27 Aug 2008

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.

15 Aug 2008

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.

8 Aug 2008

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

5 Aug 2008

In Jogjakarta at the moment

Hello all,having a lovely little holiday at the moment. This is going to be a quick one because the internet place is quite crap, as I have to hit the spacebar 3 times in order to actually get a space.
So far we have stayed in a lovely boutique hotel for 15 quid a night, eaten lots of nice stuff, driven 2 hours to Solo (for no real reason that I can figure, but it was nice anyway and we got to see a demonstration by some genuine Islamic fundamentalists who are actually considered to be a terrorist organisation, well, in fact they are terrorists as it was them that owned up to the Bali bombing).
Then today we went to Borobudur (look on wikipedia, photos coming in a few days) and some other temples, then went to a viewing point on a volcano to look at some other volcanos.
Brilliant. Oh and our bedroom tonight has a scorpion in it, so I just came to have a look at how venemous small black indonesian scorpions are.

Brilliant. Lifes same old boring stuff as usual

love to all