05 June 2004 11:13 p.m. the very first name mum learnt when she watched Troy was "Hector". i didn't have to prompt her at all. got to see Mr Pitt's sleek likkle ass, too. i think we got the French version or something. i'm not complaining. it's not to say i spent today alternately drooling and crying over i'd planned to copy verbatim from my own journal. unfortunately, i have trouble writing in it consistently. i did manage to detail the first 2 days quite well though. too bad it's so detailed i am loathe to copy it down. day 1 it took 6 hours to reach the other end of Pahang, so we arrived in time for tea at the Swiss Garden Inn. except there was no tea, because we weren't able to check in because our rooms weren't ready yet (at 4 p.m.?!) and people kept cutting in line, which didn't help the tempers of the three who did line up, my mother included. we had booked ourselves into "deluxe sea-view" rooms, but i discovered that my spectacular view of the swimming pool, beyond which was the sea, was blocked by palm fronds. my brother declared that he wouldn't swim without a pair of proper swimming trunks (he is a conservative rebel), so we went to the mall. it took all i had not to be a jakun* and point and say things like, "ooh, they have Adidas/Nike/Kenny Roger's/McD's/KFC/Converse here too!" in an awestruck tone. i mean, just because something is out of state doesn't mean it's the boondocks. i'm so stupid. i saw a cute guy. unfortunately, it was a moody-looking Raśl poster in the window of the Adidas shop. we didn't find any swimming trunks either. one thing to look out for on the way to/through Pahang is the road signs - i saw signs advertising "Sup** Gear Box" and "Guano Gu". the last one was in the town of Guai, i think. * - bumpkin ** - soup
i mean, like, omgwtf dude etcEric Bana Hector. i sat on my squidgy ass watching Van Helsing, The Day After Tomorrow and Troy. Van Helsing (or Van Houten, if it were up to my friend) was very bad and very cheesy. i was only waiting for the Prince/Werewolf (Will Kemp) and Hugh Jackman to lose the clothes. oh, okay, the vampire brides were cool, too. TDAT was cheesy as well, but the possibility of the reality yadda yadda yadda made up for it.
i like weekends for this reason
we have the Troy vcd. i still think the soundtrack vocals are overdone, but who am i to say no to Hector/Eric Bana judge?
about Pahang then...
Pahang pt 2
day 2
i didn't fancy the complementary buffet breakfast. i'm not the breakfast sort. i think that is also the reason i was ill, but that's for later. but really, is it me, or are hotel breakfasts just bland? it's like Tantalus, but not. i just wanted to put in something Greek because i don't have a Greek nickname and i feel left out.
the others went swimming while i was laid out by the medicine. i got some reading done, and i've finished The Moon's A Balloon by David Niven (it's a line from an e.e. cummings poem, i'm such a boffin). i've never watched any of his movies before, and only found out about him when i read an article about him in the papers. i've forgotten what it was about, but it wasn't complimentary. therefore, i was waiting to shoot down any falsehoods he had written about himself in the autobiography.
he is an amazing writer. the story flows effortlessly and it's a "compelling page-turner" as the blurbs often blurb. his style is very urbane and chatty, and much like his image, i assume. i know nothing about him, but he seems likable enough, though not lickable.
we went to a Thai place called Sara Thai Restaurant, located in the town center, for lunch. finding it was a real cari makan* experience. it's owned by a Thai and is run by Kelantanese. and they had only one cook.
the food was fab, and the portions were small, something rarely seen these days. most importantly, of course, it was cheap. i'm not a fan of kerabu** though.
getting back to the car was a very hairy experience. i've never crossed roads where traffic from 2 directions (2 lanes each) merged into one direction (2 lanes) and the cars seem to come right at you.
to make things worse, i was stuck on one side for 5 minutes while the other 3 scampered nimbly across and yelled at me to hurry up.
the restaurants up north offer stuffed crab, which is where the crab is shelled and the meat shredded, mixed with veg and/or other meat, stuffed back into the shell, coated in batter and deep fried. it was very oily both times we had it. an individual serving is one crab shell, which is about 4 inches across.
the other thing is that most of the malay restaurants offered "tom yam ala thai dan masakan panas". i wondered aloud about the masakan panas bit because i thought it goes without saying that a restaurant should offer hot food. mum put me straight on the matter when she explained that it meant "freshly cooked food". i felt that the moment was so duh that it should be blamed on the medication.
* - to look for food/to look for a living
** - malay-style salad
05 June 2004 9:58 a.m.Pahang pt 3
day 3
we drove further up north and wound up in Terengganu. i should have known where we were going because the stalls selling keropok lekor* were becoming more frequent. that, and the signs advertising sata**. i still don't know what it is.
we drove through a town called Chukai/Cukai***. i noticed that they had fluorescent plastic cacti decorating one of the traffic islands. there are more billboards on road safety than i've seen in KL, but it was in Terengganu that i saw billboards saying "women should cover their aurat." instead of being outraged, i thought it was very quaint, like, "ah, old world values!" i'm patronising that way. i wonder what it's like in Kelantan.
they have stuffed crab in Terengganu too.
having dispensed with the medication, i finally got to go swimming in that evening. i had a Depp dip in the jacuzzi too, but i can't see the appeal. the weather is fierce warm, and the sand is so hot it might burn the skin off the soles of your feet, so why would anyone want to sit in hot water, outdoors, in the tropics? i must be getting old, because i stayed in there for 20 minutes before jumping in the pool.
i don't think there is a woman alive who doesn't think her ass looks fat in a swimsuit. unless she's Kate Moss or Jodie Kidd, in which case, shut up. i had a crisis of confidence, i.e. a complete lack of it, until i realised that there wasn't any other female around my age, and that little girls are too young to worry what other people think of them, while people like my mother are old enough not to care about how they look in a swimsuit. in the face of all that, what was my body but another blue-skinned sausage? hohoho. even so, i kept the skirt thingy on until i was in the water.
did i carp about chinese food? we had Thai food for dinner. it was only 5 minutes away from the hotel, called Yala Thai 501 (or something). why is there so much Thai food in Pahang when Kelantan and Perlis are the 2 Malaysian states that are the closest to Thailand? i don't know, but 501's ginger prawns were awesome, and their fried squid was lovely. the grilled stingray was delicious, but no points for over-ordering, though. kerabu still does nothing for me, but i like ikan bilis**** in all cases.
* - chewy fish crackers
** - food
*** - taxes. honestly
**** - dried anchovies
05 June 2004 9:44 a.m.Pahang pt. 4
day 4
went for a dip in the sea in the morning. the sky was clear and a strong wind was blowing, so i pretended i was on the beach of Troy, watching the Aegean sea, waiting for the sails of Agamemnon's fleet to appear. you know you would have done the same. i love the sand, the sand was great. it was warm and it was a good idea to burrow into it because it would have made the nicest, coziest hide-out in the world, only i didn't because sea-water got into my eyes and the adventure was over and it was back to the chlorined safety of the swimming pool and the screaming children, who screamed because the vigilant life-guards stopped them from going into the jacuzzi.
the thing about malaysia (asia?) is that unless you're white, it would look weird if you sat on the beach and did nothing. but dammit, i wanted to park my butt in the powdery sand and stare at the horizon just to daydream, y'know? it would have looked ridiculous to the people who were sitting in the water, but that's what i wanted to do. i got a light tan, but it's prolly faded by now. and i don't think my butt is that saggy anymore, haha.
we had lunch in a small town called Gambang, which should actually be renamed the City of Flies for obvious and unimaginative reasons. it was essentially a truck-stop town that didn't pretend to be anything else. the heat irritated the coffeeshop boss, who periodically slapped her newspaper down on some flies to vent her temper.
i, too, would have liked to vent my temper at the staring truck driver, but he made me realise that ugly people have daydreams too. but it's rude to stare anyway.
after that, we had been on the road for about 5 minutes when a hornbill flew across the road. wow! i'm not gonna go all Steve Irwin on your haplessness-es ("she's a beaut, ain't she?"), but it was a beaut. big, too, and the first ever i'd seen in the wild. there was also monkey roadkill, but let's not go into that.
driving along trunk roads is scary because you're always taking a chance when you overtake a truck or a 6-wheel trailer or whatever. there's also a sense of fatality when i watch some hot-rodding revhead (that's what Eric Bana calls himself, hur) overtakes the said trailer on a no-overtaking stretch, around a blind corner to boot. and then there's the sound the engine makes when you absolutely have to make like Vin Diesel in The Fast & The Furious.
i usually don't care about reckless drivers; it's only when there's a family in that car that i get angry. you may be idiot, but your stupidity should hurt as few people as possible.
there was a coffee break in Temerloh where i bought a magazine because it had a Brad Pitt interview (BP --> Troy --> Hector --> Eric Bana --> possibility of pictures + quotes = 5 degrees of fanaticism). Alanis Morisette once sang, "you're a pretty little thing when you're cleaned up properly" (from Hands Clean). damn right. or maybe it was "done up properly."
an hour later, we stopped for another break, and i made as unhurried a walk as i could manage to the loo. it is both unwise and uncomfortable to try and hold your pee for 6 hours (i managed 4. go, me!). there is absolutely no reason to do something as daft as that unless you want to know what happiness really is...
the coffee break turned into a durian stop, and we discovered that flies like durian too. it was Gambang all over again. i'm not a durian fan because the taste is so rojak*. actually, i was more impressed that we had been driving for 4 hours and were still in the same state. KL is so very small.
i have no idea how to end this.
... and then we reached home and lived happily ever after.
well, actually, my parents bought more food and we left the little town and we finally reached the highway and overtook a bus in the near dark on a curvy, nervy little stretch before things became a uniform gray again and we were back in KL.
i miss the Aegean sea Kuantan's beach.
* - mixed
04 June 2004 11:48 a.m.about blogging. and more!
yeah, so i was on holiday (i was convalescing wat), but they delivered the newspaper to the room daily. that's where i read about how some people are compulsive bloggers. articles about blogging are stupid in the sense that they're not actually addressing the issue, but merely describing the pathology of a disturbing trend. yes, i understand that column space needs to be filled, but... no, it doesn't.
so here we come to my take on the matter - it's the personification of the faceless chasm that is the human psyche. people just don't know what to do with themselves. things are so automated and pre-fab, blogging is the only way to regain some semblance of control in one's life, and therein lies the underlying principle - control.
(i know i have a problem with run-on sentences)
but really, control is the key, because (once again) current events are beyond our control. we are not policy-makers or power-players. and so we do what we feel we can. we build our websites and maintain our blogs and discuss it in forums and chatty rooms (thanks, Angel). every one hopes that their voice will eventually be heard. we long for the fabled chorus of united voices. and we keep waiting.
i meant to blog about being ill, but things have a way of digressing like that for me. a thousand years from now, all this will be referred to as the Greek tragedy of our times, only it never feels as such when you're actually living it. hindsight is 100% et al.
04 June 2004 11:40 a.m.i am a convalescing invalid, bear with me.
dude, what is it with Aussie fellas and stripes? and it must get old with people saying "mate" after every sentence because they think it's how they speak.
it wasn't going to be a long post, but brevity was never my forte.
i was watching the Troy trailer (online, natch) and i realised that there's this sense of doom that pervades the movie. also, when Achilles booms, "is there no one else?", it could very well describe the state of the world today. ya, i know that parallels have been drawn between the movie and current events, but what i'm referring to is the question of us being the only beings in the world. recommended mood - overwhelming loneliness and despair.
30 May 2004 2:52 p.m.have microsoft paint, will manage
am too ill to blog and will be in absentia next week. this will have to suffice till then. (original picture here)
