The New Year is upon us indeed

Well well well, once again time has simply flown by, as a whole nother year goes on in record time. 2007 has been an odd one for me - well actually come to think of it most years are quite odd for me. How about you? So I'm nearly 27, which makes me nearly 30, which makes me actually feel very old indeed. Apparently I'm now an adult, although I still don't quite believe that one. Today we're all going for dinner (because I'm not quite fat enough after a week or more of constant eating) and then off to Vanessas aunt and uncles incredibly bling new appartment which is just next door to the Petronas Twin Towers. It's an amazing place, we stayed there the other night, and it is the height of opulence. 23rd floor, all the exterior walls are made of glass (oooh) and generally very very plush. We're hoping to get a very nice eye level view with the fireworks displays which are kicking off in the park behind Petronas, so hopefully I'll have lots of lurvely photos for y'all.

OK, a very felicitatious new year for all my freinds and family. Keep in touch and keep reading (I aim to be a lot more regular in my blogging this year, as I got a bit slack lately)

all the best and love to all

Merry Christmas to all of you

Having a lovely time (if not slightly weird) over on the tropical Duty Free island of Langkawi in the North West of Malaysia: at a very, very nice hotel by the beach.

It's all very relaxed, eating, drinking (well it is duty free here and a litre of Johnnie Walker Black Label is 9 of your english pounds, cigarettes 50p).
Not trying to rub it in, but bugger me it is lovely .

Missing all my family and friends mind you, as I'm here in the bosom of a family that is essentially unknown to me. There are loads of them here, Vanessas Mum and Dad, 1 sister (the other in Nottingham or Leeds), her brother, Grandma and Grandad, 2 Aunties + Husbands, 2 Uncles + Wives, 8 Cousins and Me. There's a lot of us. Vanessas uncle Jimmy is an alcoholic and has found a kindred spirit in me, so he has made sure I am constantly pissed on whiskey. Hurrah.

OK, photos tomorrow, merry chrismas and love to all

Long time no blog

Hi there skids, so it's been quite a while since I last rambled on with a load of pointless crap from the far east, and for that I apologise. No real reason for my abscence, apart from lazyness, busyness and moving house. We just moved to a new appartment yesterday in a spot a lot closer to KL. The appartment is very nice, and has fitted cupboards and a real kitchen (rather than the assortment of fold out tables and a crappy 1 ring gas stove that we previously had, still no oven, but there you go, can't have it all).
Sadly the block it's in isn't quite so nice, Vanessa doesn't like the corridor outside, it's very grey and a bit manky, but she'll grow to like it I'm sure. Our new balcony doesn't have such a nice view as the last one, but it is big enough for us to sling 2 hammocks side by side, his and hers style.
Malaysia has taken a decidedly interesting turn over the past month or so, with a general desire for people to stand up and demonstrate against the corrupt and illigal government here, all manner of people getting up and saying "actually, democracys are supposed to have fair elections, not rigged ones where you bribe certain constituants to vote for you", "perhaps you might like to make the media a free press, rather than the mouthpieces for your dictatorship that you have at the moment", "maybe people from all races should have an equal footing, rather that state-sponswered prejudice in favour of the Malay people" all that sort of thing. It's been rather jolly to see the normally very complaicent malaysian get up and do a bit of shouting and fist waving in the street. Sadly the police and government aren't very happy about this, purely because they know that they are totally undemocratic and in fact a great big bunch of extremely corrupt, thieving, brainless crooks. The response on their part has been one of total unacceptance, from the word go they waded in with teargas and watercannons (water laced with nasty eye/skin burning chemicals), basting the living shit out of everybody in the area. They have manged to piss off just about everybody in KL (the police, not the demonstrators - who the papers would have you believe are the root of all the problems) by dropping roadblocks on every road into KL every weekend for the past 6 weeks, and also on the Sultan of Selangors birthday last week too. This causes insane jams, hideous traffic problems, and makes the KL-ites very unhappy because it interferes with the most sacred of all malaysian practices, making money. Oh dear.
The week or so before the first demonstration was filled with this big hoo-haa, because the ex deputy PM (anwar ibrahim) released a video showing the High Courts highes judge being bribed to select a load of corrupt judges. Naturally the government went insane and started arrestnig all sorts of people, not the judges of course, but the ones who made the video (it stands to reason that they are the criminals. Doesn't it?).
So now every street demonstration is issued with a court order deeming it an "illegal gathering" subject to riot police brutality, but you have to wonder this... If your judicial system is totally illegal, your police force is populated almost entirely by criminals, your election process is totally rigged and illegal (as per international laws) - how legal are your proclemations of "illegal gatherings"? How legal indeed.
Anyway, the government have now arrested lots of people, some under the scary ISA which is a mighty medieval law (implemented by none other than the marvellous British when we were grabbing our money and running away 50 years ago) which can make you jolly well disappear with no actual crime having been committed for a very long time (exactly the same as our anti-terror laws back home).
Todays gathering was a bit scary, well, it never happened but their were all sorts of rumours, being spread via the media mouthpieces (my reasoning for this being: nobody finds out about the truth of these demonstrations from the papers, but somehow there have been several hints dropped in the papers this week, so why the leak?) trying to incite the Malay population to basically commit violence on the "dissenters", in a good old fashioned technique they used before on May 13th 1969, where a load of agitators caused several days of bloody riots, massacring hundreds of chinese, and indians too. The government suspended parliament then, which gave them a few days to re-write the constituation and then basically seize control of the country for the next 40 years. It's all a bit scary that, because the racialy "harmony" that exists here is quite tenuous, especially when people are forced to work really hard to get anywhere in life (the indians and chinese) when the Malays get everything handed to them on a plate (via the New Economic Policy), which means they can enjoy their favourite pass-time of sitting around and then sleeping.
It's quite silly of the police to have bulldozed in with their teargas and chemical water though, because if they'd let these things just happen (obviously use some control when they get out of hand) then it would all have blown over by now, but they have made all sorts of lazy people who couldn't care less into interested and supportive of demos, now they have just antagonised the situation, instead of letting it pass.

So there we go, hopefully no ISA for me for saying this (but Bloggers have become public enemy number one recently, because they can't censor you until it's too late) - oh shit, what's that knocking at the door? The thought police? Better put on my coolie disguise

Word up my homeeees

Howdy, just a quicky so you know I'm still alive. As if any of you even care.
Well this week has been a bit of a non-starter, pretty much just sitting around the house trying to call people to give me a job.
Last week was the end of Ramadan, and over the weekend were quite a few Eid partys. Here it's called Hari Raya Aidilfitri, shortened to Raya. I've made a new friend, called Ashka, who just bought the mamak shop (indian food place) downstairs. So he invited us to an Eid dinner on Saturday, where we ate lovely rice and spicy chicken. The festive spirit caused Vanessa and I to hold our first house party in the flat, so all our mates came over and we didn't go to sleep until 7am. We made a large vat of punch from black market spirits bought in one of the many such shops that sell dodgy imported booze (fortified with turpentine and such like, class) which got everybody well and truely conked. I'm not so sure if this is truely in the spirit of Islamic holy festivals (well that's a lie, I'm bloody certain that getting drunk quite forbidden) but it's OK cos all present were infidels anyway. Not that I didn;t invite my muslim friends (yes, evil Tim, the great international sin propagator), but one of the main parts of the Hari Raya festival is to Balik Kampung (return to village), so all my Malay friends were scattered to the far reaches of the countryside going to open houses and gorging themselves on Raya food after a month of abstinance in daylight hours.
I'll put the choice cut of party photos on here when my laptop stops being gay and actually lets me use the internet.

Amongst other things I got my teeth descaled in the week (apparently I had deep plaque and she dug right down into the gums, which bled profusely), she's going to polish them for me on Monday - all for the princely sum of 11 pounds, and I got a free toothbrush and toothpaste.
I also got a bit of an ear infection, so having those syringed in the morning - always an experience that brings deep joy. Oh yes.
Erm, oh my knee also swelled up, but thats enough of my problems. It's been one of those weeks when I feel like a lepur cos suddenly everything went wrong with me.

Oh and we got tickets to a rave next weekend, down in Malacca. Global Gathering festival. Jolly good.

Get my laptop fixed tomorrow (after the ear syringing), so I'll update photos innit

love to all

i took this (well not the one of me, obviously)

is that enough photos for you?

Hello all, I've been mooching around Malaysia for the past 8 days in a most jolly fashion. And it hasn't been idle tourism either, although it has felt a bit like it and no mistake. I randomly got a new job on friday - as in I called up a company and they said "oh we're going off on a 10 day shoot tomorrow, do you feel like coming along?". So off I went.It's been loads of fun, helping to make a 15 minute tourism video for the state of Perak (which is just a couple of hours north of Kuala Lumpur, but very different indeed). The film is one about the fabulous locations in Perak for film companys to come and film there, a potted overall view of all the nice things in the state. Brilliant.So I spent 4 nights in a lovely hotel/ golf course called the Clearwater sanctuary, in a very nice room that overlooked a large pond/mini lake covered in lillies. The pond itself was a tin mine (there were several on the hotel site, as Perak was the tin mining capital of Malaysia for donkeys years). The pond now supports lots of wildlife, they're stuffed with fish, we saw herons, all sorts of birds and a big family of otters (about 11 or 12 of them swimming in a line going home after a days fishing). No doubt all sorts of other stuff too.

We went filming around Ipoh (the state capital) which has all sorts of old British colonial buildings, like the obligitary Cricket pitch in the town centre (complete with mock-tudor pavillion clubhouse buildings - just like in KL) loads of realy big and grand buildings around the old train station - see photos for details, namely the slightly dilapidated but still proper atmospherice Hotel Majestic which is like it was made specifically for a Humphrey Bogart movie.
We went to rubber plantations, run down chinese villages full of half collapsed pre-war shophouses and lots of rubber tappers lazing around in the afternoon (rubber trees are tapped at dawn and finish dripping around 11am so the workers get most of the day free). One town seemed to be totally centred around the local coffee shop, which had a karaoke machine blasting out rancid chinese music at 190 decibells with all the local old men wailing hideously out of tune. Was very funny, if a bit deafening.

The guys I've been working with are all Malay, except for Judy the producer who is chinese but converted to Islam in order to marry, and what with now being Ramadan they were all fasting during daylight hours. I wasn't expected to fast, but felt a little bit bad about chowing down on a hearty oily dinner whilst they all sat drooling and trying not to look. So inevitably I basically ended up fasting too - although I was able to drink (thank god, or I'd have died out in that heat) and occasionally sneak a quick bite to eat behind the back of the van. Needless to say I took almost as much pleasure in the 7pm breaking fast meal as they did, almost, but not quite of course as nothing had past their lips since 5am. I lost a few inches around the belly due to this and constant sweating my arse off.

We went to a cave temple - of which there are many in and around Ipoh - which was amazing, a vast limestone cavern with a massive golden buddah (about 50 feet tall or more, hard to tell) and loads of painting on the wall. I walked up the 450+ steps to the very top of the cliff which had a great view of the city. About 4pm a mad amount of moneys came swingin down the cliff and had a feeding frenzy (a few people turned up with bags of peanuts, presumably a regular ritual).Also next door were rows of stalls selling Limes the size of my head, a locally grown uniquery. Odd enough.

One town we visited was the royal town of Kuala Kangsar, which boasted an enormous golden domed mosque, 2 sultans palaces (one old and one new, the old one is the black and yellow place in the photo, which was built out of wood and woven rattan without using a single nail or screw amazingly), and the oldest rubber trees in the country - as the origional seedlings brought over from Kew Gardens were cultivated here and were are the grandparents of all the hundreds of thousands of rubber trees in the country. It's pretty nice there, I'd say cool but my skin got majorly blistered there. We also popped into the old train station and I managed to get a few snaps of the antiquated signal key system, long since abandoned in the UK but very much in use over here.

Another interesting place was Kellies castle - see pics - which was built about 90 years ago by a mega rich Scottish rubber plantation owner. He decide to build himself a castle all his own, in the moorish style favoured by the looney brits who governed here (also a few grand buildings of this style in KL and other cities). He got most of the way through the building, also building 3 hindu temples linked to the castle by tunnels - to appease the indian workers who were scared about an epidemic of something or other - then he popped home to sort out some business and never came back. Nobody seems to have found out exactly what happened to him, but it seems he went to Portugal (possibly to sort out some business in Papua New Guinea) and then snuffed it. The place never got finshed, so it was left abandoned, the jungle moved in and started to take the place to pieces. Then a couple of years ago the government cleared the jungle and rebuilt the place, but only to the point at which construction ceased back at the turn of the century, so there it stands, virtually as it was left when the Kellie family buggered off. Quite a place.

After lots of driving around and filming we went to the island of Pangkor (south of Penang) and spent a truely hideous 2 nights on a beach resort. Such a horrendous job you ever did see, being forced to lounge around by the pool, being pistol whipped into having a massage in a spa by the beach whilst the rest of my collegues filmed me, being dragged kicking and screaming around the old dutch fort, the weird miniature replica of the Great Wall of China, the fishing villages, the beaches and coves. Such an awful way to make a living. Oh and the hotel feeds the local hornbills twice a day, which is something to behold. These oddities truely are one of the most beautifully ugly things in all creation - second only to most sea creatures and the Welsh.

So there we go, enjoy the pictures, I'm going to go and eat some food. I'm back in KL now and hopefully they want me to edit this film for them, if not there are plenty of other job possibilitys opening up to me. It seems like the next project might be a self driven one, with 2 of the guys from the crew, we are talking about making a little expedition into the rainforest and shooting a documentary/short film there for our own reasons cos they're also a bit bored of working on crappy low quality Malaysian poo.Should be an interesting one I feel.
love to all and good luck

timbo

Lovely Melaka (or Malacca, depending on how you want to spell it)

So here are lots of photos of our weekend in Melaka. It's a lovely little town, that despite lots of development, the government have decided that building a new town next to the old one and doing up the old one is a smart idea (wowee, they never figured that one out in Kuala Lumpur, oh no, they love knocking down beautiful old buildings to build rancid generic towerblocks over here).

Malacca is a very old town, and was one of the most important in the world for hundreds of years. The old town is a mix of dutch and british colonial architecture - along with a load of Straits Chinese (a mixed race of chinese, malay and indonesian also known as Baba-Nyonya or Peranakkan) shophouses - the really colourful upper floor on one of the pics is a good example.

The Baba-Nyonyas are famous for their amazing food (yum) and gypsy like bizarrely gaudy but beautifully intricate furniture, houses, clothes, and general style. These dudes knew how to mix up styles and colours that would ordinarily look utterly vile, but pulled it off with style for a long time.

Malacca is pretty small, but for such a small town it has a wealth of history. It started back in the time of the Ming Dynasty, when a hindu sultan from Indonesia came here and started a small trading port where the East and West Monsoons meet. His settlement was in the perfect position, because ships could come down the straits instead of circumnavigating the dangerous path around the indonesian archipelago. Ships from India and China would ride their individual monsoon winds, meet in Melacca, trade goods and then ride home when the winds changed.

The portugese were the first europeans to make a move on the place, deciding to go straight for the heart of the lucrative spice isles instead of trading with india - so they invaded and built the town into an massive fortress. They settled here for 130 years, and because of their enforced interbreeding with the locals, there is still a settlement of portugese eurasians by the waterfront. These guys speak Cristau, which is a completely dead medieval language from southern portugal (I think some people still speak it in Goa, but not too sure).

After the portugese came the Dutch, who lay seige to the place for 8 months or so, totally annihalating all of the portugese buildings in town, all that now stands is one of the old gatehouses - but the dutch rebranded even that with the logo of the Dutch East India Company.

The Dutch settlers stayed even longer than the portugese, and built a large amount of beautiful buildings (using most oddly, pink bricks which they shipped over specifically from Holland. Weird). Most of which are still standing and make up a really lovely little quarter of town, now mostly museums, that stands out as some surreal european outpost. There's the pink, bell gabled Christchurch, next to the enormous Stadthuys, a little windmill, clocktower, warhouses with the little winches that they have all over amsterdam. Very photogenic indeed.

They also built an enormous city wall to protect Malacca from outside invasion. Which looks like it would have been amazing.

However....

Then along came the might and majesty of the british empire, the good old glory days of Victoria and her utterly insane Generals. We got a hold of Malacca, not really through conquest but by being more powerful than the Dutch by that point, I don't really know how, something to do with politics and all that. Anyway, we got hold of Penang (in the North of Malaysia) by conning the Sultan of Kedah, and we got hold of Singapore but conning and threatening the Sultan of Johor. So the one in the middle just made sense - thus Penang, Melaka and Singapore became the Straits settlements, and lovely they were for it.

Because we put more importance on Singapore and Penang, the once mighty international trading hub of Melaka was relegated to the sidelines. Some utterly insane toff (I think it was Lord Farquand or some other sill rich inbreed) figured the best idea was to move all the people out to Penang (why?) and just leave Melaka to rot. However some other silly Brits got all paranoid that leaving a fortifed city just sitting there would be too much of a good thing for those naughty Dutch (even though the Dutch had willingly handed the place over as a British protectorate to stop the smelly and untrustworthy garlic eating Frenchies from getting hold of it) so this lunatic Lord Farquand decided to totally raze the city walls. He tried getting a bunch of locals to do it, but it was too well built and a bugger to knock down. So instead he opted for getting them to knock holes in the walls, then pack them with dynamite, then the mad lord ran around on his horse with a long burning torch and set the whole lot off.

Stamford Raffles (the father of Singapore and all that) arrived just a little bit too late to stop the lunatic Lord. He told him to stop it as he was being rather silly and wasting good quality dynamite, as well as making a jolly awful racket and a lot of mess which the darkies would spend ages having to tidy up. Or something like that.

But alas the city walls of Melacca were no more, but Stamford no doubt stopped the deranged royalty from making a giant bomb crater out of the whole town.

As for the Dutch trying to regain control of Melacca? They didn't care, they were beaen anyway, but there we go.

So hows that for a history lesson? Not bad eh. Nice town, great food, brilliant museums and lots of markets, we all had a jolly spiffing time. Shame it was about 38c in the shade though, my skin is blistered.