Finger

I suppose some of you, or one of you - namely Nick, had wondered if I was going to blog regularly again. In my defense, I could have, I wanted to certainly, but have not been able to because I buggered a finger. One can appreciate that a football travelling at a rapid pace towards you deserves some attention. One can also appreciate that said football packs quite a wallop especially if (and when) it whacks one on the tip of the finger.... Doesn't sound so bad? Well, it is if the damn blasted bloody ball smacks the tip of my finger threatening to drive the unfortunate digit into the palm of my hand. Yes. The ball hit my finger dead on. Not sideways. I was about sure the ring finger on my right hand was a lot shorter than before the incident. An x-ray revealed a small chip on one of the finger bones. It hurt like hell. It wouldn't be a bad thing except I am going diving again.

Good timing. I've now been banned from playing futsal at least a week before a dive trip. A terrible fate but seemingly, quite a wise one looking at the situation I'm in. I didn't tell mum I busted my finger four days before leaving on a dive trip. I'm keeping mum you might say. Four days? Well, in my experience, it takes two months for this kind of injury to heal.

Merde.

We're going to Sipadan this time. The mecca for divers the world over. Jacques Cousteau gave very high praise. It's one of the best places in the world to go diving.

If you'd been reading when I'd been blogging, you'd know I have a shark phobia. Well, in Sipadan it isn't a possibility of seeing sharks. It's quite a definite thing. Wish me and my unfortunate digit luck. Me, so I don't shit myself and my finger because I don't know as yet what it's going to be like struggling into my wetsuit. If I had the dosh I'd have bought one of those Scubapro suits with zippers for the hands and feet, easy-access-the-use-of.

I'd been reading a dive in Malaysia guide by Jack Jackson (how original) and it mentioned great white sharks. Jackson, Jack claimed that it is very highly unlikely to see a great white in Malaysian waters as they prefer colder temperatures. All I read is that it is not impossible to see a great white in Malaysian waters. Merde. Anyway, great whites eat food with high fat (read blubber) content and happily although I have been putting on weight alarmingly, I can safely say that there are divers in our group who would be more appetizing to a great white. I'd be well down on the pecking (eating) order although somewhere in the middle. Jack Jackson goes on to comfort the reader by saying, no no no, you probably won't see a great white. You might see a tiger shark though.

Fuck.

Merde.

Ah well.

On a different note, I hadn't realised what a snooty little bastard I can be. I hadn't been happy with a real estate agent I had been dealing with. I had been corresponding with the happy chappie via email and he'd been writing his emails to me like he was sending me a friggin' SMS. No 'Dear sir' or 'Dear Mr. Tan'. No 'yours sincerely'. Apparently also I have become a 'u' and not 'you'. It got right up my nose it did. It was probably accelerated by the fact that I thought this guy wasn't dealing straight with me. It turns out.... he was. Oh dear oh dear oh dear....

I suppose I am snooty. I don't send SMSes in SMS-speak. I do not abbreviate. You is 'you' and 'already' is not 'd'. I'm one of the twits that actually writes SMSes in full. Complete with punctuation and capitals in the right places. I don't know why. Maybe cos I'm a snooty bastard.

Anyway, do you know the English sentence most Malaysians will fuck up? I do.

"I have tuition on Wednesday evenings."

Figure it out. I'll tell you why when I get back from Sipadan. Assuming I don't meet any tiger sharks. Or great whites....

This is where we're going.

http://www.swvresort.com/

Feel free to feel envious. Hahaha!

Hippo Material

Have you noticed how swanky eateries are getting? And we're all paying top dollar for it? It's ridiculous. Let me start with something close to home. The Oldtown Kopitiam franchise. You've probably heard of it. It's everywhere.

It pleases me that a corner coffee shop in Ipoh has exploded onto the scene and it appears to be a very very profitable thing. It does however represent all that is right and wrong about it. Let me quickly explain. Oldtown Kopitiam, is for intents and purposes, NOT a kopitiam. It's a fake to appeal to the the present generation's money happy ways. The biggest example I can give to you is the upgraded McDonald's "restaurants". It looks upmarket now but let me tell you it still serves the same shitty fattening fast food. After McDonald's got rid of the plastic furniture and provided wi-fi, it was suddenly trendy.

The point I am trying to make is how easily we part with our money for bad product just as long as it's nicely wrapped.

Back to Oldtown. I'm happy that the explosion has occurred while the original (and real) kopitiam still exists, still has its regular clientele, is still doing very well and pretty much looks the same as it's done for decades. The franchise however is no better than the people who bought the franchise and run it. Of all the Oldtown's I've been to, I'm only frequenting just one outlet. The rest, while they look really nice, serve horrible food and drink. I'm pretty certain that there are standard recipes but apparently only this one outlet in Kota Damansara sticks to it. Nat and I went to an Oldtown in Penang for a drink. It was bursting at the seams with customers. The coffee really really really sucked. Were we the only ones that noticed or are we now content to pay for the atmosphere and damn the food and service.

Speaking of service. It reeks these days. We went to eat in Sushi Groove in 1Utama this week. It took a while when we were ready to order to get the attention of the staff there. When we did, this guy comes over and says very curtly, "yah?" He might as well have said, "well, what the fuck do you want?"

The last server to do this to us was in Delifrance at Bangsar Shopping Complex. I glared him down and chewed him out and told him to his face that the service had to be better than what was on offer. We walked out that time. I don't think I'm overly fussy. Again, it took a long time to be served. Again the guy seemed like he wanted to be somewhere else. He wasn't overly rude but he wasn't polite either. When Nat ordered something he snapped, "no more, no more." Then without saying anything, he walked off and when he came back, I had had enough and I chewed on him a bit. Nat was totally pissed off and we left. At premium price for a croissant, I expect better.

It's pretty much the same in most places. Expensive decor (although I have to admit, Delifrance doesn't fall into this category), ambience and atmosphere and all that shit. Maybe sometimes the food is decent but way too often the service is crap or indifferent.

In the beginning, Nat was quite surprised that I can cook. I was surprised she likes my cooking! Anyway, we have an inside joke which is called the Hippo. The Hippo will be the name of the restaurant we open with the combination of our culinary skills. Above all, not only will the food be good but you will feel very welcome there. The staff will be polite, friendly and they will make you feel happy to be there.

The best example I can give you is Pasta Zanmai in 1Utama. The food, yes, is expensive but the food is very good and the staff are Hippo material. If the Hippo really existed, I'd be trying to poach them. Another good example will be one of the staff from BBQ Chicken in Desa Sri Hartamas. She was friendly, polite, cheerful and ready to smile. Not only that, she anticipated our dining needs. Hippo material I tell you!

These days however, in the age of the bling bling, many consumers are willing to pay high prices for superficial rubbish.

Tragic isn't it?

?

Somehow, I recently remembered (vaguely I have to admit) I had something called a blog. Somewhere in the back of my mind resided the necessary information and it needed a catalyst. Two in fact. They are called Jeremy Clarkson and Bill Bryson.

They both write. I suppose no one should be surprised about that. However in respect to both men, they are alike like chalk and cheese.

I have been familiar with Clarkson for quite a while now. I had watched some BBC Top Gear shows taped in jolly old Blighty by my uncle who resides there. He also wrote a column for a car magazine. Clarkson is balls out, unashamedly anti conformist and a petrol head. He loves machinery that do quite anti social things. Zero to hundred in less time it takes for Paris Hilton to flash a tit or two. Top speed in excess of 2000% the legal speed limit. That kind of macho (and totally uncessary thing) gets his knickers wet with excitement. Don't forget he's the guy that bought a brand new Perodua Kelisa, drove it off the car lot and took a sledgehammer to it in full view of the dealership. It ended with the demise of the unfortuntate Kelisa by a good amount of explosives.

Mind you, I laughed. You yourself can watch it on youtube. But that's because I'm familiar with the chest beating apeman that is Clarkson. The Kelisa was accused of being devoid of character and manufactured for the sole purpose of profit for the manufacturer.

Excuse me. But isn't that the exact fucking point?

The absolute intention for a business, any business, from car manufacturer to your aunt Sally's curry mee stall is to make profit and as much of it as possible. More importantly I think, is that most people need to have the option of a cheap car to get from A to B (and hopefully back again) and also an easy car to drive. Character in a car means the back end's likely to overtake the front end if you get it slighty wrong. Clarkson can spout about his Farraris, Porsches, Lamborghinis, Saleens and whatnot. Only 0.1% of the world's population can actually afford and want to buy such montrosities of engineering. A road car that is capable of 320km/h is like having an industrial sized incinerator in your home. Walk the 10meters to the garbage can you lazy bastard. It's free. A car that does 320km/h uses the GDP of a small country to move that same amount of distance too.

Once, I was fully on Clarkson's side and wholeheartedly agreed with his viewpoint but that was almost 20 years ago. Back then I was a teenager suffering raging hormones, rebelliousness and zits.

So Clarkson can celebrate his Need for Speed. It's okay. It's his right. I however think Clarkson is anti-conformist and anti-social for the mere sake of being so. You can tell of the obvious guilt the man feels from the occasionally self-depracating remarks he makes.

But. I genuinely enjoyed his writings and still do. Even if I think the man's a cerebral menace, I have to admit he writes it well.

Bryson on the other hand, I simply love. An American who opened one eye and learnt how American America is. That's not a compliment actually. Bryson is an American who travelled to England to have a look see in his youth and didn't leave. He did eventually return to the YOO EHS AY but by then with a wife and four children in tow. By then Bryson pretty much grasped half of what the rest of the world do. The YOO EHS AY are a planet all on their own. I find white people adorably stereotypical be they Australian, American or British but the Americans have to take the cake in the Being White Stakes. I'd explain but my brain will probably not be able to take strain right now. It's nearly 4 in the morning. I guess have a long nap after lunch isn't a good idea.

Regardless of which and although it is stereotypical I will say that all white countries are inherently racist. The British because they used to rule us and now the the empire days are over, long for the past. The Australians because they feel threatened by us (look at an atlas sometime, mate); and The Americans because they are simply, arrogant (and delightfully unaware of this) and quite likely the new global Aryan.

Which brings me to my next bit of bitching. Es Pee Gees. I fucking hate SPGs. Not for the obvious reason which is since they only put out for white boys, we get less pussy. No no no. It makes no difference to me now anyway, not being single. Not at all. I hate them because there is no forgiveness for gross, irresponsible and blatant stupidity. One fine day, it might do them good to look up these lines:

1. Me so horny.

2. Fucky sucky, 10 doh-lar.

3. Me love you long time.

White boys love you bitches because you lot throw yourselves legs spread akimbo at them all the time. And us local boys couldn't give you the time of day because:

1. We can't stand your goddamn fake accents which none of us who have travelled almost the entire English speaking world can place let alone have heard before.

2. We think the tired old excuse than white men treat you all so much better is bullshit anyway. If I was trying to get some pussy gratis, I'd be real nice to you too.

3. This is sour grapes but we do recognise that white boys quite likely have heapo money. This does however, make you materialistic mercenary whore.

Of course I do realise we can't expect preferential treatment of the sort you crave from an Ah Beng but they're not all of us. That's stereotypical and not fair! Hahaha!

It is funny though when you tag along with us, there aren't any white boys around and you haven't a clue why no one is even remotely interested in speaking to you. So at least you do have entertainment value. Minor as it is.

Anyway, you've probably sussed out by now that this is nothing really to do with Jeremy Clarkson or Bill Bryson but mainly that I wanted to bitch and whine about something. Anything. It's what I'm good at in front of a keyboard. I've been reading Bryson and had been reading Clarkson. The fingers got kinda itchy.

I will leave you with this though, I discovered something new in the course of my work in which I meet quite a few expatriate families. I've discovered that the white boys who come over to work here.... well, their wives hate you fucking bitches too!

Truly wonderful. We're going to start a union soon.

Into the blue

Oh gosh. More than 2 weeks without a post! Well, I've been quite busy. Have to prepare 5 properties for rental and one more needs maintenance. It never rains but it pours eh? Been quite busy and other time is spent just chillin'. I've been frequenting 1 Utama quite recently and just wandering about. I've bought more books for my new hobby/sport/passion which is of course, recreational diving. Quite unlike the morbid first book, Diver Down, I've bought a book on identifying reef fish and one more on dive sites in Malaysia. Identifying fish can be quite ridiculous. Two fish which look very alike can be two different species altogether. And the same species can have varying colours as well depending on location and environment. My mother and sister who are birdwatchers, I'm sure, are secretly pleased that Nat and I have about the same headaches they do when it comes to identifying species.

It's an expensive hobby. We've already blown thousands and have to be prepared to blow thousands more as we're slowly buying our own equipment. Nothing would suck more than dying or nearly drowning using someone else's equipment! I'd rather we own and maintain our own equipment. I know Nat feels the same.

So anyway, the plunge has been successfully taken as Nat and I are now certified open water divers.

To illustrate The Plunge:



That is me, by the way, doing the back roll off the boat.



Happy faces no? Dripping wet but very happy I assure you!



Dive buddies! I'm in the foreground, Nat's in the background.



This is a Teira Batfish. It was one of my aims to get to see this fish during the trip. Here's one being cleaned by a cleaner wrasse. There are little blue and yellow damsel fishes in the background.



Nat waving at the camera. The diver disappearing to the right is me!



And that's me. I'm sure you've noticed the visibility wasn't so good this dive and lots of floating particles.



Hovering vertically head down. If you're wondering what the white thing floating by my elbow is, it's my writing slate. It came free from my cummerbund.



As a test of bouyancy control, we took off our fins and tried to run on the bottom. Not easy! That's me giving my fins a cuddle.



You can pass the theory and practical tests but you're only officially done with the snorkel test!

Life Will Never Be The Same

I''m back.

Firstly, Nat and I are now certified divers. We did it!

It wasn't the easiest of things. I had to find my comfort zone and learn to handle myself, my equipment and my immediate environment. The first time I went back below the surface (and the very first time in open water) I struggled a bit. There was a bit of mental block about sinking beneath the surface and breathing through the regulator. There was a role reversal here. Nat had a few problems in the pool whilst I had none. She happily went below the waves and I was stuck for a bit just below the surface trying to do everything at once. Breathe through my mouth. Coming to terms that I can't inhale with my nose, even if I tried I couldn't because of the face mask. Trying to equalise the air space in my mask (water pressure and air compression tightens the mask to the face) and equalise the air spaces in my ears. All at the same time! LOL! I was confused for a little while. We finished the open water tests and I'd like to think we did well. In total we did 4 open water tests dives, 3 leisure dives and one games dive. 2 of those were shore dives and 6 were boat dives. At the end of the trip, we pretty much found our comfort zones and are very happy to be in the water.

Secondly, Life Will NEVER Be The Same Again.

Our second leisure dive took us to Tokong Laut which is a rock which rises from the sea floor to just above the surface. This is a healthy reef. Visibility was good and there were thousands (and I mean THOUSANDS!) of fish of many many many colours and varieties. A lot of corals and anemonies. There was once we stopped and we were totally surrounded by hundreds of fish. It was absolutely beautiful. There is one thing looking at pictures of reef life in a book. It is also another thing watching it on TV. It is a whole different ball game being in the water, being in this underwater environment, being there, seeing, hearing, feeling. I tell you, it is a wonder. Life will never be the same again. Life anywhere else in the world is not so diverse and so colourful.


Titan Triggerfish

It was here that I saw my first sharks! :) I saw three in total. It was brilliant! I loved it! I also found out another thing. Recreational divers aren't scared of sharks. No sir. Recreational divers are scared of trigger fish! Hahaha! Trigger fish a territorial and extremely aggressive during nesting season. They attack divers without warning and without provocation. Consider this, trigger fish eat crustaceans and coral. They have very very sharp, strong and hard mouths. They can take chunks off divers and they have. Their bites can also be ciguatoxic. Ciguatera isn't something anyone wants to mess with. On a previous dive I had seen a small trigger less than a foot long. This time, on Tokong Laut, we came across a Titan Trigger which was at least two feet long. It was really really beautiful. I remember going "Wow!" more than "Oh shit!". It was absolutely fearless. It stared down five divers and refused to budge. That's when we decided to turn around and go another direction! Nat was the last to leave and when she noticed everyone had turned around she left plenty quick too!. She was finning like hell and thinking, "Oh SHIT!" LOL! Titans are the largest of the triggerfish species. It can grow to 30 inches. Which is a lot of triggerfish!

On a previous dive we saw bumphead wrasses. They were huge! Three feet long. They came to check us out and came to within 3 feet of us. It was fantastic.


Humphead Parrotfish

The most memorable fish I saw were the bamboo sharks, the triggerfish, humpheads, batfishes (big ones too!), blue spotted stingrays and various parrot fishes, butterfly fishes and angelfishes.

And of course we found Nemo! And nudibranches! We saw nudibranches! Woooooo!

There are photos and videos of our trip. We just haven't gotten them yet. There are photos of us underwater. There are also hilarious videos of us trying to run underwater on the bottom without fins, playing rugby with a mineral water bottle loaded with sand and of course, of our snorkel test! Will post them when we get them.

I am so pleased we did it. It's opened up a whole new world. We are well and truly hooked.

On the way back, I bought a t-shirt near the boat jetty. Its slogan is: Scuba Divers Go Down Longer!

And they do y'know? LOL!

Buzz

I haven't felt this for a while. The buzz the day before. I'm so buzzed about the trip, I can't sleep. Unlike Nat - who is blissfully in the arms of sleep! I'm off to Perhentian - today; and I figure in about 12 hours, I should be lunching on the island possible having already made the first off-shore dive.

I'm just waiting to see if checking in at the airport is going to pose any problems. The scuba gear bag alone which contains (you guessed it) only scuba gear weighs 16 kilos, nevermind our own personal luggage. Air Asia has a limit of 15 kilos per person and you can't combine baggage weight with other persons according to their website.

That sucks.

That's like having a meal at Mum's Place in Damansara Perdana and discovering that you've had an excellent meal for four which came to over 70 Ringgit and they don't and won't refill your iced water. The four glasses of water came to 3.20 by the way. No refills though.

That sucks.

It's just fucking cold water!

Black Canyon, which is almost as good and a lot cheaper, will. I heartily recommend Set A for two persons at Black Canyon. You get all the iced water you can drink too at almost half the price!

That aside, I'm goin' divin'! Yay!

There

Been busy!

Tomorrow, we're off for the diving trip!

Bzzzzz

Y'all have to forgive the slowdown in posts. I'm busy busy busy!

Asshole Gallery #2

What's wrong with this picture? Is the taxi really in reverse gear? Nope. This is one of the many many assholes who fuck about with their car lights array. Blinking reverse lights while braking. Reverse lights on when they brake. Reverse lights permanently on. You know the ones. You've definitely seen them about. This has to be illegal and rightly so. It's idiotic.



And here we are back to my pet peeve. Queue cutters! This is Jalan Damansara in TTDI leading to the LDP, opposite the Petronas and post office. The lane one the left is for people to turn into Damansara Kim where the Specialist Centre is. I noticed in my wing mirror, this asshole leave the queue at the back and drive up past everyone on the left. It's a nice car. I do love the new Camry but it's got a kurang ajar no road etiquette queue cutter at the wheel! The plate is WRA 1918. Might be and probably is a nice guy in person but is just another fucking Malaysian driver behind the wheel. Whassa matter? Whassa rush? Bad curry izzit?

I don't really understand the junction up ahead. I don't know why it's been fucked about with. What we have now is a three lane road becoming a 2 lane road just before the traffic lights. Which is a really stupid idea. Cars bottleneck, bunch up and argue for space at the lights. I don't know what is going on, maybe when they finish the works at the lights, it might make sense. But I'm not holding my breath.

Diver Up

As you may know, I've just taken up scuba diving. I'm going for open water certification. I've been frequenting book stores recently to obtain some literature (and colour pictures!) about diving or aquatic life. Book stores for some reason tend to be quite cold and after much shivering and swearing by the girlfriend I finally picked a book. It's called Diver Down, subtitled Real Life Accidents and How to Avoid Them, by Michael R. Ange. It's a book on real life incidents and accidents by recreational divers. Of all the books out there eh? I go and pick this one?

I do think it's rather typical of myself that I bought this one to be honest. I'm just not letting my mum anywhere near the book. Of the stories in the book, many of the divers concerned lost their lives, a few were permanently damaged and even fewer escaped permanent injury. None survived unscathed, all being damaged one way or another mentally or physically.

And I'm glad I bought it. It proves a few things my instructor had been saying. He didn't ever repeat himself much but that's cos he thinks we (Matt, Nat and I) are smart enough to realise what he's saying is mucho mucho importanto. I also now realise that I made quite a few mistakes during the confined water sessions. Our instructor keeps telling us to think. To figure things out. Stop. Breathe. Think. Act. In that order. There's only so much training and instructions can do. A diver must first be responsible for himself/herself.

It would be an interesting point to note that of all the stories, only one was due to Murphy's Law or the proverbial shit happens. An experienced diver suffered an embolism which paralysed him while he was still in the water despite not doing anything wrong. He survived.

Panic is the number one killer of divers. Not surprisingly, ego is number two. There are divers who were gung ho and macho and went beyond their limits and training and were killed in the process. Needless to say, they panicked at the end of it. Sometimes justice isn't served as one of these divers recovered completely but his girlfriend drowned and his divemaster will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. That must be a terrible cross to bear.

However, ego is not always apparent. New divers always consume air faster than experienced divers. A new diver, subject to ribbing from other divers for having to cut short his (and his dive buddy's) dive from a rapidly lightening air tank, was determined to stay down longer on the next dive. He ran out of air and died along with the new divemaster whose own tank couldn't support himself and the hyperventilating new diver to make it to the surface.

Regardless of how exciting, new risky endeavours should be taken up progressively and carefully with advice and learnings taken seriously from the more experienced. Divemasters and instructors can always tell the ones who are going to be high risk. They're the ones who can't wait to get the gear on. The ones who want a bigger dive knife. The ones who can't wait to go deeper, further, longer. The ones who go beyond the limits of their training.

My own instructor had a story about diving. An instructor had two new students with him in open water. He had a camera with him. One student signalled low on air. The instructor signalled back to chill while he got his photo and they'd go up. After he got his shot he looked back and the divers were missing. He did a quick search and then went up. The divers were on the boat. One was dead and the other dying.

My mum told me that she read in the paper that a student diver got washed away from the group by a current and drowned. That's probably because that was a production factory type training. My group will have an instructor, 4 divemasters, an experienced diver, 2 Advanced Open Water students and 3 new Open Water students. Rather than 1 divemaster for 5 students, we will be having a 1 divemaster to 1 student ratio. Sure, I'm paying almost twice the price but I have someone qualified to certify new instructors as my instructor. I like the philosophy of my dive school which is to teach students how to dive and to do it safely. Production line schools tend to be like Malaysian driving academies. They teach you how to pass the test and that's about it.

After reading this book and reflecting on it, I would like to be qualified as an Advanced Diver and to also take up the Rescue Diver course. Not that I plan to be rescuing anybody (and I hope to never have to) but it would teach me to deal with emergencies and situations better should they arise. I certainly don't want anyone to be looking at me to deal with things cos, 'You're the rescue diver!'. A diver is only as good as his/her training and attitude.

I am rather pleased with comments filtered down to me from my pool sessions. It seems the instructors thought I was quietly confident and competent and doing better than I thought I was. A fellow student thought I did everything asked of me without fuss. So yeah.... very pleased with such feedback.

The reality of it is that I couldn't wait to get the gear on! Haha! BUT! I thought I should have a damn good listen to the instructor first. The last thing I want to be is to be in a book titled Diver Down, Part 2. I'd rather be in one titled "Diver Up, Who's Next?". Who knows? I might write it meself!