Leaving the place of the darndest things

Well, the time has come to bid farewell to Subang Jaya... for now. Returning home after living overseas always seems to give mixed feelings. On the one hand you're obviously excited to be going back to what you know and miss. But on the other hand, you're leaving a place you've just begun to feel apart of.

Before leaving I managed to acquire (with the help of a friend) a book which I first saw in a book store in Borneo; Malaysian Politicians Say the Darndest Things. It just goes to show that I've still got a lot to learn about Malaysia. Not that I know that much, but I was just surprised to see a book like this even on sale.

Here's something I definitely wouldn't have heard someone say on the street. Selangor Chief Minister Mohd Khir Toyo said, "Malaysian men are easy to service. [Their] libido lasts only five minutes. A shorter period would mean more customers and that makes it more lucrative for the sex workers to conduct their activities here." This was supposed to explain why there are foreign prostitutes in Malaysia. Coming from a country where an aggressive handshake can have an effect on your political career, this sort of comment seems otherworldly.

Whilst it seems Australians can be very sensitively politically correct about charities, political correctness didn't seem to bother one Malaysian politician. Kelantan Chief Minister, Nik Aziz Nik Mat is quoted as saying, "Only women who are not pretty (kurang rupawan) should be employed by the State government, as these women would not be able to get rich husbands who can support them financially."

From my experiences these quotes don't represent the views of the Malaysian population but are more of a very tenuous link. Speaking of tenuous links, try figuring this out:

"All bloggers are liars, they cheat people using all kinds of methods. From my understanding, out of 10,000 unemployed bloggers, 8,000 are women. Bloggers like to spread rumours, they don't like national unity. Today our country has achievements because we are tolerant and compromising. Otherwise we will have a civil war. Malays will kill Chinese, Chinese will kill Malays, Indians will kill everybody else."

And all because of bloggers.

Skip to the end: I left KL and read a book about Malaysian politics.

Bamako...

It almost seems like a city. It’s definitely not a quaint country village of mud-brick houses and women singing as they collectively pound a harvest of millet. There are lots of people, noise and things happening; I notice some goats trying to have sex as I walk down the street.

Given my experiences in Ouagadougou I didn’t think it would be hard to change money. The first time I had wandered around the centre-ville I went to a Western Union who didn’t change money, and another place that didn’t have Euros. Kind people at both establishments directed me to places that didn’t seem to exist; such seems to be the way in West Africa.

Now on my second outing (after having retreated to the less stressful confines of my accommodation with some actual Juicy Fruit) I stumble into an Ecobank which even has Bureau d’Échange written on its exterior. Alas, they are a new bank without any money changing facilities as of yet. They direct me next door... who are closed.

Venturing back to surety again, along the dusty, bumpy thoroughfares known as streets, I am surprised by the relative lack of people trying to forcefully incite me to make a purchase. I pass a beggar whose ailments appear stronger than he. I wonder what he hopes for.

Crossing the road a friendly voice penetrates my insular thoughts. I am reminded that you need to cross quickly as the roads are busy; I am reminded that people still live here.

Skip to the end: Describing a day in the Malian capital.

That's a Krabi joke!

I did it. I recently bought a tie from Thailand! Whilst north of the border, me and my esteemed colleague, Lee 'is my first name and I'm not in any way Chinese' Taylor, couldn't help but notice the number of mildly amusing place names that the country where you don't even vaguely joke about the king has to offer: Bangkok, Krabi, Phuket and Phi Phi Island (pronounced pee pee).


So, doing our best impression of 'Aussie' tourists, sitting on the beach sipping at a 20 baht long-neck of what we assumed to be very bad goon (after being surprised to discover it's distinctly non beer like qualities), we tried to come up with stupid things to do in places that weren't afforded names of such obvious comic value.

Here goes:

-Buy a new jumper in New Jersey.
-Go out by yourself in Barcelona.
-Reserve a place to stay in Bucharest.
-Annoy some Buddhists in Budapest.
-Tell your girlfriend to hurry up in Russia.
-Block a river with a hampster in Amsterdam.
-Explain that it's actually your girlfriend's drink in Serbia.
-Explain to your travel buddies that you've arrived in Syria.
-Find someone to con in Osaka.
-Agree with someone in Yeman.
-Piss someone off in Hanoi.
-Tell people that you've left, albeit ungrammatically, in Saigon.
-Buy cheese from Delhi.
-Purchase a folder from Manila.
-Commit beastiality in Kathmandu.
-Shake your arse in Djibouti.
-Be friendly in Nice.
-Have a bite in München.
-Watch the tennis in Tennessee.
-Study Islam in Whyalla.
-Finish a meal in Dunedin.

Anyway, you get the point. I best stop now.

Skip to the end: Some krabi place name puns.

NEWS: Temperature tests to ease brochure fear

Monash University, to the south of Kuala Lumpur, has introduced mandatory temperature testing to deal with the general fear that has swept the campus.

It is believed that the fear outbreak originated from a brochure being handed out by one of the student political parties.

The 'Passion' brochure said the following under the heading of WHAT WE'LL DO: "We promise timely and efficient execution in all our divisions so that YOU will ultimately be taken care of."

The party also promised "Shopaholic Rehab" and cooking competitions for women, although there was no mention of the much rumored ironing, cooking and cleaning triathlon which was also popular in the Deep South in the 50's - where the party reportedly emanated from.

Since students affected by fear generally have a temperature above 38 degrees Celcius, the university has implemented mandatory temperature testing at campus' entrances.

Due to invasion of privacy laws, the mandatory testing will be entirely voluntary.

Students with a high temperature reading will be asked to return home for a cooling off period.

Looking for something to do...

The thing about Brunei, that is really quite inescapable, is that there's not much to do. No matter which way you turn you're confronted by... well... not much. This can be distressing at first but you learn to make your own fun, like watching a friend getting beaten up by a durian milkshake or lighting fireworks on the beach.


So, inane of something to do, a list was made. It was conceived in a second floor hotel room of a downtown BSB hotel (appropriately named Brunei Hotel) over two nights of mild inebriation with Hancock or EPL droning in the background. It was a list of me and my subordinates'/travel buddies' life goals... well some of them anyway.

So if you're looking for something to do, here's some suggestions (in no particular order):

- Start your own record label.
- Have a boy and a girl (human offspring).
- Finish a marathon within the allotted time of a race.
- Stay in a relationship for at least six months.
- Buy a synth... asizer.
- Learn how to drink wine and coffee (not mixed though).
- Design and have erected one's own energy & water self sufficient house.
- Drink a dozen coffees in one day.
- Own a really nice and/or expensive watch (circa $5000 AUD).
- Start one's own business.
- Never be classified as obese.
- Own a house, a nice one too, in inner-east Melbourne.
- Become a doctor.
- Be fluent in four languages.
- See the Aurora Borealis.
- Work in/go to Antarctica.
- Travel the UK by bicycle.
- Drive left to right (or west to east if you want to get technical) over the US.
- Get paid to play live music by someone you don't know.
- Own a Corvette Stingray.
- Organise an event with 1000+ people.
- Go in a car race.
- Be a newsreader.
- Buy a pair of super expensive shoes (~$1000 AUD).
- Go to a World Cup final.
- Learn the bass guitar and join a funk band.
- Attend all four Grand Slams in one year.
- Get something published in something that's sold.
- Take the train from Hamburg to Pyongyang.
- Learn French.
- See the pyramids.
- Go to Europe.
- Purchase an SLR camera.
- Go on a six month holiday after the age of 30, but before retiring.
- Hike with fireworks to the top of a mountain and release them into the wild.
- Become a wine critic (for one's own pleasure).
- Climb Mt. Kilimanjaro.
- Finish a triathlon.
- Live in South America for a year.
- Learn to jive.
- Become a psycho... logist.
- Learn Spanish.
- Learn to eat seafood.
- Learn to appreciate alcohol.
- Live next to the beach.
- Finish a university degree.
- Acquire a marine vessel/boat.
- Drive the figure eight around Australia.
- Learn how to cook really well.
- Live in Cairns.

Skip to the end: just a list of stuff to do.

The Manual: How to deal with incest, rape, paedophilia, abortion, drug addiction, dysfunctional relationships, depression and suicide.

There are no sirens, no screaming, nor yelling. Somehow a 38 year old’s foolproof suicide attempt failed. Somehow a 36 year old’s dysfunctional relationship of four years and the drug addiction that came with it is all over. Somehow an 18 year old mother’s newborn child survived a difficult birth and microsurgery. Somehow a 16 year old’s parents failed to notice their daughter’s abortion. Somehow a 13 year old thought it was normal to have a sexual relationship with a man six years her senior. Somehow an incestuous paedophile, who abused his granddaughter between the ages of 9 and 11, lives with himself somewhere in Bendigo.

There are birds chattering and the faint noise of passing cars, like waves gently making their way into shore. Somehow Debbie Jennings, 39, sits before me outside her East Geelong home. She looks like she could be any hairdresser; jeans, a simple black jumper, eye liner, mascara and shoulder length hair. “Sitting here talking to you, I’m amazed I’m here, I’m amazed I want to be here.” We are sitting on a couple of old chairs in the gravel of her car port, surrounded by an assortment of furniture and a shopping trolley. Inside, her vivid artwork adorns the walls of her modest unit.

SUICIDE

Her hair was abnormally short when I first met her in early 2008. Debbie had just survived a suicide attempt which her doctor could only describe as a miracle. “There was no medical explanation as to why I had survived,” she explains.

In the couple of years leading up to her suicide attempt, Debbie was forced to face her demons after a life time of suppressing them. At the age of 36, her destructive relationship of four years came to an end and she acknowledged that she had become a drug addict. At the same age, she finally told her family about the abuse she had suffered as a child at the hands of her grandfather, which they refused to believe at the time.

“It’s probably the hardest time, is being off the drugs, these two years. You band aid things with drugs.” “Coming off the drugs ... everything’s raw, everything comes back, and that’s when all the traumas come back, because nothing is shielding them.” “You actually have to face (them), and that’s when the grandfather thing came back, the flash backs came back, the nightmares started, my world crashed, my family crashed.”

She speaks calmly and pauses for thought every so often. Seldom did she pause to wipe her eyes; she did this in much the same way she would pause to light a cigarette.

“All I want is to have a normal brain, to live untraumatised, to have a normal train of thought, which I’ll never have completely, but just to wake up and to want to get up, to wake up and to want to live.” “It seems probably so simple to some people, but it was such a hurdle to me, it was just something I’d never think I could grab. That’s why you go to suicide, because it’s just too hard, it’s too hard to deal with.”

GROWTH

After accepting her fight to continue to live, Debbie started the “enormous disgusting task” of untangling the crossed wires in her head.

Her artwork didn’t always grace every room inside her unit. “My psychologist made me realise something. I never used to sleep in my bedroom, I always used to sleep, even (last year), on the couch. I put it together when I was talking to her and I said, ‘that bedroom was another world.’” “And I said to the psychologist, ‘why is that?’ The bedroom was the naughty room, it was the dirty room, and naughty things happened in there. When I put it together, throughout my whole life my bedroom has been messy, and when I accepted what the psychologist said I cleaned up my room and I slept in it ever since.” “It was very hard to clean up but I knew I was getting better. I could do it when I wanted and I could do it myself.”

“Moving on, it’s easy to say but to do, it’s very difficult. It was like a full time job,” so much so that she has been writing a book about her life. There is so much more to her story, but like the working title of her book suggests, she is ‘Just a Girl.’

“I’m no hero for surviving it, you just have to.” “It’s not a choice.” “You can live without your eyesight, without your hearing, but not without your mind.”

SERENITY

“Now I’m serene at everything, and when I became serene, everyone came back wanting redemption.” “When I started to heal was when I let go of any revengeful thoughts, anger.” “There’s no point, it’s been done. It’s about me healing from it. No one else can heal me; a judge can’t heal me, money can’t heal me, compensation can’t heal me.” “Karma comes back around. They have to live with that for the rest of their lives; they know what they’ve done.” “You just leave it to their own conscience, and that’s a beautiful karma.”

It is only through this healing process that Debbie has been able to make sense of her life. “I thought I’ve been put here for a reason and I’m starting to see what it is. It’s helping people live through trauma.” “There is no bloody manual, hopefully my book is the manual, and that’s why I wrote it, because I would have loved to have read something like that.”

“No-one can fix your own brain but yourself.” “The moment I loved myself is the moment everything started going right.” “It sounds really clichéd.”

Skip to the end: Nothing to do with Malaysia at all really, a profile of one of my neighbours from when I lived in Geelong last year.

David's World

Why would someone not want to be cooled down when sitting in 60 degree heat in four layers of fireproof clothing from head to toe for over an hour? And why would they pay around $100,000 AUD for the experience? I don’t know, but I feel as though I should because I would do it too.

In any case, David Wall seemed pretty disappointed that a blown engine robbed him of his chance to sit in the hot seat this weekend and race at the Merdeka Millenium 12 hour race here at Sepang. Instead, we are sitting in a prison cell-esque room. It is far removed from the opulent setting where one might imagine a racing driver to relax.

Features of the room include four walls, a floor and a roof, all in Malaysia’s finest concrete; not the German metal he desired. David is sitting on one of the Eskis that is strewn around the room, along with a few bags, pillows, a clothes rack and a coffee earn. It’s 10 p.m. and he seems quite tired even though he didn’t get to do his sitting today.

Despite this he seems quite happy to give a surprise interview. Twenty minutes prior I had talked nicely to the guardian of the tunnel and simply walked past the guardians of the gate that lead to David’s world, as though I belong here. He truly belongs here though, and he’s practically been here since he was born.

“I’ve been at race tracks since I was two weeks old,” he explains.

David entered his world through his father, Des, who has been racing for over 30 years. His world consists of making the hot seat go as fast as he can, and to never stop.

“I’ve basically raced from the time I was 11, in go karts, to the time I am now, which is 26... I’ve raced every year and haven’t had a year off. So, the plan is to keep continuing like that.”

So how do you practice sitting without a seat? “It’s basically a focus thing, there’s not really anything you can (do to) train for it. Really the only way you can make it better is (your fitness.) Over here the heat’s an issue, so when you get half way through a stint you start talking to yourself, it’s sort of funny, you don’t talk out aloud, you keep telling yourself, you know, stay focused, what ever makes you keep your eye on the job... That goes back to fitness training, if you’re fit enough you don’t get quite as fatigued as you would if you’re not fit.”

Aside from going to the gym, the other activity that takes up David’s time is his job as a civil contractor. “Unfortunately it’s still full time. One day, if I could make a living out of motor sport, that’s the... agenda of the whole thing. But like anyone I’ve got to pay bills, so at the moment I have to have a full time job.”

Given the cost of mere participation in motor sport, David is lucky enough to have an understanding wife in his world.

“My wife, Amy, her motto is whatever I spend on motor sport she gets to spend the same. But... I’m a long way ahead of what she’s spending, but ahh, I think I’ll just leave it at that,” he says with a slight chuckle.

His wife and motor sport are about all that is taken into account with his daily routine: “I go to work... during the day, then I go to the gym until 8 o’clock at night, then (I) normally come home, spend an hour, relax with (my) family. Then... the next day... (I) do the same thing. It’s the same thing like that for months on end. The joy you get when you go to a (race) meeting is you get to relax and you don’t have to train. It’s basically my life.”

Any possible threat to David’s life posed by the dangers of the hot seat is clearly over-ridden by his sheer determination to succeed. He had a major accident at Oran Park in Sydney’s west once, and carried on competing the very next day.

“I blew a left front shock, and went in backwards into a concrete wall in a Porsche in fourth gear, knocked myself out for two minutes, the whole deal, but I basically raced the next day with a head ache.”

However, he likes to put such accidents into perspective compared to everyday life.

“To me you’re actually safer on a race track than you are driving down the road to get the milk.”

David’s everyday life revolves around getting the milk for his family as well as racing. Although as far as his personal pursuits are concerned, he has a clear philosophy.

“If I had a dollar and I had to spend it to get a drive, or I had to spend it have dinner that night, I’d buy the drive.”

Who is David? Where did his world come from?

Skip to the end: A brief look at the inner workings of a Australian GT driver, David Wall.