If I was an Indonesian bricklayer I would spend all day mixing semen

Adventures of mum and dad (and me)

2010-03-10T00:10:00.002+08:00

It's been far, far too long since I wrote anything here. But I just want to let you all know what's been going on since M + P got here for the 3rd time. (when I say all, that refers to anybody who might still have an RSS feed from this thing).

Well, this trip has certainly been a different one. What with hiring a car and leaving dad to sort out all the hotels, it's turned out to be quite fresh. The road trip started with a collossal fuckup however, when Dad and I went to collect the car. There we were, we took the monorail to the correct stop, and got out on the opposite side of the road to the hotel with the Avis office. Jalan Raja Chulan is a busy road, with 3 lanes on each side. So we went to cross the street. A car was coming on the middle lane of our side, so I held up my hand and stared at the guy as we crossed, so he would slow down. He slowed down, so I looked back in front, only to discover that dad had opted to break into a spint to the central reservation, for reasons I cannot explain and neither can he.
So in slow motion, I saw him run, shouted "Daaaaad", just in time to see his leg braced right foot twist, and he legged himself up, pitching forwards onto both knees and landed on his bad shoulder. He made a right pigs ear of himself this time, and yet refused to go to the hospital to get it checked out.

I'm a bit concerned about this shoulder business, as he can barely lift his arm up now, and is struggling to drive, but being stubborn (and of course flat refuses to listen to me at any point in time, opting for going "No no no no, I'm fine" as he uses his left arm to lift the right.

So, with an even more crippled dad, we set off on our road trip.

The journey to Ipoh was mostly uneventful, (exept I opened myself up to ridicule by not knowing how to get out of KL. Hey, who does? The worst thing you can do is follow a signboard in this city, which we did, and went slightly circular until I called for backup). Hong was brilliant, as always, and the 3 of us had a great time eating, drinking and being merry. We went for a swim in the mountain river near Papan, which was beautifully cold on a savagely hot day. Then later on that evening we had a real brainwave, "hey, it's been 37 degrees C all day, let go to the hot springs!!!". It was brilliant, but, at over 40 C, rather more than a little warm. But at least we got the novelty value of escaping hot air for cold water, then escaping hot water for (slightly) cooler air, in the same day. The hot springs nearly killed me, and I could literally feel my flesh coming off the bone.

After Ipoh was a nice relaxing couple of days in the Cameron Highlands, and the wonderful, blessed cool mountain air. We met an old friend of mine (when I say 'old friend' I don't mean that I've known him for ages, but the guy is almost 85, hence). I went for a walk through the Boh tea plantations, and the parentals followed by later in the car.
Ate nice food (expensive, but nice) in Ye Olde Smokehouse, and enjoyed a drive on the winding mountain roads.

Today we're in Kota Bahru, the furthest northern city in Malaysia, which has proven to be a disappointment. It's the most Islamic city in the country, which has done such a good job of removing sinful actuvity from the streets that there is absolutely bugger all to do in town. No clubs, no bars, no pubs, virtually nothing is open after the evening prayers, you can't even hear any music in the town. A much more heinious crime however is this, the food is shit. How this has been achieved in a food paridise nation, I cannot figure out. But, the Kelantanese have managed it. It's a good job we're leaving tomorrow.

Also, Dad managed to screw his arm up even more tonight. Mum had a bug in her hair, so she started going "eeeek eeeeekk, get it out", before I could react Dad had swatted it from her hair full pelt with his bad arm. Brilliant reflex, but overall, f****** stupid, cos now he's in even more pain. Tomorrow, Kuala Terrenganu, I'm making Mum drive, I'll tell him at breakfast.

Good news all round.

2009-08-26T12:04:00.002+08:00

I just saw another black cobra, this one was even bigger than the last. This encounter wasn't quite so frightening though, as it saw me first and opted for quiety slithering into the undergrowth, good for me I didn't frighten it, cos it was well over a meter long with a body about 3 inches thick. Yikes, he'd take a great big lump out of you and no mistake.

Other news, the Muslim girls from home are having a great time, really enjoying the apartment I arranged, which is a very good thing. They are having an all round fun time, I keep checking in with them so as to make sure that they aren't having any problems.

I have a few new jobs lined up, the first one being 3 days following Mika Hakkinen around KL, interviewing him and then covering the Johnny Walkers event he's here for. Sadly I don't get to have a ride in the 2 seater F1 car, but then again I'm going to try and be cheeky, see if I can have a blast. Ha ha, not going to happen. Should be lots of fun, I like shooting motorsport events. Dad, I'm going to try and get you an autograph, it shouldn't be a problem, I have insisted we have total access to Mika in order to do our jobs properly and the client is cool with that. So hoorah, this means I finally get ot go to Sepang circuit (having missed the last 2 grand prix here), and we get to hang around the pit lanes all day, what fun.

I also have another job, I can't tell you about yet, but suffice to say, if it goes ahead (waiting on a grant) then it will be massive, mahoosive, and super duper fun fun fun. Watch this space, it's going to be a beast.

OK, slight change

2009-07-27T20:45:00.001+08:00

For some reason the videos are not in 16:9 and ended up getting squished.
Watch them properly here

LAUNCH VIDEO

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf43Rb0-5C4

SIMPLE LOVE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pm7U4zK6Bs

Much better that way

oooh, my 100th posting

2009-07-27T20:41:00.002+08:00

Here you go everybody, here are a few bits of work that I knocked out recently.
The first is a launch video for Reshmonus record label. Directed and Edited by me, knocked together in about 4 days with a budget of 20 quid.

And this is my first ever music video. Budget slightly higher, but not by much.

Watch them both in HD, much nicer

Snakes Alive

2009-06-10T13:37:00.000+08:00

Yes, indeed it warrants multiple exclamation marks does this one.
So there I was, just woke up, innocently walking down the shortcut at the back of our appartment block. Same as always, just heading out to start me day.
Half way down the jungly back lane, looking at the floor to avoid stepping on millipedes (often numerous), suddenly something in a deep primeval sense triggered. I didn't see anything, or hear anything, but some recess of my mind sensed something dangerous.
I stopped dead, almost like a switch was flipped in my head, and looked up at the road ahead.
My eyes quickly surveyed the scene, tarmac, jungle each side, leaves, branch.

Hmmm.

Odd looking branch on the road.
Sort of branch like, but slightly.... curvier, yes, distinctly curvy that branch, sort of smoothish....
sort of waving side to side ish
in a
snakey sort of way.

Oh smeg

Oh smeg indeed.

A cobra, black, about 1 meter long and about 4 meters further down the road. Head up, coiled in strike position, looking directly at me, slightly swaying.

Oh smegetty smeg smeg.

So, lucky for me I seem quite intent on staying alive, so my mind tells me occasionally, I assess my options.

Clearly taking the short cut has its benefits, am I prepared to relinquish such a labour saving device? Shall I be forced to do battle with the snake in order to shave 5 minutes off my travel time? How would I fight a snake? With a stick perhaps, but crap, how can I be sure that the stick I grab isn't another snake? Do I have a lethal bite perhaps? Erm, no, but the snake does, rather lethal in fact, perhaps you might call it "deadly", certainly deadly bite is not the best way to start in the day. What do like for breakfast sir? "oh well I'll have the continental breakfast with extra butter, orange juice and a deadly bite please".

So, what's the other option? Tried fight, not going to happen, so, erm, flight perhaps???

And all of this in just a fraction of a millisecond, who'd believe that?

Step back, slowly, oh so slowly. One step...... two...... he's still looking, still swaying a little, my he's a big bugger, I can see the curve of his head, the chevron shaped face..... three steps.....four

Suddenly it relaxed, dropped its head down (here i offered a little prayer of thanks to Steve Irwin and David Attenbrough) and slithered backwards into the grass.

I breathed.

Then turned.

And I ran.

And this is my first commercial

2009-03-27T21:23:00.001+08:00

Wheeee

2009-03-27T21:20:00.001+08:00

Holiday tales (continued)

2009-02-21T13:04:00.010+08:00

So, last time I got as far as our journey to Penang. So here's from where I left off......

NO CANOODLING PLEASE - THIS IS A HOUSE OF GOD, DON'T YOU KNOW

DOES MY DOME LOOK SHINY IN THIS?

INSERT WITTY COMMENT HERE, I'M ALL OUT OF THEM

INSIDE A CAVE TEMPLE

HONG PRACTISES HIS "VOGUE" DANCE ROUTINE, WHILST MUM DISCOVERS QUITE HOW STINKY TORTOISE SHIT CAN BE

"DO YOU LIKE MY NEW PHALLUS HEAD-DRESS?"

DAD: "TIM, WHY THE HELL DID YOU MAKE US WAKE UP EARLY IN THE MORNING, AND THEN TAKE A TRAIN TO IPOH JUST TO THEN MAKE US SIT AND WAIT FOR AGES IN A GROTTY OLD HOTEL?"
TIM: "TRUST ME, IT'S ALL PLANNED"
MUM: "HA HA, WE'VE HEARD THAT BEFORE"
TIM: "HAVE I COCKED UP YET?"
DAD: "WHAT, TODAY OR IN GENERAL???"

After our lovely trip round Perak, the last stop being Kuala Kangsar, we joined the North South highway and headed up to Penang. Somewhere along the way suddenly a mad rainstorm came ploughing down, so hard that we couldn't even see the bonnet of the Mercedes. It was a nasty storm and literally came from nowhere. I was just giving a discourse on how dangerous it is that Malaysians put their hazard warning lights on in such conditions, when we suddenly saw a bunch of hazards flashing ahead "see" said I. But then, we passed under a bridge and the rain vanished temporarily. This gave us one of the nastiest shocks of our lives (well, certainly of my life, I won't speak on the others behalf).

What we saw was simple carnage. A whole host of motorbikes had taken "refuge" under the bridge, as often happens here, and had evidently been parked in a big row having a break. We're not sure how it happened, but somebody had gone down the hard shoulder, as often happens here, no doubt trying to undertake a slower moving vehicle. Either that or he lost control. However it happened, the net result was that a car had just ploughed its way through 20 or more bike. It was total carnage. Bodies scattered, chunks of bike all over the shop, one bike wedged under a car, one body on the road that I am certain (however it all happened so fast and visibilty was not great) had no head, and a crash helmet (again, hard to tell) which I am quite certain contained the head. Either way, the body was not moving and would clearly never move again of its own volition.
Then, before we'd even had time to fully assess what we had just seen, suddenly the rain stopped and we were back in clear sunshine. We did however see a few more accidents on the way.
That's how it happens in holiday seasons here, and yet people still don't bother driving safely.

STEP ONE: TAKE A TREE, SLICE INTO SECTIONS, SLICE SECTIONS IN HALF.

STEP TWO: SCOOP OUT TREE.

STEP THREE: MAKE IT LOOK FANCY AND PREPARE YOUR HALF TONNE OF WOOD FOR STEP FOUR.

STEP FOUR: INSERT CORPSE AND BURY IN DIRT.

So, lucky for us, and thanks to Hongs good driving, we made it to Penang safely.
That night we went into town, where they were having another CNY celebration (this time for the Hokkien New Year, which falls on the 8th day of CNY, on the Jade Emperors birthday, by all accounts). This was a slight shock, for all of us, as there were about 30 million people (small exaggeration, ok, so sue me) all squeezed into the narrow streets.
One of the best and worst things about CNY is that the Chinese love (in fact are culturally obliged) to make noise at CNY. Harmonious melodic sounds are bad Feng Shui at this time, as it allows evil spirits to flourish. Thus what you have to do is this....

Oh wait, not that. That's only what you do when your son insists on you making a fool out of yourself for his own childish amusement....
No, what you do at CNY is this....

A) Set off bangers, as many as possible, preferably by throwing them at the feet of unsuspecting passers by (evidently in order to induce the spontaneous opening of bowel and bladder).
B) Smash drums and cymbals as hard as possible.
C) Crank PA systems beyond the Threshod of Pain, beyond ear bleeding, and into the brain mushing zone.
D) Sing chinese operas, in the style of a cat being raped in a mangle.
E) Shout raucusy and in a high pitched voice, in the above cat mangle style.
F) Tell crude jokes and laugh a la chat viol dans le mangle.
G) Generally be as obscenely noisy as possible.
H) Put all these activities together, on one street, and then compete to be noisier than your neighbours.

So there we were, tired and confused, being dragged around (by me) in hoping to find a bit of sanctuary amongst all the madness. Lucky for me I have my friend Salma, who has a heritage house in the midst of where all the insanity was taking place. So we went in there and had a good long rest, as they were having an Open House.

The next few days in Penang basically involved mum and dad being dragged around by me to see stuff. We went on the fernicular railway up to the top of Penang Hill (mum, brave soul, having kittens all the way up and down) and there we sat in a nice english style place and had tea and scones. Dad, in full tourist mode, wanted to go off and explore. As he went, I warned him "don't bother walking up to the mosque at the top, it's crap, the view here is just as nice, and there are loads of steps". 10 minutes later I went to find him, had a look at the lower area, no sign of dad, I saw the 50 over steps and though "nah, he won't have gone up there, not with his knee" so I looked some more, still no dad. I returned, and what do I see? Right at the top of the hill, coming down from the crappy 1980s cheap designed mosque that doesn't fit in at all? Oh. There's dad. Suffice to say, later in the day, he was bemoaning his knackered legs. I didn't want to say "I told you so" - but we all know that he simply refuses to listen to me, even when he knows I'm right. Ho hum...

So after a few days of relaxing, interspersed with me dragging them into knackeredness, we returned to KL for a night or 2.

The final leg of the Malaysian tour was supposed to be on the East Coast, but, it was the tail end of the monsoon over there, and so all the islands were closed. So, just before they came over, we had a last minute change and booked to go to Phuket.

Thus we flew to Phuket, and tried our very best to do as little as humanly possible for the week we were there. Mostly it was lying by the pool, occasionally swimming, frequently eating and drinking beer, a swim or two in the sea, sleeping, drinking and, of course, diving......

Oooooh, diving. With Dad as my buddy? Brilliant.

DADS FIRST SHARK - A BABY LEOPARD SHARK HAVING AN AFTERNOON NAP

A LIONFISH

A JELLYFISH

A BAMPYFISH
GENUS peterius doughtyonium, ORDER flattulantae

NO GEORGE, THE BUBBLES ARE COMING OUT OF HIS REGULATOR - FOR ONCE

LIKE SON, LIKE FATHER

WITH THE POWER OF NEOPRENE I BECOME "SUPERPETE"!!!!!!!!!!

"IS THIS AN OCTOPUS I SEE BEFORE ME? OH NO, WAIT, IT'S MY HAND"

IN THE POOL

POOLSIDE

So, thanks to Kims mum (Buoy) and her Bristolian hubby (Ken) we all had ourselves a properly lovely time on the beach, at In on the Beach. I never did get to take mum to a ladyboy bar, dad didn't really feel like being molested by men what don't have danglers anymore. The diving was great, Vanessa joined us for a few days (not long enough by far, but better than nothing) because she had to go to KL and have whips cracked at her in the office. I also got to eat obscene amounts of bacon, in preparation for the drought upon returning to the land of halal eateries.
Mum also got a corking bit of sunburn and attempted to purchase 30 tonnes of Thai tourist nick nacks. Dad advised her not to do so, as he only has one spine and one house, which is already full of crap - and yes, I know, most of it's mine.

Oh and lastly, we managed to track down where Santa goes on his holidays. It seems that between his Christmas excursions he transforms himself into a little inflatable version of himself, then splits himself into several copies of himself (which he must have learned from some bacteria) and then hangs himself up in a shop that sells beach toys for several months, in an attempt to set himself on fire in the intense sunshine. So there you go, you heard it here first kids, Santa is by the beach in Thailand, kicking it with the ladyboy crew.

Here's the music video I just recently edited/co-directed

2009-02-19T19:01:00.002+08:00

Howdy, not quite ready to carry on with the holiday tales just yet, cos a world of busyness was waiting to greet me as soon as I got better.
And also, randomly I got to be in 2 episodes of Puah Chu Kang. It was all a bit odd, there I was in bed, feeling groggy (not as sick as the day before, but not amazing) and as Vanessa left she said to me "what are you doing today?", "feeling crap and sleeping" was my response. Half an hour later the phone rang, could I come and be in a TV show because the talent had just let them down. They needed a token white guy. Cash is king, so I got out of bed and off I went. The guy kept asking me on the phone if I'd heard of the show, I had no idea, he was shocked, however I did recognise one of the actors names (Harith Iskandar, who's quite famous here and pretty funny comedian who I've watched on a few things). So I sms Adam and say I'm going to meet Harith Iskandar, cos I know he likes him and always enjoy making people jealous, petty but fun.
He asks what show, I don't know, but I was told it was some sitcom about a construction firm or something.

"Oh my god, you're going to be on Puah Chu Kang. That's amazing. Wah" Was the response.
Oh. Is it? The money's ok, so it must have a reasonable budget.
Then when I got there I met a bloke wearing yellow wellys, with a disgustingly huge mole on his face. "Alright mate, nice wellys, very fetching" says I. Bloke regards me oddly "yes, they are quite", "indeed" say I "I rekon I could pull them off on a night out, don't you think". I readily avoid commenting on the hugeness of his mole.

Anyway. Another sms to Vanessa, saying "have you heard of Puah Chu Kang? apparently I'm going to be in it". Well, she pointed out that I'd already watched it (and for that matter turned it off, saying "why are we watching this total crap?") and that I should ask PCK for his mole as a keepsake. I didn't. I don't even know if it's real or not, I mean, you can comment on a guys wellys but when it comes to facial disfigurements, I mean, what if it IS real? That would be a knuckle biter wouldn't it

So, as it transpires, everybody but me has heard of PCK (see how "in" I am now, oh yeah) because it's one of Singapores best known shows, running for 10 years, and apparently Malaysians and Singaporeans have grown up watching it. Now, let's get this straight, the show is crap, but it's well known and gets good ratings - well, look at Neighbours, that's crap and been running for years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phua_Chu_Kang

So there you go, I have now been on a "legendary" show. The glittering lights of fame and recognition await me. I actually had an alright part, and the director kept giving me lots more lines because I can actually speak english.
Here's part of a random episode that I found of youtube for you. Naturally the one with me in it won't be on TV for quite some time, cos it's episode 26 and the new season hasn't started yet.

Mum and Dads Holiday

2009-02-17T12:51:00.005+08:00

Hello everybody, I just got told that certain people are upset due to me not updating the blog over the last 3 weeks. Well, sorry about that, it’s been a little bit busy and I didn’t take my laptop with me on our travels, cos it’s a bit heavy and you never know how secure random hotels are.
So, yesterday I finally got to transfer all the photos from Mum and Dads cameras, and my goodness there are a few of them. Dad shot somewhere in the region of 900 photos – so you lucky lucky people are no doubt going to be subjected to several days worth of slideshows, ha ha ha. I got the job of going through them in advance and choosing the nice ones, not to mention the ones that mum has told me ‘definitely not to ever show anybody’ and then put them on the web for all to see. Yes, aren’t I the nicest son ever.

In brief, here is what we’ve done over the last 3 weeks……
Kuala Lumpur: They arrived, relaxed and got over jetlag, ate food and then we all took the train down to Malacca.

MOTHER AT THE MOSQUE

MOTHER AT THE MOSQUE

MOTHER MOONLIGHTS AS MALACCA LOLLYPOP LADY

DAD WATCHING DRAGON DANCE OVER A JUG OF TIGER

ESCAPING FROM THE HEAT

ME AND DAD? IN A BAR? NEVER

Malacca: To spend a couple of days over Chinese New Year among some nice buildings. I nearly killed them both, by route marching them in 35 degree sunshine around old buildings.
After Malacca we returned to KL, ate food and relaxed for a night or so. Then we took another train up to Ipoh, for the next leg. Mum and Dad both seem completely unable to trust their ‘little boy’ and I think there was always a certain fear lurking in the back of their minds – the fear that I would drag them for days on end, on perpetual jungle missions, that eventually led to somewhere crap where there was nothing to see or do – and also that I would have left us all stranded in this god-knows-where place with no room to sleep in, thus having to bed down in a gutter with nothing but a banana leaf to keep us warm. Well, despite my not planning very much, it didn’t turn into a homeless holiday, not even once, in fact it didn’t even come close. But that just goes to show how much faith they have in little old me, doesn’t it just.

NO RABBITS? MUST HAVE SEEN HER COMING

DAD AND MR CHIA

MUM AND MRS CHIA

"GOD, WHY ARE YOU TAKING THIS PHOTO TIM? WE LOOK LIKE SUCH TOURISTS"
"YOU ARE TOURISTS, JUST STAND NEXT TO THE BLOODY ELEPHANTS"

HELP!!! A SNAIL ATE 2 OF MY FINGERS!!

Ipoh and Perak: So, in Ipoh we met up with Hong, my friend and a cohort in the film project. He done himself very proud that man, and he sorted us out good and proper with a really nice 3 days. Firstly he took us to some cave temples, in the limestone cliffs around Ipoh, then we bought a couple of Pomellos in the pouring rain, before retiring to spend an evening in Papan, at Sybils clinic. A lovely day, not too tiring, and lots to see. That night Hong and I went out for a few beers, which unfortunately ended in his car window getting smashed by a thief, and his stuff robbed from within. Thus we (both drunk) entered the police station. Hong spent the next hour trying to convince the police officers that I was a friend, and not his catamite (ask dad). It looked like the trip to Ipoh was going to end in disaster, and naturally I said to Hong, "don't worry about us, you go and sort this out and we'll be fine". "NO!! I'm not going to let some filthy Tamil theif swine ruin my plans, I'll pick you up in the morning as arranged". So that was that, what a trooper! He came in his brothers lovely Mercedes, and we continued our tour of Perak in total style. It's a bugger that it had to happen that way though.
So on we plodded. To see the last tin dredge in Malaysia (sadly now it's filling up with water due to total lack of care and the visitors centre is full of flies, urgh), then to Tanjung Tualang to eat delicious fresh water shrimp. The next day we drove on the long route to Penang (Hong being a supreme legend offered to drive us up there) via Chemor - where we saw guys making coffins out of trees - and Kuala Kangsar, one of the most beautiful towns in Perak, made so because the Sultan has boat loads of money and a big ego, but also because the British built some gorgeous buildings there. Oh and we went to see a great old iron railway bridge, built by the victorians. It was here that Dad stated "no, I really am not that interested in trains really, it's the, you know, erm, history and all that", Hong, who had known him for exactly 3 days, raised both eyebrows and went "Hmmm", whilst mum and I exchanged knowing looks. Yes dad, time to admit it, you like trains, we all know, no shame in that.
This was the same place that mum spotted a big pile of rubber, spread out in lumps to dry in the sun awaiting collection. She wanted to have a closer look, and she was warned "don't touch it, it really stinks". What did she do? The next thing is "urrgh, have you got any wet wipes, my hands stink!!!". Can't say she wasn't warned though.

Continued Tomorrow..................... (because today I have a fever and need to go back to bed)

Oh no, it's almost my birthday - cold dread creeps up my spine.

2009-01-06T18:53:00.000+08:00

Hello all, well it’s a bit late but Happy New Year to everybody. Things are all very normal over here once again, Vanessa is back at work (working too hard) and yesterday I had to get rid of the cat that I rescued.
Did I mention that cat? Not too sure if I did, well a couple of weeks back I had the joyous time of walking past a storm drain which was meowing. Needless to say a meowing drain proved of great interest to me, cos they normally just burble and stink. Well this one had a very sweet kitten stuck at the bottom of it. Thus she was rescued, then spent the next few days shredding our apartment in a fit of kittenish happiness. Over Christmas she was looked after by a friend of ours, and yesterday I had to put her up for adoption – not only for the shredding house thing, but also the poo smell (not great in a flat), the fact it’s not fair she couldn’t go out and play (for fear of taking a 20 metre nosedive to the concrete floor below) and that Vanessa is allergic to cats (and cat poo smell).
So, that was the high point of the week – the low point comes tomorrow, when I find out that I am officially 2 years away from being 30, and thus practically dead already. Deep joy.
I am already geared up for mum and dads visit in a few weeks, got a right corking little trip round Malaysia planned, so it should all be jolly fab.
On another note, I got a call yesterday with some fabulous, but weird news. It seems that the Grand-daughter of Sybil (my film subject, one of the 4 ladies that dad tried to trace) is coming to Ipoh tomorrow, so I get to go meet her on Thursday and then ask crap loads of questions. Jolly surreal, but I’m actually quite excited. I’m just wondering how you say “hi, you don’t know me but I’ve been doing a documentary about your gran, and I know more than is healthy about your entire family, and by the way my parents have been trying to track you down but never got anywhere – in fact I even know your birthday, oh and can you just let me know how your mother died cos I’m ever so interested” without sounding like a weird stalker and making her run a long long way, shortly before putting a restraining order on me. I don’t really know, as it’s a rather new situation for me. Hmmmm, they don’t teach you this sort of social etiquette in school do they.

Merry Christmas from Bintan Island

2008-12-28T15:39:00.006+08:00

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

2008-11-29T16:47:00.003+08:00

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?

2008-11-07T20:29:00.003+08:00

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.

2008-10-26T16:53:00.003+08:00

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

2008-10-14T12:39:00.002+08:00

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

2008-10-01T14:26:00.003+08:00

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

2008-09-19T14:37:00.002+08:00

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

2008-09-16T21:03:00.002+08:00

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

2008-08-27T19:57:00.009+08:00

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

2008-08-15T13:01:00.001+08:00

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

2008-08-15T13:01:00.000+08:00

Why have I renamed my blog?

2008-08-08T22:19:00.003+08:00

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

2008-08-08T21:20:00.009+08:00

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

In Jogjakarta at the moment

2008-08-05T21:05:00.002+08:00

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

Got flu now

2008-07-16T14:35:00.002+08:00

Maybe it was all the fun of the big trip from KL to Ipoh and then Penang, but now this week I feel like crap. It's about time really, not had an illness for months on end (despite Vanessa, Adam and other friends dropping like flies all around me). So I am generally sitting around at home feeling sorry for myself.
The film is still going nicely, I have embarked on the arduous and thankless task of sitting and transcribing every single interview - which when you have 10 interviews, several of which run to around 80 minutes, you may guess that it is endless fun. Oh for an army of plebians and a typing pool so I can just sit there and go "work faster scum" and pay them next to nothing.
Ho hum, Vanessas little brother Stan is working as my typing coolie instead (and yes Stan I know you read this, so work faster dammit). Little bugger went all Chinese businessman on me the other day (aided and abetted by his mother) and demanded more money, would you believe it, 12 years old and threatened to down tools. Well, being from a family of Union supporters I had no choice but to honour the agreement, not wanting to be seen as just another colonial out to exploit the Chinese right.

Apart from this I don't have much to report, just lots of me sitting around and writing, going through over a pen a day, and reading the papers to see quite how rotten this nation is. In brief here is an update - Ex-Deputy PM (now de-facto opposition leader) has been accused of sodomy charges, again. He is not very happy. The lad who has accused him suggested they both go and swear in front of the Ulamaks. The Ulamaks I think are the Islamic equivilent of a Cardinal. They are going to try a rather crazy notion (one that none of my Islamic friends have ever heard of) which involves both parties swearing on a copy of the Qu'ran and then the Ulamak tried to convince God to strike down the sinner. Yes. You heard right, this so called legal proceeding is in attempt to get a heavenly lightning bolt to turn the guilty party into a sinful pile of ash. Brilliant isn't it, this one has amused me for days now. My question is why do they think God would give a crap? Why not burn down all the Gay-pride festivals in the world if He's that bothered about bum sex?

The other day the Opposition called for a Vote of No Confidence, but for some reason (no reason was given) the Speaker decided to throw it out without even a thought. Not quite sure how that is supposed to work, but there you go.

Then the same day the Police dropped hardcore roadblocks absolutely everywhere, supposedly to prevent a demonstration that nobody had planned. The aim, so all the blogs (including the Newspaper blogs, so I am allowed to write this cos it got past their stringent censoring, don't worry) was to make the people think that the Opposition are all evil do-ers out to destroy the lives of all Malaysians. But, lucky for Malaysia, not so lucky for the propaganda boys, Malaysians are as dumbshit as they think they are. Everybody is now shouting about it, asking "why did I have to sit for 3 hours in a traffic jam because there wasn't a demonstration 10 miles away?". Nobody has been able to come up with an answer that isn't hilarious yet.

Fun fun fun, in the sun sun sun.

In Penang at the moment

2008-07-10T00:15:00.002+08:00

Hello all,long time no jibber jabber. Has to be said I have been a bit caught up in many many ways. Where to start? Well along with making my documentary (which is going marvellously well and costing me an arm and a leg, but is looking amazing and will almost certainly be a smash, no shit guys it's going to be very interesting indeed), where was I? Oh yes, aside from making my documentary I have ended up being involved in a tourism/travel show for the USA. A long story, but basically Adam the cameraman found out I'm not too bad an editor, the american woman who presents the show thought she could edit it, after a month she still wasn't able to look at any of the footage so Adam and I hijacked the show and said we'd do it for a token fee, really to solidify a relationship and prove that we are the only people they need to shop with in the future. The americans got a bit upset and haughty, thinking we were basically going to try and screw them over somehow, but we went ahead and did it anyway.
So yours truly edited together the first episode (only 6 minutes, essentially long adverts, american style, but nice ones that are mini "come visit malaysia" programs) - then we sent it to them and they all wet their pants with glee.
So now we are almost entirely sorted, got 3 more episodes to do and it's going to be sweet. The only problem is on the Malaysian end, see the Americans refuse to bribe anybody - why? Because they have an inland revenue service like we do, and accountants that notice when 10% of the budget has evaporated into thin air, and also laws that back up these observations. In Malaysia? Well the laws exist, as do the accountants, but just bribe them under the table, ok lah no problem. Like that.
So the Malaysian client, who operates for the Malaysian tourist board, thus promoting bringing American money into Malaysia, are not being very forthcoming about payment until they get their bribe. So what to do? Dunno, not too bothered cos I got a film to make and no doubt it will all play out nicely in the end. If not, bugger it, we now know that we're good enough for the yanks market, so the rest of the world is no problem.

As for my documentary - well this week has been a bit of a heavy one (intentionally so as Adam has a 30 day job all through august, so I want to use the downtime to start editing my film) so on Monday we set out for Ipoh and met with our man Hong (the museum owner), where he delighted us with a box full of incredible old photos, along with various letters and cards etc, so we spent Monday night trawling through a whole shoebox packed with piccies. Incredible stuff, but led to a very late night. Then after spending the night in the museum (and yes I know that's the title of a crap film, and yes it was a bit scary as Adam got bizzarrely "attacked" by a "spirit" - and yes this sounds weird, but he's really a very normal and sensible guy, but he says he has dealings with the spirit world and when a guy is talking to you in a spooky 130 year old house then suddenly goes "huh?" and then doubles over and makes hideous vomitting dry heave noises on the floor in a very much Exorcist style, then goes into a trance and starts clapping (banishing the evil spirit into hell apparently) and in the process you suddenly feel like you're having a severe heart attack, well, it makes you wonder, and yes that was an inordinately long sentance with no break, but it is very very late and my head is now quite blur blur.
I digress, what was I on about? Cameramen being attackedby demons? No after that. Oh yes, on Tuesday we interviewed Olga again, but this time she was wearing the wrong blouse (bad continuity for interviews, very bad) so we had to devise a whole scene on the spot. Thus we got a great set of footage of her going through all the pictures, letters and stuff, a lot of which she had never seen before, despite it being her collection. Don't know, it's hard to tell with an 87 year old lady, her memory is utterly superb, but, well, it's hard to have a full bag of marbles at that age, right.
Anyway we all sat around until far too late having a brilliant time and getting some incredibly good footage. Then at around 8.45 we finally realised that we were scheduled to drive an extra 200kms up to Pulau Penang, so figured it was time to leave.
We finally made it up to Penang and found a place to sleep around 1.30am - ending up in a really nice and fabulously budget saving backpacker hostel (from whence I write this jibberish) and collapsed in a heap.
Early this morning we scraped ourselves out of bed and went to meet a man called Cheah Boon Kheng, who is a pre-eminant Malaysian historian, with a good number of excellent books to his name, and was a lecturer of history at University Sains (science, not my bad spelling) Malaysia or USM for 30 odd years. We had a lovely chat and although he had declined to be intervied, I have to add a, YET, I am firmly convinced that I can cheese him into it, with some good old fashioned flattery. This guy confused the crap out of me, namely because he is 74 or 75 (for sure as he was 5 when the japs invaded) but looks like he's in his late 40s. Weird? Yes. I thought I was talking to the wrong guy, in fact I kept expecting him to say "so when do you want me to take you to see my dad?". But no, another incredibly good looking youthful elderly person (that makes 4 or 5 so far on this film), there must have been something in the water back then, either that or there is something bad in the water now. Incredible. Anyway I got to be really cheeky and made him sign my copy of his book (one of them).

Finally we went back into Georgetown (which I will add incidentally got declared a UNESCO world heritage site yesterday) and collapsed. Later we went out to shoot some cutaways for the american travel show (may as well right, we needed them, we're here already) then went to meet a lady called Khoo Salma. She's the lady (or one of a few, but a very important one) who just got the whole of Georgetown declared as world heritage site. I like her already, stick one in the eye of the ignorant money grabbing uneducated shits that rule this country, who would gladly bulldozed the whole historical part of the city, grind it down into cement and use that to build "PENANG WORLD THEMEPARK" which would consist of cheap badly made replicas of the origionals (which would of course fall down in 2 years and have to be re-built, thus securing more under the table bribe money for the cabinet and their family members).
It's the saddest thing about this country that it takes a mandate from someone like UNESCO to say "you cannot tear this down" in order to save the history of this country from the vultures , surely they just have to look at these places to see they're worth saving!!! But no, they see only $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Sidetracked again. I was saying that tomorrow we're going to interview Salma and her husband, in an incredible place. It's an old chinese shophouse (I imagine dated around the 1890s, but I no expert) which looks amazing. It was the house where Sun Yat Sen (who was the father of the Chinese revolution in 1911 or 12 or sometime around then) had his secret HQ and planned the successful revolution that saw the end of Chinas Emporers. It looks utterly amazing in there, so much dark hardwood furniture, walls, floors, staircase, everything, and it positively stinks of history. I'd recommend looking Sun Yat Sen up on Wikipedia, cos he was a proper interesting bloke and changed the course of world history (as it was only after his revolution that Chan Kia Sheck and his Kuomintang lads, and Mao Tse Tungs Red brigade we established, he was the father of modern China, whether you like the outcome or not)/ Oh and we got an open invitation to sleep in the place whenever we are back in Penang, which is just amazing.

So now it is gone 1am again and my head hurts, so time for another beer.
Sorry no photos, but we killed the batter taking pictures of Olgas pictures the other day, and dunce boy here forgot to bring the camera battery charger. We're going to try and shoot some stills on the HD cam tommorrow if we get the chance, so as I can show you the location. The word for it is "Wah"

Love to all, Andrew hope your back is better soon

Just to get the family up to speed with Malaysian Politics this week

2008-06-26T13:55:00.002+08:00

Woo, it's all fun and games over this side of the world I can tell you. Yes indeed the current political situation warrents a bit of explanation for all the boys and girls back home. It's twisted, it's convoluted, it's mind-boggling and it's actually a little bit frightening, but there you go, that's life in Asia for you. Deep breath, here I go.

This week a famous Malaysian blogger, a man called Raja Petra (or RPK to all) who is the editor of www.malaysia-today.net has dropped yet another bombshell in his campaign to rid the nation of the nasty deputy PM. Najib Razak. You see, since before I got here the newspapers have been covering the murder of a Mongolian lady called Altantulia - who was over here acting as a translator and then somehow or other ended up murdered then taken out into the jungle (or a plantation, can't quite remember) and her dead body was blown to smithereens with C4. The C4 explosive was (not really very hard to do) traced straight back to the police, I think special branch. And over the months (well years now I think) the case has dragged out and then the personal bodyguards of Datuk seri Najib Tun Razak were in the dock facing murder charges - on doubt they had upset somebody, asked for more money or something otherwise it would never have got that far. In their defense and in an attempt to escape the noose they said (something like) "we didn't kill her, we were just disposing of the body like, your honour". And these boys are police innit, nice to know they were just disposing of the body, after all, you wouldn't want to think they were doing anything bad now would you.
So, the case has gone on and on, and Najib and his wife have managed to remain uninvolved in the proceedings, despite the fact that bascally everybody has been talking about it for ages and ages, but that's Malaysia.

Anyway, RPK posted on his blog a few weeks ago something along the lines of "send them all to hell" and called the Altantunia trial a "showtrial in a kangaroo court several times, then said "they'll probably send me to prison for that" so they did.
But the strange thing was that even though what he said qualifies as Defamation of character, or attempting to pevert the course of Justice, they slapped him in the nick with the very outmoded and contraversial Sedition Laws. Now I can't quite figure how saying that the judicial system is completely corrupt (which is is BTW) has any baring on trying to bring down the government, despite his claims being aimed at the Deputy PM and his wife. Anyway, they got him in the nick in a couple of days, then loads of people made a big stink and thousands (I think 30 or 40 thousand) donated 1RM each to get him out of jail. He initially said "NO I WANNA STAY IN JAIL AND MAKE A POINT" but then there were death threats, the prison guards couldn't guarantee his safety (as by all accounts you can bribe a lifer to kill somebody with a pack of fags and a new jumper) so his wife told him to come home.

Time passed. And in the corridors of power the corrupt current leadership are having all out battles with the corrupt opposition, who are getting stronger and stronger everyday. Now in Sabah there are calls from the politicians for votes of No Confidence from the PM.
I have to digress a little here, and branch into the wider political scape. The Barisan Nasional (BN) have been in charge since the British left. The British locked up anybody who wanted to oppose the BN coalition before granting independance, so allowing BN to dominate through widespread election rigging for years and years. But despite this a lot of people (Malays mostly) blindly voted for UMNO, who are the main party that rule the land, because they are basically a bunch of racists and vote for those that favour their own race. Ho hum. In 1969 the Chinese voted against the MCA (Malaysian Chinese Association) but the Malays still voted UMNO - this threatened the BN alliance, but as UMNO were still all powerful and had control of the army they were able to agitate a few riots (using the UMNO youth movement) and then blame it on the Chinese, whom they promptly machine gunned a few hundred and called on the Emergency Laws (kindly left by the British for them, ostensibly to suppress the Communists). A few weeks of curfews and killings and a Parliamentary blackout, whereupon Tun Razak (the 2nd PM who was at the time Deputy PM and Defense Minister) deposed the 1st PM, the late-great Tunku Abdul Rahman, and held a coup, changed the constitution and declared himself lord and master of all, oh and then he told Singapore to piss off from Malaysia as there were too many Chinese there and it affected the balance of racial politics too much, so by expelling Singapore then Malaysia became a Malay majority land. He is still touted as a good leader and a great man, May 13th 1969 is still claimed to be the fault of the chinese despite the fact that it wasn't. His son Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak is the current Deputy PM and the Defense Minister. Sounding like things are making a bit more sense now?

So, back to the nowtime, and the May 8th elections. Basically 54 out of 140 odd seats that were "won" by the BN coalition came from the states of Sabah and Sarawak. Now very few (if any in fact) of these seats were won by UMNO, as there really aren't that many Malays over there; ethnically it is mostly Kadazan, Iban and Dyaks (the former headhunters), some Chinese and Malays and others. And Sabah and Sarawak are not very happy at the moment, as they are basically just exploited for their resources and get very little in return.
So the Opposition have been trying to turn Sabah and Sarawak away from BN, as if they switch to the Opposition, then the Opposition have the parliamentary majority and the BN are very much on the loosing team.
Now, Najib Tun Razak knows this, and he's not very happy at the thought of loosing out on his "right" to sit in the Golden Chair and command his subjects as he sees fit and all that.
Funnily enough though, the leader of the party that is calling for the No Confidence vote, has now been threatened with a visit from the Anti-Corruption Agency, for some RM5million bribe several years ago, this says 2 things (1) it's ok to be corrupt as long as you're in the BN coalition, and (2) the Opposition don't care if you're corrupt as long as you're with their coalition.

Which brings us up to what the hell has been happening over the last few weeks. In brief

Former PM Mahatir resigned from UMNO and stated that he would only rejoin when the current PM is gone, (now this to me is Sedition, trying to overthrow the current government, but instead of anything like that being said, it just gets laughed at).
Then Mahatir is trying to blame it all on the Chinese and incite racial tensions from way way back, luckily the people of Malaysia are older and wiser now, it is a very different time to 1969 - bearing in mind that in Indonesia in the late 60s the Indonesian Malays slaughtered half a million chinese in brutal racial violence). Most people have roundly ignored Mahatirs incitement of racial hatred, but still there are a lot of ignorant and uneducated Malays who will believe whatever BossMan tells them. Which is frightening.
Then suddenly and without warning the Petrol price skyrockets, this causes most problems, as Malaysians are obsessed with money and the only way to get a rise out of them is to threaten their wallets - but luckily the people who went out and marched in demonstrations are wise to the powers that be (see, people can sometimes learn from history) and didn't start any riots. Even more relevant here is that the biggest marches were arranged by PAS and the PKR (both Malay political parties) and the police simply would not and could not attack a crowd that is comprised solely of Malays, as by doing that any legitimacy they would have over their claims that "it's the Chinese fault" would evaporate and the parliament would be stormed by an angry mob. It is interesting to note here that the only colonial powers that tried to mess with the Islamic Malay people were the Portugese, and their colonial time in Malaya didn't last long - the Dutch, British, Japanese and the current government know that the simple rule to a "happy" Malaysia is this APPEASE THE MALAYS because if you don't, they kill you. The British Resident Birch learned that one, when he tried to abolish slavery in Perak (the Malay Sultans wife had lots of slaves) so he got assassinated and then a bit of a civil war broke out. After that they learned, don't mess with the Malays.
Have you ever heard the term Amok, as in Running Amok? Yes, it's a Malay word, and it was Malay people that suffer most from the Amok tendancy. Something snaps and they grab a machete and run mentally round and round hacking up anybody they can see, the traditional cure for somebody running amok is for lots of people to grab bamboo poles and beat the mental man to death. You may now understand why the police didn't fire teargas and water cannons on a Malay only demonstration that began at a mosque.

Which leads us up to 2 days ago - and RPK (remember him?). He was not content with the Sedition charge, and it seems he is unable or unwilling to be cowed into submission. So, get this, he has gone straight to the High Court and made a Statutory Declaration, saying that he has information from a witness to Altantunias murder, who is a cast iron VVIP, who puts Najib Tun Razaks wife at the scene of the C4 blowing to smithereens of the poor Mongolian girls corpse.
Hooooeeeey, this has caused a stink. Furthermore his Declaration says that the PM recieved a memo from MI about the event, which he passed on to his son-in-law Khairy (who is a very very dodgy character, mega rich through construction contracts, corruption and all that, who is now an MP despite loosing the inital ballot, but a miraculous recount put him 800 votes ahead, amazing the miracles that money can pull off innit).

Natturlisch all those who have been implicated are crying foul play, saying nothing to do with them, "utter garbage" says Najib.
Who knows what the real truth is, but I'd have to assume that RPK has some pretty potent information that has to be cast iron, otherwise why would he subject himself to Purgery (as well as god knows what else laws you break by going to the High Chief Justice and give a statutory declaration saying the Deputy PM/Defense Minister and his wife were involved with the nations highest profile murder case ever).
But there we go, the chances are that Najib will orchestrate some violent upheaval, slap down the Emergency Laws, suspend Parliament, Re-write the constitution, expel another state and declare himself lord and master whilst putting all his enemies onto the slammer, just like Daddy did. Or maybe not. It's one of those points in a nations history when the answers are in the very Black and White. Either BN are finished, or they become a Dictatorship, again.

The big question is what happens next - the choices are Najib, and whatever plans he has for subjegating everybody, PAS (the plainly titled Parti Al Islam) who want to subjegate everybody under syariah law and are horrible and insane megalomaniacs who people seem to believe are good (the worst option totally), Anwar Ibrahim from the PKR who was former Deputy PM (under Mahatir) who is being touted as the saviour of Malaysians but I wouldn't trust the bastard as far as I could throw him - as he is no doubt hell bent on revenge after being kicked out of UMNO, put in prison under the ISA and smeared as a prostate massage loving sodomite in all the papers, he also wants to sell Malaysia to the USA.
The choice is

Proven to be Shit
Xenophobic religious extremists who are rancidly Shit
and
Revenge fuelled smooth talker who will undoubtly claim this that and the other, then get in power and turn out to be, you guessed it, Shit.

It's nice to know that the British have left such marvellously divine political systems in the wake of the Empire innit.

Read the Malaysian blogs
www.malaysiakini.com
www.malaysia-today.net
www.thestar.com.my (then interactive, citizens blog)
www.jeffooi.com

or just google Malaysian blogs and it makes for some real interesting reading

Yes, I'm a coward, but it's probably best to be diplomatic

2008-06-13T15:58:00.002+08:00

Hmmm, in a moment of angry madness I posted some jolly old ravings about the petrol increase. Well, I got in trouble with the misses, as well, basically I didn't really think to cleverly before going and raging about all sorts. So in a rare act of tact and diplomacy, I have decided it's best to capitulate and delete them.
It does make sense, after all, my white flesh does make me an eternal follower and even if I had lived her 80 years I'd still be matsalleh and so shouldn't try and interfere. Also I don't wanna get mistaken for a spy/agitator or some such and then cause an international incident.
So there we go, shock horror, Timbo backs down and uses his head for once.

It's all quite quiet and peaceful here today, but I just walked past KLCC and the Petronas Towers and there is a great big fence aroud the thing and a boat load of piggies in riot gear all stood around with their cry-maker gas guns (and no doubt the cold shower mobile around the corner on standby). Funny thing is that there are no protesters or anything, just some tourists standing and looking at the scene of police with some degree of confusion. I think Petronas are getting a bit worried, because now everybody is talking about why it isn't a publically listed company - it's accounts are totally opaque, there are no public shareholders, the only person they have to answer to is the Prime Minister and people are asking where the Billions of dollars in oil, petrol and gas revenues actually go. Interesting innit.
The Prime Minister told everybody that they have to learn how to save, but now most people are saying "save what?" as the price of Rice, Cooking Oil, Flour, Petrol, Diesel and Electric have all gone up considerably, and they're going to take away the subsidy for RapidKL (the main public transport company) very soon, and as the cost of transporting goods has basically doubled so everything else is going up as well.
The government did make a supremely magnanimous gesture this week though. They have AXED a whole 10% from the "entertainment budget" for Ministers - which comes in at an incredible several Million Rinngit, just in "entertainment" whatever that entails. So, they must be feeling the pinch now that they are down to only 3 types of canopees and the caviar is off the menu until the next budget. Poor things, it makes you weep doesn't it.

Have fun in the temperate zones,

Just watched the new Indiana Jones movie

2008-06-01T21:14:00.002+08:00

Helo all, yes me and the good lady have just been freezing our respective nipples off watching the new Indiana Jones film, and it was alright. Not bad for an old fella like, but the soppy wedding at the end was just a bit, well, weird, watching wrinklies play tonsil hockey in front of a load of other wrinklies - it's enough to put you off your dinner, and god only knows what damage it could do to the minds of the young. Shame Kate Blanchett is about as convincing a Russian as I am a Bangkok chick-boy (and I was ultimately confused by her supposedly being some psy-corps type Babylon 5 sytle psycho-kinetic woman able to open the door of Area 51 with a flick of her hand from 20 paces in the opening scenes and from then on posessing nothing in the way of psychic powers for the whole rest of the film, but then again I got really really confused when the inter-dimensional portal opened up in the Mayan temple and the alien crystal dudes flew off in a spaceship, not to space, but to "the space between spaces" and it all turned, well, what is the best word? Erm, crap?).

So there we go, Vanessa failed to understand my excitement and desire to go "doo do doo dooo, doo doo doooooo" etc and jump around cracking my imaginary bullwhip, as it was just a good old fashioned pile of turd. Too heavy on the self referencing, and Indys illigitimate son was an utter waste of space, a pathetic wimpy little fart of an actor, who was supposed to be some tough-guy style 1950s teddyboy a la Johnny T in Grease, with less character than John Mayor and less depth than Posh Spice.

Yes, I am a little dissappointed, and now I remember why I don't really go to the cinema anymore, namely because its a waste of money (and in this country its so sodding cold that they actually offer Gold Class expensive tickets with a blanket. A BLANKET!!! WHY NOT TURN THE AIRCON DOWN YOU IDIOTS!!!!)

On another note I witnessed my first police raid in a nightclub last night, which was utterly surreal and annoyingly expensive. Literally a case of enter club, pay 40 rinngit (6 quid), 2 minutes later policeman shines torch in face, lights on, music off, everybody show your ID. Being white it wasn't bad at all, as myself and my Croatian mate Boris were led out by Vanessa and Cheng and they didn't even look twice at us. Problem is the pigs were just out to persecute the Malays who were having fun, what with them being born Islamic and unable to excersise the most fundamental write of self determination. So, pity the poor underage Malay drinkers, and pity even more the ones that had taken drugs (and during the few minutes with the lights on I could see more than a dozen very scared faces in the crowd) god knows what happened to them, very possibly sent to a re-education camp - read religious indoctrination - if they didn't have the cash to bribe their way out of it.
Shame though because the music was very decent, and it cost me bloody 40 dollars for 2 minutes. I went back later and started chewing the Bouncers, demanding a refund. I asked him who his boss was, so he pointed to a bloke, so I started chewing his head, anyway I asked where I was supposed to get my refund, and should I go to Bukit Aman (police headquarters) and demand it back, he laughed. Told me he couldn't do anything, police matter, so I demanded ot see his boss, "who is your boss?", "oh, chief constable whoever". Oh your police, yes, erm, ha ha ha, sorry about that I thought you were staff. Not impressed face, but Timbo scores another minor point against the facists, yeah, eat my demeaning comment porker.
Bizarrely the club accross the road was playing similar music, had a lot more people (numbers wise the same amount of Malays, but in a much lower percentage due to more people)and we danced there until 3am with no bother. I think it was a matter of concentration, thusly raiding the one club instead of the other means the same amount of bribe money with much less effort. So nice of them isn't it.

So there we are, dissapointed by Indiana Jones, but at least I got to fire a minor insult at a corrupt killjoy oppressor of fun and it only cost me 40 dollars (plus cinema ticket).

Oh and my hand still hurts.

Love to all, I'm going up to Cameron Highlands tomorrow to meet a new interviewee who lives right next to the Tea Plantations, so lets hope my bus doesn't fall several thousand feet down the hill like that one the other week. Any prayers welcomed.

Well, my arm isn't broken, just mashed up

2008-05-21T16:10:00.002+08:00

Yesterday I spent a radiantly delightful 4 hours in the hospital, and an even more delightful RM500 (80 quid) on a bunch of x-rays, some fabulously strong drugs and a black wrist support which makes me look quite a lot like Luke Skywalker. It means that I can only move my left arm in the style of a late-90s raver, so I have dubbed my new robotic attachment "the rave claw".
One good thing to come of all this is that now most people have stopped greeting me with the standard "where you from?" and going for the even more inventive and mentally taxing "what happen your arm?". So, see good in bad I say.
At least the bloody thing isn't broken, but the soft tissue is pretty mangled up, and has started going black now as the deep internal bleeding from the impact has soaked through the muscle. Also my wrist is a delightful shade of yellowy-orange. My "good" knee has suffered a "good" bit of muscular damage, but lucky no tendons, ligaments or bone damage. Both are going to take about 6 weeks to heal.
So there we go, one unguarded moment and I get a busted MacBook (getting fixed next week), a limp, a rave-claw, an arm like a rainbow, 100 quid spunked away on hospital fees (quite literally poured down the drain) - but at least I got to top up my caustic vitriole gland, and can quite merrily call the government here a bunch of first rate, super-corrupt, lazy, uneducated shits, and I have a good reason to do it because it's their bloody fault I fell in a drain in the first place.

Love to all - ps: it's vanessas birthday on friday, she's 25

Oh the hilarity

2008-05-19T16:06:00.003+08:00

Just a quickie, as I just couldn't resist telling you straight away. I just saw one of the oddest things, whilst shopping for new stuff for our lovely new apartment.
In the shopping centre is one of those places with random entertainment for little kiddies, and there I saw possibly the most incongruous sight.
A small Malay child riding on a mechanical zebra, ok, not so weird, but the zebra was playing Jingle Bells from inside its face.
A asian muslim, riding on a fake african equine creation, playing christmas songs from its face in May?

Oh dear, where am I?

On another side note of weirdness, I was delighted almost to death yesterday with the Malaysian style of fitting out a new appartment. Firstly they fitted a water heater power shower so we can bathe in less than subzero conditions, ok, but because the landlord is so bloody cheap he didn't want to do it properly, so instead of wiring it up nicely he got the contractors to bodge it by wiring the shower up to the light fitting.
Great idea Einstein.

So day one, I turn on the light then go to take a shower. Hmm, why did the RCD just trip? Have a look, then a quick visual inspection, no the shower doesn't turn on if the light is off. Oh dear.
Call Landlord, call him a cheapskate, so he gets the boys to "fix it"
They come, declare it "fixed" then bugger off.
Phenomenally unsafe morons that they are, all they bloody did was fit a higher ampage RCD, but daft old silly Timbo is too pre-occupied with feeling sorry for himself with his injuries to check properly. So yesterday I turn on the bathroom light
BANG!!!!
Darkness.
"Hmmm, what is this", although in the back of my mind I know the answer. I open the bathroom door and see a black spot on the wall, where once there was fresh virgin paint. "Ho ho ho, I got to see this for myself:.
So I off the light, then flip the trip back on, keeping a safe distance I turn the flip the light on.
BAAANNGG, POP!!!

Wheee, fireworks in the bathroom, the blinking power cable for the shower has exploded in a shower of nicely deadly blue sparks, then of course the power cuts out again. My goodness me boys, has your mother never told you that water and electricity don't mix? No, of course she hasn't because you're Indonesian contractor and your mother probably doesn't even know how to spell her own name, do you? Is your name even the same as the one on your fake ID card? I doubt it.

So I shout at the landlord, call him an utter cheapskate and mention that I'm more than a little bit upset at him trying to kill me and vanessa in order to save a pound or two, so he comes back with his moron contractors. They look at it and have a little discussion, at which point I tell them that whatever brainchild they're trying to cook up will never work so do it my way. my way however costs about a Fiver and would take an hour, so "ooooh, cannot lah". Instead they fix on drilling a hole in the wall, to the back kitchen (semi-outdoors) and wiring it directly into the mains that feeds the socket there. OK, no problem, but then i realise that they just bodged it "for the time being" and left the socket hanging off the wall. I mean come on, it's 240volts and enough ampage to cook a donkey, but there we have it, got to wait until tomorrow with a death shower sitting there all nice and deadly. Fab, I hope it doesn't rain or the bloody fuseboard will explode in a fabulous cloud of doom - then again, I hope it does rain because then it would teach the cheapskate landlord that penny-pinching doesn't pay, but that's the Malaysian way, and I've seen it a milion times in a million ways, and it always ends up costing more, but they always come back again and try to do it cheap-cheap, thinking that classic line of "I know where I went wrong last time".

Yes, Malaysians never learn, but at least it's entertaining, and, touch wood, it hasn't killed me yet.
Not yet.

Now I'm going to go and have a ride on the good old fashioned Christmas carolling Zebra to cheer me up

It's just not my month

2008-05-17T12:44:00.002+08:00

So, yet more delightful antics from the world of Timbo.
Allow me to explain. Well firstly I don't know if I told you that we moved house. Well we did, to a really nice new place not far from the old one, I'll stick up some photos when we've cleared away all the moving house crap. So my problems this week begand with moving house. I called one of the numbers that get fly-posted all over advertising lorrys for hire, book them, order a 2 tonne lorry and 2 people, price RM180. On the day they turn up 2 hours late, this is ok, as it's Malaysian time, I forgive. They turn up with a 5 tonne lorry and 4 people, then when they come into my appartment they threateningly tell me that it will cost RM550, but they do this in such a way that the fridge and sofa (ie the stuff I can't carry) is already in the lift. The people are professional con-men, or another C word that I can't use because children read this. Yes, that's right, Cads. Oooh, aren't I the naughty one.

So, I basically tell them that they're are a bunch of Cads, and they can absolutely Flick Off and Fudge themselves with a rusty pipe. I haven't got 500 ringgit, in fact that's more than most of the furniture is worth, and they can go take a flying Flamingo through a rolling doughnut for all I care. The big man, who was getting the brunt of my Frollicking Cads Sugarlumpery called his boss, saying "ini Matsalleh cakap busuk-busuk lagi Boss" (translation: This white bloke is talking lots of stink-stink like a dirty potty mouth boss). I tell you, how dare you threaten me in my own house!!! I was a proper raging bull of all my filthyest malay, I told the boss that he can make coitus with his female sibling and all that sort of chiquanery. All jolly fun, but what could I do but insult that barskets.

So RM300 and it all goes in. But, to my utter chagrin, we arrive at the new appartment and, oh, the 5 tonnes lorry is too tall to enter the carpark, so we gotta handball the stuff in cos we can't get into the lift. These workshy Indian lazy arse lorry boys are none too pleased, not only did they not get to proeposeterously rip off the white-man, but he expects them to do the job he's paying them to do??? This is certainly not the Malaysian way. So they basically dump it all on the floor and make me pay for, well, absolutely Funk all. But what can I so here? They know where I live and make certain that their eyes tell me so. Anyhoooo, I called them all Constables and insisted they wouldn't get a penny from me if they don't take the biggest stuff in. So with heavy hearts at having to do a days work, they took the sofa, fridge and big box inside, then left muggins with the rest of the flat. In the blistering heat, getting back to some good old fashioned back breaking labour. Oh, did I mention the cheeky shnitzels had the cheek to ask for a tip??? I gave them a tip, "don't eat yellow snow", now Flower off down the rathole you crawled out of. And don't blame me that your grandparents were coolies.

Ho de hum, the place is nice though.

So, this brings us up to yesterday. I took a little stroll down the road, to see if there's an internet place near to our new place. I pootle along the pavement and a sign catches my eye outside a restaurant, laptop in bag. I look at the sign for approx 5 seconds (or 2 steps to be exact) and think "ooh wi-fi".
WHAAANNNNGG

Next thing I know my head is floor level, but what is this? Oh, my body is below floor level? What is this? My knee hurts, as does my hand. Why is this?
Oh, I have fallen into a drain. A DRAIN!!!!!!!!!! For the love of a god that doesn't exist, a Frollicking drain!!!
Yes, some utter, utter, utter Bar-steward had stolen the bleeding drain cover, I look away for 5 seconds and there we go. Now I sit here typing with one hand as I have a suspected broken wrist - hard to tell on the Xray, need to go back in 2 or 3 days and see the specialist - and my knee is all banged up. Worst of all my brand new Macbook got a right old smack, and the DVD drive is a bit jimmied (lucky under warrently, but I don't know if that qualifies 'Involuntary Drain Entry' as a fixable reason. Fire, Theft and act of Drain. Not sure, but I will get it fixed by the time honoured method of jumping up and down and making a scene for several hours if necessary, they don't know how to deal with that here, it's brilliant) and a new pack of fags got squished.

So there we go, I'm reet Forked off at the moment, with bloody bruises and possible broken bones. Bizarrely though - when I was 16 I broke my right wrist, and then of course there was the left-knee business of a few years back. Lucky enough this time I hurt my left wrist and my right knee. So there we go, at least I'm balanced out nicely now innit.

Love to all and watch out for the holes in the floor

I wandered down the road, try

My Crap Holiday

2008-05-07T18:49:00.002+08:00

Yes I was compelled to leave the country for a shoet while, despite being really busy trying to shoot this documentary. So on thursday off I went to Thailand to have a little break. The origional plan was to fly, but I had left it a bit late, and by the time I realised I needed to go away I discovered it was Labour Day (may Day) bank holiday and every man and his dog wanted to take a long weekend, thus prices too high. So I got a train, possibly the worlds most unnecessarily slow train, to Hat Yai, just over the Thai border.
I was going to scooch up to Bangkok and visit our friend Kim, but when I got to Hat Yai I was just dead. See there were no beds left on the train, so I spent a delightfully gruelling 14 hours in a rubbish seat, the sort of seat you get on the little Sprinters, ie rubbish, with a small Malay girl-child staring over the seat in front at me for almost the whole bloody trip.
So, as you can imagine, the prospect of another 14 hours on a train to Bangkok (again with no beds available) was about as appealling as a putting a rotten fish in my socks.
Thus I opted for a new travel plan, and now I realise it could have turned out incredibly badly indeed, as it was it only turned out to be utter rubbish instead.
See, I looked at a map and thought, hmmm, I've still not gone into Myanmar (Burma) have I, and there is a train from Hat Yai that goes almost direct to Yangon (Rangoon). This was early Friday evening, and I was very close to buying a ticket and just having a bit of a peek, check the lay of the land with a view to going back in a few months and having a month long trip there. In the end I could ascertain when the train would leave Rangoon to come back to the Malaysian border area, so though, well never mind, this is only a short trip, no bother I'll go somewhere else.
Lucky I did n'all I rekon.

Instead, I went West to a marine park called Satun, it's only about an hour North of Langkawi by boat, and I've heard it mentioned so thought I'd have a look, then I could get a boat back to Malaysia and spare myself the pain of another long train journey. This decision turned out to be a good one on 2 counts. As I managed not to get caught up in the Typhoon that annihallated Rangoon and the Irrawaddy Delta, in sunny - not to mention delightfully oppressed - Burma on Saturday (which would have pretty much co-incided with me getting off the train) but also the nasty train crash south of Kuala Lumpur that has thrown the Malaysian rail network into confusion and dissarray. Whoop de woo, somebody's looking after young Timbo today.

Needless to say I had no idea about either of these incidents until I got back to Malaysia and used the internet, with a sigh of relief and only a petit browning of the underwear.

So, there I went to a place called Koh Lipee, via Koh Tarutao. It was a very lovely picturesque place, however me being a dunce I didn't take any pictures. See this was all a bit unplanned, and I'd packed the small camera deep into my bag. In a moment of clear thought I opted to keep one Tshirt dry for the return bus from Penang to KL, otherwise the insanely high Aircon would freeze a damp shirt to my skin and result in hypothermia, which is actually possible in the tropics if you go on a bus/train or linger in Malls too long. Where was I? Oh yes, dry tshirt, I put it in a plastic bag, then obviously I had the great idea of putting the camera in there too, to keep that dry. Then it seems I forgot about the camera, and whenever I looked at the dry tshirt bag, I just thought, "nothing but a tshirt in there". Yes, still the same old Timbo, forget my brain if it wasn't glued in. So I convinced myself the camera was in the appartment and you don't get to see any nice photos as a consequence.

Spending a few days on Koh Lipee was ok, but I really was not in the mood, I just wanted to be at home sorting out this film. The weather was OK at first, as my peeling tomatoe nose testifys, but after Saturday evening the sky went a bit black (tail end of Typhoon I now realise) and it got a bit drizzly and grey for rest of the time. Also it was the very end of their season, so most places weren't open and there was essentially bugger all to do. Which again wouldn't have been so bad if the bookstore wasn't closed and I'd brought enough to read. So I took advantage of cheap alcohol and drowned the days away.

On the subject of drowning, I nearly did. Not a very nice expeience. (Now I hear Mum have a heart attack and roll around on the floor gasping for breath).
Allow me to explain.
See I wanted to go for a dive, after all it was a marine park. So on the sunday I went and booked a dive, before I went away on the boat back to Malaysia. Monday morning I was quite hung over and tired, but that's not so bad, I've dived hungover before and generally it's not so bad. THe guy said he'd take us to a nice easy spot and just go cruising around on the reef.
As soon as I got in the water, the hangover went away, but I was still a bit tired. Never mind, we went down, and there was something very wrong. See he'd said that visibilty there was usually around 20 to 25 meters. This day it was about 1, sometimes less, sort of like swimming in a glass of milk.
The surface current was really not bad, which is normally where the current is, but when we got to the bottom there was suddenly a bit of a surge. Not to worry, we swam on. Then after about 20 minutes I was getting tired, whichever way we went we ended up swimming into the current, it just kept changing. Then I need to burp (quite normal) and was trying to get it out, when the current got really strong, like swimming and moving nowhere, maybe even backwards. Now I really don't like diving in such conditions and I was all for just going home and calling it a day, but we kept on going. I still couldn't burp cos too busy breathing and kicking. Then I got cramp in my leg. Again quite normal, so I went to release my cramp, by pulling by fin towards me. To do this you have to stop kicking, so I stoppped, but the current pulled me back and I really couldn't see very far, thus not wanting to loose the instructor and my buddy I kept on swimming, the cramp was savage, but I kept on kicking.
Luckily my buddy noticed I was getting into trouble, and he spotted a fishing net snagged on the reef. We both grabbed on for dear life and had a rest.
Then the strangest and most unpleasent thing happened>
First the fatigue hit me like a brick. Nearly 30 minutes of harm swimming and I was knackered. I released my cramps, but I'd started to breath too fast, I think I was close to hyperventillating, panic was starting to rise, it was getting a bit dangerous. Then, and I don't remember how, I choked on a bit of water, and before I even knew what was going on I had pulled my regulator out of my mouth!!!! Can you believe this? I had no idea what I was doing, I suddenly and for the first time ever, became the textbook "panic diver", "diver in distress".
Then, well luckily i realised that I'd taken my reg out before I tried to breath in (bear in mind I already had water in my lungs, and more, well, not really that healthy) so jammed it back in and breathed in, which of course caused me to cough up the water. Then I had a lovely long burp, and managed to calm myself down, with the help and eye contact of my lovely lovely buddy. I have no idea who he is, he spoke no english, but well I'm very grateful cos he was proper good.
So there we go, the first time something like that has happened and I hope to christ it is the last. It was a stupid decision of the dive leader to keep diving in those conditions, and I really don't know why we didn't just go up after 10 minutes of soup swimming.
There we go.
After the dive he was really confused, says he's dived there for 3 years and never seen conditions like it. Of course, now it's clear that the whole of the Andaman sea was in a state of turmoil what with the typhoon 500 miles away. At the time I was just happy not to become fish food, it would be a pretty rubbish way to die right.

So, not to worry, I just came home and now I'm just wish I hadn't had to go away, and I might do a bit more research before I decided to randomly take a holiday, oh and try to remember that I packed my camera.

Love to all and don't worry about me, not a bother innit, it's all in a days work for a bloke with no job

Akshun Only! Yes I'm a one kind fella these days

2008-04-29T15:36:00.002+08:00

Akshun akshun akshun, that's been the last couple of weeks for Timbo. Trying to be a (virtually)one man show making a documentary is a little bit taxing to say the least. What with being Director, Producer, Writer, Internet Researcher (one of 2), Secretary, Lackey, Editor and god knows what else it's all proving a little bit had, but we persist (oh, add to this having read about 20+ books on the subject in the last month). However, lucky for me I'm not totally running a one man show here, as I have got beaucoup help from several key people.
These people are:

Adam Lokman - the other 50% of our documentary team on the ground. He is fast becoming another long-sufferer of Timbo, having to drive us to and from Ipoh (about 2 and half hours each way) and then getting horrendously lost in the one way systems and I haven't bought a map yet. Not only that he has to listen to the non-stop interminable jibber jabber of my overheating brain, then on top of all that he has to lug around all the lights and camera equipment (we can't afford assistants, as we have both blown a couple of thousand quid on this already) and then to top it all off he has to shoot beautiful pictures, whilst listening to audio (again, no budget for sound man) whilst I sit there and do the interviews. Then he has to drive back home again. Poor Adam, but he loves it really

Law Siak Hong - the man who runs the museum and knows all of our interviewees, thus puts us in contact with most. He is a fine chap, and has put in a shed load of work for us, and he hasn't told me to F right off (when by rights he should have done a couple of times) when I blunder in with my size 13s and start asking questions that are shrowded in thick mists of Malaysian sensitivities. On this occasion it very much pays to be me (ie: white and about as tactful as a hammer in a kindergarten) because I can basically get away with asking the most blunt questions that asians would never even dream of asking.

Me Dad - Poor bloke has got roped into all this by the merits of being very good at war history research. By rights it should really be him making this film right, as he's the guy who's always read and watched stuff about the second world war, I barely even passed History GCSE. But there we go. Now he's been co-erced into going back and forth to London to sit and dig through god knows how many documents and not being able to find very much - mainly because there isn't much to find. But he has pulled up a couple of gems.

Yes indeed, without these 3 blokes, and of course continual help and support from Miss Chia, then I'd still be swinging in me hammock scratching me nuts, instead of driving all over the country and causing trouble. We've shot a couple of interviews now, and are well on the way to having a 3 or 4 minute pilot ready in a week or so. It's going to be brilliant. I still haven't told you what it's about though, have I? Can't remember. Well I'm not going to tell you yet, so sit tight and get ready to be intrigued and amazed. Well, hopefully.

As for young Bertie the kitten, well, I wish I could have kept him, but the problem was one of the smelly matter. Yes, we cured his worms, and fixed his mite infested ear, then gave him plenty of baths and fed him plenty so he was looking good and healthy. But the problem was that he just wouldn't stop with the diahorreah. He waled round the flat going drip, drip, drip, leaving a trail of rancid stinking poo splats, which then of course muggins had to clean up every ten minutes(the virtue of having a soft heart right).
The last straw was when he lay curled up on my lap, having a lovely little cooch whilst I read my book in my hammock, then amidst the purring he fell asleep and then sschchcooooolllch.... Hmmm, thought I, My leg feels, bizarrely warm, and, oh, bizarrely moist too. Yum, then ultra pleasent sensation of having liquid feaces drippling through your shorts. Mmmm mmm mmmmmmmmm.

So, I took him back to the vet (an Indian chap called Dr Ben, who is bloody lovely, gave me all the kitten care treatment for free cos I took in a stray, how nice is that, hat off to the man innit, lovely) and got him to give him something to fix the crap cannon. But the realisation that I can't keep him, what with the flat just being to small and me being scared that he'll accidentally make a flying swan dive off the 6th floor balcony, made me ask if he knows anybody who takes in cats. He did, a lovely Chinese lady called Agness, who took him off me and is sorting him out, then when he stops with the bum fountain then she's going to get him adopted.
So it's not all bad in the land of Bertie, but I was reet sad when I had to leave him there, poor chap thought I was his mum (on a side note, did I tell you he sucked my nipple? All a bit weird that was, there was me sitting on the floor, T-shirt off, little bit chilly, then Boink, a cat on my teet. Vanessas mum asked me if I was gay, but I can't quite figure out her logic on that, but there we go, I suppose he was a boy cat, so if it was a girl kitten sucking my nipple would that be more normal? I don't know).

Indeed

Dirty Bertie

2008-04-18T11:07:00.001+08:00

Hello all. I aquired a kitten yesterday, or should I say it aquired me. I went to the shop to buy credit for my mobile, then felt something weird on my leg to discover that he had climbed up my trousers all the way above my knee. Needless to say I was instantly taken by this mangy mite + worm infested scrawny little bugger. He's very sweet. I took him straight to the vet and he gave him worming tablets (he sat quiet as a mouse in the cardboard box, the vet was well impressed). Then I took him home and he slept on me (climbs up onto my lap whilst I sit in the hammock). I told vanessa how sweet and lovely he is but about an hour before she got home the worming tablets kicked in and he turned into a liquid shit machine, dribbling diahorrea all over the balcony with a little turd hanging out his bum constantly. Needless to say she now thinks I'm utterly insane and a whole new level of filthy for bringing in a shit-squirting street cat into our house. Hmmm, he seems to have stopped with the arse jet this morning however and in one of his myriad poo piles I found the source of his troubles, in the shape of a very big (around 3 or 4 inches long I rekon) and very dead gut worm all curled up. Poor litttle chap.

I've called him Bertie (after the Irish PM)

He follows me all round the house (the cat, not the worm) literally at my heel - to the point where sometimes I lift my foot up and he stands under it, I move my foot (in order to put in on the floor) and he shadows it, thus making me dance around on one foot so as not to break his spine. He's not the sharpest tool in the box, but he's very very sweet, except for the several kilos of rancid faecal matter I had to hose off the bascony this morning - I swear there was twice his body weight out there today.

Love to all

Ear Syringing - oh what a joy

2008-04-14T19:34:00.002+08:00

Good day to alll of you, I been out of the loop for quite sometime cos I been all busy trying to sort out all this stuff for my documentary innit. Now looking tres good though, I've got 6 interviews confirmed and seem to be on jolly cordial terms with everybody (just about) that I've contacted. There is one slight thorn in my side in the form of an australian bloke who lives in Singapore, used to be a journalist (dirty dirty media hacks) for the Telegraph in london, and he's being a bit bloody obtuse (and I suspect stirring things with a few of my key interviewees) because he's got a book on the subject and I rekon he's trying to trip me up cos he's afraid I'm going to steal his reasearch or some other nasty little twisted bits of poo that I could just do without.
We were supposed to start shooting tomorrow, but the lads got called away to another job, so we're postponing until the weekend. It looks like we might have interviews in Hong Kong and possibly even Australia too, so it's going to cost me boat loads of money if I gonna self-fund this jobby. But ho-de-ho, you gots to speculate to accumulate innit.
As for me, I had my ear syringed on saturday in the most recent flare up of my recurring ear-wax problem that dogs me every 6 months or so. My jaw is good and painful, as I got a little infection in there, so now Vanessa has the lovely task of dripping stuff into my beautifully gooey lughole, while I lay on my side going urgh-urh-blaargh (this is not a symptom, I just enjoy it). And they say romance is dead.

Furtherwise I recently bought over half a metre of books (at great personal expense) centred around WW2 in asia. I am setting myself up to be a bloody historian at this rate (vanessa says I not allowed that as a career choice cos no money in it) and am seriouslt considering writing a dissertation on the matter in a few months, cos then I can just go and get myself a PHD in asian history. Bit far fetched, I might need a few more meters of books inside my head before I am able to claim that, but I could certainly be a history lecturer in a Malaysian university (but this is not a great intellectual feat, as a rabid hamster would have a fair chance in the Malaysian higher eductation system).

Oh and I met an amazing woman yesterday (no not in that way, away with your dirty sordid minds) who was a founder memeber of Sisters in Islam. Brilliant, she just won an award as woman of the year, and she has spent the last 15 years trying to champion the rights of Islamic women. Proper lady, she is a very devout Muslim and incredibly intelligent, and with several friends of hers they sat down and studied the Qu'ran to see where all the patriarchal mysoginy came from, and to see if it really is written by god that women are subhuman inferiors to men. Needless to say that they found lots of bits in there that men have used to justify beating/opressing/subjegating "their" womenfolk, that are actually not what they say, but have simply been warped by the men in power to allow them to be gits. She was quite an inspirational speaker (as quite frankly she must have recieved god knows how many death threats and fatwa threats over the years) and has really made a lot of difference to women (islamic and non-islamic) all over the world. Hats off like. Got any Muslim friends? Do you think the woman is being oppressed? Tell her about Sisters in Islam, cos they have a lot of answers.

Love to all and try to avoid getting an ear infection, cos they're a right pain in the, erm, well, ear.

Ah, it seems my attempts to make this look better are not so hot

2008-03-30T20:47:00.003+08:00

Good job I'm not a web designer innit. I thought my blog was looking quite nice and swanky, but the problem is I organise the new layout on my laptop, which has a lovely widescreen monitor. So whenever I've been looking at it it looks all lovely and nicely laid out, but now I see it on a regular common or garden desktop monitor then I discover the youtube videos are half cut off. Oh dear, this don't look so nace at all now does it. As per Sheryl and Vanessas advice I have got rid of the black background, cos they both said it makes their eyes go all spastic in a Steven Hawkins stylee. Did you know that in Malaysia it's quite acceptable to call brain-cripples "Spastics" in the newspapers? Bet you didn't eh, well they regularly run articles that show mongs in workshops making stuff (less of a sweatshop, more of a droolshop I suppose) with a headline such as "Just because their spastics doesn't mean they can't have their uses sometimes". Really, this is very true, I'm not just being a contraversial bugger. They normally have a very patronising by-line saying things like "these sweet underpriviledged souls" etc. Brilliant. Call a spade a spade and that, that's the Malaysian way.
I mention this because I've been fliking through the old papers as I got my recycling done today, I came accross some brilliant articles - such as the woman in America who got killed by an Eagle Ray (bigger than a Stingray, smaller than a Manta) because she was on the deck of a small speedboat, the boat scared the Ray which jumped out of the water and smacked her in the head at 60mph. Ouch. What are the chances of that happening though? I feel more upset at the loss of the Eagle Ray than an american though, as Eagle Rays are endangered species, and unfortunately americans aren't.
The other article that had me in bits was from the run up to the election here, and I can't believe I've been so slack as to not mention it before. It was from the Malay Mail, and a page regarding the 2 female candidates competing for the area where I live. Their surnames were, and this is no joke "Chew" (Barisan Nasional) and "Kok" (DAP). I don't know how I never mentioned walking down the streets and seing alternating posters shouting CHEW KOK CHEW KOK KOK CHEW KOK all the way down like some stroboscopic sado-masachistic homosexual pornography. Kok won by the way, so I suppose the headline must have been "Victory for Kok", or "Kok is number one" or something else equally squallid. The thing that made me laugh my balls off though came at the bottom of the page (as if it wasn't already hilarious enough) was a photo of Theresa Kok, and a little caption below it that read, and I kid you not
"Kok: It's a gender issue".
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahhahahahhaahhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Waaaaaaaahhh

Waaaaahahaahhhahaaaaaaaaaaa.

Yes, I may be nearly 30, but I have been wetting my drawers over that for the last month. I took a picture of it, but am having a few photoshop issues today, so I'll get it uploaded asap so you can all chuckle too. Maybe one of you can send it into Have I got news for you, if it's still going.

The fun begins

2008-03-28T17:28:00.002+08:00

This week is a very exciting week for me. I went on a location recce on wednesday, all the way up to Ipoh (about 2 or 3 hours drive from KL, the other side of the large mountains of Genting and Cameron Highlands) to check out the subject matter of my documentary. Adam (the D.o.P) came with me, and it all went amazingly well. We met up with our main contact, who wanted to suss us out before he agreed to go ahead, as I rekon him and the other people we're going to interview have been burned by vulture journalist types and put off by lots of shoddy local production houses offering to come and make a big pile of crap. So the fact that we're both very nice and honest professionals, thoughroughly decent chaps and a good deal more intelligent than the average Malaysian who works in TV production sold it to him.
We're going back in a week or so to meet the lady he has been protecting from us (and all the other chancers)and to set a date within the next couple of weeks to start shooting our interviews. Yes.
Adam looked really excited with the locations, and now and again I could see him scooching down and squinting, a good sign that he's getting into shooting mode, selecting lenses and angles in his head.
He has a crew of lads he works with all the time, and like myself he refuses to hire crap people, or work with them twice if they aren't up to scratch - all these boys have done stuff for National Geographic, big adverts, Discovery channel and a lot more besides, so we are on with a top-notch crew. And everybody is not only doing this for free, but we're all going to pool our money together to make this the best we can possibly make it.
Aren't I the lucky one? Mega excited, and more than a little bit tense to make sure it all go's well. Palms sweating. I've managed to track down a few more octagenarian interviewees, and am in the process of convincing them that it is essential that they do these interviews. I am refraining from saying "come on love, you're 85, you'll be dead soon so what harm can it do, eh?" as I feel this is the last resort in Timbo diplomacy.

So, there we go. Everything is going much, much more smoothly than I could ever have hoped for. Adam and I were talking in the car on the way home, and I was a bit worried that it's all just going too smoothly so far (touch wood, I have no desire to jinx this) and we came to the conclusion that we're so used to dealing with utter, utter arseholes (TV people, advertising people, theatre people) that it's just become alien to us dealing with people who are actually nice human beings. How jaded we become hey.

So this is going to be the first of many Timbo documentary productions, the first of many indeed. Watch this space and love to all

Work begins on my first Documentary Film

2008-03-25T16:13:00.002+08:00

I am now well and truly geared up to make my first documentary. I just had a meeting with a bloke who used to be an MP who knows a lot about the story I'm making. It turns out his mother used to know the woman the story is about and he's going to ask her to do an interview for me. He's also going to be an interviewee and it's possible he has the email address of a lost family member, who now lives in America. So he's going to ask her if she is willing to get in touch with me.
Tomorrow I'm going north into Perak to meet with my main contact, Mr Law Siak Hong, who owns the house where my story takes place (and has turned it into a memorial/museum to the events the film is about), I also get to meet the last surviving family memeber (a lady who is now 87 years old) and we're going to take her off to the beach for the afternoon and try and convince her that I'm actually a nice guy and not a journalist vulture (yes, convincing her I'm a nice guy may be a bit of a hard task, but I always like a challenge, never know all those years of acting lessons might finally pay off).
I have secured the services of a friend of mine, an excellent Director of Photography (who has shoots for Discovery channel and National Geograohic amonst many others in his portfolio), who makes beautiful pictures and has a beautiful camera, Panasonic P2 which shoots in full 1080HD (and has very large CCD chips that are a broadcast quality in UK and USA). He's going to bring along his 35mm adaptor and box of Nikon 35mm lenses, so we going to shoot this in the proper stylee and not just rock up with a standard fixed lens like a lot of documentarys. Yes indeed, he's convinced a lot of good crew members to do the job for free, and he's providing his services for free too - well, as a profit share if we ever manage to sell it. I've got in touch with an english bloke who has an audio studio here, and used to work for BBC and ITV, who is very interested in the project. I got to pay this fellah cos he has overheads, but he's willing to give me a very nice discount and provide other services (editing etc) for free because he likes the project.
Yes indeed, I should write a book "the art of blagging" and it would make millions.

I'll let you know how my trip to Perak goes in a few days, and provide you with some lovely photos of me with jolly nice people getting our teeth into a proper meaty project. Watch this space, this is the first of many projects in this realm I assure you.

Everybody say "Mat Salleh Boleh!!!"

F1 Hits town and everybody gone crazy mad

2008-03-23T16:58:00.002+08:00

Yes today is the F1 Malaysian Grand Prix (the big willies as some might call it)and the whole of KL went bonkers last night with dozens of pre-F1 partys all over town.
Vanessa got invited to a huge corporate BMW car launch (cos of her work) where they had free booze all night for several thousand people. BMW have had partys on every night for the past 6 days with free booze all night, and I didn't get to go to bloody any of them. Typical.
So her party involved some bloke driving around doing some nifty tricks in an F1 standby car, pretty sweet, and a bloke on a BMW superbike doing stunts as if he were on a BMX. Sounded pretty sweet.
I on the other hand went to a hard house rave, at the bottom of the KL tower. Some very banging music went on until about 4am. It was brilliant, very very loud. This was the Ferrari pre-F1 party and I have to admit, whilst free booze would have been good, the music was pumping and I had a great night with friends. Vanessa joined me about 1am, so we both got to dance very drunkenly together. The dance floor was a very shoddy wooden construction, evidently bashed together by Indonesian illegal workers (who are without question a bargain) - the construction did manage to last a good few hours, but with people dancing on it the floor resembled a trampoline, which 3/4 inch plywood is not the best materiel for. So yes, large portions sort of collapsed a bit, but nobody got hurt and it was jolly entertaining.
As for me, I managed to sneak in half a bottle of vodka using an age old technique that evidently hasn't filtered down to malaysian bouncers. Go into venue, buy bottle of water, exit venue holding bottle, empty water, fill vodka, enter venue with bottle in hand. Amazing, I really didn't think they'd be so blur not to check, but there I went not a bother. Good job because they only sold beer at the bar and to get drunk on cans of tiger is virtually impossible, as you get very bloated and have to micturate copiously throughout the night.
Oh yes, and at one point I accidentally shoulder barged one bloke in the face, as it was very busy and I'm a clumsy drunken oaf. I turned around to say sorry, and would you believe, it was a flipping policeman!! I clattered a copper right accross the jaw with my shoulder and got away with it, I went "ooh sorry" and he just looked shocked and put a hand up to his sore chops feeling sorry for himself.
Waaahahahaaaaahahahaaaaaaahhaahahhahahaaaaa, I've never seen something so funny in all my life.
I got to assault an officer of the law for the first time in my life, got away with it, and you know what? It felt gooooood, so good I might try it again someday.

At last, you get to watch my first adverts innit

2008-03-22T17:57:00.003+08:00

Now I have had chance to put my adverts onto Youtube. The ones what I was producer of. Yes, this is my first offering to the sick world of advertising. I'm not proud. But have a look.
My favourite is the Hot FM, frankly I think Fly FM is quite poo.

Here's a breakdown of Hot FMs malay so that you understand it
"Tidak" = No
"Sarang" = Attack
"Anda terkena panggilan hangit" = You have been prank called/You've recieved a hot call
"Setiap Isnin - Juma'at" = Monday to Friday

So, as I say the content wasn't my choice, for some reason the radio station thinks it's funny to prank call people in the morning. But what with Malaysias very strict censorship they can't actually say anything funny. To me a prank call is something along the lines of phoning a married man and saying

"hello is that Mr ?. Yes hello I'm calling from ? police station, we'd like you to some in for questioning regarding a double homicide" then proceed to tell him that it's his wife and kid that have been butchered.
Now that's funny right? When he breaks down in tears, says he's going to end it all, weeps uncontrollably and then you go "ha ha ha only joking"
Right? That's real comedy. No, these people phone up and say "I'm doing a survey, do you mind telling me how much you earn. Oh wow so much, can I borrow a few hundred, oh go on, you've got loads, please? Just 50 then" etc until you fall asleep at the wheel. Then of course the guy says "anda terkena panggilan hangit" and the man on the phone laughs like you just told the worlds most amazing joke.
It's kind of sweet that Malay people will laugh at anything, but that's the process of years of only being allowed to watch slapstick comedy because anything slightly intelligent/satirical might break the bonds of your religious and political indoctrination. In fact I'd go so far as to say Malays are a bit like homosexuals - as in they'll laugh at anything no matter how brainless (ie: graham norton)

Now that I have a youtube account and have figured out how to upload stuff and get it on here (yes, I am a computer luddite I know it well enough) then you can expect more such gubbins as I make it. I'm working on my new showreel and I got a few other bits and bobs to get uploaded here - but some of them are too long so i need to make trimmed down web versions for your viewing pleasure.

As for my poll, it has answered a few questions for me. Namely that ONLY my family members ever read this blog, because nobody I know over here would ever consider eating a marmite sandwhich over their own feet.
ho hum

Time for a bit of spring cleaning

2008-03-20T18:49:00.004+08:00

I got bored with looking at the same old blog layout (plus looking at white screens isn't very good for your eyes) so I have had a bit of a fiddle around with the settings as you may have noticed.
I hope this layout pleases you all.
You may note the survey I have added on the right of screen - please cast your vote here as I feel this is a very pressing subject, and your contribution to this survey (and others that I may add in the future depending on whether anybody other than myself clicks on a selection) will add greatly to the richness of human knowledge. Don't tell me you've never considered such a question before.
Results will be published upon survey conclusion.

Today is a public holiday, so I actually get to spend a day with Vanessa. It's something or other to do with Prophet Mohammed, his birthday perhaps I'm not sure. This week I've been working as a location sound recordist for an amazing new groundbreaking production, oh yes, it's been beyond fantastic. Now I can add to my lengthy CV the glorious prestige of "malaysian daytime TV mother and baby chat show". Yes oh yes, my career is truely at its peak, doing interviews with women talking about epidurals, labour pains, breast feeding, farting, morning sickness, c-sections, stitches, seepage, cravings and all the accoutrements of the very messy process of birthing. Well, isn't that just great, I'm so happy for myself I could slit my wrists, but it's a job and it got me out of the house.
Again I got to slight several malaysian "celebritities" by going around to their houses to interview them and just sort of blanking them (not intentionally) because I've never heard of them. Lets face it, the only real malaysian celebrity that anybody has ever heard of is Michelle Yeoh (crouching tiger hidden dragon, tomorrow never dies, memoirs of a geisha, rape of Nanking and a good amount of other ones) but I bet you didn't even realise she was Malaysian - or in fact care, neither do I I'm just trying to illustrate a point. Erm what was my point, I did have one. Oh yes here we are.
Malaysian celebrities make me laugh, they think they're so great and so talented, but really they got all the talent of a dead hamster and nobody outside of the remote villages (the ones who watch the really appalling local TV channels) would ever be remotely impressed by being in the prescence of them or even remotely moved by their performances. The acting standards in this country are so vomit inducingly poor it really is embarrassing to watch, it's even more embarrassing to watch a totally dire director try and "coach" a performance (i.e: reading straight from the guidebook to "the worlds most hammy and uninspirational acting, and how to make a point by over-emphasising the completely wrong words and syllables"). Then when the "actor" has made what I would consider a poor performance for an infant school nativity play the director is going "yeah, wow great, but can you be a bit more, you know natural, perhaps start the line with 'phew' or 'waaah' or something, you know, like you're talking to your friends right" so of course the lame attempts that came before seem akin to an oscar winning performance from Kevin Spacey when they try again, but trying to naturally begin a sentence with "phew". Ho ho ho, these people are truly hilarious, even moreso when they try and behave all diva style, as if they have actually earned the right to behave like an important person, waaahaahahaaa. Natuarlly I have made a few enemies by saying things like "do it yourself, what you think I'm here for you?" and "perhaps in this take you could try and, you know, act. It's what actors do".
When oh when oh when will somebody with even a hint of talent get on screen here? When oh when will somebody who has any idea what they are doing open an acting school here?? When oh when.

Erm, not much else to report except I just got soaked walking the dog because we're having freak monsoon downpours in the dry season. Oh and I want to spend quite a bit of cash on a professional video camera and have been hemming and hawing about it, but a fortune cookie I ate this afternoon told me that "an investment I make will pay off more than you had ever imagined". So I rekon I'm gonna just go for it. Well, a bit of paper in a piece of savoury confectionary can't be wrong now can it.

Democracy at last

2008-03-13T17:16:00.002+08:00

Well, it seems that I have been sitting here smack bang in the centre of a major event in malayisan history. I speak of the 12th General Election that took place on Saturday. It has been a massive event, that now seems to be the herald of the first democracy that Malaysia has ever possessed.
What happened was this: Up until this point (since Independance was granted in 1957) the country has been ruled by 3 parties, formed into an Alliance. I speak of UMNO (united malay nationals organisation), the MCA (malaysian chinese association) and MIC (Malaysian Indian congress). Along with a few other parties (Gerakan, PPK and some others in Sabah and Sarawak) they all went under the banner of Barisan Nasional (BN for short).
UMNO have always been the ruling party, and have their methods, that are a little heavy handed and discriminatory against anybody not a Malay UMNO voter. They looked after their own to keep themselves in power.

On Saturday UMNO got their biggest shock ever. 5 of 12 Malaysian states voted in favour of "the opposition" - the States of Penang, Kedah, Kelantan (all northern), Perak and Selangor (which surrounds Kuala Lumpur) all voted away from the BN. UMNO faced heavy casualties, with several of its cabinet members and old boys getting the royal boot. The head of the MIC (a very unpopular man, responsible for millions of toll booths on highways) got voted out, as did the president of Gerakan.
Where BN stood unchallenged was in Sabah and Sarawak, and they got their seat not a problem, however UMNO didn't get voted in there, because they don't stand.
So the long and short of it is this - the BN are still the ruling allience, but they have always needed a 2 thirds majority to rule as they wished, and UMNO was always by far the biggest party. But the problem for UMNO is they didn't get enough votes. It wasn't just the chinese and the indians voting against them, but many of their hard-core malay constituencys said "No" and didn't vote them in.

It's been a massive week, because the thing is everybody in the whole country knows what the results mean. Even the very newspapers that last week were "UMNO UMNO UMNO BN BN BN" because they have no choice, have had the choke taken off them. The Star yesterday said "the days of UMNO dominance are over". Dominance? Last week it was almost divine right to rule. It's amazing. The MCA also got slashed to ribbons, by the mainly Chinese opposition party of the DAP (democratic action party), and the very upset Indian hindu community who has been the target of a lot of bad media recently told the MIC to roundly get lost.
People are now very interested to see what happens. Despite scaremongering that the economy is going to collapse, that investors in the KL stock exchange are grabbing their money and running to escape from this unstable government. This is a good amount of bullcrap, and the people know it, and they know that any attempts to take the publics decision away from them rests in the hands of a very weakened UMNO. The people really have spoken, and it's hurt the ones they spoke to.
The Prime Minister on election night (abdullah bedawi, otherwise known as Pak Lah) said, I paraphrase "well that's democracy isn't it".

A nation awaits what is to come.

In fact the former minister of Information (a well known gibbering bigot, by the name of Zainnudin Zainal, who made a total tit of himself of Al-Jazeera interview, click here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1_GQ-K7P_w to see the interview, it is embarrassingly funny - this man was the INFORMATION MINISTER) who got well and truely voted out. Made some obscure comment yesterday about "young turks" in UMNO who I think he suggested were all in favour of trying to seize power on election day after parliament was dissolved, but for some reason they didn't and now we all hope that the slow and difficult process of genuine democracy (or at least as close as anybody ever gets) is underway.

So there we go, sorry to be all poltical, but it needs to be said, a dark path has led to a fork, and now lets hope Malaysians can guide themselves into the light. Let's hope.

Let us also hope on a footnote, that the tolerance period where the media has slackened, isn't just a bit to lure free thinkers out into the open, then promptly arrest them all when they decide to slam on a military + police rule, slamming us all in jail under the ISA, cos I may be a bit buggered innit.

love to all

footnote: as Malaysian are absolutely in love with acronyms, especially within politics, allow me to explain a few to you

UMNO - united malay nationalist organisation (BN)
MCA - Malaysian Chinese Association (BN)
MIC - Malaysian Indian Congress (BN)
DAP - Democration Action Party
PKR - Parti Keadilan Rakyat (peoples fairness party)
PAS - Parti Al Islam (Islam fundamentalists, very iffy, but party of "the oppostion", it's one of those unfortunate things that the DAP and PKR have been forced to side with a bunch of crazy nutters to make any form of sway in a political opposition alliance)

BN - Barisan Nasional. An allience of UMNO, MCA, MIC, SNAP, Gerakan and some others. The ruling party for 50 years.

Ha ha, the jibber master returns

2008-03-08T14:52:00.002+08:00

Top of the morning to ye, and sorry it been so long since wot I wrote sumfink here.
Yes, I am indeed one lazy blogger, on top of that I have been tied up trying to organise a new project, add to this the need to reformat my computer (due to lots of reasons, not the least of which was a deep seated registry virus that was just getting right on my nerves).

So, I don't really know what has happened since I last saw you. I've read a lot of malaysian history books though, and that has led me on to a new project which I'm about to start this week, all done by myself and at my own expense, which is a bit poo, but I can't be bothered to grovel to a load of numties for financing cos then they'll just start stomping their idiot ideas around and changing the whole thing. So I keeping this one all to myself.
First step however is forking out a boat load of money on a new video camera. Tomorrow I shall be purchasing a Sony HVR-A1, which is a lovely little thing, and at the entry level of professional HDV cameras. It ain't cheap, at around £1500, but I figure that it's a definite investmant. Mini DV cameras are cheaper, but basically, MiniDV is utter stink innit.

So, that's mondays job, then I go north to Ipoh to start my new career move as documentary film-maker, we'll see how that one goes (and yes of course, how long it lasts).

What else? The sodding taxman stung me for a £100 fine, cos i didn't fill in my taxreturn on time. Arse!!!
Oh and I missed mothers day, even though dad sent me an SMS saying "mothers day on sunday, don't miss it". Ooops, not sure how that one slipped the net, I was fair convinced that it was this sunday coming up. My only real excuse is that I generally haven't got a clue what day/date/month or in fact what year it is these days. Floating along in my own little bubble of blur.

So there we have it, I'm gonna go and start being a film-maker this week, I gonna send you photos of my first recce into the shooting territory.

love to all
timbo

finally i got chance to put more photos of mum and dad

2008-02-21T13:26:00.004+08:00

Me and mother at the Rice Padi museum, Langkawi. Marvellous place
Dads photograph of a dragonfly on a rice plant. Nice nice, Natural Geographic here we go.
Mother and Father enjoying a lovely sunset (which you can't see) - not that father has just farted out a boat.

This is the view of the brilliant (if not very, very wobbly) bridge at around 600 meters above sea level. Clearly this has not been built by Malaysian engineers as it has not fallen down yet.
Dad stood on said wobbly bridge over ravine. Brilliant. It bounces and sways in the wind
Me and Ma on a nice big beach. Very hot here indeed, nice limestone formations all over (a lot like Thailand cos we are very close to the border).
Those 2 in the sea.

View from our balcony at Langkawi lagoon resort. This is after we changed rooms
View of hotel from the breakwater.
Eating in nice little restaurant, this is before mother decided to nearly choke to death because she ate a chilli.
Frog. Happy

View from the cable car as we went up. Hairy

Pre pizza beers. Yum the pizzas on the beach was lovely. Shame that this bar insisted on having 2 very noisy and unskilled musicians playing crap very loud every night.

Gong Hei Fa Chai (spelled wrong, but it's all squiggles really innit)

2008-02-06T21:33:00.000+08:00

Well a new Chinese New Year is upon us, Vanessa and her family have gone down to Singapore. All here in KL has returned to normal (as in utterly unpredictable and random). Today has been such a fine example of life returning to normal in KL that I felt compelled to tell you all about it.

Early rise, after a late night working on the adverts. Vanessa going down to Singapore on the Nice Bus with her brother, to meet the rest of her family for Chinese New Year. I join them tomorrow cos I got work to do. Vanessa was very tired cos she up late packing and working.
We arrive at the Old train station, bid farewell and they get on the bus.

My day continues, sending + recieving emails, checking the edits, phoning the clients and getting called, all that sort of stuff.
About 2 o'clock I sms Vanessa to see if she in S'pore safe and well. She calls me back....

VAN "erm, we got a small problem, guess where we are".
ME "Oh really? What's wrong, let me guess the bus broke down in Johor",
VAN "erm no, we're in Penang"
ME "Oh.............Why are you in Penang? It's the opposite end of the country"
VAN "Yes I know it's the opposite end of the country, I am a Malaysian"
ME "Hmmm......... How come you didn't notice the bus was going the opposite way to normal?"
VAN "I was asleep. Plus the bus man took my ticket and pointed to the 'singapore' bus so we got on. Very tired I fell asleep. The microphone on the bus broken so no announcement saying 'this is the 10am bus to Penang, we will be arriving in Penang etc"
ME "Oh crap"
VAN "The first thing I really noticed wrong was when we were going on a bridge over the sea, and I thought, hmmm why haven't we gone through immigration yet, oh when did Singapore build a bridge that looks exactly the same as the Penang bridge"

Thus wise their predicament unfolded.

So my day has been spent at the Nice bus office shouting and jumping up and down saying things like "they're bloody stranded there, they have family coming from Indonesia, Hong Kong, Australia (these last 2 are lies), I demand satisfaction, you must pay their air fare, were all your staff born stupid or did you have to train them that way?!!?!!" etc.
I managed to get their tickets refunded, but not the air fare. I'll leave that particular little doozy to Vanessas mum, she's a lot better at chewing peoples heads off that me.

OK, I can't really face going into what happened with all the work related stuff, it's one of those things that just wouldn't look as good in type, needless to say, the client is driving me insane.

love all, I'm going to Singapore tomorrow (on the Nice bus too) and I just have to make a really big point of not getting on the wrong bus.

Mum and dad gone home now, just heard they back in UK safe and well

2008-02-03T23:12:00.000+08:00

So there we have it, another chapter in the Malaysian epic has come to an end - mum and dads first visit went off without a hitch (well, just about anyway, a few minor tweaks and twiddles but nowt major). It feels a bit weird with things just getting back to normal now, cos they both fit in here very well indeed. In an amazing twist of what I imagined would happen they both went home having lost weight - which is something I find amazing cos I just get fatter everyday what with food being so lovely and bountiful. But there we go, life always has a few surprises.

Shame they've gone, I just got used to having them around and there is just so much more stuff to show them and places to visit. Next time, I have no doubt they're gonna come back (even after they get home and get the credit card bill) cos they didn't really seem all that happy to be leaving. I rekon they both gonna have a bit of a shock going home to the freezing snow and bland food of the UK - fairly sure the biggest knock is going to come when they wake up in the morning and realise all their joints and arthritis hurts again after 2 weeks of it being much less painful due to the humidity and heat. They probably not going to miss the constant sweating mind, but there always has to be a price to pay.

Bizarrely in this post I'm not going to put more pictures of their holiday, because I left the drive with them on at home, but I have got some more pictures from our caving trip (and white water rafting) the other week - I only just got given them today, they were from Julians camera. Have a peek at these, lots of fun.

Now this week I have to do lots of frantic running around to make sure these 2 adverts get finished and broadcast on time, after that I go down to Singapore for chinese new year with Vanessas family, so hopefully I'm going to get the opportunity to visit the botanical gardens there, unless it bloody rains again and foils my plans.

Let you know whats going on down there when I get the next opportunity to babble at you,

love to all

mum and dad are going home soon

2008-02-01T02:43:00.000+08:00

Arrrrr me hearties, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum. oiiil make ye walk the gangplank yer lillie livered land lubbers ye

View from Hilton window. Nice. No funny comment forthcoming.

Some blokes wot look alike. Only one looks more stupid than the other, and has less hair

2 peas in a pod - note the fact that these women were seperated at birth and one ended up in wales and started making quilts whilst the other got more of a tan and made a quilt shop.

A rare photo where neither Vanessa nor mother possesses an alcoholic beverage.

Woman in quilt shop. Happy (nb; shortly after photo taken woman leaves with heavier luggage and significantly lighter wallet. No discount)

"Oooh, I wish I could live here and open a quilt shop" thinks woman. "Why am I wearing womens clothes and why does no-one help my distasteful water-vomitting illness" thinks cross-dressing cat that has nothing to do with Singapore but is apparently the symbol.

Chez timbo and vanessas pad. And no, we aren't hosting a carnival

Cyborg man on train. Happy, train got no graffiti. My train says cyborg man.

Sinapore is more relaxed about allowing Jews into the country than Malaysia. Hence Jeff Goldblum made a dramatic entrance that nobody niticed (except the thousands crushed under his enormous insectiod eyes, for which there will be no memorial)

"This is a beer. I am happy" Cyborg man claims to be remebering times gone by and Tiger beers quaffed in memory, but really he is planning world domination with the aid of pint of beer. Exterminate. Exterminate.

(Footnote: technically footnotes are at the foot of the page, I just want to buck the trend here. That was not the footnote, this is. Wowee, I just looked at how much I typed in today’s entry. Well, there we have it, I’ve offloaded a lot of my pent up loquaciousness onto you poor, poor people. I would apologise for being so over the top in my descriptions of the last 2 weeks, but I’m not going to. It’s up to you if you want to read it or not.)

It’s hard to believe but 2 weeks have rocketed by, we’re now on our last full day in Langkawi – fly home tomorrow afternoon – and then on Saturday night mum and dad scoot back over the water to sunny (or should I say snowy) England.

OK, back to where I left off in the last post (doo doo, doo doo dooo, doo doo doo, doo doo doo, doo doo doo)…….

M + P went on the “nice” bus down to Singapore, which leaves from the marvellous colonial grandeur of the old Kuala Lumpur train station (a building which sadly the government would absolutely love to fall down because it’s on valuable land and apparently history doesn’t make enough money; in fact it nearly fell down due to negligence about 7 years ago when it caught fire, and nobody will admit if it was state sponsored arson or not). They had a jolly little incident on the way down when the driver missed the highway exit to Singapore, slammed on the anchors and then reversed 400 meters up the hard shoulder – good old Malaysian drivers, they are very well trained over here, road safety is always their first priority. When they were there they went and met Ira (the quilt lady) who took them for dinner. They took a boat along the Singapore river (thus completing the set of transportation methods – aside from helicopter, motorbike, pushbike, hydrofoil, trishaw, bullock cart, and skis, OK so the almost complete set of plane, train, monorail, local bus, car, coach and boat). I know that mum decided to chose a restaurant one night and they ended up eating a big pile of utter crap, and very expensive crap as Singapore is no cheap cheap city – an event which dad has chuckled about ever since, as it was her one choice of eatery and the only bad meal they’ve had thus far. He has to rub it in of course, she would.
They went to Raffles hotel (bit too early for high tea sadly) but they wouldn’t let dad into the hotel proper cos his shorts were a few inches too short (above the regulation limit of below the knee – well, they do have to maintain some standards to keep out the riff-raff, after all they are Raffles, the pride of colonial Britishness.

That’s about all I know about their trip down to Singapore.

Thursday 24th Jan: (whilst m + p in Singapore)

My first day as a producer for adverts (oh no, sucked into the hideously deformed world of the devils work, yes it’s true I may be an atheist but I can sincerely say that I am now an agent of Satan peddling his dirty advertising wares to millions of unsuspecting brainless peons nationwide). This day was the hardest of the 2 as I had my good friend Tony Pietra as director. He’s a lovely lad and a good director, but can be a bit of a handful when trying to get him to be realistic about his desires onscreen. So we started early and had to shoot this ad in the style of various horror movies, done in a comedy mickey-take style. The first real problem (and in fact one of the only problems that threatened the shoot) was a fatal error on my fart. I put some trust in an actor. Now this lesson was one of the first lessons I ever learned in a theatre – YOU CAN NEVER TRUST AN ACTOR TO DO ANYTHING RIGHT ON HIS/HER OWN, NOTHING, THEY ARE WORSE THAN INFANTS, WORSE THAN RETARDS, THEY EVEN NEED HELP WIPING THEIR JACKSY, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER PUT THEM IN ANY POSITION OF RESPONSIBILITY.

So silly old me here, when I was trying to organise this whole thing and co-ordinate the structure of the day made a grave mistake. I hire a girl called Syazlina, she’s not that bad an actress and moderately good looking in a kind of not very good looking way (looks better on camera than in real life for sure, especially if you avoid her face, and we didn’t need a stunner or I wouldn’t have called her). Her problem is that she’s been in a couple of crappy Malay TV programs and is a spoiled little rich girl, so she seems to think that she’s right up there with Madonna and Halle Berry. Hmm, methinks not dear. I thought I was doing her a favour by getting her onscreen but she seemed to think otherwise. Anyway, slagging aside, she says she didn’t need to be collected by the runner, she could make her own way, and also she lives near the lead male actor Usamah Rohner. She offered me a marvellous option of picking him up and bringing him onset. This seemed a golden opportunity when I was stressing over the schedule, cos at that point the runner had to be on the other side of town and I could figure out how to get him to be in 2 places at once. Herein lay my error and a great lesson to me. Now my schedule required that we shoot their scenes in an office, an office which is in use by normal office people and full of normal office noise in office hours. So we had to be out of there by 9am. I called them for 7am to get it all done and dusted. Now, because I wasn’t paying amazingly well (for an advert for sure, but the budget was pathetic) Syaz obviously thought a 7am call for beyond her superstar glam image (something akin to “I won’t take a crap for less than 500rm darling”) and thus she casually failed to wake up on time, thus wise belaying Usamah, thus wise delaying my shoot, so all of us had arrived at work at 5.30am to do nothing but stand around cupping our balls until she casually swanned onset at 8.45am. Great, thanks a lot. Then she had the audacity to bug me all day about whether she was going to get paid today or later, try and be all diva diva about it. Well, there we go, that taught me 2 lessons, NEVER TRUST AN ACTOR and NEVER HIRE SYAZLINA EVER AGAIN.
The unpaid extras were amazing however, despite Tony’s insane demands that we all do a hundred meter sprint, several times, in the baking midday sunshine (no shelter, as for some reason the big shady side of the street just wasn’t blisteringly hot for slave-driver Tony. I can directly testify for how rancidly hideous this part of the day was, as I was one of those extras being made to run mini marathons in 35 degree direct sun on tarmac for bugger all money. Many blessings and joyous hugs of gratitude to all the extras and their patience. Ps.: don’t ask me to cover the medical expenses of your skin cancer treatment, got no budget lah.

Anyhoo, it all went well and only ran 10 minutes over schedule (which is a good job I slipped in 2 hours for cockups isn’t it)

Friday 25TH Jan: (M+P get back from S’pore tonight)

More shooting, but this time with nowhere near as many actors and nowhere near as much stress. Or so I hoped.The day started badly, with the runner oversleeping by several hours, leaving me stranded and the wardrobe girl also stranded. I very stressed because I realised I had all the DV tapes in my bag, as well as the runner van having all the lighting and grip kit inside it. But lucky, lucky, lucky, the cameraman made sure he had hold of the camera and also had a spare tape on his person (good job really, it made him worth the exorbitant fee he charged). So my ass was saved – because we were filming DJs doing their morning show live and if we’d had to come in an extra day it would have burst the seam of the budget severely. Lucky also for Pakot the runner, cos if we had had a major setup (requiring lights etc) then I would have said “Pakots fault” and left the crew and director who arrived at 5am do what they desired to him whilst I walked away. Lucky, lucky, lucky all round.
The rest of the day uneventful, except I did break my shoe when I had to shoot my scene with me going mental and smashing up a mobile phone into million pieces, got a bit carried away jumping up and down on it in flimsy sandals, ah well.

Mum and dad got back in the afternoon, and myself and Vanessa’s mother planned mums day of pampering for tomorrow.

Saturday:

Went to Hilton to meet mum and dad quite early this morning, as mother had a day of pampering arranged by Vanessa’s mum. In typical mum style she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown because she had no control over the proceedings. All I knew was “driver picks you up at 10.15, go to salon, driver bring you back after”. So mother all like, “where do I sit, front or back? Do I talk to the driver? Do I have to pay him??” Anyway, I got her in the car and bid her farewell. Dad and I decided to go and have a trip into Bukit Bintang and try to get hold of these Nintendo DS card reader thingies for Jonathan. So the obvious stop was Plaza Low Yat, land of real and dodgy technologies. Took dad on his first trip on a commuter monorail (his only other experiences being on novelty ones like from the car park at Alton Towers, not one jammed to bursting with ignorant scurrying shoppaholics). He seemed to be in train geeks heaven, getting exited about the way its power is distributed, the doors, the windows, the points and the control systems on the tracks – however the monorail is driver operated, not automatic like the LRT or the KLIA ekspres. Glad to see him having fun. We popped into Low Yat and got a hold of what we needed, not much cheaper than the UK, but a little bit discounted, so got them anyway. It still baffles me how technology in the UK is so cheap, when everything else is shockingly expensive. How do we do it?
After I took dad to a nice outdoor bar on a street-side to have a few beers and talk about the colonial histories and wartime wotnots of Malaya and Singapore. Cor not that old chestnut I hear you roar, when will you get bored of that. We possibly talked about rugby for a bit. Then I got to wax vitriolic about local politics. This is one political subject which won’t draw dad and me into an argument, cos he doesn’t know much about the shocking degree of Malaysian political corruption and murderous police brutality, so therefore can’t agree with me whilst saying “no no no” at the same time. I may have to dig this one out again in the future.
Mum had a lovely time getting pampered and rubbed down at the Menard salon. She had a proper facial, full massage, and god knows what else (add that to last weeks massage and pedicure and she’s had a good work over since being here. She met Vanessa’s mum briefly, who gave her a big bag of free goodies to take back. Mum feels a bit like she’s living in hogs heaven here I reckon, as a half hour massage back home is about 50 quid and she got 3 hours of proper nice spa treatment and facials for not much more than that.
Tonight is the big night, the grand meeting of the Chia and Doughty families, the first introductions (softened slightly by mum meeting Mrs Chia when slightly incapacitated in the middle of having her pores examined by a macro camera skin camera thingy.
So Vanessa drove to the Hitlon to pick up ma and pa (we got lost on the way somehow and I had a bit of a go at Vanessa cos we went into the most savage jam KL has to offer for no real reason). We got them and then headed off to Mid Valley where we were having dinner. After picking up mum and dad I tried to direct Vanessa to mid valley (a way we hadn’t been before, but I had seem the signboards repeatedly and figured I could direct us. The weather was awful, nasty rain, which then became torrential as we went on. We somehow missed the turning, namely because KLs roads and signboards are beyond spastic, in fact spastic would be a compliment to the city’s road planning department, so I tried to take us a way that I knew for sure and thought would lead us around the jam. We took this large detour (which brought us past our house) but the problem was that I’d been this way in the daytime and didn’t realise that there were no streetlights there, which is bad enough on a normal night but by now it was torrential. We got to just outside our apartment and the road had turned quite literally into a river in the storm, being around a foot deep for about 50 meters. Vanessa bravely ploughed through this new ford, and we made it out to the other side. By now visibility was, well, the windscreen, so we pulled over by the hospital to wait it out a bit. I thought Vanessa knew the way to Mid Valley from our place, as she had driven me there before saying “we’re going the Mid Valley way”, so I got a little bit over exasperated when (apparently due to my bad directions, but, well, we’ve already had this argument several times since so lets not go into it, I’ll just say “it’s my fault” cos that makes life much easier all round. It was my fault.
So, long story short, we took the exit before the one we should have done, which led us smack bang into, yes, you guessed it, the same jam that we’d joined for no reason less than 40 minutes previously, only now it was even worse (ie: static) because of the rain. I stupidly shouted at Vanessa and made her upset, which I know wasn’t fair but I bloody hate traffic jams, especially the same traffic jam twice in an hour and both times for no reason at all. But never mind, I was wrong to shout, she did very well at piloting our car/boat through the river rapids obstacle course and it affected her ability to navigate.
So, dinner. Brilliant, Chinese food, which is always a winner. Our respective mothers and fathers got along very well. Jack and Julie (friends of the Chias) came along as moral support and to provide us all with topics of conversation when the words ran dry (I think Vanessa’s dad was a little nervous about what to talk about, I imagine he’s been having awful nightmares about sitting at a table with 2 carbon copies of me and him contemplating suicide if he had to engage in yet more controversial/generally crass topics such as I am want to come out with (yes my curse of verbal diahorea and lack of choosing the right moment for certain topics has still not abated, I fear it never will). So I think he must have breathed a sigh of relief to find that my dad is quite mature and able to chew the fat about a variety of things, and not my usual drivel (also that dad isn’t as smelly, messy or vulgar as I am – well not in polite company anyway). Mum and Mrs C got along very well I reckon, they seemed to have plenty to talk about. Mother kept going “oh my god this is DELICIOUS” at most things, having a try of everything (including Jellyfish and may I add these little knots of orange stuff, which looked like pasta or noodles, but Julie pointed out, after the first bite, that it was actually small intestine… “mmm, that’s lovely” said I, as I tried discreetly not to vomit Aah those crazy Chinese, is there anything that isn’t on the menu?).
Afterwards we all went back to the Chia house for whiskey, but one car (Mr and Mrs Chia, Stanley and Ah kong) got stuff in traffic leaving Mid Valley and didn’t get home for over an hour, which was a bit of a bummer. All got to bed around 1ish and a good night all round.

Sunday:

Stanley’s 13th birthday, and at my suggestion we all went paint-balling at a local spot inside an old multi-storey car park. Brilliant fun, except for the point when I accidentally shot the birthday boy 3 times on the top of his head from only a metre or 2 away. Yes, you mat ask how I “accidentally shot him 3 times” – as Dad did, and Vanessa's mother, and Vanessa, and Jess, and Stanley already did. Well, can I coin my own personal catchphrase and say “it wasn’t my fault”? Well it was my fault, I didn’t mean to shoot him in the head even once, let alone 3 times, and it did look painful, all blood in his hair and lumps and stuff. Oh god, why me???? After all my hard work I go and try to kill the only son, and on his birthday. Oh Christ, why have you forsaken me??? Oh that’s right, cos you don’t exist. Erm, well, scratch the Christ part. Oh clumsy misfortune, why have you stuck yourself to me like superglue all my life??? Yes. Never mind though, lucky for me, no brain damage and he’s not likely to forget it next time I ask him to come paint-balling with me. Stanley's friends have now been firmly re-assured in what their parents taught them, namely “all white people are utter callous bastards who can’t be trusted in the least”. It is true though.
Vanessa’s mum helped me out though, by pointing out that at least it was only Stanley and not one of his friends cos then I’d have to explain to their mums and dads why this very tall nearly 30 white stranger shot their 12 year old “accidentally in the head 3 times at point blank range”. Yes, try explaining my way out of that one. So see good in bad eh.
In the afternoon we all went for a kind of birthday tea – I also got to walk the dog for the first time all week – and mum and dad came away laden with gifts, which I think made them feel that my suggestions of wine and chocolate were a bit crap, well I didn’t know they we gonna get nearly a whole suitcase full of presents now did I!!!! No bugger told me anything.

Monday 28th Jan – until now: A lovely relaxing time at Pulau Langkawi

We flew up to the north to enjoy 4 days of lovely relaxing in the sun. It’s a bit of a shame that we had to come to Langkawi cos I don’t really like to support such a bad idea of destroying a beautiful ecosystem in the name of making money, but it’s just the easiest place to bring mum and dad to enjoy some tropical loveliness. I’ll take them to Thailand or the east coast next time. The hotel is very nice indeed, however when we first got here they stuck us in a crappy room with bird poo all over the balcony. Dad didn’t want to complain, “complain, cheap hotel, british, grumble” but mum took the initiative (with a little push from me) and had a moan, so we got bumped up to a very nice suite with a balcony sans avian dung.
We’ve had a fine old time eating, swimming, drinking, eating, going around in a taxi to various places, shopping, eating, relaxing and swimming. Yesterday we had quite a hectic day, and somehow managed to fit in all our touristy ness into one day. We hired a taxi and went to the cable car, which mum very wisely didn’t attempt to endure cos we’d never have got her down as she’s have glued herself to a rockface. That was proper good, as the last leg of the cable run goes practically vertical for about 300 meters up. Very impressive, if not a little bit trouser browning. The platforms on top offer an amazing view of the unspoiled virgin jungle that covers most of the island, interspersed with the nasty scars of government clearfelling. At least the platforms of the cable car and viewing pints weren’t too destructive, but that’s obvious enough because it wasn’t done by shoddy cowboy Malaysian contractors – as evidenced by the lack of deaths so far, in fact it was made by Austrians. At least the government are not so stupid (I won’t say intelligent enough, because they really are thick) as to go killing tourists when they’re trying to bleed as much dollar as possible from them. Yeah, the cable cars were great, then we took a trip out to a beautiful stretch of beach (where we all swam in the sea and got repeatedly stung by hydrozoans, the mosquitoes of the ocean) ate some nice food and got fairly badly sunburned. After that we ended up going to the Padi museum (nothing to do with diving, but padi as in rice padi fields and coolies). Mum was mesmerised and got taken around by a lovely guide who kept giving her herbs to smell (she literally filled her, no not pants dirty minded buggers, hat. She filled her hat with the stuff the guy gave her, frangipani, lemongrass, some flower that smelled of cooked rice (and the local translation is "flower that smells like cooked rice" imaginative in it's nomeclature and no mistake), curry leaf, turmeric root, cinnamon, rice grains and god only knows what else). Dad was reet tired after going up a whole load of steps to walk over the wobbly bridge that you get to after the cable cars – a very hairy bridge, but it looked cool, and he didn’t really have the energy to find out about the history of rice cultivation, but mum had a whale of a time and now feels very well informed on the subject.
All in all this trip to Langkawi has been a resounding success – they’re bobbing around in the pool as I write this, occasionally calling to me when the great big sea-eagles come flying over so I can get a photo with dads new telephoto lens, but the blasted creatures keep vanishing as soon as I bring the camera to bare. Swinehund. I’m going to join them now, as it’s taken over 3 hours to write this and my bum has gone numb.

More to come at a loater date when I can be bothered.

Sometimes I wonder how my head doesn't fall off

2008-01-25T21:02:00.000+08:00

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?

Sorry about the messy advert, it'll be gone soon

2008-01-15T19:15:00.000+08:00

I thought about signing up to put ads on here and make some money, read the terms and changed my mind, but the thing is still there, hopefully it will be gone in 10 days or less, that's what they say.
Ho hum, you'll just have to live with it for now

Wet and Wild

2008-01-15T18:20:00.000+08:00

Yes, last week was a jolly one indeed. A bit sad because all of Vanessas family returned to Australia to continue their work and studies, but they got sent off with a big meal. It was all quite random though because our mate Brendan and his Frenchie girlfriend finally turned up here in KL. They been on a climbing holiday in Thailand, and stopped by on their way back home. Brendan was the chap who took us to South Africa and drove us all around, and I was kind of hoping to show them around asia a bit, but they seemed to do alright on their own. They stopped on the mattress in our gaff and we got to indulge in copious amounts of beer and recounting old tales, as well as catch up on 2 years worth of Bristol gossip, as well as visiting some of our local watering holes around the corner (footnote: these are actually semi hooker bars it would seem, or GRO bars - which stands for Guest Relations Officer a very fancy term for an Escort or a Taxi Girl), which was all jolly good fun.

On the Thursday we all got a day off (public holiday, don't know what religion but great all the same) and Jess booked a whole bunch of us to go white water rafting down the Kampar river (in the state of Perak just north of here, where I did that location shoot and took all those jolly nice photos a few months ago). So off we trooped. Small problem was that Brendan and I had been up drinking on the hammocks all night - as in quite literally all night as we had a lot of fat to chew. The first realisation of quite how much we had been rambling on was when the morning prayers started drifting out of the local mosque (a very clear indicator that it is 5am sharp). Small issue was we were supposed to be waking up a 6am, so kind of buggered my oppotunity to go to bed in a rather large way - obviously Vanessa was smart enough to hit the hay at a fairly respectable hour, what with her being much brainier than me (not brainy enough to be nowhere near me, but that is just one of those things for which I am truly grateful). Er where was I?. Oh yes, very pissed on a hammock and about to get up and go spelunking, shoot down a flying fox, climb up some rocky stuff and then get very wet on a raft ploughing down a very fast river. Lucky I wasn't hungover, as I was simply too drunk for that. I only got some photos here, but will provide other ones when Julian gives me his camera to plunder.

You may note here that these photos are of us in a raft, however the raft is not in the water. Well that was the very safe and fun ride we took to the river (note the photo with the 2 rafts that have just been unloaded from the ultra safe lorry, and the ultra safe well maintained bridge we went over, add to this multiple very safe potholes on a winding jungle road with a marvellously safe 3 metre ditch on one side and super safe low hanging branches and you get some idea about quite how brilliantly safe that trip was. Crash helmets were not just incase you crack your head on a submerged rock, no siree bob).

The caves we went into were amazing, but stank of fruitbat shit (apparently fruit bats are the key pollenators of the Durian tree - the worlds most unpleasant smelling fruit - which explains why their poo is so maloderous). At one point we turned all our torches off to see quite how dark dark can be, but there I was with all these colours and shapes and stuff flashing in front of my eyes, I thought to myself "this cave isn't that dark" then I remembered I was still a bit drunk and hadn't been to sleep for over 35 hours and had just exerted myself a lot by climbing through a cave. I'd say it was a sobering thought, but it actually wasn't

Miraculously I managed to not die due to being drunk in a pitch black cave with precipices all around and little bits of old rope to haul myself up with, nor did I drunkenly drown in a rainforest river, I did kind of bang my elbow a bit and got a nasty knock, but that was OK cos the booze was a marvellous analgesic. Vanessa had a nasty injury when we barrelled into a big set of rapids, got totally submerged and then popped up minus our boatman (isn't he supposed to be the professional rafter?) who unfortunately smashed into Vanessa on his way out and nearly broke her elbow. But she's ok now, just ruined the day for her a little bit.

Apart from that it was all very good fun.

The hangover that evening wasn't.

ps: I know it's not big and it's not clever, but I tell you one thing, it is bloody interesting and there s no finer way to sober up than being dumped at high speed into fast moving freezing cold river rapids, whooo, that is one serious wakeup call, they should try and use it on coma patients

It Ain't arf 'ot mum

2008-01-04T17:36:00.000+08:00

Indeed today is rather on the warm side. I woke up this morning and had a lovely 20 minute suntanning on the balcony, listening to the sounds of birds and motorbikes. Then had a bloody good go at tidying the appartment (along with scrubbing at the nasty stain that was left by a cat, I forgot to mention that in my New Year blog, when we got back home and paid the theif taxi driver, then we discovered a lovely big steamer on the doorstep, a present from some local toerag moggie that I hope for his sake I never catch in the act, or he'll get some free flying lessons from the 6th floor, then we'll see if he lands on his feet after I've rung his bloody neck) and trying to make it look passable and cosy for tonights party. Yes it's once again my birthday and I am feeling decidedly past my prime (ably assisted by my post festive season gutrot and general lethargy). Yes 27 years old, knocking on 30 in a rather unpleasent manner. However it's nice to know I still got a mental age of 4 and a half.

I went shopping yesterday to some delightfully dodgy booze shops in Brickfields (an indian part of town). All this booze comes very much grey import from Thailand, much of it is totally dirty and undrinkable, but highly alcoholic and exceptionally cheap (got a litre of Vodka for around 3 quid) so I bought, 1 litre vodka, 1 litre rum, 1 litre Thai Song (odd Thai not-quite-whiskey-not-quite-rum-not-quite-potable-but-potent) and around 1 and half litres of assorted unknown other high proof liquor. So punch it is tonight then kids, and what a mighty punch it will have.

On Thursday night it was the 26th wedding anniversary of Vanessas aunt and uncle, so the whole lot of us went out for a very tasty buffet dinner at the Mandarin Oriental. A very posah hotel next door (literally) to the Petronas towers, where the door staff all look a little bit like the genie from aladdin (minus blue skin of course) and the variety of buffet curry was delectable. Yum yum indeed.

Well, after tonights birthday festivities I should be able to settle into a slightly more normal eating routine, and hopefully shift a couple of the extra tonnes I piled up in the gut department over this festive seasons festivities, maybe I'll give my liver a few days to metabolise all those lovely coagulated fatty droplets too. It never hurts to try and stave off cirrhosis for a few more weeks now does it.

Very soon mum and dad will be popping over for a flying visit, sadly only 2 weeks, which isn't very long over in this part of the world I can tell you, but there we go, it's a start and I'm pretty certain they'll be desperate to come back ASAP.

Last night a tree round the corner from Vanessas parents place got struck by lighting, cleaved in twain and deposited across the road. This was a bit unnerving for me, as only an hour before I'd been stood underneath that tree (though not in the savage storm, just before as I walked the dog) and watched monkeys vigerously copulating on somebodys garden fence. Yes, copulating, yes I was watching. It wasn't so much out of voyeurism, or even that much out of the David Bellemy sense of "Oh wow, a monkey taking another monkey from behind on a fence, now isn't that a beautiful bit of nature in action". No in fact it was more out of plane old shock. There I was, walking the dog (not a euphamism) minding my own business, when suddenly the dog tried to drag me off towards what turned out to be a troupe of simians. One of them looked like it was going to try and savage the dog, or me, or both, whilst the dog kept straining at the lead because it wanted to go and sniff the nasty little buggers poo-pipe. So there I was, one eye on the potential attacker, another eye on the 6 other potential attackers. When low and behold, a small female (I presume it was female, but knowing monkeys it could go either way) lifted her tail, bent right over and waved her buttocks. A very large male sauntered over, lowered his gaze to check the proferred buttock offering, nodded his approval and then with both hands grabbed a good grip on her cheeks, shuffled himself up and started monkey humping. In broad daylight, have you no shame.
Well I do monkey boy, and it wouldn't do much for my Face for me to be caught gawping open mouthed at monkeys doing it doggy-doggy, but the doggy would budge cos it was staring at another monkey. So I was obliged to wait this out (luckly only 30 seconds and with no frantic ook-ooking to be heard at all thank goodness).
No I didn't get any photos, you dirty buggers.

So there we go, at least I can go to my grave saying "well at least I got to watch some monkeys having a shag".

What did you do this week?

2008-01-04T15:27:00.001+08:00

Provided by florida web design company.

Barbeques

2008-01-03T17:07:00.000+08:00

Yes in this part of the world the partys never stop. This is the New Years Day Barbeque (good way for me to sweat out the hangover).

My god was there ever a lot of food there.

In the words of the Aussies,

"G'day mate, let's chuck anather shrimp on the barbie"

so we did, and then about 50 more.

yum

HAPPY NEW YEAR

2008-01-03T16:18:00.001+08:00

who are you calling big nose, big nose?
vanessa somehow improsoned herself in the goldfish bowl

julian discovers exactly how painful it is to pull his own face out of his eyeball (whilst eating his own thumb)

People in a lift. Stuck

Well, as far as portents for a new year goes, I think this year has some sort of bizarreness in store for Vanessa and myself. Hopefully not dark portents, but certainly surreal ones. This is the story of our New year celebrations, I hope it comes across as bizarrely in the translation to text as the events themselves seemed (however in the true style of, well, me and a million other alcoholics in the world, it is suffice to say that I was ever so slightly drunk for the majority of these proceedings, but nonetheless, they were all a bit odd. Enough preamble, here goes.

New Years eve 2007, 7pm:
Arrive at KLCC, next to the Petronas Twin Towers, at the very nice, very expensive and very plush new apartment belonging to Vanessas aunt and uncle, where we are to see in the New Year. Everybody all dressed up and ready for dinner. Jimmy (Vanessas youngest uncle, the pickled one) plies me with very nice Johnnie Walker Blue Label and 21 year old Ballatines. I accept. Photos and exchanges of pleasantries, the girls go and get ready.

Around 7.45pm:
Myself, Mr Chia, Mr Hii (uncle, owner of apartment),Oma and Opa (Grandmother and Grandfather), Cousins Claudia and Darius, sister Jess and boyfriend Julian all get into the private lift down to the lobby (this is a lift with no Floor buttons, they just put their keycard to the reader and it whisks you up to the 23rd floor), the others go out to Delicious (a nearby restaurant) and I linger in the lobby to wait for Vanessa, who is right behind us in the next lift load. I light a cigarette. I wait. I finish cigarette. I look around, getting a bit concerned, is there another way to the restaurant I don’t know about? I wait a bit longer, vexed. It occurs to me that there are at least 6 women in the next lot, so maybe they are just procrastinating with their hair or some obsessive clean-up project. I go to the restaurant to see if they snuck past me.
Claudia conforms my suspicions about possible last minute preening, by saying, “well there you hav it, that’s my family for you”

Around 8.05pm:
I’m now decidedly baffled as to Vanessas whereabouts. Opa comes over and says “lif stack, ho ho ho” with a big smile. Hmmm, what is this? Lift stuck? I go out to the doormen of the apartment and the conversation went a bit like this:

ME: “you know your lift? It’s….”

DOORMAN: “oh lift, that way” (pointing in a very helpful way to where he know’s I already know where the lifts are because he watched me go into it a few hours before and come out of less than 20 minutes hence).
ME: “No I’m on about the private residents lift, it’s..” (point to private residents lift)

DOORMAN: “Oh that’s private residents lift. Private residents only there

ME: Yes, well you are a mighty intelligent fellah aren’t you, I can see they only pick the cream of the graduates from the Acadamy for super-sharp doormen here. Did you by any chance get a first? (OK, I exaggerate, I obviously didn’t have the quick wit to articulate such a scathing retort on the spot, in fact I just said)

ME: Yes, that one. Over there, it’s broken.

DOORMAN: Huh?

ME: Broken
DOORMAN: Huh?
ME: Broken, stuck, eee no workee, kaput
DOORMAN: Huh?
ME: Oh for f@*ks sake, come with me idiot
DOORMAN: Huh? (follows)

We enter the lobby to find a member of the maintenance staff (in blue shirt) standing in the doorway of the very high tech lift maintenance room, with his hands at chest height doing the classic dance of the incompetent fool:

One step into the room, shake head, one step into lobby, look for boss, alarm rings in room so step back in, waggle hands around, repeat for around 15 minutes with a look of complete uselessness on your face, going “errrrm”. (deee dee-dee, dee dee dee dee deeee deee, cha cha cha)

So by this point they’d all been stuck in the lift for 15 minutes and nobody had been alerted (fortunately the system has an automatic call out to the maintenance guy, but he was over 30 minutes drive away from the centre of KL, which is normally very jammed, but on new years eve, with a big fireworks display planned in the park behind Petronas and several roads closed, it was just pure chaos). By the time I got to the random useless dancing caretaker, Mr Chia, Mr Hii and Opa had all arrived in the lobby. Mr Hii, the owner of said very expensive and exclusive apartment was no a happy man at all, Mr Chia stood there looking like the building manager was telling him a series of increasingly funny jokes (such as “it’s going to be at least half an hour”, “yes there is a manual over-ride, no I don’t have the authority to use it, why not? I know I’m the building manager but I haven’t been trained to use it” and a lot more besides.) My favourite comment from the building manager would have had me in stitches in some other time and place, I asked him to come and help me force open the lift doors (as they were only stuck between 1 and G), his reply was amazing……

“we can’t do that, oh no, oh no, if you open the doors then the lift will fall automatically, it will go straight down to the basement”

Now call me a bit ignorant if you will, but in all seriousness, did he truly believe that the lift manufacturers would have an inbuilt mass-murder/suicide system for when the meddling firemen turn up and try to save the people trapped in said lift. The lift descends, detects problem, emergency brakes go on, alarm pressed, firemen come, prize open doors and then whoooooooommppphhh, straight from the 20th floor to the sub-basements and all inside are turned to puree. Genius.

"Don't worry madam, we'll have you out of there in a jiffy" Wheeeeee splooorgge!!! "oh well lads, I must try and remember that suicide catch next time, always slips my mind"

So I ignored him.

Needless to say the 3 elder males were not a very happy crowd, as they are men who are accustomed to saying “I want this done” and the immediate response is “certainly sir, as quickly as possible, in fact it was already done before you asked for it, perhaps you'd like me to remove my trousers and drag my testes accross broken glass and chilli sauce as way of apology” (or something a bit like that anyway).

Opa was very angry indeed and shouting things in Hokkien at the manager, no idea what he was saying but he didn’t look very happy and sounded even less so. I decided (ina very rare moment of sensible clarity) that another person shouting probably wouldn’t be much use (or less of a lie is that I thought "bugger me, this is all a bit frightening, these chaps don't need my help to rip this guy apart, I'm getting as far away from here as I can feasably can in case they suddenly turn on me, I'm off!!! But the truth sounds so much less heroic doesn't it), so I went up the stairs to go and check on the unfortunate captives.

Would you believe they were playing cards? Of all the things. There was a battle of concerned fathers meets the blur-blur doorman going on in the lobby (shortly to be joined by the rest of the family) and the buggers in the lift were having a very jolly old time of it.
Jimmy (on the inside) and myself tried to prise open the doors, but to not much avail as they were bloody hard to budge, so I went back down to get some lads to help. I went back into the lobby and much to my surprise 2 metal bars had appeared from somewhere (god only knows where they came from) but as I walked into the lobby Vanessas granddad was smacking one metal bar onto the marble reception counter as an emphatic counterpoint to his Hokkien rage (bit scary, somehow moreso coming from a near octogenarian), Mr Chia was shouting at the man to just phone the fire brigade, and I managed to grab a hold of Darius, Julian and Krishnan (the driver) and get them to help pull the doors apart (the metal bars came with us),
So we had about 5 or 10 mintues of door wrestling in order to create a 3 inch gap (Uncle Benny started shouting “there’s people fainting in here!!! It’s so hot!! Help us!!!” The joker, but it put the fear in the manager, who ran off to get cups of water) and then the bloody lift man turned up.

What happened next was just a sheer shock, I had to restrain myself from punching somebody (anybody) because there we were, 4 lads and 2 metal bars jammed in the bloody doors, and the lift guy saunters up, cool as a cucumber with a very thing piece of metal with a little bend in the end. We took the metal bars out, closed the doors and he just pushed the little pokey device into the gap at the top, moved it about 2cm and then CLICK, the doors opened.

THAT WAS ALL IT TOOK?????!!!!! I could have bloody done it with my glasses, for pitys sake.

In the name of all things good and right in the world I prevented myself from smashing his smug git brains all over the polished floor tiles.

So then we all had fun pulling 13 people out of a lift that was half way down in the most dignified manner possible(it didn’t plummet to the ground and slaughter everybody by the way, a point I felt compelled to make to the manager afterwards) and so like some crazy fire-brigade reality show we started to haul them all out into the fresh air-con. 10 minutes of shouting followed (all the escapees felt like venting it onto the manager, I’d say I felt sorry for him, but he was a total doink so no sympathy from me) and we went and ate food.
Dinner was very nice, service was shit, but food was nice, and everybody was quite happy to be alive and no longer stuck in a lift.

MIDNIGHT: So we all went back to the apartment after dinner, drank more and awaited the coming new year. We thought we’d have a pretty good view of the massive fireworks display at KLCC, what with being less than 100metres away and eye level to it. But, unlucky for us, in our assumptions we hadn’t bothered to check which way they would be launched. Ooops, didn’t take into account the building in the way now did we. Whoops, so we got to hear a lot of loud bangs, saw they sky flash lots of colours, we even got to see some reflections in a building opposite, but sadly the only way to see the real quality of the display was on the frigging TV. 100 meters away, on the 23rd floor, and we had to watch the pissing thing on TV. Bugger that, what a gyp. Eh? Never mind though, we should have done us homework (more to the point I should have laid a bet with Vanessas uncle Jimmy, then I could have won back the 300 rinngit I lost to him at poker in Langkawi, cos I did have a sneaking suspicion that Sods Law would come into play a little bit there). Never mind. Somebody in the carpark below did set off some mortars and we got the novel experience of being directly above them when they exploded (ever had that? Me neither, until then, it was quite bizarre, and fun too), which made some attempt to recompense us for the loss of the Million rinngit fireworks display going on the other side of a big building from us. Some way, but not all.
Oh and somebody had been sensible (and bling) enough to buy a few bottles of Dom Perignion 1990 from Langkawi duty free. Which made up for quite a lot.

3.30am: After a lot of very silly drinking games, being drunk on the balcony and sticking playing cards to our foreheads (for a reason that quite escapes me now) we went home to bed, but not before a bastard Taxi driver charged us 50rm to back to my apartment, the shit left the meter running too, just to rub it in, it came to 8.20rm – which after midnight is double time, so say 16.50rm, plus a bit extra for new year, I would have been magnanimous to give the bastard 25rm, or maybe even 30. 50!!! 50!!!! I told him to choke on it.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL (except taxi drivers, I hope you all get savaged by rabies monkeys)

The New Year is upon us indeed

2007-12-31T10:31:00.000+08:00

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

2007-12-24T19:10:00.000+08:00

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

2007-12-16T17:54:00.000+08:00

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

2007-10-19T21:18:00.000+08:00

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)

2007-10-07T23:48:00.000+08:00

is that enough photos for you?

2007-10-07T23:06:00.001+08:00

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)

2007-09-24T21:14:00.000+08:00

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.

long time catchup

2007-09-24T18:50:00.000+08:00

So, it's been ages since i updated this blog. It's going to take a bit of time to get you up to speed on Timbos activities over the last month or so.

Starting from where I left off, here goes:

So I got fired. For the first time ever i got given the boot, and for no apparent reason whatsoever. OK so I told the boss a few times that he had absolutely no idea what he was doing, and basically told him that the best thing he could do would be stay well away from the project and just sign the cheques, but that is beside the point because deep down he knew that I was totally right, except he is a very silly and very rash individual who acts on a whim without consulting anybody, then regrets his actions later. He fired vanessa at the same time, which was also a very silly thing to do. He has since realised the error of his ways, and asked us to go back and renegotiate, but Van now has a new job (starting next week) with the biggest Special Effects company in Malaysia, so she ain't going back for any reason at all. I simply can't face another day with Keith being my boss, he's a lovely guy but just far too much of a child to deal with and his penny pinching tight-arsedness is just more than I can handle. I mean the guy was asking me to run all purchases I made past him - and wait for him to sign the money off - even for things that cost around £2. Ridiculous.

Anyway. Getting fired was great, immensely liberating in fact, so much stress that I hadn't even realised I was under just fell away. As a present to ourselves we decided to go on a much needed holiday. So off we went on the train up to Thailand. Vanessa was a bit worried about taking the train cos the south of thailand is a little bit dangerous at the moment, what with some seperatists blowing up lots of stuff and cutting off chinese peoples heads and leaving their corpses in plantations, and the Thai army going in and executing thousands of people around the region. But the journey was actually very uneventful, no explosions or shrapnel wounds at all.

We webt back to Phuket to go visit Kim, and we had a great 8 days there. Kims mum let us stay in the hotel (In on the Beach) on Karon beach, totally for free cos nobody else was there. This place usually cost about £50 or more a night (a flipping fortune over here, proper expensive) and is absolutely lovely. You just step off the hotel doorstep right onto the white sand beach which is so fine it squeaks as you walk along it.

We generally passed the days reading (Kim took us to a great 2nd hand bookshop which sold brilliant books, my favourite being a 1972 guidebook to Malaysia, which is fascinating but brings a bit of a tear to my eye when you look at the savage damage capitalism has brought around to this country) and eating nice food. We had the usual games of "spot the ladyboy" and "hooker slalom" but because it was low season there was nowhere near the usual amount of hassle.

Vanessa and I went SCUBA diving a few times, Vanessa went on her first wreck dive, which was a bit scary for her I think cos the visibility was low and wrecks always abound with dangerous spikey things, rusty metal and poisonous creatures. My idea of fun, not hers, maybe its a boy thing. We saw a really big turtle having a sleep inside a doorway, really well hidden, but I couldn't quite figure how he was supposed to get out again.

We met a lovely guy called King on Phuket, a chinese-ozzie, who is living over in KL for 8 weeks as part of his Doctor training. His real name is Wan King Man. No shit. Wan being his family name, but the chinese put the family name first. Wan King Man, I've had to take the mickey for that a few times, but the guy is from Australia so there is absolutely no doubt that he has been ripped to pieces all his life, he takes it well, after all it is a very funny name.

Wan King Man. Heh heh heh

Anyway, purile jokes aside, we all ended up getting stupidly drunk on many an occasion and generally having a jolly good time.

We convinced Kim to come visit us in KL on an extended stay type idea, then when the holiday was over we both went back to our appartment.

A few days after going back Kim came over to stay with us. We kept on with our marvelloiusly unemplyed holiday vibe (exept vanessa went and got a job a day after we got back) by drinking lots and all being tourists in KL. King only lives a mile or so from our place so we have all kept going out on the lash and doing other such work avoiding tasks as laying around in the hammocks and going ice skating.

The ice skating was fun, as it's been years since I dared to but unfortunately the random flailing of a very large (and now slightly portly due to to much good food and laying around in hammocks) white boy did little for his ailing knee. Yes the silly sod forgot he had a bad knee and ice skating mashed it up quite a bit. Well not the skating so much as the flailing around and falling onto my arse repeatedly.
Now a week later I have a bandage on it and the swelling is just starting to goo down.

Silly boy.

This weekend we went down to Malacca, which is a brilliant town absolutely chock full of history.

I'll tell you all about that next time cos now I've got to go eat dinner.

love to all

timbo

word up

2007-08-19T14:16:00.000+08:00

well the exploits in the world of malaysian TV are still well and truely underway. W've hopefully finished 2 episode sof the crime bytes series, finally, it's been a real slog but I think that now these 2 are out of the way then the rest should just fall into place nicely.
There have been plenty of battles this week with boss etc, but now I think the work should speak for itself, I also think the american clients will like these and aprrove them. Which would be very nice indeed.

As for other stuff, we went a bit bonkers last weekend and randomly decided to shoot an entire new episode froa series here called Dark City. They had finished shooting the series, but one episode in particular was so hideously bad, mindboggling awful even by malasyian standards and that is certainly saying smoething I can tall you.
So myself and James the editor, hit upon a great idea, he came up with a rough script in one night, the next night we had a "pre-production meeting" and worked out all the logistics over a cup of tea. The next afternoon we called various friends and pressganged them into being in the show for free, then over the weekend we shot the ting. I wa cameraman (and quite proud of the results I am too).
We shot the whole episode in less than 14 hours (for a half hour show), when all the others took 3 days, and our budget didn't excede 230RM (the princely some of less than 35pounds) when the other episodes had budget around the 3000pound mark.

It was hilarious, basically a bad splat gore dark comedy about a failed actor who went crazy and killed off the film company that offended him - using the origional ator from the awful episode that wa never going to be.
Proper good, and we got to salvage footage from the origional episode, so that wasn'[t totally wasted.

Amongst other things I have provided the film company with a brand new greenscreen facility. At the cost of around 8pounds, co I painted a wall green in the office. It drew some unfriendly comments at first, followed by complete lack of faith in my abilities, until we proved them all wrong and have shot two different things on greenscreen this week alone.

Hahaha eat you hats disbelievers, feel the power of the mighty bodger and his cheapfix techniques of doom!!!

I'll show you a picture of the cutting edge painted wall and the joyous key-outs that have followed in my next entry. I think half of the reason why I face such opposition to these mighty ideas is that they are just such obvious solutions - why spend 500 quid on a "professional" greenscreen cloth, when 8 quid on a can of paint will do? Why spend 2 or 3000 on tracks and a dolly, when a wheelchair and cheap shoulder bracket will do the same job and better for less than 100?
It take s abit of time for these ideas to sink into the thick skulls fo the non-believers, but the result speak for themselves.

Wahahahahahaaaaa.

Here to illustrate my new invention of the wheelchair psuedo steadycam, is James - the american white muslim video editor cum new Director - testing out the marvels of the "cyborg cripplecam "TM

it's not attrative to look at, but my god it works a treat. No aspiring film company should be without one.

Howdo

2007-08-04T22:31:00.000+08:00

Well once again it's the weekend, and finally I have some time to sit down for 20 mintues and get everybody who cares back up to speed. A lot has happened in the last 2 weeks, and make no mistake about that, in fact I'm quite unsure where I should begin.

So Craig has gone back home now, the month bascially flew by at an amazing rate, I rekon he had a good time here, we did plenty of stuff, went plenty of places and still had a suitble amount of relaxation time. He generally went and explored the myriad bizarre activities on offer in KL whilst myself and Van were at work. It's hard to get bored in this city.

As for myself I've been working very hard, trying to get my head around all this producer malarchy. I've had to build a functioning team, get the best out of the guys already at my disposal (who are turning out to be very useful indeed and keen to get stuck in). On top of that I've had to plough through lots of old newspaper articles and compile decent stories about these Malaysian criminals, make them into a usable and interesting tale that can be told in 5 minutes. Once the rough story has been ascertained, then I have to try and find people to interview, one's who are related to each case and willing to talk about them. Next up we confirm the interview, go to them and set up everything (I am lighting and sound man as well as interviewer and the one who writes all the questions). I've got Vanessa as my interview camerawoman and she's doing a brilliant job at no extra cost. After the interview my PA Genevier gets the un-enviable task of listening to all the interview tapes and transcribing them.
Next in line I have to take the transcripts and make the wordage from 2 interviews into a coherant storyline, before I take all this to James the American Editor.

As if this wasn't enough I have to sit and direct the edit with James, making the dialogue into a proper show. As we find out what shots we need then I send my other very excellent PA Reuben out to film as much location footage as he can. At this point in the edit Vanessa is busy making amazing motion graphics from newspapers and still photographs which generally make the whole thing a hell of a lot better.

It's a long and slow process, but I do get total control of absolutely everything, it is basically what I see that makes it into the final version. I am pretty bloody proud of what we have managed to produce thus far, and the Americans who payed for the whole thing like what I'm doing too. So who knows, perhaps this could be a very random step into the world of documentary making for me as a career. Who knows. I suppose it all depends if they are crap or not innit.

The show are going to be broadcast in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Phillipines for sure, who knows if we can make them well enough they might even make it to America and the UK - after all I think that the Crime and Investigation channel is a worldwide satellite station. Who knows.

As for leisure time, last weekend myself, vanessa, craig and vans friend Cheng all went to Genting Highlands for Craigs last weekend. Genting is a very odd place, an old hill station in the clouds, it's a big hill/small mountain in the Tittiwangsa mountain range north of KL. The place is now an emourmously enourmous casino complex, with the worlds biggest hotel (apparently - there is however no such thing as a trades descriptions act here) called the First World Hotel. I've been to Genting before (for Vans birthday last year where I got very drunk and made a fool of myself) but we stayed in her parents appartment that time, which is half way up the hill. This time we managed to stay in the hotel, because Chengs dad very nicely got us a free room big enough for the 4 of us, up on the 13th floor. Proper nice.

The "city" of Genting is essentially a place specifically designed for separating people from their hard earned cash. But it does this very well.

The main bulk of the complex (aside from hotel) is a giant indoor theme park, with another even more giant outdoor theme park behind it. The indoor theme park is basically a Las Vegas rip off in minature, complete with mini Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, Petronas Towers, Statue of Liberty (bizarrely riding a motorbike), Venice et al, and lots of indoor (if slightly tame) rollercoasters. The whole place is a psychadelic explosion of neon and garishness, a proper eye bender. See attached photos for more confirmation.

All in all the weekend there was a success, because the last night the 4 of us hit the Casino. briag was on some major good luck streak and came away with 4 times the amount he originally converted into chips, as well as his origional steak. I was a bit less lucky, essentially losing all my money, until I had only 3 chips left. At this point I said, "right Vanessa, change our luck, place a bet and win for gods sake".

So she did and won 4 bets in a row, trebled my original steak and basically payed for the whole weekend with that. We all came away with more money than we had when we left KL. Woohoo!!

This week was a mad one too, because Thursday and Friday we went on our first work related field trip, shooting on locations in the north of Malaysia.

First thing Thursday morning our intrepid team got in the car and drove to a small town called Bentong (about an hour or so north of KL), shot some stuff and drove all the way up to Pulau Penang to conduct a whole afternoon of interviews with a brilliant man called Dr Sundramoorthy.

We did the interview at Universiti Sains Malaysia, in the old school colonial guesthouse where we all stayed the night - sadly no photo cos we were so busy we forgot to get one - on campus. It was a proper place to stay the night cos it was built as an army barracks building back in the 1930s. Reall old school colonial asia, with wooden slats on the windows and art deco ceiling fans, all that stuff.

After the interview Sundra took us all out to eat very tasty Penang quisine - Pulau Penang being very famous for it's food and we all got a very very well earned sleep after that. What with beign awake from 5am and finally getting to bed after midnight.

Yesterday was a fun filled day of driving from location to location. We started by filming an ex leper colony (which later became a penal colony) just off from Penang. Then we hopped back into the car and drove north to the state of Kedah, which is very flat and full of rice padi (Kedah being the ricebowl of Malaysia) and borders onto Thailand. A few towns around Kedah were very useful locations and we ended up in some very random very remote Kampungs there. some locals had a jolly good laugh at us, because I have purchased a wheelchair for the purpose of moving camera shots, a very cheap and easy way if getting some interesting tracking shots for the documentarys. Imagine a vey rural village where very few whiteboys ever go, then imagine his chinese girlfriend (apparently crippled) being wheeled down a dirt track with a camera in her hand and her white boyfriend laughing maniacally. That should make for a bit of entertaining gossip down the coffeshops, it certainly got a few stares.

Lots more driving, this time to Peraks capital Ipoh, where we filmed a mental asylum (and no, wasn't booked in there, thanks for asking though) and finally we cruised back to KL.

All in all a bloody long journey, but loads of fun for all.

Right, that should get you all up to speed.

all my love Timbo.

p.s Happy birthday Joseph, I hope Craig gets the presents to you in one piece. Have fun young man.

Back in KL, back to work. It's all gone bonkers, what has happened to the peace and serenity of being on an island? Have I gone a bit mad? Perhaps so.

2007-07-17T00:00:00.000+08:00

Yesterday myself and Vanessa came back to town, to continue with our gainful employment. Now the 8 days of relaxation have given way to the frenetic strains of city living. We had a lovely old time back on Perhentian Kecil, spending our time diving, eatin, laying around, diving and, erm, eating. Did I mention diving?

Craig and Vanessa both took their PADI Open Water courses, and are now quite competant divers. Vanessa is much better at the theory than me, so that means she can plan the dives and work out our residual nitrogen levels from now on, which is nice cos I always get a bit confused.

And here they both are playing with a lump of gelatinou sea goo. The guy in the middle is Will Brown, with whom I made friends with last year on the same island. He was Dive Master there last-time with his wife Mel. They both went back home to the UK for a while and fortuitously came to be Instructors this year. It was brilliant to see them both again, and we resumed where we left off - by sitting in the dive shop getting talking about fish, going into the sea to get wet and blow bubbles, then sitting in the dive shop drinking beers all night.

All very civilised if you ask me.

Who would want to partake in the everyday rigours of normal life, when you can bob around in an ultra surreal world of sharks, coral, parrotfish and turtles all day, then get lashed with your mates in the night. Would you? Not I.

Here is Vanessa being attacked by a strange crab with thin black arms. Oh my god, get you probey thing out of her mouth!!

and some random weirdo we found along the way. I didn't realise they did aqualungs for palsey victims, but apparently cabbage diving is quite common.

I was quite pleased with my first lot of underwater photos ever. Now I just need to justify the cost of buying my own camera with underwater case. It's proper amazing taking pictures underwater, it's just a bit of a bugger that most of the creatures are camerashy. They don't tend to stick around long enough for you to line up a nice shot.

Oh and I found Nemo, he was just behind a rock.

2007-07-07T14:40:00.000+08:00

Off to an island today, we're just sorting the last bits and bobs out now. Last night Vanessa did a gig with the drum circle, myself and Craig went along. Sadly when we got there it was happy hour on jugs of Tiger. Such a shame that was. Now my head hurts a lot.
I've had a lot of fun and crazy times filming this week, yesterday I got to film the chief of police (for Petalling Jaya, the city where I live) in his office inside a very large polcie station, surrounded by pigs on all sides. Waaarrrgh. Ooooh dear, it was all a bit strange, but quite nice. I do get to meet a lot of bizarre old characters over here at the moment.
Oh, I also got a promotion. Now I am the Producer for the company, I just need to do a few more Camera jobs for them as well to help bail them out of the immediate poo-poo.
So there we go, this week has been promotion promotion promotion.
Tres bon.
As they say in Cleethorpes.

Right,we're going diving now, and sunbathing on white sand beaches.
Ha ha

Craigs here, I started my new job and all is bizarre

2007-07-04T22:41:00.000+08:00

Things are looking good, I've done the first of the interviews and more coming

up this week. On the weekend the 3 of us are off to tropical islands for a short diving holiday. We went on a long roadtrip today out of the city to a fairly crazy but relaxed rural district (the same place where I did my first filming job here months ago), ate lots of nice food and had a lovely time lying in the rapids at the bottom of a waterfall. I sat in this pool for ages not moving, then next thing I knew loads of baby fish were eating the dead skin from my feet and hands. Cheeky blighters. It was bizarrely fun though, a bit ticklish at time and occasionally the nibble was a bit hard, but I've never been a buffet platter for fish before, it's usually the other way round.

In the photos you will see us enjoying the lovely local dairy speciality of Ice cream sandwiches. Proper, now that's what I call classy.

Yesterday Craig came with me to work, where I did my first day as cameraman. We went off to the rather exclusive Selangor Polo and Equestrian Club (an old colonial offshoot of the Royal Selangor Club) and filmed a wealthy beknighted fella riding round on his steed, before going to his house to do the interview. Then I took Craig on a toe blisteringly long and bafflingly hot walk round KL, stopping to eat as much as possible as often as possible. Man I'd forgotten how good food is over here. Waarrghhghhh, it makes me dribble just thinking about it.

There we go, it's been a funpacked couple of days, but very tiring. Got to go cos I'm up early for work tomorrow.

Love to all

Wowee looks like I got out of the 5th Reich just in time (or Gordon Brown is a wannabe killer, it won't take him long)

2007-07-01T21:57:00.000+08:00

So there I am, sitting in a mamak eating a plate of roti cani and feeling quite surreal through the jetlag. I have not long returned to the land of spice and sunshine and am enjoying a lovely breakfast. I turn t0 the world news section of the local paper and what do I see? Bombs in London, and then today a flaming car drives into Glasgow airport. At the risk of sounding like a typical Tim comment, can I just say "I told you so".
Al-quaida my hole. So what do we have in the UK now? A man who proved himself time and again to be a total and utter lying murderous warmongering swine steps down, and not 24 hours after he has been replaced by a non-elected jock scumbag then we have a brand new set of undemocratic procedures bearing down on the British Isles.
Well well well.
So I put a bet down now, within less than 6 months the UK will be at war and blowing the living crap out of another poor backwards raghead nation. It's the way things go when you live a totalitarian system. So there we have it, political rant over, enjoy your defcom 5 or whatever it is. I'm just glad I don't pay taxes to such murdering scum anymore. Al-quaida don't exist. It's all lies.

On a lighter note, I'm having a lovely time back in the folds of an Islamic nation, the weather is fine (if not a bit stifling but I'll get used to it), the food is great, my lovely lady is very happy to have me back (I'm sure that'll change in a few days once the novelty has worn off) and my jetlag has nearly gone. Today has been a bit weird though, because my jetlag took a whole new form I have never experienced. This morning I woke up, felt OK, got out of bed and nearly fell over. I've spent most of the day lay around on the floor because of the odd falling over head swimming thing. I don't quite understand it but hopefully it'll go away tomorrow because Craig arrives and I have to go all the way to the airport, which won't be nice feeling like this.

I went to visit my boss on Friday and he has given me a massive boost of good news. He wants me to be the cameraman on a 13 part crime investigation documentary series (only 5 minuters, but hey) starting ASAP. It's going to be mega, I get to do loads of interviews all over the place, 5 episodes are being filmed in Singapore (so hopefully I'll be able to get a better feeling about the place, cos at the moment it's not up there in my top 100 countries to visit) and it'll look amazing on the old CV. It's a nice feeling coming back and actually getting a bit of respect and trust for my abilities, rather than being belittled, pushed around and generally treated like crap by the Wexford lot for 9 weeks. Oh the lovely Wexford lot, how petty and meaningless their jibes seem now that I'm over here back in a place where I can do my job properly. I look back on these last few months with little else other than contempt and pity for them all in their sad and bitter lives.
Good luck to all, and I'll be back on soon to fill your head with more drivel.

And remember. Gordon Brown is unelected, he doesn't have the voice of the people behind him, he is trying to consolidate his power base by starting trouble and comissioning "terrorist acts" so that the people will all love him for reducing their civil libertys. Dictators do exists. And this is how they begin.

love to all

Nearly done now

2007-06-14T23:25:00.000+08:00

We have now only 4 more shows to go, and then a week of destroying the place. The end is well and truely in sight - however not quite as in sight as the festival office would have me believe because they told me that todays cheque is the very last. Yeah, whatever, i think they may find several very angry boys if they try and pull the wool over our eyes in this particular area. Getting payed is what we do best, certainly a lot better than the work we do.
Getting payed is the only reason anybody would actually put up with this job.

Things are getting much cheerier here, everybody can feel the weight has been lifted, the end is now well with our grasp. After tonights show is over, then the last 3 shows will be a doodle. On Saturday we will start to load out the first of the shows, then monday will be the final get out, before we start to strip the theatre of everything and stick it back in the van for storage.
Can't wait to get the hell out of here.

Huzzah for a few hours off work

2007-06-05T22:37:00.000+08:00

Man oh man, this is one hell of a gig. I'm actually over the moon to get a real lunch break, the kind that normal people enjoy, a whole hour (plus travel time) so I've gone off site and into town to enjoy the first proper sunny day in ages. I'm relaxing with a coffee (real and not instant, ooooh) in the company of people who don't work in theatre. Amazing. And I get to update my blog too, give you all a little bit of a lowdown on the vibes A la Wexford.
Where do I start?

Well, Hell week was excactly that, 10 days of pure savage hell. In at 1pm and home to bed by 6am, for 10 days solid, lots and lots of mental work. Rehearsals, turnarounds, fixing stuff, rehearsals, turnarounds, fixing, fixing fixing, Lots of sets came to us that needed to be totally modified to fit the venue, stuff needed to be totally rebuilt, the works, utter mayhem. On top of all this we had an utter arsehead of a director called Keith Warner, who was a very very obese man who acted like a spoiled little brat. He demanded everything, from 3 rehearsals a day for 3 weeks, to every pie in the whole of wexford. He was an insufferable cock of a man, who everybody hated and was very very glad to see the back of. What a little baby he was, and he sat in the front row spread over 3 seats like the proverbial beached whale. People called him the Fat Controller, I personally referred to him as the Roller (because he was a Fat C%!@).
His show is the pig of all shows, made entirely out of steel and polystyrene, it looks like an enormous cowshit, weighing into a total of more than 4 tonnes - perhaps he asked the designer to build a show that Keith could see himself in.
Anyhoo, I could slate this awful man until the cows come home and you all get very bored, but I can't be bothered to waste another moments thought on the pig, and would rather forget that he even exists.
The other 2 shows are great, they go in and come out quick and easy in comparison. There is an Italian company who do a ballet/opera which looks great and involves lots of men and women running around in Y fronts doing pirhouettes and a dummy that is the spitting image of Margeret Thatcher (no lie, the photos will be up here some point soon). Also we have a very straight Opera Opera called Rusalka, which is OK if you like opera (personally I can't really stand the stuff).

We have now got past the worst of it, the publice dress rehearsals went very well, the opening nights are all over and done with (more about one of them in just a few paragraphs), the rich bigwigs have all been in and enjoyed their stupidly expensive night of "culture" - which no doubt they didn't understand, appreciate, enjoy or even care about, but they got to arrive in their limousines wearing ridiculously overpriced DJs, drink vast amounts of stupidly expensive champers, fall asleep in their seats and then go and tell their rich friends about how incredibly cultured and marvellous they are because they had a night at the opera darling. Cynical? I really don't think so actually.
The irish times has given most of the shows rave reviews and we're packed out all the time, which I suppose must mean something, but I couldn't give a monkeys at this point because my whole body hurts. Oh and we got to neck loads of free champagne and generally misbehave ourselves in front of loads of rich tossers (my personal technique being turning up to a swanky black tie affair in dirty dirty clothes, paint all over my hands and under my fingernails, smelling like a dogs bottom and standing by the champagne table with hands full of champagne glasses going "more, no more, more please, give me a bottle, go on, well you won't give me a bottle hey, so I'll take 8 glasses instead, try and stop me" and chasing the people who have trays of canopes in order to stuff my face. Great craic. It's about time we got a bit of perks from this bloody gig.

So more on the opening nights. Well one in particular I might add. There was a moment of slight embarassment and no mistake. Allow me to fill you all in.
Picture the scene, the opening night of the second show. The whole festival is totalling the 4 million euro mark by now, the rehearsals have all gone perfectly for this one (in fact it has been the easiest shows all round, no worries).
Opening night, big wigs, media, dignitaries, politicians, businessmen, celebs, rich rich people paying 120 euro a pop, board of directors, blah blah blah, the works. The top of the show there is a huge white cloth across the whole front of the stage (a Kabuki cloth). One of the dancers performs a shadow dance behind the cloth to open the show, then on the cue the line is pulled and the Kabuki cloth drops to the floor to be pulled away and the show continues.
The show starts, the dancer performs his shadow dance, the cue goes, the string is pulled, the cloth soesn't drop, the string is pulled again, again and again. Nothing.
Oh
The show is stopped (Stage Manager goes out front and says, oops, technical hitch). We all have to go out in front of 600 people and bring in the bar, re-rig the cloth sharpish and pull the bar out again (to a bit of applause from the assembled masses). The show starts again, the shadow dance, the cue, the pull of the string (we all cross fingers, clutch our balls, pray, whatever) and the cloth drops. Almost. A few feet of the cloth are snagged and it just hangs there, big and white and right in front of the bloody show. Oh dear.
The show stops again, we walk out front again (very pleased to be dressed in black with hoodies to hide our shame), bring in the bar quick as possible, take the sodding thing off and get it the hell out of the way, then fly the bar out ASAP and scuttle off to cry in the corner. Shame of shames, on opening bloody night of all things. Well, to add a bit of hilarity to a generally shite situation I managed to pull off a classic Timbo Moment. As we flew out the bar, we tied the rope off and scuttled away quicksmart. Clumsy numpty here gets the tail of the rope caught round his foot and trips up, falling head first through the door to backstage, right in full view of all, with a stifled "hwuurgh" thud.
Oops again indeed.
Ah well, the lads enjoyed it and still have the odd little dig for it, but at least it made a bit of light of a generally poor and embarrasing situation.

Heads haven't rolled yet, but I have no doubt that they will do (as soon as we have no further purpose to this festival).

C'est la theatre. It's live, it buggers up from time to time.

Anyhow, I'm going to get myself some lunch and then go back to work again to listen to lots of loud people singing about god knows what in Czech.

love to all

Mental, just utterly mad

2007-05-19T03:52:00.000+08:00

Worked like a dog, cold and wet, mad levels of disorganisation, savage working hours, heavy amounts of work, mental whichever way you look at it. Just bananas.

Kind of fun though.
In a masochistic kind of way.

love to all, will report more thoughroughly when I'm granted a few moments of time dedicated to me. Now I have to go back to work, at 9.30PM on a Friday night.
Just the way I like it