sun rays highlighted gold covered images of Buddha and aspects of his teachings and the whole ambience was just too celestial. I say too celestial as I had to drag myself away and begin the descent, down those worn steps again - in the failing light. It was then, having survived the mountain steps and being driven to a local (now infamous) Cambodian restaurant, that I was confronted by that ignominious dead rat.

Siem Reap

martinbradley — Thu, 4 Jul 2013 10:47:00 GMT

Siem Reap had changed out of all proportion when I reached there nine months later. The old spreading tree, under which I had eaten so many meals, had disappeared to be replaced with a bank of shops, yet more restaurants and a boulangerie. Tourists had almost completely taken over the town, with puffy pink German, Israeli and British faces and their accompanying tightening shorts on display just about everywhere. Locals had taken refuge from the spreading Mexican restaurants, inside - at the old market, where you could still get authentic Khmer food, coffee and a not unreasonable bargain on a Cambodian made white cotton shirt.

The dusty tuk tuk journey from Siem reap airport, into town, recalled that fateful journey when I had proposed to the woman who, one day later, was to become my wife at the gallery Colors of Cambodia. However, on this newly dusty journey, I noticed that new hotels were sprouting up everywhere along that route into town - like so many dubiously wanted toadstools and were, no doubt, a necessary evil if the town is to continue to grow from the tourist US$.

Siem Reap seems to have lapsed into a reluctant symbiotic relationship with tourism. Tourists need that launch-pad to propel them towards the ancient joys of Ankor Wat, temples and their all too enthusiastic brush with another’s poverty, while Siem Reap is in desperate need of money to develop the town after the atrocities which occurred in Cambodia not too many decades ago – which left the whole country devastated.

Once more I trundled up the steep staircases to my attic studio apartment - above the Colors of Cambodia gallery. I almost literally dropped my camera, in my haste, and placed my tablet on the small wooden table provided, tidied away the red suitcase then immediately sprung downstairs to see what the children had been doing in my absence – wonders it would seem. On the walls were new watercolour and acrylic paintings, while gathered around the tables, inside, were advanced students drawing stunning artworks from photographs. We unpacked the boxes of materials I’d brought from Malaysia, and set about stacking them in the store-room, for use after I had gone. There was a buzz of excitement as I renewed old acquaintances, and then started planning for the following few days of my visit.

Despite its growing tourist trade, the ever present WiFi internet, and the nightly drunks – Siem Reap still holds both a charm and an undeniable peacefulness for me. It remains one of the few places where I can easily write poetry and prose, dance without hindrance and probably make no end of a pratt of myself. Ankor Wat – that grand Wat (monastery temple) mesmerised me on my first visit. It provoked me to write the lengthy poem – Colors of Cambodia, which I have since included in the book – A Story of Colors of Cambodia. Siem Reap/Ankor seems to lull me into a more balmy cultural existence. Maybe it is the centuries of culture layered in that tragic land, maybe it is the sight of oh so many Buddhist temples or maybe there is just something so very amazingly different about Cambodia and, in particular, Siem Reap.

On the last trip to Siem Reap I was in awe. Cambodia seemed very familiar, yet very different at one and the same time. There was a similarity to Thailand, and in particular Chiang Mi, while some of the rural villages reminded me of Perak and Malaysia’s kampongs. Yet there was always that difference, that undeniably Cambodian difference which pronounced itself in the language and in the local food, which was in no way similar to Malaysian food, but bore a slight resemblance to Thai cuisine – especially the salads. Street food seemed to be a disappearing art in Siem Reap but, aside from the fried insects, I could still find the spatchcock chickens and the Chinese influenced Gu Tsai Guay (fried chive cakes), on the rare occasion I was at the Old Market early enough. The wonderfully aromatic Vietnamese coffee still seems to be available – if you know someone who knows where to look – I had the Khmer artist Seney scout some out for me.

Harold Wilson may have said that a week may be a long time in politics, but a week in Siem Reap seems no time at all. I fairly flew around snooping in art galleries, attending exhibition openings, drinking at the Foreign Correspondents Club – which you no longer have to be a foreign correspondent to enjoy, and generally poking my nose into whichever art farty goings on would allow me to. And that was it. Schools visited, Art History lecture done, friends made and I was off again, back to Malaysia with the promise of a slight trip to the Philippines in the New Year.

Merlion City

martinbradley — Thu, 4 Jul 2013 10:44:00 GMT

Merlion city was awash with business types, drizzles of rain and a focused rushing towards year end and year beginning.

Singapore was just where I had left it several months beforehand - at the end of the Johor Bahru causeway and wagging Malaysia like some perverse dog’s tail wagging it’s slightly dowdy body. I had half expected, indeed wished for, an all lit-up Singapore in preparation for the Christian festival of Christmas. It was not to be. True, there were pockets of tinsel-mass – all glitter and huge baubles, but the overall feeling of Christmas had escaped, or had just been nudged out of the way by Deepavali. There, at the end of November, where Europe was all be-decked with Christmas cheer, holly and mistletoe, Singapore was still clasping its soft white office-worker hands and praying to Mammon. Christ was forgotten, and if he was remembered at all it was on Facebook or on those car stickers which preached to the cars, SUVs and mosquito-like motorcycles behind.

And then, rather surprisingly - there was ‘poo’.

It was unfortunate. I was loitering in an MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) station to the north of Singapore island. I had been awoken early to get my lift into Singapore. I was a tad hungry and still a great deal sleep deprived. It was my breakfast time and, on the way to breakfast, I espied a squat vending machine peering from out of a Singaporean news kiosk. Intrigued, I ventured closer. It was a vending machine such as I had not encountered before. Its sole function seemed to be to exude reconstituted instant mashed potato into a waxed paper cup, just that, nothing else. I was curious, perhaps not curious enough to try that machine’s wares as there was a red lit sign towards the right hand side, near where the mashed potato should dollop into the aforementioned receptacle.

Aside………I have to confess to nostalgia for instant mashed potato, or at least the kind of powdered potato, refreshed with hot water, which no doubt that vending machine would proffer. Back in the days of my impoverished youth – that is before my days of impoverished teens and all the subsequent impoverishments of the intervening decades, there was Cadbury’s Smash – instant mashed potato at its finest. The TV advert ran – For Mash Get Smash. I remember that advert involving metallic futuristic aliens but cannot, for the life of me, remember the connection between aliens and mashed potato.

Here in Asia, a certain Colonel’s Southern American fried chicken comes with a small plastic tub of reconstituted mashed potato and a drizzle, a mere drizzle that is, of brown cornflower thickened ‘gravy’. It too reminds me of Cadbury’s Smash and I further confess to a mild addiction to that soft, powdery pseudo-tuber, pseudo-victuals.

Back to that vending machine - the blood red sign, adjacent to the dispensing area of the mashed potato vending machine, read – POO. I did a double-take, and to this day I cannot fathom why that sign said POO. Perhaps it was some malfunction of the LED display, or perhaps it was a consumer warning – I shall never know, but I noted that warning and moved on mashless, hungry and pooless.

There comes a time in every man’s life when he yearns for the comfort of coffee and books. Ok, not every man’s life – maybe just a few cruddy, fuddy-duddy minority’s lives are afflicted by that particular yearning – but that day mine was. Still suffering the pangs of a breakfast not eaten, that yearning drove me to shoot to the fourth floor of the Ion building, off Orchard Road, in Singapore.

The day was characteristically hot. I was tired from a distinct lack of sleep on the drive down to Singapore and the passage through customs and immigration which, while not too lengthy, was nevertheless was wearying. Sleep was knocking my head with Gargantuan or was that Patagruel’s weighty mallet. I headed for the Books and Coffee corner of ‘Prologue’. Why Prologue I hear you mutter. It was simply because it was there, and the additional fact that the comfy chairs of Starbucks were all full, and the fact that Borders had long since closed its doors to the book browsing public in Singapore.

Coffee and/or cakes came with a free book. Free that is if you had spent S$16 or more on a single purchase – I had. There was a slight, perhaps meager selection of aging books available for ‘free’ - perhaps books that no one in their right mind would have wanted to purchase at the proper price. After a reasonable exorbitantly priced ‘Flat White Coffee’ sleep eluded me. Sleep just would not come, not even when I leaned my tired head against the double-glazed picture window displaying Orchard road and its tree lined fairway.

I was left in a bizarre limbo between wakefulness and the comfort of a leisurely sleep. Chattering Chinese customers, nattering netbooks and tattling toddlers forbade me the nap I so richly deserved. I just could not knock-off, nor could I claim any portion of 40, not even 39.99 winks.

Later, one meeting down and another were in the offing. Singapore was in danger of losing its luster. I was still a little titillated to be there - breathing in the essence of dollars and imagining what life must be like for the moneyed, and I momentarily regretted being simply the son of an apple-farm tractor driver - but suit-wearing, kow-towing and working under a boss was not for me. In the streets the sign sang – LIVE WELL, NO SMOKING BY LAW and SWING IT STRONGER. That last could have been an advertisement for Viagra, but turned out to be one for double-strength fish oil. Perhaps a better advert would have targeted hair loss - as there seems an inordinate amount of men with bald or balding pates in Singapore. I chuckled a momentary chuckle, and then swept my lengthy graying locks under my equally faded John Lewis pseudo-Stetson.

Meetings were eventually met, galleries were eventually visited, and the final metallic S$1 was collected from the MRT ticket dispensing machine. I headed back across the causeway, back up the North South Highway to my little Chinese enclave on the fringes of the city whose muddy waters merged beside Mogul inspired mosques. I was washed out with the high life. I needed to wallow once again in inefficiency, waste and a bureaucracy so bureaucratic that Franz Kafka would instantly have written an entire series of books about it.

Dream Weaving

martinbradley — Thu, 4 Jul 2013 10:18:00 GMT

I imagine that cat’s name must have been Tiger, or its equivalent in Malay (Harimau), but I think of him as Blake’s ‘Tyger’. He was certainly one of the most striking cats that I have ever seen. He lay there, in that long greenhouse, stretching to his fullest extent, on that old wooden table, with the table’s grey only serving to make that animal’s fur even more golden, and his stripes more pronounced. It was as if that aging table, the greenhouse, the plant nursery and maybe the whole hill too - belonged to him, and maybe it did.

I had spent the entire morning, and most of the afternoon, on that hill, at Janda Baik, near Bukit Tinggi, in Pahang. It was an hour’s drive through Selangor, on the way to Genting Highlands. There was a nice little R&R, conveniently situated at the bottom of the hills. Mc Donalds’ had proved a convenient convenience and, after loading the SUV with bottles of wild honey – courtesy of the local Orang Asli, I meandered my way up that hill, up narrow roads and espied countless rest houses, camps, training centres and one or two really charming places, which would not have had to try too hard to seduce me to stay. But stay I didn’t.

That golden cat, stretched in all his furry feline glory appeared after a midday sojourn wandering around the open gardens of that Malay political writer Syed Hussein Al-Attas. There was a hand-painted sign cheekily calling those gardens - Wadi Hussein. After a morning traipsing around Janda Baik, with its similarities to Perak and Cameron Highlands, it was a sheer delight to fall into the gardens of that author’sThe University of Life, and be introduced to one of the most magical and surprisingly serene places that I have, to date, visited. It truly seemed to be an oasis.

Being an Englishman, I was a little wary about just marching through someone else’s gates, and helping myself to their obvious delights, but my companion egged me on and I followed into the most amazing gardens. All my apprehension and pseudo-middle class British pretentions melted away like so much dairy produce in the noon-day heat.

It is needless the say that the day was moist; Malaysia is mostly moist, it is moister still in hills where humidity lurks amongst the dense foliage. I was moist, my shirt was moist, and moistness was creeping in places that I would rather not have a moistness creep.

I wandered hither and thither. I gazed at amazing waters, gawped at surprisingly coloured urns (not Greek), and was charmed by the splendid array of blossoming flora. Within those grounds sprouted houses, guest lodges, small and large ornamentation - organically blended amidst the planted flora until it was difficult to tell which had been placed and which planted. It was a veritable wonder assailing my eyes. Every nook echoed a cranny, and every cranny had a marvel to present.

My eyes darted everywhere. My camera clicked until it could click no more – flat battery. There was so much to see, to take in and to savour. I peered and snooped with, and without, mechanical devices – my mind was enraptured. It is true, I wax eloquent. I ramble like a poet in my writing, but since having entered those gardens it has become difficult not to do so.

The midday sun, berated by Noel Coward, formed painterly patterns on tiles, grasses and statuary. Light, and its tricks, conjured a wonderland replete with giant concrete mushroom. I half expected to see a gigantic caterpillar smoking a pipe. Was I the Mad Hatter? My hat was a little age-worn and discoloured, but did that make me mad? I longed for tea, and a biscuit or three and travelled on.

Food was to come later – down the hill, and after the stroking of that magnificent golden being who appeared to be half-civet and half-cat. Photographs were forbidden in the plant nursery not five minutes drive from Al-Attas’s gardens. The nursery was where ‘Tyger’ rested his golden mane, so I took no photographs. That act of forbidding robbed me of any joy that I may have had in that nursery. It robbed the Helliconia of their sun-kissed glory and made the fruiting Mulberries mere commonplace. That censorship deprived us of the ability to relive the scents and sounds of that nursery, for of that enterprise and their multiplicity of plants I shall say no more.

After a late lunch (which threatened to empty our collected wallets) we tumbled into Bukit Tinggi and the fruit market. Red bananas were bought, as were passion fruit. On the way back, the Al- Attas gardens haunted me, as did the fact that I didn’t get to meet that gentleman himself. I was also haunted by that spectacular golden beast, seen in the plant nursery – calling it a cat is insufficient, and other words seem either too pompous or too belittling.

That day seemed as though an angel had stripped Lou Reed’s song of its negativity, and strove to create a Perfect Day in actuality. It was the sort of day that your mind returns to time after time, dipping its toes in the serenity and the peacefulness of that place and time.

Bereft of Bacon

martinbradley — Thu, 4 Jul 2013 10:14:00 GMT

To have been bereft of ‘real’ bacon for neigh-on seven years was a great hardship. I was born and brought up as an Englishman; the consumption of bacon, and all things porcine, was second nature to me. The absence of pork products, and in particular – bacon, in my life for those oh so many lean years was poignantly noticeable. That lack became somewhat burdensome to me, in the hot and humid equatorial country where I had chosen to end my days.

Beef bacon, chicken bacon and all other forms of meat ‘bacon’, which does not derive from a porcine source, is not bacon. Bacon is, at its most simplest – pig meat cured with salt, and that is the most important part – it is meat from a pig. Bacon comes from a pig, it is pig meat, it is not, repeat not, from any other animal except from a pig. It is porcine. Beef or chicken bacon just is not bacon; it is a gross misunderstanding of English terminology and a cunningly mischievous word play on behalf of some. Bacon, or so we are led to believe from internet sources, has been with us since Roman times. Bacon is thin slices of pig meat that is boiled, salted or smoked to produce a most distinctive flavour – that of deliciously cooked pig.

In my seven-year forced abstinence, I constantly daydreamed of bacon sandwiches. Bacon sandwiches had been my saviour as a small boy. In the late afternoon, I would traipse back from my almost entirely hateful secondary school, dragging my education weary feet up the formerly Anglo-Saxon hill and through the Norman Castle Park, to reach the town bus station. As I sauntered, my recurrent youthful fantasies included a drive-by featuring the mythically marvellous Boudicca, knives on her whirling chariot wheels, ploughing through the school bullies who were always making my life hell. Those fantasies tended to dissipate as I crossed the road by the war memorial, and caught an imagined scent of bacon sandwiches.

In the bus station cafe, fronted by the monthly American comic book display, lurked the most delicious of sumptuous repasts – those inequitable bacon sandwiches. Those truly divine sandwiches were sodden with greasy bacon fat, and stuffed with mouth-watering rashers of fried streaky bacon. The small boy that I was could only enhance that bacon loveliness with Heinz Tomato Sauce – none other condiment would do. I was proud to have that sauce, and accompanying bacon fat, dribble down my young chin – it was a coming of age, an initiation into adulthood. Bacon sandwiches were my liberator then, as now. I saved my school lunch money, went hungry all afternoon, and denied myself the pleasure of a comic or two, just to be able to delight in bacon sandwiches at that old Roman town, bus station cafe. It was a small piece of heaven.

The country in which I had found myself, reduced the grand notion of cured porcine bands to thin strips of beef, which could have be mistaken for leather....I continue to have doubts along those lines. There is simply no comparison between what is so loosely called beef bacon, and the real, genuine article – bacon from a pig. The name ‘bacon’ is most misleading. It was not until I had once holidayed in that sunny clime - where three predominant cultures try to avoid rubbing shoulders with each other, that I ‘discovered’ the entity known as ‘beef bacon’. It was a severe culture shock.

There were two ribbons of a dark brown substance lying on my hotel breakfast plate. I prodded them, half expecting them to shuffle off the plate, slither across the table and plop onto the floor. They didn’t. I poked those two objects sniffily, then slashed my yellow egg yolks (with apologies to Buñuel and Dali), and let them bleed across those odd objects. I punctured and cut those brown strips, dowsed them in yolk and eased then into a position commensurate with chewing. They would not be chewed. I tried harder and eventually evacuated them from my oral orifice, much to the disgust of my travelling companion. I discovered later that those two dark brown objects were called, laughingly – beef bacon. During the years that followed, I abstained from the travesty that was beef bacon, and later – in the company of people of certain religious convictions, abstained from real bacon too. After my epiphany and resurrection, I rushed headlong to Tesco – cornucopia land of wines, spirits et al, and purchased rashers of what was to be the most delicious bacon I had ever tasted. It was delicious because of the seven-year denial.

In days off from work and writing, I actively seek venues where bacon may be consumed, despite the creeping religious limitations of the beautiful country in which I now reside.

Mother In Law's Dumplings

martinbradley — Thu, 4 Jul 2013 10:08:00 GMT

Mother-in-Law’s kitchen was infused with the sort of light which could only be accurately captured by that miracle of Chinese film making - Zhang Yimou. Inside - the ambience was Chinese rustic meets culinary museum as a poignant and pregnant romanticism filled the cooking scent-filled air. I was poised – at the very tip of my metaphorical seat, to engage, for the very first time, in my new family’s ‘Dumpling Festival’, otherwise known as Duan Wu Jie.

I tittered a Frankie Howard titter when my new mother-in-law offered me her dumplings. It was a cultural misunderstanding – not the first and will certainly not be the last. At the very last minute I realized that I was the only one in the room getting the joke – the smile on my lips died an ignominious death, the way of all such, and I let the bawdy Englishman in me take a backseat for the remainder of our visit.

A plate of small dumplings was set before us. It was being converted into a ‘still life’ which my wife was so painstakingly drawing, but as she did so the ‘subject’ was rapidly disappearing as I snatched sweet dumpling after sweet dumpling, unwrapped and then dipped them into a gula Melaka (palm sugar) sauce. Dripping with sauce, I proceeded to throw each summery coloured delicacy into my mouth with barely room enough for breath. That pile of yellow dumplings (Ki Chang) – so called because of their colour was reducing at an alarming rate – alarming to my artist wife that is, not to me – I was quite happy with the way things were going. I was not deterred by the stickiness of those goodies, nor of the fiddliness of unwrapping the bamboo-leaf packaging. In fact, as time slipped by I was becoming quite adept at unwrapping all things Chinese.

Ma-in-Law’s antique fan-cooled kitchen spoke of sundry other worlds. It was enhanced with flavoured teas from Japan, crispily dry crackers from the Americas and, of course, a super-abundance of delicious foodstuffs from the mother country – China. Woks bearing the patina of ages sat beside antique rice-cookers, those rice-cookers sat next to aging hot water boilers bearing antediluvian brands, while gleaming tins of straw mushrooms leaned on other tins stuffed with black bean sauce doused fried Dace.

We sat, correction – I sat, and consumed delicious sweet yellow dumplings while dragon-boats bobbed up and down on equatorial waters a few kilometres away and memories of dead Chinese poets haunted the warm air. It was my very first ‘Dumpling Festival’ and aside from a heaviness brought about by over consumption, the day was looking like a great success.

That visit, unlike previous visits where car tyres were counted and I was grilled as to my intentions towards the family’s only daughter, was also looking like a great success as Dim Sum followed dumplings and yet more dumplings followed Dim Sum. My waistline – a little dormant over a six month period, began to assert itself onto my (British bought) Bangladeshi leather belt. It was a gluttonous day, a day concerned with Mother-in-Law’s dumplings, of long forgotten delights of Chinese delicacies and, ultimately, the warmth, love and care of families. Schoolboy titters had long since been left in the playground of my memory, and cultural misunderstanding pushed to the side of the plate as the last yellow dumpling slipped with ease from the fork, seemingly dipped itself into the sweet sauce and hastened its way to my waistline. Then, SUV loaded and permanently visiting stray dog stuffed back onto the rear seat - we once more shot down the North/South Highway, back towards the city haze, to suburbia and home.