KL

Kuala Lumpur means muddy river. There are muddy rivers all over this city. I take a bridge over one on the walk home from the train station. The water is never clear, plus it has an assortment of garbage floating down it. I’m morbid and always think that the piece of who knows what is an arm or a leg or something. Anyway its not a river you would ever want to take a canoe down let alone dip your toes in. I would rather take a bath in the Scioto than put my foot it that river. Get this, There are always men or boys fishing in it. This is in the middle of a ‘modern’ city. Someone told me that they usually sell what they catch to local shops. Chalk up another reason not to eat at a hawker stand, really how many ways are there to get diarrhea? .

On the 5 min. walk from our condominium to the train station there is a ‘Buddhist temple’ this rickety wooden structure painted red with black Chinese lettering all over and shiny fake gold decorations. Usually they are a little nicer looking but this one looks like it could collapse any second. There are always about 10 mangy looking men lounging around outside and strewn throughout the area. They heckle me every single time I walk past. “hey baby” “I love you” “sweet white girl”… I don’t think that’s what you say to a girl as she has to step over your pool of used-to-be-curry-vomit you left in the middle of the sidewalk and smell your rancid b.o.
There are several train lines that run through the city. The ones that we take most often are actually really nice. If you ever went into the depths of the NYC subway you probably felt like you were still back in 1678 or whenever those holes were dug. Here the lines are fairly new and surpisingly well maintained, cleaned and air conditioned. That’s great. Regardless if it’s a nice train or not I am still much happier trekking it on my two feet( yes, I just invested in some Birkenstocks…) and waiting for a train or hailing a gypsy cab than owning a car. Even though that would be so convenient and nice sometimes when you know you have a five min. walk to the train at Titiwangsa(our stop. Try and pronounce it.. Lol) then a 15 min ride to Masjid Jamid then a 5 min. walk to the star line train and another 3 stops to Bangsar then a 15 min walk slightly uphill in the 80 degree heat.

I love the ministry here. The territory is extremely international. In one street you can meet people from Malaysia(so from here they will speak maybe 4 different languages), China, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and more. Usually these people would love to have something to read in their native tongue. Always carrying lots of tracts is a must.

My roommate Jen’s deaf r.v. works at a local kopitiam(coffee shop) and when we went visit her she ‘stole’ us food. She said don’t worry my boss not here, you no pay, sh sh. . .We did try to pay… Then we went back the other day and her sister was there visiting her. The sister who doesn’t even work there asked us if we liked egg tarts and proceeded to look around suspiciously, tip toe up to the display case, pull out two egg tarts in a very shady manor, then brought them to us and said they were free… interesting. O, an egg tart is like a quiche with just a plain slightly sweet custard filling. Its tasty and probably fattening… This is Malaysia after all, where the two main food groups are fried food, and sugary food

umm i cannot make that picture sit the right way for some reason. technical difficulties...

the south/the future?

We arrived in Singapore Thursday night and left early Saturday morning. Not much time but we managed to do plenty of eating, my favorite activity. Friday was spent shopping . Which you could just spend weeks doing because there are so many huge multi-level malls and every other street has a market full of open air stalls that are hawking all kinds of junk no one really needs. I bought a watch at one not so much because I need something to tell the time with(that’s what cell phones are for, right?) but I just have been wanting one with a really big round face and a little band. I bargained the woman down from 10$ to 7. That made me happy. Later I realized the second hand is ticking in place. One-one thousand one-one thousand one-one thousand. So if you see me wearing it don’t go ahead and ask for the time.
Michelle and I got up late and had a traditional singaporian breakfast, 2 soft boiled eggs(so I discovered they still taste good half cooked even if it looks like snot, plus they only use brown eggs here!), kaya toast(homemade bread toasted with this jam made out of sugar and milk, no fruit involved, plus a SLICE of butter), and iced coffee(made with the strongest coffee ever brewed and sweetened condensed milk). I -am expecting my teeth to fall out any minute now and my dr. to tell me I have diabetes on my next visit.
The moment I got off the bus I noticed almost everything in the city is Disney World clean. The opposite of Kuala Lumpur where you feel like Pig-pen, always surrounded in a cloud of grime(I exaggerate a lot and I swear I am not exaggerating about the grime in KL). Then I noticed the power washers. Most of the city gets power washed almost every “fortnight”(singlish). Love it. There are 1000$ fines for chewing gum(Its illegal to sell there too), littering, peeing in the street(almost stopped me), jaywalking. The fine plus the mandatory caning’s… its best to behave.
Big brother is watching in Singapore. You feel uneasy because its so unnaturally clean for a city plus you know the work is under ban. It’s got this Brave New World or The Island feel. Like any moment a robot is going to pop up out of a ‘rubbish bin’ and zap you with a laser, or cane you with a laser (can you cane someone with a laser? Well I am sure they are working on a way) They do have cameras spying on you all over the city. Geraldine(we stayed Geraldine and Luen, they have 7 cats in a one bedroom apt but the cats are better behaved than most humans and there was zero cat smell) says they who are active JW’s there and have it all on record but haven’t really interfered since the 90’s. Luen told us about how when he was 18 he served 3 years in detention(every male JW in Singapore has done the same) for not joining the military(I questioned why Singapore even has a military as they are the size of Lancaster with just 4 million residents, but there is no sound reason, it must me up there with Canadas military forces…). What’s interesting about Luens stay in prison is that he wasn’t even baptized at the time and hadn’t studied with witnesses in several years. But right before he turned 18 someone called him up and asked if he was going to take a nuetral stand and he said ‘yea, I guess I will’. So he spent 18-20 in jail and resumed his bible study. I asked about the cells and if they had a hole in the ground for a toilet and if it was pretty rough conditions, he said he wished they had a hole in the ground for a toilet, would have been better than a bucket… He concluded his story saying how it wasn’t really that bad and he feel very sorry for the poor brothers in Cambodia who sometimes end up spending 10 years in detention...

Did you know its illegal to have a car over 10 years old in Singapore? If you want your city to appear shinier and cleaner definitely enact that law. They send all the old ones to Malaysia, go figure. How to turn paradise into a garbage dump101. There is a line of demarcation in between Malaysia and Singapore. Dirty/Clean
The Mentor Minister, Prime Minister, Mentor Prime Minister, or whoever, is really running an elite and tight ship. They have no natural resources and it only takes 45 min to drive from one end to the other but they are the biggest .. Wait… something to do with shipping or marketing or business you do with computers and ships.. Anyway they are a really big deal and whatever they do there affects a lot of people. And I must admit I was totally sucked in as a tourist. I would go back tomorrow.