Merry Christmas from Bintan Island

Hello everybody, much love and kisses to all the family, and a few hearty punches in the eye to all my friends. I appear to be having a few problems with my Blogger layout settings today, as my account has gone haywire. Firstly the entire webpage is insisting on being written in Indonesian, which is a bit annoying as my extent of Malay/Indonesian has never had to go into the realm of computer stuff. Then I just had a battle with the transliteration predictive text, as when ever I typed something it would miraculously turn itself into arabic script. I thought I fixed it, but then it started typing Tamil. Well now it's typing in English (evidently) and I don't want to have a fight with it about the layout of photos, for fear that it decides to transliterate everything into Urdu and not let me change it. So for the minute, you all got to live with a messy page.

So Christmas this time has indeed been a different one. Firstly we took the bus down to Singapore



On the way down to Singapore suddenly the riot nazis pulled up while we were in the rest area. I never seen a water cannon up close, it looks so cute and dinky, sort of like it belongs on Bob the Builder. How strange that a cute little fire engine can be the stink fist of facist bullyboys. Note my finger.

We spent Christmas eve and Christmas day in the Lion City. Quite frankly I have never considered Singapore as a Christmas destination (well lets face it, who would ever consider that? Despite the tourist offices best attempts to promote a Christmas in the Tropics, Singapore just doesn't have the same vibes as say Lapland or Denmark for that traditional Christmas appeal). Well it's actually not too bad, the only real downside is that it's just so bloody expensive it hurts. Especially since the pound took a nosedive, the cost of beer is excruciating. Never the less, we went and had a genuine Singapore Sling in Raffles hotel bar (a first for me, and a last cos it cost a Tenner - and my Jew gland started to spasm, we sipped slowly). I got to see old town Singapore, around the Padang and the city hall area, and as always it made me a bit sad. Yes, I think I was born a hundred years too late. Ho hum.
So we did Christmassy stuff like eating too much, getting drunk and stuff like that, interspersed with having to physically force our way down Orchard Road as it was obscenely crowded with pedestrians shopping.

Here you may note a few of Singapores more tasteful christmas decorations, my favourite being the rancidly ugly Bauble tree, and the traditional christmas donuts. Ah yes, the traditional christmas donut, how could I forget. Almost as good as Malaysian shopping centres with their christmas clowns and giant plastic elephants balancing on beach-balls. Ah the spirit of Christmas is evidently open to interpretation.

On Boxing Day we all woke up early and went towards Changi Naval Base. Then at the ferryport we got onto a catamaran bound for Bintan Island, which is part of Indonesia, however it used to be owned by the Sultan of Johor many hundreds of years ago, before the British came (Bintan and Batam are called the Riau archipellago, and the Johor sultanate used to be Riau-Johor, so there you go). Mum, do you remember a really bad and biased program you showed me a few years ago, about how evil Malaysians are because they employ Indonesian maids. Well, anyway it had Batam island on it, as a place of vice and human traffic. It's just across the water outside my window, and anyway that program was a bunch of lies. Where was I?
Oh yeah, we took a catamaran, and got to Bintan which is really very lovely.
As I stood in the cue to get my Visa on arrival the man in front of me got heartily vomitted on by his daughter, this cheered me up immensely, not only to watch a man get his shoulder and back drenched in chunder but it took 5 people out of the cue in front of me.





So this is the view of Club Med from the upstairs bar. Beer, wine, house liquor and cocktails are all inclusive. And yet, for some reason I haven't been drunk yet. I have been drinking, but some sick little goblin inside me has prevented me from being outragous. I'm most disappointed with myself, and I have to make greater efforts for the next 2 days. "What's going on at Club Med?" I hear you ask, well quite a lot. The youngsters seem to be obsessed with running around and being healthy, and somehow I got dragged into the yesterday. Thus I went to the gym and regretted it instantly. There is an archery range, which I am well happy with cos I haven't fired arrows since I was 10. I'm actually not a bad shot, it must be the welsh blood.

Then yesterday I went on the trapeze. No explanation, photos say all.























So there you go, yesterday I was on a flying trapeze next to the beach, hanging upside down and doing backflips.

Today I am in pain.

Penang videos

Hello everybody, here are a few videos that I recently directed/edited. Shot by my good friend, and partner in crime, Adam Lokman up in Penang, assisted by our bizarre and elusive friend Osh.

It was the weekend of the UNESCO opening ceremony. It was a first time venture for us, cos we didn’t really know what to expect, we were supposed to shoot a short documentary but ended up running around like a news crew. It was quite funny, as the Chief Ministers press secretary thought I was there from the BBC, I didn’t want to lie to her so said no, she was very disappointed but we did a short interview with him anyway, so she wouldn’t lose face.
Anyway, I took ages to get around to sticking them on youtube, and once I stuck them on the Penang State government decided to put them on their tourist office website

http://www.visitpenang.gov.my/portal/

down at the bottom, in the latest news section.
Which was nice, and a little bit unexpected.

So I hope you all enjoy. Please go and check the youtube links below and have a watch. Also if you rate the videos (5 star, naturally, ha ha ha, no but seriously, nothing less than 5 star you buggers) then they will move higher up the list, and thus more people will be directed to them if they type in Penang.
I haven't bothered to embed them in here cos it's just too slow and last time I got half the video chopped off. Also you may not notice that this was shot in HD, as youtube doesn't enjoy such big file sizes. I may start a vimeo account and put the proper HD stuff up there, however that will be for affictionados only cos the download times are pretty huge.

Also if you could do me a massive favour and email the links to your friends then I would be immensely grateful.
Yes I know that's cheating, but I just don't care, it's called whoring oneself.

Lots of nice exotic Malaysian stuff for you to see.
Love to all

Timbo


HINDU TEMPLE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig5I6vgvHh8
LION DANCE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-pL4cx1ftQ
WALK OF UNITY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=200a-Hfzvus

What to say about today?

Hello all, I can see I have a fair bit of catching up to do cos I haven't been blogging much recently. Well, what has been going on in my life since I last blathered at you? Well to be honest I'm not too sure, but I have ended up venturing into a new realm, that realm of music videos. Annoyingly my film has had to go on hold for a little while, whilst I end up editing this thing, which has taken up much more of my life than I ever really wanted it to, but there you have it, c'est la vie, and Adam the cameraman is very tied up with stuff anyway so can't shoot without him. Was that a very long sentence? Yes I think it was.
So we had a 3 days shoot for the video, but I think I told you that, and still haven't got around to putting up any photos. That's because I'm rubbish, I know.

Now it's nearly 3 weeks that I've been sat in this tiddly little edit suite, freezing my nuts off cos the air con is just too cold (can you believe I am wearing a hoodie right now? 2 degrees north of the equator I wear a hoodie zipped up. This is one seriously weird country).
The video is looking quite nice, but there are just a few too many cute looking children in it for me, it's just getting a bit too much what with all the cutesy cuddly chubby chops moments. Frankly, you all know me, I'd be much happier if it was a video where all the cute little children get attacked by Santa Clause with a chainsaw, and he throws them all into an enormous woodchipper machine, then brings the bags of child mince to their parents house and makes a pie which they are forced to eat before he does the same to them. But I don't have a voice anymore, thus it's cute children being cute and cuddly and nobody dies horribly.

Ho Hum.

Last weekend was jolly nice, as it was mine and Vanessas anniversary, and we went to Bangkok to stay with Kim, and go out and party in some real nightclubs rather than the lame and tepid selection that this (muslim) country has to offer. It's almost like the national fatwa council went "NO FUN ON FRIDAY OR SATURDAY NIGHTS, EVEN IF YOU'RE NOT MUSLIM WE DON'T CARE, FROM HERE ON NIGHTCLUBS WON'T BE BANNED THEY'LL JUST BE BORING". So we went to Bangkok and had a lovely time

The fatwa council have been causing all sorts of jolly fun this last couple of weeks, when they declared that "tomboysism" is against Islam (apparently girls can't wear "mens clothing" whatever that means - bow ties? bowler hats?), lesbianism is against Islam (but I thought that was taken as red anyway what with gay men not being allowed) and then suddenly like a bolt out of nowhere they decided that Yoga was un-Islamic. Yoga???? What? What has bending in a relaxing manner got to do with anything?
This one is a bit lost on me.
What next? Step Aerobics?

This one has a good few people confused at the moment, especially pregnant Malay women who go to yoga to do their pelvic floor stuff, so it's been in all the papers over and over again. I don't think many people know what it's all about, but there we go.

Oh yeah, obama won. Hooray, goodbye Bush. I hope he spends the rest of his life being tormented by the souls of all the innocent blood he spilled for cash.

Anyway, love to all. I'm gotta get back to work and then go eat some food. Hugs to the nephews and nieces, and sorry aunty paul for forgetting your birthday.''

xx

It's Deepavali, and I'm still ill.

Hello all, well this weekend is the Hindu festival of Deepavali (that's what they call Davali over here, not too sure why, but I think it's cos UK has mainly Northern Indian descendents, but here they are mainly descended from Southern Indian migrants - from Tamil Nad and Ceylon mainly).
So the Indian parts of town are all jolly nice fun, lots of people, food, lights and that music from those mad long wooden flute/trumpet things wot is very Indian. The ones that snake charmers use in the movies innit.

I've been pretty busy and stressed this past couple of weeks, editing a music video for a Malaysian superstar (so he is indeed, no diggety) and it's rather a tough gig, with a mad heavy edit, I'll show you in a couple of weeks when it's done and released. I get to be on TV, because they interviewed me as they made the "making of" video. So I got to rant on about all the crap things here (mainly braindead drivers and the litter), and generally be a super arrogant white bastard, after all I have to keep up appearances, right? And nothing works better in Malaysia than a racial stereotype, so don't want to confuse the poor misguided buggers, oh no, so best to play up to the English = Arrogant.

Can only be a quick posting, cos I got a big render going on which is nearly done.

Footnotes: Mum, sorry no email, read above, hecticness, will email soon. Have you got my parcel yet??? If not I will have to bitchslap my friends that brought it over. Let me know.

Andrew, we shot half of the video on the Red camera. Mmmmmm. Red Cam. Mmmmmm. Sexy. 4k. Mmmmm. Jealous? Mmmm? Not even a little bit.

Others: If Andrew doesn't read my blog, please be sure to rub his nose in the above footnote.

Love to all

It's a bit warm today

Well today I seem to have come down with a bug, some form of fever mixed with a minor chest infection. That's really very helpful and couldn't have come at a more opportune moment, as today I start a shoot for a music video, with one of Malaysias big boys Reshmonu.

So here we are, shooting a pop video, in a big studio with lots of lights, and the air conditioning is a little bit less than good, in fact it is a bit poo. Add that to the midday heat (around 34 in the shade) plus a slight fever and you may detect a touch of sweat on my forehead.

Oh and also we have a TV crew here filming us, for the delight of many viewers of bad Malaysian TV, and I have to do some sort of interview later on, in Malay (ha ha ha, that'll give them a surprise), but I sound like I have been gargling with broken glass and keep coughing up lumps of phlegm that look like they belong in the Aardman props cabinet.

Then I get to spend the next 2 days running around in the jungle getting covered in leeches, which I will take photos of for you.

Life's back to normal

Selamat Hari Raya

Hello all, and a very happy Eid Al Fitr to you all. Yes, it would seem that the fasting month of Ramadan is over, and now everybody of the Islamic faith will be at home with their families, eating, drinking (orange cordial) and being merry. It's also a public holiday today, and was yesterday too and the whole of KL is pretty much a ghost town.
It's a bit odd in fact, as around 60% of the population of the cities all go home to their villages and small towns, and the rest of us with no place else to go get to wander around and actually imagine what KL was like before it became a big stinky traffic filled crap-hole. It's quite nice really, just being able to take a walk without thr risk of some mental running you over, and not having to fly to a different country to do so.
But then in the next few days the millions will return (but not before several thousand have killed each other on the remote back roads because they never learned to drive ever, and are now "drunk" with a belly full after gorging themselves on good food after a month of abstinance. Then all the food places will be open again all day (which again, I kind of got used to having nice empty cafes all to myself, just me and the papers, ho hum, am I selfish? Don't answer) and normal life will resume.
In fact, things are going to start happening again, as for the last 2 weeks whenever you ask somebody if they can do something, the answer is basically "After Raya", well now is Raya, so, hopefully things will happen again.

So, spare a thought for our muslim brothers and sisters around the world, as they enjoy their equivilent of Christmas. And mother, if you see any of your islamic friends from work, I think you're supposed to say "have a safe and prosperous Eid, may I be forgiven for any wrongdoing I have done to you this year" - I don't know the Arabic translation, but I rekon the English would make them happy.

Love to all

So this is what's going on in Malaysia, if you're interested

It seems it's a hard time being a blogger in Malaysia at the moment, cos it's all going a bit mental.
Suffice to say that the current government is in a bit of hot soup at the moment, however they are still trying to deny it and cling on tight to the reigns of power. It's hard to know which way it's all going to go.

Here is a brief rundown of the last few weeks according to the local media.

1) Former DPM (now opposition leader) Anwar Ibrahim announced a return to politics, his wife (who has been holding his parliamentary seat with big majorities for the last few years) stepped down and they called a by-election with Anwar as candidate for the opposition. The ruling government tried to get him arrested for Sodomy (again) and started a massive campaign against him. It didn't work, he got voted in with twice as many votes as the government man.

2) Business bigshot and UMNO government man Ahmad Ismail tried to slur the Chinese, saying they were all immigrant squatters. Motives are unclear, but the PM and DPM apologised for him, then he stood up and said "why should I apologise, I did nothing wrong". So he got a 3 year suspension (which is unprecedented admittedly, but basically a slap on the wrists, when he actually committed Sedition and lots of people who were unseditious get arrested, but they are not bigshots with money and power.

3) Blogger RPK, a journalist (the one who wrote the article about Mr Squatter, and my local MP Teresa Kok all got arrested with ISA in one evening. No real reason is clear, except for RPK because he has a big news portal and is trying to bring down the government by writing about them. The journalist was released after a day - and I think it's probably due to the fact that the national media went to the government and said "you do not arrest reporters, reporters are edited heavily, so if anybody arrest the editor whom the buck stops with, if you arrest reporters don't expect us to be your mouthpieces much longer" or something like that, that's my theory anyway.
The MP Teresa Kok was charged with some trumped up charge about handing in a petition to a mosque, to ask them to turn down the prayer towers for the 5.30am morning prayer, because the area the mosque is in is largely non-muslim. She is the candidate for the region and was just doing what her constituents asked. Strangely both of the mosques and several muftis stood up and said "this is not true, it's nothing to do with her, why is she is prison?". Fortunately she was released today.

4) Opposition leader Anwar announced that he would have a new government on September 16th, as he claims around 31 MPs are willing to defect. This date has gone, but he seems convinced that it will happen. This is what caused the ISA arrests I think as the government is seemingly going a bit barmy, they are pulling all the punches (sodomy charges, arrests, racial tension) but none of it seems to be working. Malaysians aren't protesting or demonstrating, they're just sitting at home and seeing what happens. I think times have changed here, but the government doesn't seem to have noticed that.

5) De-facto Law Minister quit the government because of the ISA arrests, and he has caused a bit if a stir.

6) 2 days ago the Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) quit the ruling coalition, they have not defected but gone independant.

7) On the days leading to September 16th all the government Back Benchers got sent to Taiwan, on an "agricultural trip" - but then everybody went "hey, no fair, are these your defectors and you're sending them away??". Then a day or so later the opposition sent a team to Taiwan to visit them, then suddenly the "agricultural trip" finished and they all came home. This chapter was quite hilarious actually, as the statements in the press were amazingly funny, and the image of 30 or so back-benchers involved in some international game of Benny Hill-esque cat and mouse. It was all a bit weird.

8) Yesterday another blogger got arrested - they say it's because he flew the flag upside down (in distress) on his website, but well, read his website and that is the least of their worries. He don't like them, and he does like freedom of expression.

9) PM has taken over Defense ministry, christ and allah only know what happens next. Sit tight, cross fingers.

None of this is dangerous to blog about by the way, it's all in the papers - can read online at www.thestar.com.my and have a good laugh.

love to all

Food for thought - or a reality check

Today there was a terrible incident in Indonesia, somewhere in East Java. 21 people were killed and dozens more injured in a stampede of around 10000 people - what caused it? The government was giving away money as part of a Ramadan thing (giving packets of cash to the poor). Guess how much money was in each pack

Go on, have a guess.

How much is a human life worth out in Indonesia?

Take a guess.

And another.

OK, I'll tell you.

Each packet contained approximately £1.50

Yep.

One pound and fifty pence.

21 dead.

Think about that for a few minutes.

On a lighter note I just had an amazingly strange week out shooting with Adam, as he randomly called me and asked me to step in somebodys shoes. So off we shot to Langkawi for a week. It was the beach that I took mum and dad to visit for the afternoon (remember mum? The nice one with the sticky uppy islands not far off and it was far too hot for me to sit in the sun that day, so you and dad had a swim). Well we ended up staying in the 5 star resort there, and the Producer managed to convince the resort manager to let us have all food and drink for free (except the mini-bar, but go down to the hotel bar ok, so I did, a few times). Oh and room service too.

Thus I have been pampered, and the job was really easy, in fact just a mad holiday really. And we got to go out to a mangrove swamp n'all. I haven't any photos, but some of the crew got some and are going to send them on to me.

It was all a bit random, and the randomness was slightly amplified by a continuous hangover (read above for reasons).

Love to all

Kuching

Well I finally got to visit a bit of Borneo. Don't ask why I was there because it just makes me too angry and upset to talk about. Never mind the reasons, I got to go to Kuching and see the land of the White Rajahs at last. I learned a lot from this lovely little place, which still has a bunch of dinky little forts and proper old school colonial buildings there, a lot like Singapore would have looked before it got bombed to crap by the Japs I would imagine. This place was a Crown Colony after the war, whereas Peninsular Malaysia never was (only Penang, Singapore, Malacca, British North Borneo (Sabah and Sarawak) and Labuan. I'm pretty sure that Brunei was there as a protectorate or something. So after the war Sarawak was given over by the Raja as a Crown Colony, and stayed that way for a few years after the rest of Malaysia was made independent. It has to be said, the crown colonies actually did a lot better out of the deal, in terms of livability of the cities, what with Singapore and Kuching having roads that actually make sense, and pavements that you can walk along without falling in a hole. Kuching is really very lovely indeed, very peaceful and calm, with the mighty Sarawak river running through the middle of it, it feels almost a little bit European, what with it having a nice riverside promenade (all the big rivers in urban Peninsular Malaysia have had their embankments concreted and look about as inviting as a sewerage treatment plant).


Despite what I would have previously imagined, it turns out that people think quite highly of the White Rajas here (Mr James Brooke, his nephew Charles Brooke and third one was Charles Vintner Brooke) and were ever so nice to a simple English lad like me. I imagined people to be infused with that nationalist pride (often misguided and ignorant) that they have on the peninsular, but not a bit of it. The Chief Minister is married to a British woman, and he even drives a Rolls (which is hilarious, as there has been a lot of media hoo-haa the past few weeks, because an opposition state said they wish to buy Mercs for their Ministers and the government made a big fuss because it was apparently an insult to the National Car - the Proton Perdana, which is, well, a Proton - and yet here is the Sarawak CM, obviously not an opposition boy, driving around in a real car instead of one whose windows don't work. Ha ha ha).



Kuching is really very lovely, I had a few lovely evenings spent just walking around, because it was such an incredible novelty to take a walk in a city, down a pavement instead of along a road, down PEDESTRIANISED streets, not constantly having to be on the lookout for broken paving slabs, collossal drains, missing manhole covers, uneven footways. Even more fabulous was not having to constantly dodge around cars that are parked 3 deep on the road, or all over the pavements, or in the middle of the road, or virtually inside the restaurants as you get in the peninsular. The worst jam we had to wait in was 5 minutes because of a traffic light, as opposed to hours. They also have roundabouts. My god, it was like being back home again, only hotter.

One of the funniest things about Kuching is the fact that it is called "Cat" (as in kuching means cat in malay) and because of this they have in recent years obviously tried to come up with a cat gimmick. God only knows why, but they seem to think that a gimmick is necessary for a city, so they settled on cats. Thus you find several roundabouts with excessively tasteless cat statues on them, as well as a veritable abundance of little cat sculptures all over the shop, shops too have a plethora of tacky cat statuettes and some crazy bugger decided to open "the worlds first and only" Cat Museum. Bloody cat museum, what a bag of crap that was. Here is the statue that has in recent years become the symbol of Kuching - and how marvellously twee and tasteless it is. Yes, it does look exactly like a bigger version of that horrible ornament that your elderly (and slightly drooling) friend would put on the mantlepiece and say "isn't it beautiful" and you would nod and say ""yes, lovely, very erm, erm, lovely, did you get it from the pound shop?", "no" she'd say "It was £380 paid in 6 installments, it was in Womans Weekly and I couldn't resist it". Well, Kuching city council couldn't resist it either, so here it is.



I find it wholly incredible that a state that simply teems with artistic ability, and native art being so incredibly beautiful and ornate, that they should commission an "artist" whose idea of art is akin to that what a spastic might come up with. Maybe he was a spastic and it was care in the community, who knows. Oh, I'm not allowed to say spastic am I, OK, so it was done by a mong.

Here are some Orang Utan. Ha ha ha. Proper cool that. Are you envious? I hope so.







Kuching's got lots of nice museums (exempting the highly tasteless and utterly strange Cat Museum of course) and they are in my humble opinion the best museums in Malaysia. As in they have actually got interesting things in them, are well curated and have members of staff as well as educated local volunteers who come in and take you around telling you everything for free. The local volunteers were amazing, and you could just tell that they are immensely proud of where they come from, as well as immensely proud of their heritage and above all really proud to have such a fab museum. It was proper amazing in there, despite the fact that it was full of stuffed dead things (a la Woolaton Hall and other Victorian museums where a picture just wasn't good enough so they had to shoot it) there were some amazing exhibits. My favourite was the 2 elephant skulls that were painted by a local tribesman sometime in the 1950s (when they had a really good curator it would seem cos he did lots of good things). The elephant skulls aquired the legend that they were Giants Skulls, as the local population of reformed headhunters put a lot of stock in a good skull they came from miles around to see the "Giants Skulls". I don't think anybody had the heart to tell them that they came from a pair of Siamese elephants that were imported to drag logs out of the forest. I couldn't get a photo cos I got told off. I did manage to sneak a couple of shots, one here is of the 'Tree of Life' that another local tribesman artist painted in the 50s, which is amazing, the other is the blur shot of a human head. This is one of about 20 heads hanging up at the back of the museum inside their fake Longhouse. It was very dark in there. Apparently the heads are known as the "laughing skulls" and the Iban people who donated them to the museum said that they chuckled late at night. Spooky. The museum building is proper nice, and was designed by some Frenchie who was friends with Rajah Charles Brooke (the 2nd one) as a copy of Normadie Town Hall, allegedly. Opposite was the Natural History museum (the one with the huge and highly unattractive butterfly on top, why???) but sadly it was never open.





And I went to see a Longhouse village too, which was nice, and they gave me Tuak which is the local moonshine, and it has a fair kick to it no doubt. It was a village that is open to tourists, and you know, it's a bit like that but there weren't actuall any tourists there. All the locals seem to live quite normal lives (fridges, satellite tv etc) but their whole village is contained in one long building, with individual appartments, and common areas, there were lots of old ladies sitting around splitting bamboo with huge machetes and stuff like that. The whole place was made of bamboo, walls, floors, gutters and roofs, amazing but a little worrying when you are fat like me and the bamboo is old and rotten as it often was.



Other stuff looked like this







So that was my first trip to Borneo, and if anyone else decides to come and visit I'm going to bring you here.

Howdy ho, from one very silly country to another

Shame on all of us British people comes once more. Oh, dear, it's been a long time since I remembered just how shite the politics of the UK are, but this past week or so I've had some stark reminders.
Yes, just the other week Tony B showed his smug and infinitely kickable face in KL, as part of some Commonwealth summit or summert and I got the rancid greasy feeling once more, oh if only I had a high powered Sniper rifle I'd have hunted the shit down good and proper. Anyway I have been slightly cheered up by the fact that the Malaysian bloggers have been on a serious Tony B bashing session, which cheered me up no end - yes a lot of people hate him here, because he's a murderer like wot I've been saying for years, and so I have been able to plough on and join in the bastard bashing sessions and haven't had Dad there to tell me that I'm a silly reactionary. Aaaah, it was almost like the good old days of Tony hating all over again.

Then to top off the arrival of el dictat the UK has gone and allowed the corrupt bastard Thaksin to seek asylum in the UK, AGAIN!!!!! But the bastard super corrupt facist mother was suppose to be going on trail for being a super-corrupt non-tax paying facist dictator bastard this week, and his wife just got charged with non-payment of $15million USD in taxes and sentenced to 3 years in the nick, and her brother, and Thaksin was due up in the next week or so. Then somehow (ie: via corruption) they managed to secure a weekends pasage to China to watch the Olympics (oh yes, even if you are on trial, if you got money in Asia you can do whatever you like lah) so then the pair of corrupt shits went and absconded to the sunny UK and got put up, presumably as political asylum seekers.
Now, whilst I do agree with political asylum if you are being persecuted or your life is threatened, I have a bit of trouble seeing it being granted to a massively big time gangster lawbreaker who owes tens of millions of dollars in unpaid taxes after robbing a nation blind for years and gaining the revenues that you didn't pay taxes on from the taxpayers revenues in the first place.

So there we are, by allowing the prick and his family of sinners to reside on British soil, we are not serving justice or values of freedom, we are merely allowing Britons international reputation to sink further and further down the pan. The Thais seem to think that they can extradite the bloke and his gangster family. But, well, if we were to do that then we would have to make sure that the Thais promise to release all of the young British boys and girls who got duped into being drug-mules and are presently rotting away in the Bangkok Hilton.
Maybe, if they were to use the imprisoned Britons as bargaining chips, and make sure that they are all released into British custody and repatriated, then and only then should they allow him to be extradited. This may seem like a contradiction, but the simple fact is that he SHOULDN'T have been allowed into the UK in the first place, so if justice is to be properly served then the least we can do is make the Thais cough up the poor devils that they have locked up for life in the most abominably inhumane conditions and thus something good might just come out of this shameful fiasco.

I got a bee in my bonnet about the Thaksin thing, can't you tell.

Howdy ho, from one very silly country to another

Shame on all of us British people comes once more. Oh, dear, it's been a long time since I remembered just how shite the politics of the UK are, but this past week or so I've had some stark reminders.
Yes, just the other week Tony B showed his smug and infinitely kickable face in KL, as part of some Commonwealth summit or summert and I got the rancid greasy feeling once more, oh if only I had a high powered Sniper rifle I'd have hunted the shit down good and proper. Anyway I have been slightly cheered up by the fact that the Malaysian bloggers have been on a serious Tony B bashing session, which cheered me up no end - yes a lot of people hate him here, because he's a murderer like wot I've been saying for years, and so I have been able to plough on and join in the bastard bashing sessions and haven't had Dad there to tell me that I'm a silly reactionary. Aaaah, it was almost like the good old days of Tony hating all over again.

Then to top off the arrival of el dictat the UK has gone and allowed the corrupt bastard Thaksin to seek asylum in the UK, AGAIN!!!!! But the bastard super corrupt facist mother was suppose to be going on trail for being a super-corrupt non-tax paying facist dictator bastard this week, and his wife just got charged with non-payment of $15million USD in taxes and sentenced to 3 years in the nick, and her brother, and Thaksin was due up in the next week or so. Then somehow (ie: via corruption) they managed to secure a weekends pasage to China to watch the Olympics (oh yes, even if you are on trial, if you got money in Asia you can do whatever you like lah) so then the pair of corrupt shits went and absconded to the sunny UK and got put up, presumably as political asylum seekers.
Now, whilst I do agree with political asylum if you are being persecuted or your life is threatened, I have a bit of trouble seeing it being granted to a massively big time gangster lawbreaker who owes tens of millions of dollars in unpaid taxes after robbing a nation blind for years and gaining the revenues that you didn't pay taxes on from the taxpayers revenues in the first place.

So there we are, by allowing the prick and his family of sinners to reside on British soil, we are not serving justice or values of freedom, we are merely allowing Britons international reputation to sink further and further down the pan. The Thais seem to think that they can extradite the bloke and his gangster family. But, well, if we were to do that then we would have to make sure that the Thais promise to release all of the young British boys and girls who got duped into being drug-mules and are presently rotting away in the Bangkok Hilton.
Maybe, if they were to use the imprisoned Britons as bargaining chips, and make sure that they are all released into British custody and repatriated, then and only then should they allow him to be extradited. This may seem like a contradiction, but the simple fact is that he SHOULDN'T have been allowed into the UK in the first place, so if justice is to be properly served then the least we can do is make the Thais cough up the poor devils that they have locked up for life in the most abominably inhumane conditions and thus something good might just come out of this shameful fiasco.

I got a bee in my bonnet about the Thaksin thing, can't you tell.

Why have I renamed my blog?

It may seem a bit unwarrented and obscene. But behold the joy of phonetics









Need to put up a brick wall? Perhaps re-lay your patio, or even just repointing your chimney. Well look no further.
Oh yes, here in Indonesia only the best semen will do. And that is the Elephants fiber semen. Well, I'm sure the elephant makes very strong semen.


This little town also has funny name

I promised some photos, well finally here are some

Here are a bunch of photos from our trip to Jogja. Brilliant it was, even though it was dirty and polluted it was a reet nice trip away for the week. First holiday I've had in ages where I wasn't a total pennypinching backpacker.

In this series you can see the marvellous temple monument at Borobudur. Made around 900 years ago or more, then the civilisation that made it vanished and the jungle took it back. Rediscovered by Stamford Raffles, and rebuilt a bit, then generally looted by anybody that felt like it and messed up, until in the 1970s when UNESCO and the indon government rebuilt it. And all so that uneducated indons can run all over it touch and climbing and generally ruining it all over again. Hooray for the uneducated masses.

We stayed in a really nice hotel for the first 3 nights, and even did posh stuff like hiring a car and a driver to take us to places. The other 2 ladies you see in some pictures are Vanessas cousins (or something, it's hard to tell with such an immense family) and they were both lovely and took us to lots of places where we ate nice food (not as nice as Malaysian food I hasten to add).

Sorry about the layout of this, but for some reason blogger has gone a bit mental, instead of showing photos in the main typing page it is just showing HTML script which is just a big random jumble of letters. Not having the best luck with technology this week.

So what else did we do. We went for a long (and a bit pointless, but nice nonetheless) drive to a town called Solo, about 2 hours away, then we bought Batik and had a look in a Batik museum, owned by some rich bloke who collected Batik, which was certainly interesting up to a point (I'm sure mum would have been very excited). Then we ate frued jackfruit, got to drive past a rally by the aformentioned JI islamic extremists (commonly referred to as a bunch of utter mentals who's perception of religion is so far skewed from the real Islam that they are pure dangerous, in fact very dangerous, just a bunch of poor and ignorant dissafected young lads who have been brainwashed into believing sick things that relate to their faith in no way whatsoever. Bit scary when you are next to them and they have their faces all covered and only eye slits showing - a la Al Quiada stylee - and they got big sticks and you could reach out the window and poke them. Sadly no photo, cos it was a bit of an unexpected surprise and I am not Japanese).

Vanessa and I went up to a place called Ketap Pass, and (you can see photo of me in front of lots of clouds) we were supposed to be looking at the volcanos that surround it, but it was just too cloudy. If you look behind me, you can see a big dark patch, that is a big active volcano, it is high, but invisible due to cloud/smoke. Shame though

We also had fun watching the Volcano movie there. Not because the movie was any good, because it was poo. No the funny thing was that the tannoy lady had been saying in Indonesian about watching a volcano film, but we didn't pay attention. Then, just as we decided to go she evidently spotted me and so said "For lady and gentlemen want watching volcano filem of duration 22 minute, please coming and inside volcano theatre seeing, but registering before thank you". So with such a delightful invitation how could we refuse. So we went towards it, and there were 3 girls and a man looking at us, we made the gestures of "how do we get in", and they looked so shocked that their marketing ploy had worked they started jumping up and down, going, "wheee" and clapping. No joke. As the door closed behind us they carried on clapping and talking excitedly. There were a few locals in the "theatre" which was a lovely little place. The "projectionist" sat at the back, with the light switches (which went click when turned off, very classy) and his projector and DVD player which he didn't know how to work. Then half way through the film it all turned off - evidently the "projectionist" had moved a little excitedly and unplugged the bloody thing. So the lights clicked on again and the "projectionist" went oooohhh, then called in an assistant. Between them they managed to turn it all on again, but oh no, disaster, were we going to have to sit through the first 10 minutes again??? Much confused chatter between the "technicians" as they tried to decipher the remote control of a home DVD player. The muslim girl between us and them was covering her mouth as she choked back the hysterical laughter listening to tweedledum and tweedledee taxing their brains to the limit. But, finally the fast forward was located and we managed to watch the rest of the film. It was quite good, but the Chuckle brothers routine was better.

What else? We decided to have a full day sitting around by the pool and doing nothing. I took a walk around the area where our hotel was, to get food and just have a mooch. I then brought Vanessa out of the hotel (on false pretenses that there was actually something to do around there, but I was much mistaken) and then she slipped over and hurt her arm so we went back inside. I somewhat chagrinned at my pitiful attempt at light entertainment.

We went on the penultimate day for a long becak (trishaw) ride, into the old Sultans palace area, which is a city within the city, called the Kraton. This place was proper nice, as it's a palace, but that only covers about a quarter of the Kraton area. The rest of the area within the city walls is occupied by around 700 families, who have lived there in service of the palace for 10 generations or more. It is sort of a servants quarters only more like 5000 people. The residents there carry on with the old artisan practices of their forebears, making Jogja batik, wayang kulit (shadow puppets) and god knows what else. I ended up spending lots of money on a wayang kulit puppet, and I will tell you more about him next time. The nicest thing about this area is that the Sultan protects the families there, subsidising their homes and food, so that they don't have to worry and can settle down to just doing what their families have been doing for generations, namely, creating amazing pieces of art hand crafts. I was distinctly taken by this place, and I want to go back.

My eyes hurt now from tyoing so long. Getting back to KL stuff kind of sucks, as the political power struggle is getting more intense. The opposition leader got arrested for "sodomy" the day that he was announced that he was running in a by-election and so that has upped the stakes somewhat. Today we got caught for hours in a city wide traffic jam, caused by the Police establishing roadblocks all over the Klang valley. The reason? Unknown, but they generally do this when they want to make people feel scared/intimidated, as a reminder of sorts as to who holds the power in the country. Tomorrow they will blame it on the opposition leader, or say that they "heard rumours of a demonstration somewhere" so they make life hell for everybody. It's a shame, it was such a nice holiday.

Oh and everybody has been very excited about the olympics.

On another note I have been asked to write/direct and edit a corporate video for a flying acadamy, we went there on a location recce today, and this means that I will get to spend 2 days flying around in light aircraft and HELICOPTERS!!!!!! Waaaaaaaaahhhhh!!! I get to go in a helicopter. not just once, but lots of times, and I also get to DIRECT THEM!!!!! I have asked if I can have a shot with all 5 Eurocopters flying in formation, YES, then can I have the planes in formation? YES. Can I shoot the formation of planes from a helicopter? YES. The helicopters from a plane? YES. Can I have the formation of 5 helicopters fly towards us at the bottom of frame and then the 10 planes fly in formation over the top of them, so we get all of the schools aircraft in the same shot?????? Ermm, well I suppose so, YES.

WAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

I am excited