A Moving Story

Moving house is a trial obviously invented in one of the innermost circles of Hades. It is meant to torture we mere mortals for all eternity.

When moving house, normally placid tempers become frayed,  not mine as mine is constantly frayed, tireless people become tired and tiresome and legions of previously undisturbed dust mites dance merry dances to irritate further, already irritated sinus.

In Malaysia, folklore has it that there are tiny magical creatures called Toyol. Those creatures steal anything shiny, or valuable, and no doubt have a grand old time when humans decide to move home. Toyol puloin just about anything during packing, transporting and unpacking from one place to another regardless of the items value.

Combs, always to hand, go irretrievably missing. Could the old cliche of the single sock and the missing matching pillowcase, also be down to Toyol, one wonders.

Moving house is one of the most stressful life events,  according to psychologists. I can attest to that. During moving, life is turned upside down, or is that down side up. It's difficult to tell when you life is in boxes and unlabelled bags. Then there is the physical exertion, something I loathe, and the waiting, the endless waiting for services, lorries and goods. There is the constant nagging doubt of insecurity and, of course, the expense. Only minions of Hades would devise a torture which you pay for yourself.

Oh there are joys.  There is the joy of finding that article which you swore others had lost, and the continuing guilt of that knowledge.  There is the joy of seeing your previous abode suddenly become very attractive without all your furniture. It is the very same furniture you have just moved into your new dwelling, making that seem less attractive. 

There are joys to be found in hard labour, or so I am informed,  and the joys of a job well done.

Moving home may be a necessary evil. Yet at this precise moment, with my internet connection in one place and my office, and home, in boxes, I long for the gentle quiet of a less turbulent, perhaps even static,  existence.

Eating Catalonia

Dali was absent, nevertheless it was still exciting to be sleeping in the room he always stayed in (room 101) when visiting Hotel Duran, in Figueres, Spain. Those two weeks in Hotel Duran were time well spent and extremely memorable for us as my artist wife was using the room as a temporary art studio. Her exhibition was later to be hung at the cafe/restaurant Dalicatessen, in Figueres, known for its speciality of anchovies from Roses on the Catalan coast. 

The Durans had been great friends of Salvador Dali, schoolmates, friends and patient chefs too, acceding to Dali’s often eccentric tastes in both food and art materials. Rumour has it that as well as ordering a variety of birds to feast upon - thrushes, larks and terns, Dali once ordered an octopus, but not for eating - for use as a brush for painting. Another gem tells that Dali was in the habit of drawing on the hotel’s tablecloths, which were subsequently sent for laundering. You might wonder just how many millions of Euros those tablecloths could be worth on the current art markets of the world if they had been saved from laundering.

In Figueres nearly everything is Dali. The town has made great use of its connection to that great Surrealist painter, especially after Dali made inroads to construct his teatro museo de salvador dali (Dalí Theatre and Museum) there, in 1974. At times the sheer weight of commercialism does tend to cloy. You can only see so many badly made Dali watches (as key rings) or buy so many posters of his work before the excitement wears off. But, and there is a big but, when you come face to face with his actual works (in the Museum) you are frequently awestruck. Well, I was, and that does not happen to many times these days.

Hotel Duran was a sheer delight. Yes, the hotel did make its connection to Salvador Dali clear, but in an understated, subtle way. Photos on the wall showed generations of Durans with Dali, or Dali and his classmates both at school and at the art school in Madrid. Other photos were of Gala and Dali, but they were all outdone by original Dali lithographs hanging in reception and all dinning areas of that hotel. Hotel Duran is a treasure trove for lovers of Dali’s work and, incidentally provides some of the best accommodation and food to be found in Figueres, as we (my Dali struck wife and I) were to discover on the last night.

Breakfast at the hotel was the usual European fare, with lashings of cold meats and cheeses, not to mention gallons of Nespresso coffee to wash down the rolls, croissants and chocolate croissants. Tea infusions nestled against each other for comfort and the odd pyramid of Lipton’s Earl Grey tea waited for this odd Englishman to purloin. We never lunched at the hotel. Daylight meant us traipsing off to Cadaques, Port Lligat, Roses, Girona, L’Escala or Besalu (a medieval Spanish town famed for its Romanesque bridge).

Lunch was grabbed on the fly, and where we could, along bus or train routes. Sometimes it was green tea with fresh orange drink and later gelato ice cream (an Italian import) in Girona. There was zarzuela (Catalan fish stew) in Roses, washed down with sangria, after visiting a local famers’ market and buying chorizo (Spanish sausage). Other times Middle-Eastern cous cous in Cadaques, taken down some ancient lane laden with bougainvillea, accompanied by Damm Lemon 6-4 (cold lemon cerveza - the Spanish equivalent of British shandy), or simply gazpacho (cold, spicy, tomato soup) taken with local Catalan bread smeared with garlic and rubbed with tomatoes in the Spanish way, while we were on our way.

Generally we steered clear of the tapas bars. Tapas (Spanish appetisers similar to the Middle Eastern mezze or Hong Kong Dim Sum) are a great way to sample Spanish food, but are renowned for cost, not per single dish but as an accumulation over the evening, like in Sushi bars. Tapas simply was not in our meagre budget, travelling, as we were, from the Far East and having to convert from Malaysian Ringgit to the more expensive Euro.

We made plans to meet up with Hotel Duran owner Lluis and his beautiful and most charming wife Joaquina, for dinner, on our final evening at Hotel Duran. Admittedly I had fantastic notions of being served the head and feet of terns, or sea urchins, thrushes, if in season of course, and finished off with garnatcha, which is a sweet local wine. The actuality of that meal was no less fantastic than my imagination had been moments beforehand. 

It was Hotel Duran’s Degustation Menu - a careful, appreciative tasting of various foods and focusing on the gustatory system, the senses, high culinary art and good company (according to Wikipedia). The wine was rioja, not garnatcha, but local and tasty. The appetiser was gin and tonic iced lime foam, which immediately send me back to my pre-hippy days a young mod pretending to be all Ray Davies and ultra sophisticated. I had been introduced to frozen margaritas, in Cambodia, by one wealthy American and here was being introduced to a frozen G & T by a wealthy Spaniard - is there a connection between wealth and frozen alcohol, I idly wondered. That drink of fantasy and memories came accompanied by a cracker (biscuit), brandishing cold meat, foie-gras and one troublesome small fried egg. Why was the egg troublesome? I stared and stared and thought - how on earth did they manage to reduce that egg in size, then it hit me - it was a fried quail egg, duh!

The salad was a carpaccio of wild mushrooms, local prawns and mixed lettuce in black truffle oil, wrapped with toasted bread. The soup was cold. It was meant to be cold, and green, with leaves of lettuce shredded, almonds and paper-thin baked wraps to dip into the soup. The fish dish was wild fish grilled to perfection, as opposed to tame fish perhaps, with steamed cauliflower, broccoli, courgette and cherry tomatoes, and the meat dish was a succulent centre steak with a buttery, creamy idiazabal (Basque) cheese sauce and scalloped potatoes, with a fruit drizzle. Just when we had surrendered, on came the dessert. An Ascot hat on a white plate appeared before me. The hat’s feathers were solidified sugar twists, its brim was three different coloured and flavoured sauces - including a freshly and properly prepared vanilla cream, while its mainstay was the tatin (jelly) of fresh fruit.

What a send off. The airline foods, on the flights back, were a pale comparison to those we experienced in Catalonia, northern Spain. But, there again we were happy to be returning to the gastronomic hub of Asia - Malaysia, home of Durian, nasi lemak and teh tarik. We flew home to the children, writing and painting, glad to be back after two weeks away in our Surrealistic fantasy, but with very fond memories of Hotel Duran and all the amazing people we met on our travels.

Who was that Masked Man

As we equatorial dwellers cough our guts up and mime curses at international smoke plumes, and I say mime because our throats are far to sore to utter said curses, some are reminded of dusty blighty, fog, smog and other hazy days.

June is a long way from November. Bonfire night, in dear Albion, is 5th November with memories of gunpowder plots and although escaping a rapid change in government ala Guido Fawkes today, in KL, it would seem that every night is bonfire night, and every day this month is bonfire day.

We not only have evenings, but days, of swirling mists, fog and smog enough to expect an Asian Spring-heeled Jack to pounce. And perhaps pounce he would if he were not also coughing up his lungs somewhere in a Kuala Lumpur gutter. So maybe that's a blessing in disguise.

Horror aficionados wait anxiously for John Carpenter’s The Fog to roll down Putrajaya, some with thoughts of seeing Jamie Lee Curtis, some just waiting to groove in the sheer mayhem, but alas and alack as yet it has not happened.

While going out into the city reminds me of glitzy, or painfully real, TV series set in hospitals, with nearly everyone wearing paper masks as if going to, or returning from, operations of a medical variety, I remember someone saying that a standard surgical mask is of little use against many environmental contaminants. Perhaps people prefer the psychological assurance, like one KLite, who yesterday faithfully wore his mask right up until the point that he needed to smoke a cigarette. Curious.

It is said that a surgical mask actually offers no protection against ozone, nitrous oxides and only some limited protection against fine particulates. A mask may prevent some pollen exposure, but to be effective it must be very tightly fitted and not removed. A N95 style mask may offer some protection against is dust, but not over long periods. Smog is curious enough without people hiding behind thin sheets of paper.

Back in the land of my birth, face masks were only popular during Halloween, and then only lately because they were seeing far too many American TV shows or, more recently for cyclists in the Big Smoke (London). In cities, certain masks might be deemed to be advantageous due to diesel and other noxious car fumes, if you are a cyclist, but probably not if you are a pedestrian. Even mask protected cyclists have to change their mask pads frequently, for them to remain effective.

I hope that this mask phase, and the smog, will clear soon and that Indonesian peat fires will be better controlled next year - if we all survive this pollution that is, and if Spring-heeled Jack, perhaps wearing a cheap paper face mask, doesn’t get us first.

Lazy Hazy Crazy Days Of Summer

It was the summer solstice and, coincidentally, the first actual day of summer here in these heat blessed lands. I had been having all sorts of weird dreams and awoke with a start. I gave up, I did, didn’t I? I’m sure I did. Then why does this place still smell of smoke.

My newly awakened brain could not cope. I struggled to come to whatever senses I still had left in my severely advanced years. I gave the last fifteen years a quick run through. Yep, I did give up. I remember all the cursing and swearing and the delusion of addiction, and distinctly remember the craving and the ‘Ok just one last one, then I will quit completely”. I also remember that I quit completely so many times that I had to quit quitting completely to enable myself to quit smoking. In my awakening state I swore that I gave up smoking and have not had a cigarette in all that time. Then why did everything smell of smoke?

‘Oh, my godlet we are on fire’. I dashed the duvet off, dived out of bed and ran through our minuscule flatlet, rebounding off the piano in the hall - because the hall is small and the piano is not. The tiny kitchen was not awash with flames, nor were the storeroom, the office/studio or the second toilet. I slid into the bedroom across not so cool tiles, again, and burst into the cupboard we laughingly call an ensuite bathroom (minus the bath of course). No fire, just a cockroach which, incidentally, also was not on fire.

I distinctly remembered that old idiom - where there’s smoke there’s fire, but I couldn’t find the fire, but the smoke was everywhere. A dingy grey haze hung over Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur. Everywhere was ‘misty’, half hidden and reeked of burning, including our tiny apartment. Online news informed that the ‘haze’ as it is officially known - not ‘that reeking bloody stink’ as some would have it, came to us courtesy of Indonesia. Thank you so much Indonesia, you may have your haze back now, we have done with it, I silently groaned. Silently, because I was alone indoors and really didn’t want to open my mouth unnecessarily, and gulp in countless atoms of scorched peat.

The smog, for that is what is really is, reminded me of those winter school days in the UK, when we would all be sent home early because of rolling, smothering smog. We prayed, or rather the more religious children prayed, the rest of us just hoped that their prayers would be answered and we wouldn’t have to commit to any religious dictatorship, that smog would come. It wasn’t that we hated school, but that we were children and preferred anything apart from school - even smog! With the later affluence of central heating the smogs died away and I escaped the motherland to bask in the equatorial sun of Kuala Lumpur. Only today there was no sun, just smog.

So that was it. My morning burning smell came with thanks to a smog caused by bloody peat forests in Sumatra. Sumatra, no less! Singapore was suffering its worse pollution levels - ever, and asthma sufferers in Malaysia have become homebound, even though without double-glazing it was rather pointless to sit indoors as the stench was insidious, and crept through doorways and window frames etc. And there was not a bloody thing I could do about it except for to blog - hence this diatribe.

Hats Off

I usually have little trouble with children. They know their place and I know mine. In rapscallion moments I have been called a ‘dinosaur’, a ‘mountain’ and things in Chinese I have not the wit to translate. Over time I have acquired a twelve year old stepson, whom I think the world of and, in my folly, I attempt to teach creative writing to a group of 11+ years olds, once a week. I also volunteer in Cambodia, frequently in schools with young children, and visit homes of impoverished Cambodian children. However, those children, no matter how monkeyish, ebullient and gibbering they appear to be at times, are not the issue here.

Some days past I was on a working holiday, in Cambodia. I was giving Art talks and reading poetry to students in Siem Reap, as well as visiting the aforementioned impoverished children who, incidentally, were all tucked away down barely beaten paths in the most rural of rural places in the Cambodian countryside. They smiled their dirty faced and most glorious of innocent smiles to me and I reciprocated, while simultaneously trying to dash coconut water from out my drowned beard - with thanks to one village parent who had organized fresh coconut juice - straight from the coconut. 

No, it was not the charming children in the rural villages, nor the insistent but nevertheless endearing children in the towns with their baby milk scams, that had me all wound up and virtually fuming at the ears, but one singular urban child. He was a Malaysian tyke whom we had brought with us. He was a jackanapes of a male child, who had, perhaps somewhat reluctantly, accompanied his mother on our saunter into heaty and dusty Cambodia.

The fun had began on the plane. The boy’s voice could be heard above all others on the silver cigar tube slicing through sufficiently fluffy clouds of South East Asia. It was heard right up to the moment of disembarking and through into customs and into the baggage hall. That unmistakable demanding and simultaneously whinny voice was no less silent while we waited for our transport to whirl us away to our hotel. Joy upon joy upon joy - we were to be staying in the same hotel, which rapidly became hot hell.

Other guests complained. The boy was given a warning to be silent at night while other guests wanted to enjoy the peace of Siem Reap and soak up the Angkor atmosphere. To no avail. I kept my distance, not wanting to be drawn into remarking upon that individual’s behaviour, unfortunately, fate decided otherwise.

Our small group went shopping in the local day market. We trundled the lanes, browsed the stalls and lit upon a stall selling material goods - T-shirts, shirts, blouses etc etc ect. Being somewhat tired due to my size in a hot country, I sought to rest on a chair opposite. My good friend was on one side of me and my wife was occupied buying goods for us both. The chair on the other side of me was empty save for my wife’s hat - exactly like mine but a tad smaller and brown. I had bought both in John Lewis before departing to live in Malaysia, eight years since at a cost of￡35 each.

The child, who was rapidly becoming someone out of a Hilaire Belloc Cautionary Tale, was continuing his obnoxious behaviour with no respite. Nerves were on the point of fraying, teeth were grinding and all thoughts of Buddhist philosophy had flown back to Angkor Wat and Bayon. The child then did something quite unimaginable. The frowning, grumpy child, awash with his own thoughts, and giving little thought for others, grabbed my wife’s hat from where it rested on the chair and threw it onto the dusty, dirty floor. Without a moment’s consideration, my right hand clipped the back of the boy’s head as my wife’s hat touched the filth of the ground.

My friend leaned across and whispered “Good, I have been wanting to do that all day”. The boy stood stock still. His lips trembled, but no sound was emitted. He stood, inwardly sobbing, for some seconds, then moved to the comfort of his mother. From behind her, he screamed at me “I’ll, I’ll, bash you”. He had not learned a lesson, but I had - not to allow myself to be in such situations with obnoxious small boys ever again. Now I have to practice Right Thought and Right Action even harder than before. My life journey continues.

The Price of a Happy Sunday

The price of a happy Sunday, in Malaysia, is exactly fourteen ringgit, that is £3.

It was a sleepy layin Sunday morning after an early morning cockroach scare which had us chasing the poor soul and beating it to death at about 1 am. The day, when it arrived, was hotter than Hell, and as bright as the Sahara. Morning tea was Lipton's instead of Earl Grey, and brunch instead of Breakfast. Despite all that minor upheaval, we (my wife and I) emerged into the punishing equatorial heat and made the decision to forgo Banana Leaf in favour of the large won tons sold at the predominately Chinese food court.

Once there and cheerfully parked under a leaning tree whose leaves gave shadow enough, and whose space was miraculously empty, the won ton soup was uninspired and insipid. The won tons themselves, once I decided not to lift them with slippery plastic chopsticks but speared them with a fork instead, were as tasty as ever, especially with the soya sauce and cut chili accompaniment. All appeared fine. Fine that is if you ignored the meal interruption by my wife’s friend who insisted to sit and chatter away in whichever Chinese dialect suited the occasion. It left me with the continuing sense of being a stranger in a very strange land, and suddenly very intent upon my meal.

The meal was paid for. It was at that very point that the cost of a happy Sunday became poignantly apparent. There was a dispute over whether change for the meal was given or not. I didn’t see one way or the other, intent as I was on taking my first food of the day. The change, yes you guessed it, was RM14 (£3).

All changed at that point. Sunny smiles and affable demeanor ceased in favour of scowls and remonstration. The waiter was challenged but chose to deny owing money. Grumbling, groaning and a great deal of frustration ensued, enough to sour what was left of the morning and threatened to extend itself into the afternoon too. I too was beginning to lose what little calm I am able to muster these days, due perhaps to increasing heat outside and a form of moroseness which seems to come with advancing years. Though, in my defense, I am nowhere near as bad as a certain British jazz/rock drummer, once famous for Toad, and who one is asked to beware of.

But as the day progressed, to quote the Bard of Avon, ‘All Well that Ends Well’ and, in time, the triviality of the small theft was put aside, yet the darkened clouds remained for a little while after as poorly exercised mindfulness took its own sweet time to develop for right thought to emerge triumphant over wrong.

Bussing Singapore

OMG, WTF good grief and maybe even WOW, the wasp coloured double-decker bus to Singapore stung my sight. It was so posh that even had a Captain instead of a bus driver, boarding passes instead of tickets and those little screens in the back of seats that you sometimes get on international flights. My wife said – “Cool”. I agreed.

It had been many, many years since I had taken a bus to Singapore. The last time was a seedy looking rat trap of a bus from Klang (Selangor, Malaysia). That bus had partially working air-con and a driver who stopped every so many miles to deliver packages, take smoke breaks and generally delay my arrival to singular Singapore. This new bus was a whole other creature – sleek, shiny and straight down to Singapore with only one (small) stop for a little leg stretching. I was duly impressed.

The speedy bus was a little early as it arrived at Singapore Harbour front. I had a few hours before my performance that evening, and we had to find a hotel to rest weary heads. It was Easter, not Christmas, but still we got the no room at the inn scenario. We trudged around the old Arab Quarter looking for lodgings, getting wearier with each step. Five hours on the bus had left me a little groggy. The Singaporean humidity made the air into treacle with each footstep. You would have thought that eight years in Malaysia would have acclimatised me – it hadn’t. Underneath the mild tan I was still the very same Englishman who had stepped off of that twelve hour MAS flight back in February 2005, only older and heavier thanks to all that good Malaysian food.

The only ‘reasonably priced’ hotel available in the Arab Quarter was found. We ignored the stains on the ceiling, on the carpet and the trail of micro-ants to and from a slight residue of sugar on the aged dressing table. We breathed in to enter the room; for fear that we would not be able to u-turn once in. Later I quipped with the desk clerk “is that the larger of the two rooms”, “Yes, the other is much smaller” she said with a straight face. If the room had been any smaller we would have been spending the night half in and half out of Narnia, I thought.

That night, Arab Street was plagued with night cyclists glistening with sweat, their hard hats pointing backwards for Christmas. Those self-righteous cyclists smirked the smirks of the newly fit - all fitter-than-thou and scornful of our shovelling humus with pita bread into cavernous hungry mouths, swaying gently to the soothing Middle Eastern vibes.

My much-better-half and I sat at one of the myriad Middle Eastern themed restaurants. We were confronted by slyly spiced yoghurt, gleaming green and overtly jet olives, curious coriander and stiffly squared feta cheese amidst an array of lettuce leaves, cucumber and a mixed mezze squirted with freshly tart lemon juice. At that moment we were free as proverbial Beatles birds, lounging in a Singapore un-beset with meetings or other imposing necessities. My small performance was over, my Southern Comfort drank and we had exited back into the Singapore night unmolested by fans ( of which I have none) or any other even mildly interested party.

The Singapore Arab Quarter seemed to host a number of streets going by the vaguely exotic names of Kandahar Road, Orphir Road and Sultan Gate. Somewhere, nestled in there, was Kampong (village) Glam which, despite its name, was not a nest of 1970s, sequinned, aging rockers whose mascara had run for the last time. The morning eventually claimed us. After greeting the hotel room’s line of small ants with an enthusiastic ‘Good morning line of small ants’, we checked out – for you can have too much of a good thing, and strolled under a mild sun, past the vaguely Art Deco school of art and sought breakfast. We had forgotten, again, that Singapore – much like an ageing actress, does not do mornings. We grabbed a nondescript Nasi Lemak and instantly longed for Malaysia. But Malaysia it was not, for Singapore has not been part of Malaysia since 1965, and there we were roaming that Arab Quarter on a very quiet Good Friday morning.  

Amidst German tourists, Chinese tourists who seem to spend an inordinate amount of cash on large cameras and Americans with curiously cropped hair we skirted the Sultan Mosque and its compound. Outside that compound, eager merchants had gathered to ply their trade without the white lines seen in Egypt – to demark limitations for merchandiser and tourist interaction. Away to one side of the selling frenzy, two white-haired women sat. One was of Chinese descent, the other possibly American. They were imbibing coconut water, through plastic straws, direct from the weighty cut coconuts – “Isn’t it refreshing” the Chinese lady said to the other, her eyes shielded by oversized sunglasses.  A conversation ensued over the merits and demerits of coconuts and their uses. It was obvious that the Chinese lady was a little proud to be able to impart that knowledge to her friend; maybe she was a little proud of Singapore too, smiling as she spoke.

We left the Arab Quarter, travelled across Singapore on the spotlessly clean MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) and arrived in Little India as did the rain. Little India has become somewhat of a haven for authentic Northern and Southern Indian food, hence our opting to stay in that area for the majority of our time in Singapore. Once again accommodation was hard to come by unless, of course, we wanted to share a room, barracks style, with eleven other people of the same sex. I had no desire to do so. We trudged on until we eventually found a reasonably priced hotel. We later discovered that it was a hotel chain which had been infamous for selling rooms by the hour, sometime in its recently lurid past. But, on the day of our arrival, there seemed to be Chinese families and hordes of Malaysian tourists crowding out the hotel – no obvious hookers or johns evident.

The problem with hotels is that you are not at home.  In your unwisely chosen hotel room you are constantly at the mercy of other people’s behaviour. When neighbours arrive, noisily, at 1am, shout and wish each other good night in their various languages you are at their mercy. When the very same neighbours awaken at 7am, you are still at their mercy. Your sleep pattern, or lack of it, becomes guided by the thoughtlessness of others. Groggily, you lay awake to their stories unfolding - the children running along corridors, their banging on doors – and sometimes the right one. You hear, because you have been awoken by them, the grandmothers yelling at the children in foreign tongues, the children’s and their parents’ responses, the slamming of doors and the unnatural quite as the entire party is transported down to the lobby, in the lift. It is the quiet that disturbs more than the noise - the anticipation laying in wait within that quiet.

My much-better-half joined the Singapore Urban Sketchers for a morning’s sketching. We travelled across Singapore, on smartly on time buses, to arrive at Gillman Barracks, vaguely on time, to sketch until luncheon. Gillman Barracks was named after the British General - Sir Webb Gillman, a former General Officer Commanding-in Chief for the Eastern Command (1931), based in Singapore, he died in 1933. The barracks was built and named after him in 1936.

The posh art galleries which have claimed the old British Gillman Barracks didn't open until midday. There was no chance to gain succour there while my much-better-half sketched, so I skirted the closed galleries and headed for the sanctity of ARC (Alexandra Retail Centre). The one Gillman gallery to be open, as I passed, held an exhibition of psychogeographic images. I did a little head scratching and later ‘Googled’ to discover that, in this case, psychogeographic images meant road and footpath markings made in construction work. I was a little baffled and went to ask the young lady seated at a desk what it was all about. She was intent on watching a soap opera on her laptop, earphones plugged in. I wanted to ask if it was intentional that some of the postcard size images were peeling from the walls. Was it a statement on contemporary curation, or on the ephemeral nature of such markings, but I could not gain her attention and left none the wiser.

While others sketched away in a heat, nearing the noon day (when only mad dogs and other Englishmen are abroad), I was biding my time in coffee@room in the ARC mall, somewhere in Singapore. I was unaware that Saturday was live band day at ARC. My relative peace and quiet soon disappeared, as did I after finishing my tea. It is no doubt an age thing. But I just cannot fathom why live music, or entertainment, is necessary in a place designed for shopping. Singapore, and no less so the ARC mall, is a land of enigmas. Fusion mixes to the extent that if becomes confusion. Food and drinks are no longer bound by strict cultural rules. Rowan Atkinson's Mr Bean becomes a soft drink emporium, Vanilla becomes a muffin shop and the aforementioned live Chinese band plays pseudo prog rock into a mall distinctly lacking people – quite possibly due to the smallness of the mall and the loudness of the music.

Having at least partially sated ourselves with Indian food, good Art and good company it was time to climb aboard the yellow and black caterpillar and dash back to Kuala Lumpur. I say dash, though in reality it was a seven hour slow dash - due to it being the Easter weekend, raining and dark. Singapore by bus was an experience – more luxurious than ‘coach class’ in an aeroplane, cheaper but much, much slower. The trip was nice for fun, but probably not on a regular basis due to the huge amounts of time it consumes. We (mentally) waved fond farewell to the wasp coloured caterpillar and earnestly considered driving down to Singapore in the future.