Writer’s block?…

… indeed. Road city nose block; the blooming guava trees standing guard along Lorong Gurney are silent - don’t be silly, they’re only trees, they don’t talk! - as I proceed towards the main road in a shopping trolley. But I am telling the story backwards - I must try to hold Pontianak’s rapt attention (sitting there twirling her shroud around her fingers) because she has no patience for Joycean stream of consciousness and holds fast to the traditions of linear storytelling - she is my muse and goads me on to write this fevered account. Also, she works for nothing and I would have to close down the belacan factory if she flounced off bored to jump on top of a car to shriek howl scream all the way to Alor Setar.

So, to tell the story properly (not to say that I am proper), on that day, the 14th of September 1972, at 4.32 and 17 seconds in the afternoon (or maybe a bit before, perhaps after, perhaps maybe even 5 years later or before or sideways); wait, it was in the early hours of the morning that the gerbil fell floridly. But to explain this I should tell you first of the bomoh who made tea. We sat in his hut, which had a garden on the roof, as he mouthed incantations and passed his hands over his bubbling cauldron. After some time, he passed us two tin mugs full of a brown liquid, in which we had milk and sugar. All of a sudden, a hole appeared in the roof, and amidst a velvety glitter of bougainvilleas, hibiscuses and orchids a small rodent fell onto the table between us. Raising itself in a stunned fashion, it looked at us as if to say “My fall parallels the the fall from grace of our country, from the pastoral gentleness of our ancestors to the industrial Westernness of other people’s cups of tea”. But perhaps he was just stunned.

To summarise, the bomoh chanted, we had tea, the gerbil fell (with flowers), I travelled hidden in a shopping trolley toward the main road. I write this sitting on the edge of a spring bed with a thin mattress above the work of pounding shrimp and chili and I suffer writing block yet again. No wait, I have another string of verbs to run together, now then, where was I, shopping trolley, food mixer….

(With apologies)

BTW

It has been a long time since the last post. Luckily, there is now something to write about - the Prof and I are married! Yes, we were drinking coffee one morning while I bemoaned the lack of fun and portentuous things to write about in this grey city where the weight of history presses down on your shoulders and squeezes thought from your head.

“Let’s get married”, she said.

“Yes!”, I concurred, throwing my straw boater into the air, “that will smash my writer’s block!”

And so it was done. Gentle reader, if you look above you will now see my tagline commemorates our union.

OK, it wasn’t quite like that. We didn’t talk about blogs at all in fact. We did, though, have a very nice day and then we went straight to Ghent in Belgium, which is yet another place I would like to live.

Pics to follow.

(Later that day) And here they are..

The good looking couple

I want to live here

Cats 3

The Prof, during her rigorous and unending search for knowledge and truth, uncovered the following:

Cats 2 (The Outward Bound Mogs)

Our cats like to go to bed with us and sleep, or just hang, on top of the covers. This is endlessly entertaining, because quite unlike their uncanny poise walking along the top of a fence (well, Teddy’s uncanny poise, anyway - Laila falls off the sofa), they seem oddly unbalanced by the shifts of the duvet. So they will stand and look nonchalant, while their legs shakily try to find purchase. It put me in mind one night of a pair of retired ex-British Army Sergeant Majors meeting on a rope bridge in the middle of a howling rainstorm. Imagine Richard Attenborough in Guns at Batasi.

“Morning.”

“Morning.”

“Weather turning, what?”

“Seen better.”

“Bridge could be sturdier.”

“And wider.”

“You coming this way?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going that way.”

“Ah.”

Going to lunch

Well, my sister is down for a visit, and Prof had the astounding idea of going to get some Malaysian food. Yay!

I’ll take the opportunity to explain why Malaysian food is the best in the Universe (this, by the way, is the cause of the occult nature of life in Kuala Lumpur - aliens from many galaxies and parallel universes cloak themselves in human form and discuss which char kway teow stall is the best. Sometimes it leads to fights - they’re rarely the best sort of aliens..).

First, the durian. Initial impressions are negative. Is this enormous spiky oval a weapon? You can do a lot of damage with it, but wait! What’s that formidable stench? It’s the durian! You can’t be serious! You want me to eat it? What are you doing with that machete? OK, OK, I’ll eat it, don’t chop my head off. Oh, you’re opening the durian with the big knife? It looks soft and mushy inside - it’ll have a gaggy texture, I just know it.. OK, I’ll hold my nose, put it in my mouth.. mmm.. guess it’s not too bad… God, it’s great! Give me another. Another! Open another one! (Time passes). Oh, I feel sick, I just had 10 durians.

Our intrepid adventurer is reborn, she has crossed a culinary Rubicon. The durian causes genetic, chemical and philosophical change. One cannot be the same person after one has eaten of the fruit of terror.

Next, roti canai. This one you can eat without spiritual death and rebirth. The effects are more like a warm bath, with a special friend doing loofah duty. Equally as important is that, on the way to your plate, it spends an eye-catching and entertaining time being twirled over the head of the stallkeeper for the purpose of stretching the dough paper thin, before being folded loosely and fried just enough for toast marks. Oh yeah, I feel my muscles loosening just thinking about it.

Finally, though not exhaustively, a personal favourite, curry laksa. Now this is just a noodle soup with a spicy coconut sauce. It’s a fiery red colour, and you can only really get the full experience in Malaysia, where they have no scruples. The exciting thing about real curry laksa is the stirring and dredging to see what the cook has decided to include - oysters, chicken feet, shrimp, fish bits, tofu, eyeballs, insurgent Communist body parts and what have you. A piquant delight!

I hope that this little tour through only the most miniscule fraction of Malaysia’s all-conquering food culture has tempted you, gentle reader, to try for yourself the many gourmet delights of my happy sun-blessed former home, where people dance merrily with a song always on their lips. For my part, I will go with Prof and Sis and eat full mightily, without a thought for tomorrow.

Syok!

Hit the road, Mac

I’ve been recovering from my Californian adventure - the jet lag, the lethargy of 9-to-5ing and the abrupt plunge into the cold bath of mundane reality. Some were not so lucky. I sat with my iBook as it slipped into a coma from which it was not to recover. All attempts at resuscitation failed - the hard drive was so tangled up it could not recognise itself. The only thing left is to recover what data I can by wizardly means, zero out the disk and reinstall the operating system. But I have no heart left for this, and demur to again grow an attachment to a machine, an inanimate object, a totem, an icon, a symbol, an idea. So I dusted off my old Thinkpad, which is as attractive as a blocked toilet, inconveniently bulky, with a sticky backspace key, and I’m using it as ruthlessly as the back of an envelope.

Computers used to occupy me, for the usual reasons - a universe totally under the control of reason and science, and so on - but one of my Fresno lessons (there’s the motif - raise your hat!) is that life, the thing that happens under your nose and flickers in your eyes, disrupting your concentration on the LCD or CRT, is more interesting. Confusing, inconsistent, infuriating and frustrating, and also fulfilling, joyful, shot with clarity. I’ve read that “may you have an interesting life” is a Chinese curse. What I forgot is that the idea of yin/yang, the philosophy of things generating their opposites, also came from those parts. I leave an investigation of eastern cosmology as an exercise for the reader.

Bungee jumping

It’s a slightly warmer than crisp Saturday morning, and I’m back home in the Smoke. Actually got back home on Wednesday afternoon but felt too laggy to do anything other than moan pitifully while trying not to do too much damage at work the next couple of days. The rest of the crew of S.S Dunroamin are out doing Tai Chi and Kung Fu but I’ve decided the cats need company, and anyway the rigours of modern travel mandate a respectable amount of recuperation time.

One of the many by-products of meeting up in Fresno (advance warning - there is going to be a lot of this “great time in Fresno” stuff, and in fact this blog is one of those by-products), was realising that all the good things in life were right there all the time, at every instant, only needing the onlooker to see. I seemed to be in two times simultaneously, that of 30-40 years ago and that of now, as if I had a temporal elastic band wrapped around my waist, slamming me back and forth between the two. When that sort of thing is rattling your brain around, it tends to attract your attention.

To my addled mind it seems that everyone knows, the way they know that it’s night on the other side of the Earth, that they are different from the way they used to be. When, however, you are privileged with an unusual viewpoint, for example meeting up with a friend who you haven’t seen in 30 years, before life happened, before the heart-ripping breakups, before the vertigo of finding out people rely on you now and not the other way round, before realising that young people are rebelling against you, with no intervening accomodations and without the complacency of familiarity, well it seems as if you walked out the door one morning and found yourself in the future, going “Hey, they’ve got portable radios now, and everyone’s got a TV!”. Fertile ground for science fiction writers. And it helps you to see everything with a sense of wonder. Then. Now. Did I do that? And you thought this? Oh my god, I see.

Kind of like that. So, good holiday. More to come.

Cats 1

First of all, let me stress that I do not intend to infringe Suicide Lounge’s copyright on the Cat Song. This post is about the cats left at home.

Prof and I were talking on Skype in the usual manner, exchanging inconsequences, alternately responding to and ignoring each other as we surfed, sent links back and forth, stared into space and so on.

Something made her think about the cats - we have two, both black, brother and sister. We got them at the cat shelter, expecting to spend a lot of time judiciously considering temperament, medical histories and past owners. What happened was that I saw these two looking at us and I said “Can I have these ones, please?!” Everyone else was carried away by the depth and force of my infatuation and we took them home, after the necessary formalities.

Apparently, they have been in a mischievous mood. I think they enjoy the Prof’s company better than mine, and feel that they can express themselves more freely around her. They didn’t seem quite as fun when the Prof was away, though perhaps they spent the time reflecting on questions of meaning and ultimate purpose.

Today, for instance, the cats were employed alternately in staring at Prof with kittenish, wide eyed faces, thinking “What will happen if I jump on my human?”, and jumping on her. Cat lovers will know the face I am talking about, others will not care, so I feel relieved of the burden of describing it accurately, as everyone’s needs are catered for.

In short, I miss my cats. They are friendly little cats.

Some History

So, the story is, nearly 40 years ago I moved up to secondary school, which is Year 7 for UK people, Junior High for in the US. Seeing an opportunity for amusement, Kien scuttled up to me and, for purposes of exposition and because I can’t remember his actual words, said “Hello”.

He had a friend named Marcel. Soon we began to hang out together. Possible reasons for this outcome include: a) we all recognized that we needed reinforcements, being weird kids; b) they were the first people I met in this new school and they let me tag along; c) utter, blind chance.

Adventures ensued, some growing up, a few backward steps, laughs, tears and so on. There were musical jams, camping trips, eating contests, and impromptu Jesus Christ Superstar productions. We explored literature and art, discussed philosophy with each other in the usual schoolboy manner.

School ended and we started to pursue the rest of our lives. The story becomes more fragmented here, because of course our lives were different. New places, new people.

So again, roughly 30 years after we were last in the same place together, here we are in the same place together. I’m resting up, writing this little post, preparing for a tightly scheduled night at the Rogue Festival.

And that’s the story, one way of telling it. It could have happened to anybody.

Hello California!

Well, as Marcel said, (M’s blog), here I am in the gorgeous metropolis of Fresno, central California. I left my entire record collection with him when I left Malaysia and said I’d be back for them.

30 years later, I’m sitting in his shed, typing into my new blog, with Kien giving helpful editorial suggestions. Marcel thinks the records are in Malaysia still, so my fevered dreams of re-experiencing Liberace’s Greatest Hits are dashed on the rocky shores of cruel circumstance.

Still, you’ve got to grow up, and that’s something I’ve got plans for. More reasoned and measured comments to follow in my next post.