On a Clear Day You Can See Malaysia

It’s 8:00 AM in Singapore . I’ve been up for an hour, already eaten breakfast.

And why not?

It’s part of the terms of my stay at this nice, expensive hotel in the heart of the city’s financial district. Singapore is becoming a more expensive travel destination, thanks to the new casino. Not that I would set foot in the place. Gambling has never made any sense to me as a pastime. I understand its addictive possibilities, and I have always been grateful that God spared me that particular problem even as he endowed me with so many similar ones. Cocaine, for example, makes perfect sense to me as a pastime.

But never mind that. I’m in a city whose anti-drugs policy is a trifle on the harsh side of less-than-zero tolerance, and for all I know, someone may be reading this other than you, dear reader.

I can see already that this post will be weighty, if not significant. I have a lot of ground to cover.

So let’s start at the beginning.

Sometime last week, I got a message from Ben Lo, aka Bad Boy Ben. He invited me to join the What’s Good Conspiracy. I love a good conspiracy.

Especially when it looks like this:

No wonder it’s so hot in Malaysia.

Ben says that more people should be exposed to Tierneyisms.

I wonder how the Center for Disease Contr **ol would feel about that. Or the woman in the above photo.**

***The gist of it is this: Ben set up a page for me at* http://sean.thewhatsgoodconspiracy.com . I blog there, and it gets ported here. So it may take me some time to work out the vagaries of posting.**

***And considering how much this hotel wants to f@#$ me for using the intern* et, it may not be until I get back to** Hong Kong .

I’ll still write the same things. I’ll still be me.

Dammit.

So as a prologue to this travelogue, I wanted to say “Hello Malaysia .” I know that the first two Ws in www stand for World Wide, but I figured the least I can do is start with a post that’s a bit more Malaysia-centric, if you will. They deserve it; Malaysia has some remarkable natural resources:

I should be so lucky...

I’ve never been to Malaysia . But I can see it f rom where I’m typing this. I have yet to do more than just fly over the place. That’s a shame.

And not just because of the natural resources.

Speaking of which, can someone tell me what exactly Malaysians are growing in such abundance directly beneath the landing pattern for Changi

Airport ? My God there’s a lot of it.

One reason I don’t know much about Malaysia is its unwillingness to attract attention to itself as a nation, i.e. its not a meretriciousnation. Like Canada . I spent almost 40 years living next to Canada and knowing almost nothing about it. But that’s a good thing.

America is in the news all the time.

Some day, I promise, it will be for something positive.

So if I don’t know about Malaysia , its because Malaysia doesn’t force me to know about it.

What little I do know about Malaysian politics is because of Sarah Lian, who, in addition to being what they call “easy on the eyes,” is a very astute political observer who sometimes allows us a glimpse into the vagaries of Malaysia ’s culture and government.

Sarah will deny any abilities as a ‘political correspondent,’ but don’t let her fool you.

Ben, she should be made head of the National Affairs Desk at the Conspiracy.

Angie Ng is from Malaysia too. I’ve never met a woman taller than me (even in heels), but I don’t mind if they’re almost as tall. Frankly, I kinda like it.

I’d probably meet more women close to my height if I stopped wearing the heels, huh?

Alvin Lee is from Malaysia . Alvin Lee shares the name of Ten Years After’s singer/vocalist.

Though I’ll assume that’s coincidence.

Alvin ’s involvement in after-market accessorizing of cars is fascinating to me. I always thought of cars as a means of getting from point A to point B, and carrying some sh*t there too.

But if I made a larger investment, both literal and figurative, into a car, I would turn to Alvin for advice.

If I wanted to know how to drive a car well, I would ask Ben Lo. His ability to bend the car to his will also fascinates me, mostly because I know that I couldn’t do the same thing.

At least not without sh*tting myself.

While I don’t share an automotive obsession (except for a 1971 Plymouth Road Runner with a 440), I understand that obsession. I can understand looking at a factory car and saying “How can I make this look/feel/sound better?” Guitars are very similar that way.

I can also understand looking at a car and asking “How fast can this motherf@#$er go, and how sharp can I corner it?”

Guitars are very similar that way.

My good friend Yvonne is from Malaysia . She always tells me to visit. I should.

There’s a Border’s Books in Penang .

They have mangoes in Malaysia (that’s not a euphemism).

Malaysia is (according to Malaysians) the durian capital of the world. People are serious about their durian in Malaysia . They can differentiate and appreciate durian from different places. I mean places in Malaysia .

Durian is so prevalent in Malaysia that they have to put up signs prohibiting durian consumption in places.

Durian is proof that God has a sense of humor. I’m not sure how tall durian trees grow, but the idea of someone getting tagged in the skull by a falling object of some weight covered in spikes makes me giggle.

One thing I do know about Malaysia is that like Singapore , drugs carry a death sentence.  There’s a really bad movie called Return to Paradise about a moronic American who gets caught with a not-small amount of hasish and is sentenced to death in Malaysia. There’s lots of gweilohand-wringing and indignation, but in the end, luckily, the jackass swings from a rope.

What’s good (!) about this movie is its implicit messages rather than its explicit ones.

The reason the idiot gets caught is because he and his friends failed to return rented bicycles. Classic, if not typical, Ugly Americansims.

So stupidity gets him in this predicament.

The other thing of value in the film, and my favorite part, is when the American lawyer has the temerity and gall to challenge not the decision but the laws that drive it. The judge proceeds to tell her, in rather plain terms, that Malaysia, as an independent nation, can have whatever f@#$ing laws it likes and enforce them however the f@#$ it sees fit. One reason they kill people with drugs in Malaysia (and Singapore ) is so that other people don’t get killed bydrugs in Malaysia, whose drug problems are much smaller than, say… America’s.

Personally, I think stupidity should carry a death sentence. Get these ignorant f@#$ers out of the gene pool ASAP. So this film made me appreciate Malaysia .

I also love this film because it shows the hubris of Americans in particular and the West in general. We come up with humanism (an epic misnomer, judging by history) and think the rest of the world needs to ‘catch up.’

Usually, the rest of the world thinks we need to f@#$ off . And I think they’re right.

Let’s be honest; Britain didn’t use the Empire to spread humanism. It was to make money.

And find edible food.

They made money by pushing dope in China , for example. So maybe the death penalty is a post-colonial backlash of some sort, and I say good for that.

Quite often at this time of year, or whenever I visit tropical climes (even in Florida ), I ask myself what the f@#$ was wrong with whatever gweilojackass that ‘discovered’ the place.

Did they not discover that it was hot, humid, and filled with mosquitoes?

Okay, the mangoes and bare-breasted women in some places may have had some influence.

But that’s just Miami.

Seriously (?), how on earth did white people find this climate bearable? Look at how much clothing they used to wear. Notice that there’s no air conditioners in the windows of 19 th century colonial houses (although maybe they were left out of the lithographs as an artistic concession, who knows).

If I had been an explorer, I’d have never gone anywhere more than 25 degrees Celsius:

“I’m sweating! Turn this motherf@#$ing boat around!”

Jesus, where am I going?

Singapore .

Why am I in Singapore ? Well, someone who shall remain anonymous is here on vacation. She sent me the briefest invitation possible, a single word, whose potential for double-entendre jokes is so massive that it shall remain unspoken.

I wouldn’t want it to come to that.

I wanted to come to Singapore . So I did. Yesterday.

A last-minute flight on Cathay Pacific (whose new seats are surprisingly generous in terms of leg room, even in economy class, especially considering the average height of the vast majority of their passengers) was booked.

A reflexively Cantonese inquiry as to the whereabouts of the nearest toilet evoked an effusively positive response from a flight attendant.

Hewas very impressed.

Dammit.

I try not to let my prejudices get the best of me. But sometimes, it can be difficult.

Especially when I’ve been averaging about 4 hours of sleep a night for the last week. And I have a headache that could blind a rhinoceros. And the sunlight is squatting on my forehead running a jackhammer.

And a large group of passengers is TALKING REALLY LOUD IN MANDARIN for the entire motherf@#$ing flight.

It may have been that they were talking about who could unbuckle their safety belt the soonest after the wheels touched the runway. Or maybe they were talking about having no access to hot water for a couple of days, seeing as how the guy next to me came from the province of Stankonia .

But f@#$ all that noise.

I survived the trip.

It’s what I do.

As I have blogged previously, I don’t hide fatigue well. I have been accosted in Tokyo airport as someone who visibly showed signs of having just endured a trans-Pacific flight when in fact I had come from Hong Kong .

So much for Australian social science.

I say this because yesterday, when I went to buy a ticket for the hotel shuttle, the woman at the desk took one look at me and asked/exclaimed “Are you all right?”

“I don’t sleep much,” I told her.

She was very nice and took very good care of me, and I am grateful.

I got to my hotel soon enough, and set out for 7-11 to buy a Singapore sim card.

Don’t worry, I only eat 7-11 food in Japan .

And it kicks @ss.

I needed to get in touch with some people.

That’s not a euphemism.

One of the first people I contacted was Binevon Loric, an AnD member who lives here. For some reason, this intelligent young woman reads my blog and actually thinks I have something useful to contribute in terms of assisting her with reading choices.

We met in Chinatown , since it was the closest neighborhood to my hotel. As you may imagine, the financial district is not exactly swinging after 6pm .

We ate Sichuan food that was as good as it was spicy. And the food was great.

I wanted to ask where they get the napalm they cook with.

Binevon is a very smart young woman, and more importantly, she wants to learn. Not for any mercenary reason as much as an appreciation for knowledge itself. Not only do I respect, value, and esteem this position, I can also attest to its utter scarcity among people in general. Too many people seem to equate learning with aggravation, irritation, or superfluence.

I guess we’ve all got a right to be stupid, but its not an obligation, is it?

It seems I can’t escape stupidity, even when I’m with smart people.

I am lucky enough to often be in the company of friends who are young and female. They are my friends, and for a lot of reasons, that is best.

Why? It’s because I know what people think when they see me in the company of a woman young enough to be my daughter but too Chinese to actually be my daughter. Their perception of the situation is much more tawdry than the reality.

Which is utterly without tawd. And since tawd isn’t a word, we’ll make it a euphemism. But just for today.

Of course, reality and truth often have little to do with perception and social interaction.  But I knew that the situation was innocuous (Lord knows I’ve had my shots), and so I didn’t care about the disapproving looks from sweaty, overweight tourist women who looked a lot more like me than Binevon.

“We’re talking about college. No, really…”

I dropped her off at the MRT at 9:00 and walked back to my hotel, where I promptly took a shower and went to bed.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do today, but I am sure it will be relaxing, interesting and fun.

It’s my vacation, motherf@#$er!