City of Cats - AKA Land of the HornbillZ

Today is day two of CIJ's ICT Training crash course in Kuching, Sarawak (OR day three of my cold). The session is aimed at indigenous groups from across Malaysia- there about 20 people here, some from the Penninsula, others from Sarawak, and a few from Sahbah. It's only a two day affair, but I gather it's been really well organized - some really useful information, laid out in a sequence that really makes sense. Gaya, Shawn and Jen (the latter two are from Kuching) have discussed/taught: writing presses releases, formal e-mails, using Skype and Youtube, and Blogging. The majority of the presentation has been in Malay, so I havn't been of TOO much help - but I've flashed some smiles and those make the world go round.
Kuching translates into cat. While Jose and I are here (Apsara and Zac are heading back to KL with Gaya tomorrow) I plan to get the most out of my inner feline, whatever that means. I'm really excited about the next few days - this morning, Jose and I were invited by our driver to hang out at a longhouse community and eat Durians tomorrow (a waterfall fits in there somewhere as well). On Sunday, hopefully the weather will be decent enough to allow us a day wandering through te trails in Bako Park. And you know what that means.. proboscis monkeys!!
Anyways, here are some photos from CIJ's Sarawak adventures thus far:









P.S. I'm now addicted to Malaysian pulled tea. It is to tea what a Tim Horton's Double Double is to legit coffee.

A Week in Seven Pictures

I took this from the parking lot on top of SungeiWang mall with my little Cannon Elph - I havn't edited it at all - the natural colours were too cool to mess up. Interestingly enough, this was shortly after I'd discovered that there were two floors to the mall I had yet to visit. Getting to one required me randomly deciding to walk across a roof parking lot. Hmmm. Good thing I didn't run in to Bowie.
I have a confession to make: I took this one a while back. I know. Scandelous, right? Argh... I'm doing well to establish credability with this photo essay. Though that having been said, I did omit this from the title. Anyways, these were playing at the Coloseum theater - one of the oldest movie theaters in KL, located near little India. Unfortunately, neither of these were in English. I do intend to go see a Tamil movie while I'm here though.
Thursday was the International Conference on Ethnic Relations at the local university. Me and Jose went to help Miss Phang sell books (mostly related to press freedom and the Malaysian gov), but ended up sitting in on most of the sessions. This shot is unrelated to the conference, but Did happen on campus. I'm not quite sure what it was about.
40 Winks at No Black Tie, last Friday. The two bands before this, Estrella and Stoned Revivals were amazing. 40 Winks was cool, as this was my first Ska show, let alone Malaysian Ska show. Unfortunately, the ska bit was a little short - at only 25 minutes, the set could have been much longer. But all n all, an excellent evening! Zac, Jose and I managed to get "Reserved" seats at both Palate Pallate (excellent dinner) and No Black Tie. Sure I felt a little guilty, but it was excellent.
On
On our way to Miss Phang's house on Sunday, I stopped to get some Mcdonald's fries. I tried a local delicacy - McShaker fries. Imagine mixing Shake and Back with McDonald's. It's got the goods, baby. It is also amazingly salty.
Miss Phangs - essentially a day dedicated to eating. I havn't been so consistently full throughout a day like this... well ever. Also her husband kept feeding us beer, so that didnt help.

Photo albums... delicious

I Almost Forgot... Part Six

On the transatlantic flight over to KL, I watched the movie Ghost World. During my first few days in KL, I was dreadfully jetlagged and found myself thinking over the various movies I watched on the plane. This is probably why I noticed that there was something suspicious about the popular toothpaste brand "Darlie." I remember in my jet-lagged stupor wandering around the hyper-market Marcato and fixing my eyes on the toothpaste logo... flashes of the Cook's Chicken poster from Ghost World raced through my mind.

(source: Wikipedia)

"Wait a minute," I thought to myself "... is that... 'blackface'?" I was quite thoroughly perplexed. There's no way that a major brand would continue using that logo if that's what it referenced. So, once I got over my jet lag and could properly think, I did what most info-seekers do... wikipedia. It turns out, I was bang-on.
Darlie is actually an update name - the Taiwan-based company used to be called "Darkie." Wow. Here's a picture of the logo's transformation, courtesy of Wikipedia:



Interesting, no? So nutters.

No Black Tie Tonight

Tonight is the second last night for the "No Black Tie Music Showcase 3" and I'm making a special point to go. A couple weeks ago, me and José were pumped about going to go check out 40 Winks, a local ska band somehow at the last minute forgot until about 3 days after the event. Apparently 40 Winks is pretty big here, according to one interview they've played in about venue in Malaysia. I was a little chagrined to find out we'd missed them, as I've never really experienced any Malayian Ska, but it looks like a second chance abounds tonight! I reckon me, José and Zac are going to pre-jam somewhere and head over there for 10ish. The show, also featuring Estrella and Stoned Revivals is happening at No Black Tie, on Jalan Mesui, just around the corner from 38 Bidara. I'm pretty excited - perhaps I'll be able to hone my budding photog skills? Only time will tell. Cover is only RM 20 (7ish CDN) ... so thats kinda sweet

An Interesting Encounter, Part 2

I was lounging at the patio of the Coffee Bean at Pavilion last night, using their wifi from an inconspicuous table/hideout around the corner from the front door. I'd already just had a coffee from the Estana Curry House, and a Coffee Bean one would surely set me over my goal budget of RM 20 per day. In short, I was using their wifi without buying anything and feeling very sneaky about it. Dangerous even. As an integral part of most my plans that somehow go awry, I put on my headphones and absorbed myself in my computer so as to seem too busy to disturb over trivial matters like buying something. Well, this worked for awhile - I even got a phone call in before things took a strange turn.
This strange turn went something like this: I was listening to iTunes loud enough to drown out most noise from the real world when I saw someone in my peripherals. An older chubby white fellow saying something in my general direction that got lost in the chaos of the new Of Montreal album I was listening to. I pulled out my earbuds,

"Sorry?" I asked
"are you... finding you way around all right...?"

Now that I was looking in his direction, I could see that the man was quite drunk and a little unsteady in his treads. The man looked to be in his 60s and this wasn't entirely a conversation I was wanting to get into; after all, I was immersed in MSN and Facebook (important daily activities). I quickly made up my mind to escape,

"Yup. Thanks" I answered and stuck my face in my computer. My peripherals were strangely busy that day, and I saw the mat selleh still standing there. "Are you?" I feebly asked, feeling escape slip through my fingers.

"What?" responded the unsteady man.

"Are you finding your way around? Are you looking for somewhere?"

"What? No... I am ... just making conversssation. I enjjoy confusing people." And with that, he sat down at my table and I knew I was trapped. I glanced around in panic, looking for a way out of what was surely to be an irritating encounter, but was without help. I was alone and without any excuses that wouldn't cut me off from the warm network of faces on my computer.

To be honest, I decided to give in - I knew then that it would most likely be more irritating to continue replying in short sentences than to have a real conversation. As such, I learned many things over the next ten minutes or so. Here was a man from Norway who now lives in Australia and is currently a visiting professor in KL that teaches engineering. When he was young, he joined the french legion in Algeria and saw the world "as it was in biblical times" and received ... eight medals. He even directed me to the website where some photos from the war were. After that, he was a sailor and maybe at some point saw Toronto, but is unsure because at that point he was smack dab in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis - he never quite elaborated on this point, but it was intense. At this point, things took a deep turn as he lamented on how different the world is today - he raised some important questions, such as "what good is all of this experiences when I die? I can't take them with me." There was a moment of silence and then the fellow took off... never to be seen again.

I returned to my MSNing and thought deeply about how I was going to blog about the encounter. In conclusion, the convo itself did not turn out to be irritating - it was actually quite interesting and full of existential questions. In fact, I felt strangely enlightened by the end of it...

Interesting Tidbit from Malaysia

People ride motorcycles a lot here.
For seriously.
Motorbikes and Mopeds rule the streets. Unlike in Toronto, where motorcyclist tend to be hardcore - i.e. matching suits, intense yet stylish helmets etc - people are very casual about it here. In fact, it is completely normal to ride around with a backwards windbreaker on. Frankly, I'd be embarrassed to ride WITHOUT one. Apologies to the poor fellow whose photo I snapped for this entry and who will henceforth be immortalized on the web.

I Almost Forgot... Part Five

Okay so it rains a lot here. The weather is pretty predictably all over the place - one can be pretty sure that at some point in the day it will be blue skies, overcast, misty and thunderstormy. For example! Right now, I'm sitting at Old Town White Coffee, drinking an iced coffee, watching 30 Rock in one window of my computer, and looking at the weather in another. For the next six days the temperature will be 32, 31, 31, 30, 31, 31, with thunderstorms across the board.
Anyways, one would think all this sitting water would lead to mosquitoes like crazy. Well, at least I did... yet no dengue fever yet. In fact, mosquitoes havn't been too bad at all - I'd say they were worse in the Toronto. Anyways, I spotted the culprit responsible for all this mosquitoelessness and snapped a few pictures:

This CAN'T be a healthy job. This fellow was spraying bug repellent like it was nobody's business. Well... certainly not mine in any case. It was kind of fun to walk through because of a) the suspense that it was just a little too toxic and b) such a scenario (i.e. clouds of toxic smoke, abandoned government buildings...) is ripe - RIPE - for zombies.