Sometimes I wonder how my head doesn't fall off

As I sit here typing my newest installment of "guff wot I done lately" my eyelids keep dropping shut and refusing to liift up again. I am right now what is mostly referred to as bloody jiggered. It's been quite a week. Where shall I begin.



Saturday: The esteemed and long awaited arrrival of my parents (would you warrent it, the day they flew here was the day after that miraculous non-fatal plane crash at Heathrow. When was the last time a plane crashed in the UK? How many years has it been mercifully accident free? Then the day before mum and dad come a sodding plane scooches it's arse on the perimiter fence and bellyflops onto the runway. As if mum isn't utterly neurotic anyway without being reminded - half a day before she gets into a plane to the other side of the world - that from time to time they happen to fall out of the sky). I went to the airport and picked them up, took them on the marvellous superhightech train that takes them to the doorstep of their hotel - this no embellishment, you practically fall over the thing on the way out of the lobby.



They are both seeming very delighted with the Hilton, they were on the 27th floor with a lovely bay window view of KL. The hilton is super swanky and no mistake, so they get to fell the raw pleasure of a nice bit of luxury living at a great height. Took them for a bit of grub, then i recieved the 1/4 tonne of food, presents and supplies (i.e mega overdoses of marmite and twiglets) that they dragged 8000 miles with them. Thanks for my pressies everybody, they're

brilliant. Great to see them both, but there never seems enough time for us to finish our sentences, we just keep on jabbering. Which is great, cos malaysians just don't seem to be able to keep up the pace of a good old fashioned yabber like we can.



Caught up on all the wotnots and that from back home, and got to see a lot of lovely photos of various younglings, in various states of being not-so-young-as-you-were-last-time-I-saw-you-lings. All very jolly.



SUNDAY: Mum and dad did a fair job of jetlag recovery. We took them out to Chinatown to see some of the sights, sounds and bargains on offer. This is usually the best place to take people when they're feeling woozy and spaced out by the travel and the general culture stuff (it's a kind of instant noisy bright, colourful, pushy, tasteless - oh so tasteless - and sinky dose of culture shock, but with lots of bargains i you willing to haggle). Mum and dad took it all in their stride, although I could sense mum getting a little weirded out by the hard sell of certain fellas and the heat, which there is no escaping from.

We took them for a taste of local food, in an environment that is - shall we say - a little less pristine than the hilton. It's dirty, but it tastes great.



I took dad into the buddist temple there, whilst mum and vanessa had a bit of a shop (which I remember several years ago me saying that hanging out in temples is a brilliant way to waste an afternoon and being greeted by his usual cynicism) and he seemed to really enjoy it, found it very peaceful I'd wager. You never know, maybe there is time to pare away a few layers of the cynic from him yet, now he's retired n all.



MONDAY: Mum got a slightly dicky belly (standard for any new arrivals just a bug you need to get used to, nothing to do with yesterdays chinese food, however I'm sure that it helped her become more "acclimatised" to malaysia, if you know what i mean) so she stayed around the hotel having a lazy day. Nothing too serious, but she feel it would be prudent to go on a long walk away from the toilet. Dad and I went into town to see the Petronas towers, which are quite a sight even after all this time. I go past them most days, I stomp past on my way to work and to meet people, but it does me good to look at them properly with somebody who has never seen them up before. The best way to do this is take the LRT whic goes underground (so you don't get to see them getting closer and get a bit bored of looking), then you climb the steps and look up, then up more, then up a bit more. They're mega big huge massive innit. Dad I believe is suitably impressed, not only with their engineering and stature, but by the fact that they're just so bloody shiny and clean.

We walked off to the traders hotel behind, for the (now almost customary) pint or 2 in the skybar. My favourite drinking spot, on the 33rd floor with no roof. Here we chewed the fat and discussed how good it is getting new lenses for Nikon DSLRs, and how he should just go ahead and buy himself a nice new telephoto or macro lens and start having a bit more fun taking pictures. A storm passed over, depositing very generous amounts of wind and rain along with a brilliant lighting display in the distance. A couple of pints passed the afternoon away merrily. Oh crap, we better go and check on mum. Anyway, I hadn't eaten for ages so I nipped into a shop to get a quick bite to eat, after paying I look around for dad. Oh he's in a camera shop, oh oh, he's talking animatedly to a shop assistant, oh no, he's got a camera with a nice big telephoto lens in his hands. Eeeek. So over I go, look at the lens box, eeek RM5999 (about 900 quid) it says. Waaah, must stop this happening. Anyway, long story short the man tells dad he can give him a good price of 400 pounds. Dad ponders this, then points out that he read in a magazine that in the UK you can get for 210 pounds. Shock horror, he's been rumbled, out comes the calculator "I must have made a mistake" he says, whatever. Anyway, dad gets it for 170 pounds in the end (or RM 1170 instead of the listed RM5999). Wahahahaaaaa

TUESDAY: I had to go to a meeting in the morning, then I met mum and dad in a coffeshop. Today was to be a day of pampering and massage for them. I took them to my favourite local massage place, where it is proper nice and spa stylee, a bit more expensive, but you do get a proper good work over and it's not in the least bit dodgy. I left them there for 2 hours getting rub and contorted in the name of relaxation. And very good they seemed for it after. In fact I could hardly get them to move after. Took them to my flat and mum told me "well it's not as awful as I thought it would be" which I took to mean, "quite a nice place you got here" would go in my hammock though.
Later on we went into town and had a meal with them and vanessa. Opted for the super asian choice of fish and chips - don't you know it's as asian as you get dear (I had pie and mash). Mum and dad were reet impressed however, as they opted to eat the Garouper (or groper as dad insisted on calling it to the usual hilarious results), which I think blew their minds out cos it were mega tasty.

Next 3 days they went to singapore, don't really know what they did, but met up with Ira the quilt woman, rode on dads train and ate a crappy meal someplace. I can giev you better details when I got more time. Over the time they were in singapore I was busy Producing 2 adverts (my first adverts ever) but this is not going to get mentioned now cos I in a lovely hotel next to a beach in Langkawi.

Right, I gonna go now and catch u more on the rest of their holiday tomorrow, namely cos I 'm a bit drunk and the internet is a silly expensice price (i tried to use dads laptop but typically I pressed the ON switch and it broke, why me? Why is it every time I try and use mum or dads computer it breaks? I use computers all the time, I got my own and it hardly ever breaks, but then I touch the flippin on switch one flippin time and it flippin goes to the "someone just broke your omputer, please allow windows to spend an hour trying to fix it" screen. Why god, why?