21.12

Today is 21st of December.

Duh!

Of course I know you know.

However, did you know that today is the Winter solstice - when the Earth is most tilted away from the sun.

In some cultures, the winter solstice is taken to be the first day of winter.

Images of snow, warm mittens and sitting around a fire place swirl in my head but the sun beating down on me today brings me back to reality, reminding me that I am in a place where there is no winter .... and I sweat a little bit more.



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Listening to 'Civil War' by Guns N' Roses.

Penang Trip

I just got back from Penang and I am damn sleepy. I had gone there to attend a Symposium, which was held at the Grand Plaza Parkroyal Hotel. I am not going to discuss about the symposium, which was quite interesting by the way (but boring to others I guess). However, this post is not about the symposium but about the hotel I stayed in. Well I drove down with a friend who had gone there ages ago and here we were driving around the state, which is also known to have the worst drivers in the whole of Malaysia. We only had the address of the hotel and a vague idea about where to go (direction given by Penang born friends). Would you believe it - this was my first trip to the Pearl of the orient. As you would expect, we got lost. We finally reached Batu Ferringhi Beach and the hotel, after a few directions from my good friend Rajoo.

So far, the Sutera Harbour Resort Hotel has been top on my best hotels list. However, after this trip, the Grand Plaza Parkroyal Hotel ranks side-by-side with it. Well I got a double bed room shared with my friend. The rooms facing the sea, cost almost double the rooms facing the hills and even though I had booked the cheaper rooms, we decided to upgrade to the sea facing rooms. After all, as participants of the seminar, we were eligible for discounted rates and the rates were with our budget (paid by our organization). All together it came to RM259.98/ each for the 2 nights and 3 days stay there.

After we had registered for the conference, checked in and kept our stuff in the room, we had to rush down and get something to eat before they stopped serving breakfast. The food was great and we stuffed ourselves.

What I liked about this hotel were the complimentary personal grooming items. So far, it was the first hotel to provide a shaving kit. Great for people (like me) who always forget to bring their own. The only complaint I have is that their toothpaste was lousy. I guess no one asks for it and it had semi-solidified in the tube. They also provided an ironing board with iron in the room. Normally in other hotels, we have to ask for the iron. They also provided 2 huge complimentary and really tasty home made cookies. Yummy! The replaced these cookies every day. Learnt from a friend that this hotel also has a place where you can drop your kids while you are busy with your symposium or want to go somewhere else without the brats.

Besides the saving kit and toothpaste, I also forgot to pack swimming trunks, and slippers. Don’t buy these items from the hotel. We went around town and obtained these items at prices half the prices quoted in the hotel and stalls around the road. We drove down to the town to get the stuff and visited quite a few places in George Town and again got lost. We went round and round.

Just outside the hotel, there are a number of stalls where you can browse around for a gift. A number of stalls selling DVDs and CDs. There were a number of restaurants along the road but we avoided those as we had received prior warnings about the overpriced food in those places. Instead we had a meal at the open air stalls a short walk away from the hotel. At the table next to ours, Loganathan Arumugam of the Alleycats, was having dinner with some people (his family I guess). I had chappati but my friend’s mee goring never arrived and he was damned piss off. I asked him to go and enquire but he didn’t and just waited and waited and it never came. I was a bit annoyed with him. Come on, just order something else or just remind them or shout at them or something but I guess he is that type of guy….

His mood later improved and we went back to the hotel after buying some snacks. We sat down at the hotel lounge where a live band was playing slow music. Finally went to sleep after watching a movie on NTV7. Something about Mars and Aliens.

Had a great time in Penang even though I didn’t get to see any of the famous sights. Maybe next time and when I do, I would definitely stay in the Grand Plaza Parkroyal Hotel.

Househusband

Well I got your attention there, didn't I.

Just found out that Female students make up about 70 percent of the total student in Universiti Utara Malaysia at Sintok, Kedah. By the way, the spelling is correct, that is how University is spelled in Bahasa Malaysia. According to my friends in the educational sector, the figures are similar in other Malaysian universities too.

What happened to the guys?
One lady friend joked that most of them are in 'Pusat Serantis' - Rehabilitation centres. She said that it is increasingly getting hard for well qualified ladies to find any eligible bachelors. One reason why there are a lot of available but still single ladies in Kuala Lumpur. According to her, all eligible men are either taken or gay.

We know what housewives are. Guess we will be seeing a lot of househusbands in the near future. After all, if the only eligible candidates for jobs in the private and public sector, are women, what will the men do?

Actually that's not funny.

Khalwat

Had this interesting conversation with a friend yesterday while having lunch. We were talking about Islam, islamic state and so on. He was of the opinion that many are not aware of the Syariah laws existing in Malaysia. I guess that includes me.

To illustrate his point, he gave some examples of Khalwat (close proximity) cases. For those who didn't know, Khalwat is when a non-muhrim (Muhrim = married or relative) people of opposite gender are in isolation (I guess that means behind closed doors) together. It is a legal offence and MUSLIMS (including foreigners) can be charged in the Malaysian Syariah court. However, this law does not apply to non-Muslims.

For more info you can go to this page on the Women's Aid Organization website.

It was interesting because a lady working in our organization was caught with a guy in a hotel in Alor Setar. The funny thing is that I never believed it when I heard the rumours . She was soft spoken, wore a tudung and was well educated. I guess it was bad luck, because I know of several people who were never caught. While I was in KL, few of my neighbors in the Condo I lived in were definitely not married but living-in together but were never caught. I guess they were lucky. According to my friend, they were stupid. They should have stayed in a five star hotel in Penang or KL. According to him, the religious officials rarely raid five star hotels and people don’t give a damn in these cities.

You can be charged even if you are not doing anything of a sexual nature with the other person - the very act of being in close proximity means trouble. We hear of such cases almost everyday, including some high profile cases. Of course, some were caught "IN ACTION" and they have no excuse. However, I feel it is not fair when people who were not doing anything were caught only because they were alone together.

A few things I learnt from this whole discussion:

- You are safe unless someone (my friend used the term busybody but others might disagree) makes a complaint or unless religious officials catch you in action during their regular rounds.
- You should leave the door open so that neighbors can see that you are not doing anything naughty, when with a person of opposite gender fulfilling the criteria above * (not really sure about this as more nosy neighbours can see you and fuel the gossip mills).
- Spending more time than necessary in your car in the car park is not OK. No amount of “we were just talking” is going to help. Because you will only get “Ya, right!”.
- Even if you didn’t do anything wrong and you were “caught”, you are guilty in a lot of people's eyes including those did do something but were not caught.
- Having more than two people in a room in isolation is not OK if there is only one lady in the group.
- Being alone with your gay friend (of opposite gender) is still not OK.
- Even if you are married and with your spouse, keep your marriage certificate/card.

Some strange scenarios where disaster can strike:

1. You are alone and happen to take a taxi with a lady driver.
2. You are on your way to an open house. You have picked up a lady friend/acquaintance and now in front of another friend’s house, who is still getting ready/ in the toilet/ went in to pick up something.
3. You are a lecturer and you are alone in the room with a female student.
4. You have to finish balancing your accounts and your secretary stays back to help you.
5. You met this girls, took her out for a drink. When you return home, it starts to rain and you don’t have an umbrella in your car. So you wait in the car for the rain to stop.
6. You give a lift to a lady co-worker whose car/bike broke down.
7. You give a lift to a lady whose car/bike broke down on the highway at night.

Can you think of some more scenarios. In the end, I guess it is better to be safe than sorry.

Price Wars

I usually fly with Malaysia Airlines only when my ticket is paid for or I can claim the price later - from the government. On unofficial journeys, I usually fly with Air Asia. That is, until I recently, discovered that MAS has quietly entered the low cost airline market. In case you didn't know, you can get great discounts on domestic destinations through the MAS 'Domestic supersavers' online offer. Up to “50% off” they say.

My in-laws have to attend a relative’s wedding in Jitra, Kedah next week and we were trying to book tickets for them. We visited the Air Asia website and discovered that the cheapest prices for the KLIA- Alor Setar trip was RM99 (without tax). However, the return trip was RM115 (without tax) + RM10 for an infant. It all came to around RM866 for four adults + Rahil without the taxes. The plan was to go on 11th morning and come back on the 12th evening. As they say, sometimes things don’t turn out the way you plan them. We found out that there were no evening flights anymore. As my in-laws were not planning to stay longer in Kedah, we were discussing other options including driving, when I suddenly remembered the MAS offer.

We checked their website out but found that we couldn’t book online. When there is a will, there is a way. We called up their customer service and discovered that we could get tickets much cheaper. However, the only drawback is that you cannot buy the tickets online - you can only book them and have to pay for the tickets at the nearest MAS office within 24 hours of making the reservations. That’s a minor hassle considering that we can get better service + extra miles on my Enrich loyalty card, at almost same prices. To tell the truth, though I was a great fan of the discount airline, I am beginning to get annoyed by Air Asia’s frequent flight delays. I am definitely flying with MAS from now on.

Let the price wars begin.

Coffee Anyone

I was never a coffee drinker. I was more of a tea person till I met the girl who is now my wife and she introduced me to Coffee Bean and Starbucks. We were regular customers of their outlets in Bangsar during our MBA days at University Malaya and we would even study there. Now we hardly go there anymore.
Anyway, as we don’t have a good café nearby I have to make do with my own cuppa. I got a coffee maker in my office (which I received as a wedding present). However, after using roasted and ground coffee beans for a while, I decided that cleaning up was a damn hassle. Now I mainly use it to heat up water. I just have to take a sachet of instant coffee mix, pour water and I am done. Here I have quite a selection to choose from. I have the normal Nescafe 3 in 1 Regular, Gold choice Instant 5 in 1 “Tongkat Ali, Ginseng, coffee” mix and even Sureco Cenkudu Kc420 6 in 1 “Kopi prachampur mengkudu (morinda citrifolia fruit), cendawan merah (ganoderma) & halia (ginger)” mix.



The strongest is the one with Tongkat Ali. The 6 in 1 mix is good, has an unusual taste but there is always some solid residue left at the bottom of the cup. However, the best is the Nescafe. Nescafe mix now comes in 3 different varieties but I prefer the one I have – regular. How do you like your coffee?

Pudu Station

Took the night bus back to Kedah yesterday. I was a bit early and having nothing else to do, got a drink, just sat down and watched people go by.

Pudu Raya is a really interesting place and you get to see and meet a lot of characters. The place is always busy and yesterday night more so with all the people coming back from their Kampungs and students going back to Universities after the Raya break. In fact, Jelita the only bus service which goes into the Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) campus ran extra buses and yesterday I counted 5 buses going off at 9:30 pm. Normally they have only 1.



Anyway, while waiting for my bus I was passing my time observing the people around me. There were the usual ticket touts. Some of the ladies were very aggressive shouting “Ipoh, Ipoh, Ipoh, JB, JB, JB”. Suddenly, this Indian guy came up to me and said " Excuse me! Can you please give me some money to buy a ticket to Ipoh?" in perfect English. I said "Sorry! I don't have enough money" and he walked off. Normally I would be very helpful but this being my fourth experience was wiser to the fact that this people usually hung around Pudu trying to get money from sympathetic passengers. However, I always had this feeling of guilt. “What if they were really telling the truth”.

I was looking around for another famous Pudu Raya character, a beggar with no arms wearing a sarong and a small bag around his neck. I didn’t see him.

I finished my drink. Continued looking at couples going from counter to counter trying to get tickets at the last minutes. It was getting pretty uncomfortable as I was sweating, feeling sleepy and sick of the fumes wafting up from the idling buses and the cigarette smoke from the guy sitting next to me. Hey! I thought they banned smoking in public places. Making laws are easy; enforcing them is the difficult part I guess.

Then there were these two young teenage girls sitting opposite me. They had real sad expressions and were not talking to each other much. Some guys hung around (Romeos on bikes often found loitering around Pudu, maybe?), trying to chat them up without much success. One of the girls asked the other girl something, which I could not hear and the other girl snapped back "I don't know!" The other girl looked as if she was ready to cry. Observing their miserable expressions, several scenarios were playing out in my head. Maybe the person supposed to pick them up didn’t turn up. Were they running away from home? Maybe someone tricked them and they were stuck there not knowing what to do. The girl who looked slightly older looked at me and was staring. Was that a plea for help? I guess I didn’t have the guts to ask them. Anyway, the Police counter was just around the corner if they had any problem. Felt a bit guilty.

Finally left Pudu Raya for Kedah at around 9:30 pm. The aircon felt good and I was ready to try to get some sleep. Then the girl beside me started having coughing fits. Oh! My god! Waited for a while but she didn’t stop. Do I have Strepsils? I usually do. Looked around in my bag. No I don’t. Arrgh!