Details, or the lack of them: Yes, this is hideously late - it took ages to write and then ages to be vetted. There are blog entries that have been easy to write but this hasn't been one of them. I did random touristy things, but KL was mainly about people and meals and hanging out and conversations and I really dislike recording details of conversations. It's not just because "Record of Conversation" sounds awfully like work (there's actually a form for them, though I've not used one in years...). Conversations have many many stories and opinions that people may feel comfortable with me knowing but not with everyone knowing. This means that not much happens herein...
Ray: Ray is a Malaysian Chinese friend from uni days who returned to Malaysia a decade back (with another one-year spent in Australia in the intervening period) and now has a security equipment business and a fledgling drinks export business. He put me up for more than two weeks in total in his apartment while I was in KL between my trips to Taman Negara, Kuala Selangor, Melaka, and Penang. Thanks heaps, Ray!
Welcome to KL: My first day in KL was a bit shambolic as my bus from Singapore failed to pick me up so I didn't meet up with Ray as arranged and stayed in Chinatown instead.
Velvet: I managed to get in contact with Ray late that night - he was at Velvet, a club in KL's "Golden Triangle". The occasion was the birthday of Jo, a close friend of Ray's. It was really good to see Ray again after several years. Jo dragged me round and introduced me to lots of her friends, most of whose names I promptly forgot (if I could hear them at all over the music - it took about eight tries to get "Farsha", for instance) and had to be reintroduced to at later quieter occasions. I'd a few drinks, a bit of dancing, and some half-shouted conversation with Ray and others, before heading back to Chinatown.
Random Touristy Things: Lake Gardens, Bird Park, Butterfly Park, museums, inner-city streets and shopping malls, train system, bus system. Didn't ascend Petronas Towers - I'm still not a morning person and I never got moving early enough (you have to get there before 09:00* to get tickets, and KL's traffic is jammed enough that you need to start travelling before 07:30).
[*I'm moving to 24 hour time - pm and am are annoying me]
Luk-Luk: ... (or Lok-Lok) is a form of steamboat where you select skewers of various foods (meats, fish dumplings, vegetable, tofu...), dip them in boiling stock to cook, and then eat them with sauces. Ray and I ate it twice in one night at a Pasar Malam (night market). The first was standing at a mobile van, and the second sitting down at the hawker centre immediately beside it with Jo and Susan. Afterwards we went back to Susan's and watched Prison Break (in English with subtitles) with Ting and Farsha.
Quote from the evening's sparring:
Susan: "Talk to the hand because the face ain't listening"
Taro: "...Sorry, what was that?"
Language: Unfortunately my pidgin Bahasa Indonesia never really got extended into pidgin Bahasa Malaysia - people in KL generally spoke English by choice since in a mixed crowd it's neutral.
Deli: Ray and I met up with Jo, Ting, and Jo's Melburnian co-worker Peter for a dinner of sandwiches and wine (yeah, an odd combination) at a deli in upmarket Mont Kiara. Jo works in PR and her company, with offices in Singapore, KL, and Bangkok, is owned by an Australian (Peter's dad). Most of Jo's friends are in PR or Marketing (I asked someone at another gathering if he were in PR and he said that he wasn't. I replied that that made a change because everyone else was, to which he responded that he _used_ to be in PR)
Barbecue: When Ray said that his condo had a barbecue, I was expecting a flat metal plate - gas or electric. What I wasn't expecting was multiple platforms of chicken wire. Once the rather grotty top wire was covered with alfoil, and charcoal was loaded onto the second platform and lit by Rohan, there was a hot spot big enough to cook a steak. Given that there were a dozen people there, it was lucky that Susan had brought a proper barbecue. It had never been used before and took about forty minutes to set up, but it was faster to do that and then cook the remaining food.
Chok Eng: Back in the early 70s when my mother was posted to a school in Terengganu, she taught Chok Eng English, and they've remained in contact since. I met Chok Eng about 20 years ago when she came to Australia for a month. Her family were ethnic Chinese in a predominantly Muslim Malay area, but all have left the town - for KT, KL, and Johore.
Fish Head Soup: Chok Eng chose Fish Head Soup for dinner. I was a bit dubious about it, but it turned out to be pleasant, if slightly bland (she said there probably wasn't much fish head). My digestion was helped by the fact that no fish head was visible.
Forest Research Institute Malaysia: Chok Eng took me to visit FRIM, which is on the outskirts of KL. There's a museum, offices and laboratories, gardens and plantations, a waterfall, rainforest walks, a canopy walk, and leeches. Boy are there leeches. The leeches are generally much smaller than the ones in Taman Negara, which is not a good thing, as big leeches are easier to see and avoid. FRIM investigates sustainable forestry, forestry management techniques, wood use and protection, etc.
For those at the University of Canberra in 1994:
** Louis and girlfriend Kate spent a few days in KL while en route to Germany to watch the world cup. Kate was at Arscot House but she wasn't one of the Kates that we knew from that period. I haven't seen Louis in ages - he's still in Canberra but now southside.
** Nik is engaged, hideously busy, and likely to get busier as he continues to divide his time between Kuantan (China) and Malaysia. We had lunch in Penang and dinner in KL at the start and end of my time there. I met his fiancee the first time in KL but unfortunately she speaks very little English, and I no Mandarin. Hopefully we'll catch up again in Kuantan (and he'll be a little less busy!)
** Ray is happy, and probably returning to Australia late next year.
** Taro continues to slack around the world on his <cough> fourteen and a half months of half-paid leave<cough>, resisting his entrepreneurial friends' encouragement to think a little more entrepreneurially.
