Cherating and Impiana Resort: Finally, my first visit to the East Coast!

Though the vast majority of Peninsular Malaysia's population lives on the western side of the peninsula, it's the east that unquestionably has the best beaches. Even discounting the breathtaking postcard-perfect beaches on the islands of the Perhentians, Redang, and others off the east coast, the actual coast of the mainland itself has beaches that surpass almost any to be found on the west coast.

Looking north along the beach towards the headland
(taken from Impiana Resort)

The small town of Cherating, in Pahang state, an easy three-hour drive from KL, doesn't have the best beaches, not by a long shot, but the beach is still quite nice. Clean water, gentle surf, and a charming, laid-back atmosphere in the village all lend themselves to the appeal of this long-established backpackers' spot. In three years of living in Malaysia, I had yet to venture across the peninsula over to the east coast, which at KL's latitude is only 145 miles (235 km) across. One of my friends from Singapore was up in KL visiting for a week, so we decided awhile back to take a few days and check out Cherating. 

From bottom to top: Pineapples, durian, and longans

We left the haze and congestion of KL after a midday dim sum meal and headed east, hoping for clearer skies, which we found! The drive over was easy enough, using the seamless tandem of the Karak Highway (which can be dangerous owing to crazy drivers trying to negotiate the hairpin curves too quickly as the road crests the spine of the peninsula's highlands) and the East Coast Expressway (Lebuhraya Pantai Timur). One cool thing about driving on the highways here is the R&R plazas (that doesn't stand for "rest and relax," though it stands for Malay words that roughly mean the same thing, rehat (rest) and rawat (recreation)), most of which have a fresh fruit stand or two. Look at these pineapples... so big! Anyway, tolls for the whole one-way journey totaled RM31, which is about what I expected. 

The suitably grand lobby at Impiana Resort

We stayed at the Impiana Resort, right on the beach. It was a nice place, though showing its age a bit. However, for the price (RM189/US$63++ per night, including breakfast buffet for two), it really was quite okay... I'd give it a 7 of 10 overall! The room was comfortable and clean, the food at the restaurant was pretty good, the pool was nice (although it inexplicably closed at 7 pm each evening), and the service was... well, you can't expect too much, right? It's still Malaysia, after all. On that note, I read something recently that a former Malaysian prime minister said. He lamented the fact that while Malaysia can afford first-class infrastructure, it remains mired in third-world mentality when it comes to understanding things like planning, service, and maintenance. Obviously this great truth is manifested spectacularly in the epic traffic jams of KL and Penang, but the service component is a major factor, too. In restaurants, in hotels, in shops and stores, there is simply a near-total lack of service. It apparently isn't expected, isn't demanded, and isn't provided. Here we were in a supposedly classy 4-star resort, and we weren't even escorted to our rooms, nor greeted upon arrival as we drove up under the porte-cochère. As for maintenance, I see the absence of that even here at my condo. Even though it's a reasonably nice, upscale place, there are numerous lights burned out around the grounds, and one lamppost that's perilously close to toppling over altogether. I think someone ran into it with their car. It could easily be remedied, but I can guarantee everyone that it won't be. And honestly, how hard is it to replace light bulbs? So the Prime Minister nailed it. But if the head of state can see such things and not effect change, obviously it's far beyond my power to do so... and so, like most Malaysians, I just tolerate it.

Waterlilies seen from the lobby of Impiana Resort

At Impiana, I never even had an inkling of expectation that we would be accompanied to our room. I figured they'd hand us the key and we'd head off ourselves, schlepping our own luggage all the way... and I was right. Since I have no such outrageous expectations of this supposed 4-star resort (and it's not), I wasn't disappointed at all. In fact, I thought Impiana was perfectly fine... but only by Malaysian standards. I wrote a review of the resort on TripAdvisor.com. I'll add the link here once it goes live on that site. Meanwhile, here are a few photos from around the resort, showing the room, the grounds, and the pool. In the first picture, take a look at the waterfall just to the left of the center. It's a nice touch, but the background is appalling. It's just the facade of the building, and not an attractive one at that, with the sad vertical blinds behind the glass, and the lone air-conditioner compressor sitting off to the right. It's one of those things that, with a little more effort in the execution (rocks, etc., to give a more natural, inviting look), could have been grand. The waterfall could easily have been the focal point of the pool, elevating it to a really nice resort-like experience. Instead, it just falls flat and almost looks industrial. Unfortunately, this is the case around here more often than not. Even painting the expanse of white concrete wall behind the waterfall to a darker color would really improve things, I think. Note the swim-up bar to the right... a very nice touch.

The inviting waters of Impiana's pool

The covered sunloungers by the pool

And here's the room... nothing opulent, but
clean and comfortable... very satisfactory!

And here's the view from the balcony of our room

Kailan with Oyster Sauce... yum!

Unquestionably, the highlight of the trip was the first night. We ate dinner at a small cafe in Cherating Lama (literally, "Old Cherating," the original village, which retains a whole lot of charm). We had ikan bakar (grilled fish -- we had white snapper) and assorted veggies, my favorite of which was kailan (one of the many marvelous Asian greens) sautéed in oyster sauce. After that, we popped into a little shack promoting various tours and activities, arranged or co-brokered by a man named Hafiz. The beaches of Cherating are one location in Malaysia where sea turtles come every year to lay their eggs. So we left our number with him with the understanding that if the rangers spotted turtles that night, they'd give us a call. Sure enough, around 10 p.m., we got the call, so we headed off to the designated rendezvous point to meet our guide, who we then followed to the beach.

There's nothing in this photo for scale, but the turtle's head
is roughly the size of a large cantaloupe

Using only dimmed flashlights, the rangers led us to one female green sea turtle who was busily digging in the sand to lay her eggs. Green turtles never lay eggs in consecutive years, but typically will lay eggs 2-3 times during one mating season. A single clutch of eggs can contain between 100-200 eggs. The female spends about three hours on the beach, the great majority of that time spent digging. There was no actual egg-laying action taking place here yet, so we walked quite a ways down the beach and found another female who was just completing her egg-laying. These turtles aren't as huge as the giant leatherback turtles, but they're nowhere near small. These females were nearly four feet (1.2 m) in length, and a cursory bit of research suggests they probably weighed around 300 lbs. (136 kg) each. Their front flippers are enormous, and though they are well-suited to propulsion in the sea, on land, the turtle is quite ungainly. 

The telltale path of a green sea turtle

No sooner had she finished depositing her eggs in her nest (and gotten a barnacle-scraping, with the ranger slicing off two of the parasitic organisms, one from her head, one from her left front flipper) than she lurched back towards the sea, leaving a distinctive trail in her wake. Unfortunately, poachers are all too familiar with this trail and can easily find sea turtle eggs, which must remain in the sandy nest for 45-75 days, giving unscrupulous people plenty of time to find and steal the eggs, which are prized in parts of Asia. Since the green turtle is an endangered species, the rangers (who were from the local turtle sanctuary) promptly dug up the eggs to take them to the sanctuary for protective incubation. Upon hatching, the baby turtles are returned to the same location from where they were removed, and released, where they instinctively head into the waiting sea. This affords the hatchlings a doubly increased chance of survival over just leaving the eggs where they were laid: First, even if the eggs aren't poached by humans, they can fall prey to any number of maladies during the incubation period and fail to develop. Second, the trek to the ocean after hatching on the beach is the most dangerous time in the turtle's entire life. Many baby turtles never make it to the water, getting picked off by birds, monkeys, lizards, even crabs. Released under the supervision of conservation-minded people, the turtles stand a significantly improved chance of initial survival.

Me with two of the hours-old hatchlings. The turtle
on the right is particularly eager to be released!

One of the most remarkable things about sea turtles is that many undertake epic migrations to return to the exact same beach they hatched at decades earlier in order to lay their own eggs as adults. So the two females we saw, in all likelihood, had been hatched on that very beach many years ago. Green turtles can live up to 80 years in the wild, and don't start breeding until they're 20-30 years old, so how they find their way back to the same beach they were born at, often well over 1,000 miles (1,600 km) away all those years later is a great mystery. 

Time for a beach ping-pong marathon!

The second turtle we saw left behind a clutch of 108 eggs, which look almost exactly like ping-pong balls, and even feel similarly, for the shell is semi-soft at the freshly laid stage. The eggs were collected rather unceremoniously in a plastic grocery bag and taken off to the sanctuary later. I mentioned to my friend that, really, these "rangers" could actually be poachers, and we'd never know... not only stealing eggs, but taking money from unsuspecting tourists, too! The only way we could really know would be if we saw them actually releasing newly hatched turtles back into the ocean. In a great stroke of providence, a batch of baby turtles had indeed just hatched that night, and they brought them (in a shopping basket, which was amusing)... probably a hundred tiny hatchlings, only a few hours old. So after seeing the adult turtles and a big clutch of ping-pong egg balls, we even got to release baby turtles into the South China Sea, all under a big full moon. It really couldn't have been scripted any better and we paid only RM30 to the guides for this remarkable experience, about the cost of seeing the latest crappy movie at the cinema in my hometown. As I learned not too long ago, a great maxim for living life is, "Buy experiences, not things." So we did just that. The second night, we did it again... this time, trading turtles on the beach for fireflies on the river.

For these baby turtles, an 80-year journey begins with
a moonlit 20-meter dash into the sea

The tour guide mentioned earlier, Hafiz, is also an expert on fireflies and leads a boat tour down the Cherating River at night, so we did that. I think we set off at around 8:30 pm, into the inky darkness of the river. The boat was full, with six adults, three small children, and Hafiz, who had given a short, but remarkably educational pre-departure lecture on fireflies in general, and on the specific species we were to see. He also (to my amusement) asked us not to swat or smash the fireflies, as they would be flying to us and landing on us and the boat. I grew up chasing fireflies (not much of a chase, really... fireflies are among the easiest bugs on Earth to catch) and know that they're harmless. Obviously there are no photos from the firefly river tour; it was far too dark. However, suffice it to say it was well worth the RM15 we spent. The tour lasted a little over an hour, and we saw plenty of fireflies, many of who paid up-close and personal visits to us in the boat. Now I really want to go to Kuala Selangor, which is not far from my place (maybe a 30- or 40-minute drive) and see the fireflies there. It's a different species and those fireflies actually synchronize their flashing, which I'm sure is an amazing spectacle.

Tong Juan's famous stuffed crabs

For dinner on the final evening of the short holiday, we drove the short 15-km distance north to the town of Chukai, just across the state line in Terengganu. One of my friends in KL is from the nearby town of Kuantan and recommended this place in Chukai called Tong Juan for their stuffed crabs. Located right by the river there, the ambiance-challenged restaurant serves up stuffed crabs for RM8 each. Now, perhaps it's because I was born and raised on the Gulf Coast in the US, but to me, stuffed crabs are nothing new, nor anything fancy. But this place is famous among Malaysians (who consider RM8, nearly US$3, for a single stuffed crab, somehow, to be a bargain), so we had to try it. We got the last remaining table and ordered four crabs, a couple of vegetables (kailan and kangkong), and two young coconuts (to drink). The crabs are stuffed with a mixture of crab meat and filler (breading, herbs, etc.) and to me, weren't seasoned enough. The resultant product was almost devoid of any real flavor, although it was certainly fine to eat. Then the whole thing is dipped in an egg mixture, I think, and fried. Our total bill came to about RM60 and honestly, the meal was not worth that price tag. In KL, two people can eat good food and a lot of it for that price. And I know with certainty that I could make stuffed crabs at home that taste better. The ones at Tong Juan were fine, but bland. Naturally, there was no hint of gracious service whatsoever, which is, regrettably, to be expected. So to recap... rubbishy service, a total lack of ambiance, and good, but unexceptional food. Though I think the overall meal was certainly okay, this is not a place I'd patronize again, especially having to drive out of the way to get to it.

It's not often you get to walk along a multi-level beach.
Here, the upper level was a good two meters higher than
the lower level... all courtesy of the monsoon

On the same day, before we went to Chukai, we went back to "Turtle Beach" to see it during daylight hours; there were some really nice rock outcroppings and right-on-the-beach jungle I wanted to see. It's really a nice stretch... and curiously, the size of the beach increases and decreases significantly with the seasonal monsoon. Six months earlier, the beach extended 100m further out to sea. Each year, though, as the monsoonal flow shifts, the sea consumes the beach. You can see clearly in this picture the different places the water reached as it reclaimed the sand, resulting in a dramatic two-level beach.

We also got to see a beach monkey! The little bugger was probably casing the joint for a future raid on a clutch of freshly hatched turtles. I'll toss in a few more pictures from the walk here, captioned accordingly.

Monkey on the prowl... I think it's a macaque

Walking along a desolate beach as the day's light wanes

Less than 50m from the sea, the sand gives
way abruptly to dense foliage...

The biodiversity of the jungle so close to the ocean was amazing
(Click to enlarge and you'll see)

This is a good one to enlarge as well. I'm not sure what these
are (a species of barnacle, perhaps), but they were all over
this rock, particularly along the crevices

More turtle tracks

Deep water- and wind-eroded striations in a massive rock formation
that's likely been there for hundreds of millennia

Small flowers on a beach-bound vine

Overall, the trip was just really nice. Like I said, I've lowered my expectations here to the point where the things I've mentioned don't even ping my radar until I evaluate the experience later in my head. By local standards, this was a really enjoyable holiday and I'd definitely recommend a few days in Cherating to any KL resident wanting to chill out and enjoy some time on a beach without having to board a plane or spend a fortune.

House and Home: The Move to Perdana Emerald and a Trip to Colorado

A snow-dusted Lookout Mountain seen from my mom's neighborhood

Well, it was a great two weeks back in Denver, despite the wacky weather. May is late spring in the US, and as a transitional month, Colorado's weather, which is subject to wild changes at any time, is even more difficult to predict. But usually, this time of year is pretty warm if nothing else. Not this time! It was cold and rainy almost the entire time I was home... when I was picked up at the airport, it was about 6°C/43°F and raining. That was to be the theme for nearly the entire stay. People were wandering around in a daze, mumbling, "It never rains this much in Denver!" In the two weeks I was there, we literally had rain, snow, slush, hail, thunderstorms, and even a few small tornadoes just north of the city. Went out with my friends... rain. Went to a Rockies baseball game with my mom... rain (and cold... and windy). Even when I went to the airport to leave... yup, more rain. We had roaring fires in my mother's fireplace, marveling that it was just on the verge of summer and we were all freezing to death. Crazy Colorado weather.

Brrr! 4°C on May 20th... insane!

Yeah, it was every bit as good as it looks.

On the day after the Rockies game, we went to this great restaurant in downtown Denver called Rio Grande (or "The Rio," as everyone calls it), a place that has not only great Mexican food, but is justifiably famous for its margaritas. They limit you to three during any one visit, and with good reason: these bad boys are strong! They're the classic recipe made with quality tequila, triple sec, and fresh lime juice (not sweet and sour mix), so the finished drink is a totally transparent yellow-green color. Delicious! And take a look at that steak tostada... and the mounds of fresh guacamole on the plate behind it (this is a seriously great photo to click on and enlarge)... ahhh, I do miss good Mexican food. I've managed to find two places in KL where I can get decent Mexican food, but obviously there's no pork (no carnitas, no carne adobada, no chicharrónes... sigh, now I'm drooling), and it's even less authentic than America's version of Mexican food. So basically, the US has fake Mexican food, and Malaysia has fake Americanized Mexican food. Talk about diminishing returns. If I get really desperate, I can go to Chili's here for fajitas. Nothing says fake-but-delicious Mexican food like a sizzling iron plate full of fajitas.

So while I was in Denver, my mom put me to work, as usual. She typically has a list of things for me to do when I am there visiting. This time it was digging up hundreds of pounds of rocks from her back porch and replacing them with bricks, which was complicated by the incessant rain and cold. However, we got it done, and the finished product looked much nicer than it had looked before, but a noticeable dip in the field of bricks might necessitate a fix on a later visit.

So it was a fun trip, and as always, great to visit with family and friends... and stock up on all that great stuff I can't get in Malaysia. Hehe.

Move-in day: 1/2 misery, 1/2 excitement

Almost immediately upon getting back to KL, I had to start wrapping up things with my job and prepping for the big 1-km move to my new place. Even though I consciously avoid acquiring stuff, I still have managed to accumulate a fair bit of it in the time I've lived here, so I got some empty boxes from the supermarket in my neighborhood. (It looked like I was running a small retail operation for cat food and eggs, I think, since those comprised most of the boxes.)

Evening at Perdana Emerald

So the move has now been completed and I'm slowly but surely getting settled in the new place. I definitely like Perdana Emerald. The facilities are great, the pool is gorgeous, and the unit is considerably larger than my other one. Truth be told, it's not quite as nicely fitted and renovated, but it's still very much acceptable. I had to look at nearly twenty units before settling on this one. I actually even have a dryer, so for the first time in over two years, I won't have to hang my clothes out on the balcony every time to dry them.

_____________

Nearly three months later...

Yes, I suck, I know. I think the only reason I'm so sporadic with these updates is because putting photos in this stupid blog is such a pain. Seriously, if you ever want create a photo-heavy blog, look elsewhere. Blogger.com is definitely not the best choice. [Edited to add: Actually, they've completely retooled the interface now, photos seem easier to insert, and there's even apparently the option of adding captions to photos... functionality I have longed for. However, after publishing, it still looks pretty crappy, doesn't it? And it seems I can only insert photos where there's a paragraph break, rather than in the paragraph, as before. Sigh. Curse you, blogspot.com!]

The last few weeks have been remarkably dry overall here in KL, even by the relatively dry standards of June and July. We still get rain, but it's pretty infrequent. As a result, and because of all the construction in the neighborhood, I have to mop my floor in the new condo at least twice a week to keep it from getting too dusty. (I open the windows pretty frequently to capture the nice breezes... so it's a trade-off.) It's also been pretty hazy these last two weeks, which is pretty uncommon this late in the dry season. Hope it subsides soon, because I don't like hazy skies at all. Here's a shot of my new living room, shortly after moving in. The sofa is vastly more comfortable than the one at my previous place! It doesn't really come across in this photo, but the thing is huge, too. I can lie fully and comfortably on it, and I'm six feet tall (183cm). Awesome.

Boiling water and a happy ice cube on the
same cooking element. Magic!

So I bought a new induction cooker quite recently. These haven't really taken off in North America (for reasons unknown), but in Asia and Europe, especially where kitchens tend to be smaller, they're quite popular. They're also quite cheap here... at least mine was (RM179... US$60). I knew a little about them, but only after purchasing one was I aware of how radically different they are from conventional ways of cooking. They may look like a regular smooth-top stove, but that's where the similarity ends. The element, when turned on, generates a strong electromagnetic field. When a pan is placed on the surface of the cooker, that field induces an electrical current inside the pan's metal, stimulating the molecules, which vibrate at some 30,000-50,000 times per second. Since iron is a poor conductor of electrical current, that resistance is (rapidly) converted to heat energy, so the cooking vessel actually becomes the source of heat. The induction cooker itself does not generate heat at all. I snapped a picture of a small pot sitting off-center on the element, water boiling merrily away and an ice cube sitting unscathed on another part of the element. Very cool (literally and figuratively). The only real potential drawback is that not all pots and pans work. They must be ferrous; that is, containing iron. So usually, anything cast iron or stainless steel (which is an alloy composed primarily of iron) works brilliantly and most of my cookware here works with it. A couple (aluminum) don't. I tested the efficiency and speed of induction cooking by heating a liter of cold tap water to a rolling boil in an uncovered pot. In the induction cooker, it took 3 minutes and 30 seconds. On the gas cooker, at high, it took 5 minutes and 40 seconds, and the handles of the pot were scorching hot afterwards because of all the heat that radiated up the sides of the pot. No such problem with the induction cooker. I've become an instant fan of this method of cooking. It doesn't heat up the kitchen the way the gas burners do. (About 45% of the energy produced by a gas burner is wasted, while only 10% of induction-generated heat goes to waste.) So there ya go... you probably never thought you'd learn something about induction cooking by reading a blog about life in Kuala Lumpur.

So really not much to report. I went down to Singapore for an overnight trip last week, and will be going to the east coast of Malaysia for the first time soon... a three-day trip to Cherating Beach, about a three-hour drive from KL. Really looking forward to that! I'll definitely post photos.

Professional medical bandaging, KL style

One other saga that seems to be nearing resolution is with my eyes. I thought about writing an entire entry about it and calling it, "A not-so-jocular case of the ocular," but that just made me a little nauseous, so I'll just regale you with the story here. Many moons ago, back in November of last year, I had a stye on my left eye. Though quite common, simply resulting from blocked oil glands on the eyelid, I had never had one before. So I went to my regular doctor to get it tended to, but he was out of the office that day, but had a guy filling it. I assumed he was an actual medically trained physician. My mistake. He first tried to anesthetize my eye by spraying some sort of local anesthetic directly in my face. It was cold as ice and caused far more discomfort than it ever could have precluded to begin with, but to make matters worse, it didn't really even work. The guy next took a needle and punctured the stye, which hurt like all hell, and then pinched the thing to squeeze the pus out. Can't tell you how wonderful that felt. Then he half-assedly taped some gauze to my face and sent me on my way. Good lord. A ringing endorsement for medical tourism in Malaysia this was certainly not.

I Only Have Eye (drops) for You

While it did indeed relieve the visible symptoms of the stye, it wound up causing far more long-term problems. Lancing and draining a stye like he did is the first thing you're told specifically not to do with even a cursory check on Wikipedia, so I have to wonder what little backwater kampung he got his medical training in. So yeah, with the stye punctured, the bacteria that caused the thing to begin with were free from the corral, so to speak, and ran willy-nilly all over my eye. A rub, a poke, and the bacteria spread to the right eye, too. Now this didn't cause blindness or any major trauma, just months of dry eyes, watery eyes, sometimes one of each, itchy and tired eyes, you name it. I went to one specialist who gave me a vial of expensive eye drops (from Germany) and a bottle of fish oil capsules. That turned out to all be utterly useless, so thankfully the company paid the bill on that one. For months, I tried one sort of eye drop and/or antibiotic topical ointment (for the skin surrounding the eyes) after another. Look at this pharmacy full of empty containers I amassed over time! I set them all up on my coffee table and took this picture just to highlight how insane this has all been... and this honestly isn't all of them. Add about five or six more dropper vials, plus a tube of Neosporin ointment, and that would be complete. Finally, a few weeks ago, I went to a different eye doctor in Damansara Utama who prescribed a good (US-made, hooray) antibiotic eye drop and a lubricating gel to replenish the corneal fluid. Apparently, the anesthetic that the quack of a fake doctor sprayed in my eye damaged the cornea of my eye and the subsequent staph infection made it near-impossible for my eye to heal itself properly. So anyway, it's on the mend now, and hopefully it will be back to full normalcy soon — a year of eye-related misery. The moral? Don't ever let idiot substitute doctors treat you.

Dear Humans,

Psst! Hey there. We can't read.

Sincerely, The Dogs

Finally, on a lighter note, I always snap pictures of funny signs around town when I have my camera handy. Given the propensity Malaysians have for doing odd things with the English language, there's not a shortage of subject matter. I'll try to include these pictures here and there. This one was taken at a playground in Bangsar recently. I was meeting a former business contact for lunch nearby, and parked my car near the playground. When I was walking back to my car, this sign caught my eye. I looked at it, and as the definition of "stray dog" crystallized in my mind, the humor became evident. I usually have to explain it to my local friends here, who never see any problem with the sign. A stray dog, by definition, I tell them, is a dog without a human owner. They're strays. Street dogs. So unless these owner-less dogs can read (and read English, no less), this sign is completely pointless. Ha ha! So if you see any illiterate stray dogs out there, be sure to tell them: Stay away from the playground in Bangsar!

Transitions

I’m writing this from Tokyo, where I’m laid over watching a steady afternoon rain shower while awaiting my transpacific flight to the US. For the first time, I’m flying into Seattle as the port of entry. Anything to avoid Los Angeles, an airport I truly deplore. The 7-hour flight up to Japan from Singapore was great. I had three seats to myself on a nicely outfitted Boeing 777-200, slept over half the flight, got fed twice, and watched some TV shows on the nice little personal widescreen LCD. It was even a touch screen, eliminating the need for the retractable-cord remote. Honestly, that was probably the nicest aircraft I’ve flown on… and it’s Delta. I’ve been quite impressed with their international service as I’ve flown with them the last couple of trips back to the US. The meals are not that great, but they’re okay. If they notched up the food quality a bit, flights on that particular aircraft would compare favorably with some of the best Asian carriers.

This is just a short visit home – a couple of weeks away from the stress and uncertainty of my life in KL as of late. Most this has arisen from having to move soon… my landlord sold the condo I’ve been living in, and the new owner is planning to live in it, not rent it out, so I’ve been looking at numerous places over the past few weeks, trying to find something acceptable, but without much luck until literally the day I flew out from KL. I found a nice unit at Perdana Emerald, a condo development just down the street from where I live now. So I’ll get to stay in Damansara Perdana, after all. Even though it’s being ridiculously overbuilt, as I mentioned previously, the fact of the matter is that it’s a very small enclave and there are, at the moment, only seven condo complexes from which to choose. Three of those are immediately bumped off the list for me for their units being either far too small (Ritze Perdana and its sequel, Ritze 2) or far too large (Armanee Terrace). So that left only four developments, and I wasn’t particularly keen on two of them, leaving only the place I currently live, and Emerald. I figure these must be pretty decent places to live, because neither of them have lots of available units for rent, unlike Metropolitan Square and the tragically misnamed Perdana Exclusive. (Seriously, there’s nothing exclusive about it at all… though it’s certainly an okay place, it is, in fact, the oldest and least impressive of all the developments in the township.)

The condo I found in Emerald is substantially larger than my current place. Still three bedrooms and two bathrooms, but this one is over 1,400 square feet and on the tenth floor overlooking Emerald’s excellent pool. I confirmed acceptance of this unit literally three hours before setting off for my flight down to Singapore. I’m not that happy about having to move, but I’m hugely relieved that I found a place. I hadn’t realized how stressful the looming homelessness was to me until I felt the weight of that stress lifted once I settled a new residence.

Another source of uncertainty lately has been my job. I won’t go into great detail here, but suffice it to say I’m looking for other challenges and opportunities, and one of those coincided with my time in Singapore yesterday. I timed my layover there to give me ample time to meet with someone from a company that is looking to expand into Malaysia. We’ll see how things progress – there’s no hurry to jump into something else, and I have a couple of other options in KL as well, so as things evolve, I will write about it here. Expect some changes, though.

Let’s see, what else… oh, car news. I’ve officially sold the Proton Tiara. I had been letting one of my good friends drive it for the past few months, but the road tax and insurance renewal was coming due, so I figured it was as good a time as any to sell it off. I listed it online and sold it within a day, for about RM1000 less than what I initially paid for it back in September 2008. What a great, cheap, crappy little car it was for me. In other car-related news, I had my first KL fender-bender (in my Kia) about three weeks ago. One of my friends and I were driving in a massive jam on a Saturday afternoon, heading to dim sum lunch (naturally), and in the stop-and-go traffic, we were stopped when a car slammed into us from behind. After taking a few seconds to ascertain what had actually happened (it’s amazing how easy it is to be confused and shaken when something like that happens so suddenly), I got out of my car, fully expecting to see my rear bumper in shambles or hanging off the car or something. I was stunned, though, to see that it was barely even scuffed! Now, the other guy’s car, a Perodua Myvi, was a big hot mess. The front was crumpled, the headlights were all wonky, and the radiator was busily disgorging its contents onto the road. Wow. The Myvi looks nice enough, and is indeed Malaysia’s most popular car for I think three years running now. However, if you want to play bumper cars on the highways of KL, this is not a good choice of car for you. When telling my friends in KL about the accident, exactly none of them were surprised that the Myvi fared so poorly in even a minor collision. Anyway, the other driver wanted to just pay for the damage rather than getting the police and insurance companies involved, so we exchanged information, and, still a bit rattled, my friend and I headed off for our lunch.

Fast-forward a week, and I took my car to my beloved mechanics and asked if they could refer me to a body shop to repair and paint the bumper. Even better, they just took care of it for me. I left my car with them and picked it up the next day, completely repaired. It was only RM280 for the bumper and RM30 for a new registration number plate (the “5” was broken). So I texted the guy who had hit me with the information, and within 15 minutes he had “banked in” the money to one of my friend’s bank account, and my friend just withdrew the cash and passed it to me. It was virtually effortless, and I’m so grateful that the guy who hit me turned out to be honest and efficient like that. That said, I hope I can go the rest of my time in Malaysia without any more accidents!

So that should get everyone up to date on the last month or so. I’m looking forward to some “down time” back in Colorado. It’ll be great to see my friends and family, and it will even be nice to have some relatively cooler weather for a change. We’ve gone nearly a week without any rain in KL and it’s been stupendously hot and sunny for days. It’s bad enough that locals, who virtually never discuss the weather, are doing just that. Okay, about an hour until my flight leaves… I think it’s about 8 or 9 hours to Seattle, but not sure. Will catch up later and post some pics!

Eating my way through KL... And the slow destruction of Damansara Perdana

I can honestly say that, after all my time living here, I'm really not completely enamored of actual local Malaysian cuisine. It's all quite okay, but for a country that lies between the world-famous food of Thailand and the almost criminally underrated cuisine of Indonesia, I have found the food in Malaysia to be kind of uninspired. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy some local dishes, and there's no way I've tried everything, so there may yet be something out there that would thrill me. But for the most part, the cuisine here just seems to suffer by comparison to that of its neighbors.

When I say this, I'm only referring specifically to "indigenous" foods. Many of the foods available here are wonderful, but they mostly come from other cultures and regions. In that sense, KL can be a food-lover's paradise. Taiwanese, Chinese, Thai, Indian (north and south – the cuisine is markedly different), Japanese, Korean, Western (to varying degrees of authenticity, it has to be said)... there is no shortage of good restaurants in the KL area. A shortage of decent service, yes, but that's to be saved for another entry... :)

Being something of a creature of habit, I have gotten into a routine of visiting a few choice restaurants on a regular basis. I go for dim sum almost every weekend. This style of eating, hugely popular in Hong Kong, is thought to have originated in what is today the Guangdong province of southern China. Various dishes and dumplings, either steamed, pan-fried, or deep-fried, are served hot and fresh along with a pot of Chinese tea, an important part of any dim sum meal. Though I have frequented a number of dim sum restaurants in the area over the last couple of years, the place my friends and I always go now is called Jin Xuan, in Damansara Jaya. They have five outlets, but this one is among the best. The dumplings are all made fresh by hand onsite, and they do a booming business, especially on weekends. The quality of the food is very good, the prices are terrific (seldom more than about RM20 per person and you leave totally full), and even the service is good, particularly by Malaysian service standards. This explains the popularity of the place. Among my favorites are the siew mai (seasoned pork and shrimp in a dumpling wrap, topped with crab roe), something called a sharkfin dumpling, shown here in the round basket on the right, which is not made from shark fin, but so named because I guess it kind of resembles one? I don't know. I have a serious moral issue with shark fin soup, so I only order this because it's "shark fin" in name only. It's similar to the siew mai, but tastes a bit different, so I don't know... maybe different seasonings? I also love the pan-seared "potsticker" dumplings, served with shredded ginger and rice vinegar. Lo mai kai is another favorite... sticky rice, pressed in a mold with chunks of chicken, mushrooms, and a slice of glazed, pork sausage (called lap cheong). Very tasty! We get a big pot of tea (my favorites are the semi-fermented oolong teas like tikuanyin or cha wong) and just order the little baskets of food until we're full.

Another favorite of mine is Japanese food. For awhile now, my restaurant of choice has been Nihon Kai, just off of Old Klang Road, not far from my office in Midvalley. Their sashimi is great, the portions are generous, and the prices are incredibly reasonable (Japanese food tends to usually be on the pricey side by KL standards). One of my favorites to order is the sashimi don (pictured), a good-sized bowl of thick slabs of various sashimi on a bed of vinegared rice. It's served with a bowl of miso soup, and costs only RM26, a great price for such a fresh, generous selection of fish. Salmon butteryaki and crispy tempura are also great choices here.

However, recently, I discovered that the restaurant in my own neighborhood, called MAIU, had rolled out an everyday promotion where you can eat and drink all you want, ordering from a menu (not a buffet line), for a ridiculously low RM38 per person. It's just insane. The food there is outstanding... fresh, delicious, prepared and presented wonderfully. You just order from the menu of selections, and they keep bringing it. Sashimi, sushi, teppanyaki, soups, soba noodles, tempura, yakitori, tofu, salads, on and on... it's just an orgy of delicious free-flow Japanese cuisine, and all for barely more than US$12 per person. Their maki rolls are amazing, and in particular, the California maki is hands-down the best I've ever had. Do yourself a favor and enlarge these pics... if you're a fan of Japanese food, you will be drooling.

Korean food is also very easy to find here, owing to the fairly substantial Korean expat population in the city. I can't remember what this dish is called, but it was really tasty. Typical of Korean meals, there's an array of small dishes, too -- little tidbits and such. Very nice. This was at a restaurant in Midvalley; the Korean restaurants in the typical Korean enclaves like Ampang and Mont Kiara are even better, especially for Korean BBQ, which is delicious!

• • • • •

So in non-gastronomic news, back in January, I got a text message from the owner of my condo... "Ohhh so sorry to inform you, but I've decided to sell off my condo." Nice, right? Long story short, it indeed sold (rapidly, I might add), and the new owner does not wish to rent the unit out, so I have to move. Real estate transactions are painfully slow in Malaysia, however, so I still have a couple of months before I need to clear out, even though the unit sold in early March. So far, my search for a new place to live has been fruitless... and discouraging. I got lucky with my current place in that it was only perhaps the fourth place I viewed. So far now, I've looked at over a dozen, all unsuitable for one reason or another. I want to stay in the same area, even though MK Land are trying their level best to destroy Damansara Perdana. (Deep breath before the rant...)

Like all developers, they can't stand to see a single patch of land remain in its natural state. So, even though there is clearly no demand for new office space in the area (as evidenced by the vast number of currently empty shoplots), they're building a massive multi-block trade center, as well as not one, but TWO new 19-story office towers, and another substantial block to the new (and woefully underutilized) Neo Damansara. They're expanding and adding onto the already sprawling and sadly under-occupied Metropolitan Square. There are cranes everywhere you look as you enter the small township of Damansara Perdana. (Seriously, I think I eyeballed nine of them at last count. It's obscene.) They constructed another condo block in the mold of Ritze Perdana, unimaginatively calling this one "Ritze Perdana 2," like it's a sequel or something. Like its progenitor, most of the condos at RP2 are little 450-square-foot studios, vastly overpriced. They're also building a sequel to the stupendously big Armanee Terrace, which is at the complete opposite end of the size spectrum. These condos are all two-story units, each at 2,500 square feet or more. And even though they're 5-6 times the size of RP2, they're only 2.5 times the price, which really illustrates the insanity of paying over RM300K for a small studio apartment in PJ.

As if all this madness wasn't enough for the one tiny road we have in Damansara Perdana, Maxis is digging up the street to lay fiber optic cables for what I guess will finally be real broadband Internet (not the 700 KB/sec. rubbish they try to pass off as broadband now). And, in a final assault on what's rapidly becoming a not-so-pleasant place to live, MK Land are utterly destroying a vast swath of the hillside jungle near Armanee Terrace. It looks like a bomb was detonated there.. take a look. These are "then and now" pictures from roughly the same general vantage point, which is almost hard to believe. One picture was taken in November 2008; the other, just last week (click to enlarge for the full dose of despair). Residents and owners of Armanee Terrace and Perdana View condos have formed a "Save Our Hill" campaign at this point, but honestly, it seems a bit like closing the barn door after the horse has already left. The hill and jungle have been pretty much destroyed at this point already. Ahhh, progress. (That said, I'm happy to see that people at least do care that their neighborhood is being methodically eviscerated. If I had paid RM800,000 for a unit at the original Armanee Terrace, at least partly on the strength of the beauty and serenity of the adjacent jungle and hillside, I'd be furious at what's taking place there now.)

Further up the hill, the 88-unit Rafflesia development lumbers ever onward, at least as behind schedule as Armanee Terrace 2. The fact that a high-end luxury development was named for a giant, putrid, stinky flower isn't the most confusing thing, though. Here in Malaysia, they call these type of link houses "semi-Ds," standing for "semi-detached." This honestly makes no sense at all, even by odd UK standards, from which Malaysia takes most of its cues. (In the UK, a semi-D is two houses joined by a common wall. In the US, we call this a duplex, but here, "duplex" is used to refer to a double-story condo.) Anyway, the English language has a word already for this so-called semi-detached state: ATTACHED. A house cannot really be "semi-detached." It's either attached or it's detached. In the US, these units would be called townhouses or row houses. I guess they look nice enough for Malaysian homes, but their selling price is completely insane — in the neighborhood of RM2 to 3 million per unit. This in a country where the average annual income is about RM25,000... that's nearly a million US dollars for a townhouse. I just don't understand this at all. (Okay, my bad... I got some pics, and in looking closely at these houses, they're not like row houses after all; even though they're literally only a couple of meters apart, they are technically not joined, so each house is really one half of a whole, thus meeting the UK definition of "semi-detached," if not the English language's definition. I can still make fun of the name, though, right?)

I really don't think Damansara Perdana is going to be a nice place to live in a very few years from now. They're completely overbuilding it without improving the infrastructure at all. There is still only one road in and out, and really no way to expand or add to it. Further, there doesn't seem to be any demand for this level of development. The vacancy rate in the existing business centers is already so high, one wonders what the hell they're thinking by building MORE commercial centers. For my part, I keep hoping the exposed hillside where they've done so much damage will all just collapse and bury all of their heavy equipment, destroy their fancy sales center, and scuttle their evil plans.

Recap: Starting 2011 in Thailand

Once again, apologies for taking so long to post this entry. I wrote most of it many weeks ago. I'll post it as I originally wrote it, even though nearly two months have passed since doing so...

First off, a very happy new year to everyone as we kick off 2011. This is the start of the second decade of the century/millennium, and it’s so hard to believe the last ten years have gone by so quickly!

This is actually my third “new year” celebration since moving to Kuala Lumpur, and curiously, none of those celebrations have occurred (for me) in KL. In 2009, I was in Penang; in 2010, I went back to Denver for the holidays, and this year, I spent six days in Phuket, Thailand. This was my first trip back there since March 2009, so it’s been awhile. I met my friend Dendy from Jakarta, along with one of his friends, who lives in Penang, and his friends, who are all also from KL, so there wound up being six of us for the New Year’s festivities.

Currently, I’m sitting in the rather crowded Phuket International Airport waiting for my flight back to KL. I’m flying this time on Qatar Airways, one of the only six 5-star airlines in the world. It was actually cheaper to fly here on Qatar than on budget AirAsia, and half the price of Malaysia Airlines, so it was a no-brainer. To make things better, I was told at check-in that I was being upgraded to business class. That surely has to bode well for the new year, right? It’s a harbinger of great things to come!

We were torn between Hong Kong and Phuket as a vacation destination, but ultimately chose Phuket because we figured it would be a lot more fun for the New Year celebrations. I think we made the right choice! We stayed in Patong, the most happening beach town on the island, and of our five nights in Phuket, we went out clubbing and bar-hopping on four of them. At some of the clubs, the action doesn’t really even get started until after midnight. It was a blast.

Unquestionably the highlights of the trip were the actual night of New Year’s Eve itself and, after the effects of that night’s excesses subsided, the day trip that three of us took a couple of days later.

One thing about New Year’s in Patong: There is absolutely no shortage of fireworks. They don’t even bother waiting until midnight.. from about 10:00 p.m., and continuing for well over four hours, the fireworks never stopped, peaking from about 11:30 to 12:30. Patong Bay is a large, crescent-shaped bay, and all along the beach, fireworks were being launched in varying scales. Fireworks safety is all but nonexistent in Thailand, so although there were plenty of “professional” shows, there were even more small-scale launches of skyrockets and firework bombs. Add to this the awesome spectacle of hundreds upon hundreds of Thai sky lanterns being released over the sea, seen here, and the sky was lit up for hours.

For our countdown, we all went up to the third-floor open-air garden terrace at our guest house with a few bottles of liquor, two bottles of Moet & Chandon Champagne, snacks, and mixers. From that vantage point, we could see about half the night sky, including the sky over Patong Bay, so we could see the constellation of sky lanterns as they were being set free with the wishes and hopes of their owners. It was truly a wonderful spectacle.

From there, we hit the street with thousands of other revelers and stayed out until after 3 a.m. ringing in the new year. Truly a very fun night, and it only took me until about 6 p.m. the following day to fully recover! What can I say, I’m not as young as I used to be.

Much of the other time was spent shopping, wandering, and eating… typical holiday stuff. Sadly, though Patong is one of the most upmarket areas in Phuket, and about the most expensive place in Thailand, the food is largely uninspiring. My guide book calls the dining scene in Patong “dire,” and brands the many cafés and restaurants that dot the beach road and nearby environs as “disastrous.” For the most part, I agree with this assessment. Patong is no food-lovers’ paradise, although good food CAN be found, like this place (pictured) where you can select your own fish, “oyters,” and fresh veggies, but it’s startlingly overpriced (triple the price of similar fare in Bangkok is common). Even the more pedestrian food is much more expensive than either Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur. Chalk it up to tourism, I guess, plus this is the absolute peak season in Phuket, anyway. As an example though, mouthwateringly good Pad Thai (the best I’ve ever had) is available from street vendors in Bangkok for 30 baht (about US$1); decidedly average Pad Thai usually goes for 80-120 baht in Patong (as much as 190 baht in “nice” restaurants, which is obscene). But we did manage to score some good food, and found one place on the main road, part of a place called the PS Hotel, that had dishes that were quite decent. Their tom kah gai, a chicken coconut soup that is among my favorite Thai dishes, was brilliant, if slightly expensive at 80 baht. Honestly, by US standards, none of this is remotely bank-breaking, but by the standards of the rest of Thailand, Patong is breathtakingly expensive.

On the second day of the fresh new year, three of us took a package tour to Raya Island, also known as Racha Yai. For peak season, we got what I think was a pretty good deal of 1,200 baht each (US$40) for a so-called full-day tour.. Though we were supposed to be picked up around 8 a.m., the minibus didn’t arrive until 9, and we certainly didn’t get an hour tacked on to the end of the trip; it was simply cut short, which is a bit rubbishy in my opinion. But regardless, the trip was great, and Raya Island didn’t disappoint at all. Take a look at these pictures…they haven’t been manipulated or edited (except for some cropping here and there). This is really how the place looked. The main anchorage is called Patok Bay, and it’s simply gorgeous. The water is literally crystal clear, the sand is like fine sugar, and apart from the flotilla of boats disgorging day-trippers like us, and all the people bobbing around in the bay, it’s truly like a postcard.

We all swam for an hour in the pristine waters, then got back on the boat to go to another part of the island for some snorkeling. The water there wasn’t nearly as clear, but there were loads of colorful tropical fish – butterflyfishes, tangs, wrasses, Moorish idols, and loads of green chromises and yellow tigerfish. It was great! We hung out there snorkeling for nearly an hour, enjoyed some fresh fruit, then got back on the boat to return to Patok Bay, where we walked inland about 700-800 meters for a buffet lunch that was really pretty good. We stuffed ourselves, then just the three of us wandered the northern tip of the island and found a stunning, stunning place called Siam Bay that was the total opposite of Patok Bay. This bay was much shallower, so boats have no chance of coming in, and the water appears white and pale blue for much further out, until the depth increases and gives a richer blue-green tint to the clear waters. It was completely pristine, and with nearly no one around, felt like a bit of paradise. Unfortunately, we had only about 40 minutes to enjoy Siam Bay since we weren’t given an extra hour to make up for the tour operator’s tardiness, so we had to find our way back to Patok Bay at 3 p.m. for the half-hour speedboat trip back to Ao Chalong Bay on Phuket. As you can see from the photos, it was just an amazing island… I even saw a huge sea eagle there (captive, but still most impressive). For anyone traveling to Phuket and wondering what sort of day trip to take that’s not too far from “base camp,” I definitely recommend Raya Island. The Similan Islands are even more spectacular, but are considerably further, requiring a 90-minute bus ride, followed by a 90-minute speedboat trip. This one is 20 minutes on the bus and 30 minutes on the boat – very manageable.

And that was my trip to Phuket!

The surprise upgrade to business class on Qatar Airways was brilliant... vintage Champagne, amazing lie-flat seats, total comfort. I only regret that it was such a short flight! I could have easily handled a few more hours of luxury.

Next up on the blog... spending Chinese New Year (about a month later) in Penang, another birthday (groan!), and getting the news that I'm going to have to move to a new condo!

Bahasa Melayu, Censorship, and the Delicate Art of Manglish

So after over two years of living in a multicultural, multilingual society, I figure I may know somewhere between 120 and 150 words in the national language, Bahasa Melayu. It's not that it's a particularly difficult language; on the contrary, it's far simpler than languages such as Spanish, French, or English. No real verb conjugations to speak of, no tenses (perfect or otherwise), and no genders for nouns. Even the lexicon is far, far smaller than English. Really, it's just that learning the Malay language isn't functionally necessary for living here as a foreigner. Most people speak some degree of English (or attempt it on signs, as shown here), and as I've witnessed many, many times, English is routinely used between two people whose mother tongue is another language (like two Malays or two Chinese speaking to each other using only English). Still though, I try to pick up a few new words in Malay each month, but the problem is, if they're not common words, and I don't use them or see them regularly, I forget them easily.

One of the joys of living in a multilingual nation is that people here routinely slip in and out of various languages, even in the course of the same conversation. I think that's so cool... if you don't know how to express something in English, then you just switch over to Cantonese, or Malay, or whatever, then back to English, or vice-versa. It's very natural and common here... I think it's brilliant. And it's totally normal for me to be talking to a friend in English, when he'll get a phone call and rapid-fire jabber away in Mandarin, then will flip effortlessly right back to English for me. I've always thought that was amazing being able to switch between different languages like that — and there's no actual translating involved. I can sometimes do this at a very remedial level. I was driving in a steady rain once, and rounded a curve on the highway and saw a flashing sign, Awas! Terowong di hadapan! All road signs here are in Malay, and what was cool for me was that I didn't have to actually translate that in my head or sort it out into English. It just clicked into place exactly what it meant... I equated the words with the ideas and things they represented, rather than with their English-language equivalents. (In English, it's basically, "Caution! Tunnel Ahead!")

Ads and displays are oftentimes multilingual, too. The phrase of the actual ad will be in English, but all the other stuff will be in Malay. Movie posters will have all of their taglines in English, of course, but at the bottom, it will say Di pawagam 31 Dis 2010 or something ("In theaters December 31, 2010"). I wish Americans were as accepting of other languages as Malaysians are. English is happily, if not gracefully, woven into the Malaysian culture in a nation where all of its inhabitants' native languages are definitely not English (Malay, Cantonese, Mandarin, Tamil, Hakka, Hokkien, and probably a dozen indigenous dialects), and nobody really seems to mind. But when signs are posted in English and Spanish in the U.S., some Americans tend to feel threatened. I think having multiple languages in a society is great and often find myself envious of people here who speak three or four languages easily.

However, I have to say somewhat critically, the response I get from locals when I do attempt to speak to them in Malay is not usually encouraging. They usually just laugh at me or don't understand me at all and talk back to me in English. I don't think they're doing it to be rude, but it's very different from the reaction a foreigner gets in Indonesia or Thailand when making the effort to speak the native language (they are typically delighted that you're even trying), instead of just presuming like everyone should speak English, like many Americans are prone to doing when traveling abroad. So between the lack of real necessity to learn the local languages here, and the lack of encouraging response I normally get when I do attempt it, I usually just opt to converse in English.

One of the inherent problems in a country where only a conversational level of English is typically used is a lack of understanding of some of the more esoteric words and phrases in the language (like the word "esoteric," for example!). For instance, the words "already" and "never mind" are routinely and widely misused in speech here. My mechanic will tell me that "The spark plus are spoiled already, lah." "Oh okay," I'll reply, "Just go ahead and replace them." To which he'd reply, "Never mind, never mind, I replace already and call you later, lah." It's completely understandable, just slightly... off. This is not how we use these words in American English. Nor do we add "lah" to the end of sentences, but this is a quirk of Malaysian and Singaporean English.

The amalgam of English with Malay is called "Manglish" (and "Singlish" in Singapore), and it's frequently a source of confusion, frustration, and/or amusement for me. One of my favorite things is how they use double comparatives, as in, "This is much more better," or, "That one is more cheaper." I hear this so often, it's almost starting to sound normal to me. Another thing is how the Malay language incorporates other languages into its lexicon. In English, the borrowed word is usually kept intact, such as the word "rendezvous," which retains its French spelling. In Malay, however, the spelling is changed to fit the strict phonetics of the Malay language. Science becomes "sains," ice becomes "ais," bungalow becomes "banglo," and many words ending with "-tion" in English end with "-asi" in Malay (inspirasi, inovasi, transformasi, telekomunikasi). For some reason, the word wow becomes "wah," as seen in this photo, but oddly enough, the rest of the ad is in English. The line between English and local languages here is continually blurred. Sometimes it's just mixed up altogether.

This issue is brought keenly to light when watching TV. Not only are the subtitles (in Malay) only a dim approximation of the nuance and complexity of what's actually being said, the Malaysian censors will oftentimes edit out what they think are offensive words (they just drop the soundtrack briefly), while leaving in actual profanity, or censoring the same word inconsistently throughout a program. On one episode of "Family Guy," a show I can't believe is even aired in Malaysia, they censored out the word "prostate" the first 9 or 10 times it was used (in reference to a prostate exam), but left the word in there the last few times. Never mind that it's not even remotely offensive or profane... it was just wildly inconsistent. "Bitch" and "ass" were left intact, however. It was very puzzling. It's also annoying to watch a show that airs somewhat late at night (after 10 p.m.), begins with all the warnings about language, violence, mature subject matter, etc., and then is STILL censored. Then sometimes, they'll show the same program (and same episode) from early evening again after midnight, and paradoxically, the late-night version will be much more censored than the 7 p.m. version was... wow. (Sorry, I mean "wah.") Fortunately, I don't watch a great deal of TV here, but things like this always make it an adventure when I do.