Back to a dreary Japan...

Yes, we had a pretty boisterous lunch-party at a friend's house on the 28th...
It was, I'd say, more of a "ladies' party"...
The husbands, the men that is, stayed at the sidelines and watched the ladies yakked and roared...
It was a good opportunity for us husbands, to connect and establish rapport...
And for me, it was particularly refreshing to get to know the children of my friends...
The boys, handsome as they are... and the girls, pretty and charming...
It will be a joy if I can meet them again in the future...

After the party, we took a taxi in the rain to KLIA...
As in most of our travel back to Malaysia, the midnight flight was tiring and taxing on our senses...
How long more can we take this, I sometimes wonder...
Thankfully, we managed to fly back home safely to Japan...
From a pleasant temperature hovering around the high 20s (as in 28 or 29 degrees Celcius) in Malaysia, we were welcomed by a windy 6 degrees at Kansai International...
From there, it was another 5 hours by highway bus before we can get to our front door...
It felt good to be home again, after two weeks of moving around...
But wooh, how cold the house was...
We set the heater thermostat to 18 degrees, but still it felt cold for me...
As in my daily practice, I took my blood pressure before heading for my bath in the evening...
Wooaah... my eyes almost popped out of their sockets when the meter showed 154/92 with a heartbeat of 86...
Was it the greasy, cholestoral-packed food that I so happily gulped down in Malaysia?
Apparently no, as the weight scales showed 62.8 kilograms with 16% fat... (thank god)
My doctor had mentioned that the blood pressure reacts to cold weather, so perhaps my body had yet to adjust to the sudden cold...
Good thing that on the next day, the blood pressure indexes were back to normal at 113/78 with a heartbeat of 72...

The weather forecast is for colder weather on this last day of 2010...
The winds are howling, and there is a layer of ice on the pond...
Good thing, the goldfishes are not frozen yet...
The frigid weather is to continue until early 2011... brrrr...

Anyway, we have been spending our year-end-year-beginning days in Malaysia for the last few years...
Perhaps we may go for new year prayers at the local shrine tomorrow...

Happy new year to anyone reading this post...

Discrimination, you say?

The habit of waking up early in Japan is thankfully not lost even while I'm vacationing in my village...

My missus wakes up before six to catch the morning news in Japan...
I crawl up at about seven, just in time to watch the day gradually brighten up...
And oh my, the singing of the birds... trhe misty morning views... this is as heavenly as I could wish for...

Normally for breakfast, we would have some hot Japanese green tea (brought from Japan) and wheat bread purchased from the minimarket the previous day...
I bought honey, 'Madu Tualang dari Cameron Highlands' for the first time...
It has a faint sourish(?) flavor and I like it...

We'd sit at the table in the back of my brother's house, cherishing the early morning calm as we watch the village folks pass by on their motorbikes and motorcars...

You know, I was really thrilled to witness the invasion of cyber space into my ancestral village...
The initial prospects and anticipation of being able to link up through the net within the comforts of my village soon turn into bewilderment...

My niece had contracted Celcom Broadband and man, talking about being frustrated waiting for the 'broadband' to link up...

Of course, I'd be foolish just to sit there, waiting for Celcom to do its work... While trying to hook up, repeatedly, that is, I listen to the radio... I enjoy the views from a distance through my binoculars... and at times, I read the papers...

Once it took me almost two hours to give up trying...
Thing is, I would have enjoyed updating my blog more often if the connection had been better...
So much for 'broadband' in Malaysia...

Anyway, my missus and I were very honored to be invited by an old classmate to his house to celebrate Christmas...
We haven't seen each other for 35 years and just some days earlier, We accidentally bumped into each other at a tosai shop...
So, there we were with his family and their friends, listening to Christmas songs and chatting about work... about family life and how one of his daughters love sushi...

Soon, another old classmate came along and it was fun to catch up...
This guy grows orchids as a hobby and has two young lovely daughters...
The conversation was pleasant and cordial...
Till that episode that almost made me, cringed...

My friend had sent his daughter to a Chinese school...
And in his daughter's own words, she 'geram' when her (Chinese) friends bullied her in school...
Apparently, her dad then transfered her to a national school when she was in Standard Four...

So, there you are... the discrimination in Chinese schools...
I don't know why, but I felt somewhat bad for the girl that such a thing happened...
But I suppose that discrimination occurs everywhere... even in schools in Japan...
Still, somehow at the back of my mind, I thought to myself...
Now, if the Chinese Malaysians are so inclined to voice out how bad racial discrimination in Malaysia is, they should first watch their own backyard...

The mother of this bright little girl is Javanese...
Her dad is of the Punjabi lineage...
Just imagine... she speaks Punjabi and probably Javanese as well...
Her English is super fluent and I suppose her Bahasa is equally good...
Put in Mandarin, and can we envisage what kind of Malaysian we will have in her when she grows up?

I say, when she asked for a transfer, that Chinese school should have conducted an investigation and should have reprimanded the culprits (if found guilty)...
Now, we can only feel sorry for yet another case of lost opportunity in cultivating inter-community goodwill, among other positives, that is...

Blissful in Malaysia

Am now resting in my village Kampong Ah Piew, and my hometown Alor Star...
It has been raining almost everyday, otherwise, it is cloudy....
The air is cool and we like it...

We had the so-called 100th day memorial for my mother the other day...
It seems that the people around Tokai (the one-street town about 2 kilometers from my village) got together to collectively secure a burial plot in Bukit Pinang...
So, it is like, 'together forever... dead or alive' for folks around Tokai area...
The highlight of the memorial was the invitation by the Taoist monk for mother to rest at the ancestral altar in my youngest brother's house...
Which means to say, my mother is now reunited with my father and all the ancestors...

We did not plan to do any scuba diving this trip...
For a change, we spend our time relaxing, and soaking in the views of the green-carpeted paddy fields, the fresh air in the village, and the songs of the little birds that congregate day and night at the fruit trees at my brother's house...

We also did something that we had not really done before...
That is, meeting up with old friends... schoolmates from secondary school...
I have not met some of them since 1975, which is like thirty five years ago...
In KL, one friend was too kind to set up a get-together at the roof-top of a condo, with sweeping views of the KL skyline and Genting Highlands...
Another was too gracious to bring my missus and I out for a night at a Lebanese restaurant...

In Alor Star, a friend met and chatted with us for hours over coffee and toast...
The same evening, yet another friend entertained us at a Thai restaurant in Jitra...
The following morning brought our friend and us together at a popular tosai joint where we met another old classmate by accident...
It was a joy catching up with him and I was too happy to accept his missus' invitation to visit them on Christmas day...
As if this is not enough for us, we are set to meet up with a bunch of old buddies and our teachers on 26th December...

We are due to fly to KL on 28th morning to connect to a late night flight to Osaka...
We are equally thrilled that a friend is organizing a lunch get-together on that day...
Wooh... how lucky can we get with these friends of ours?

Contemplating about a wood stove...

Been debating for a long time about whether to install a wood stove in our house...
A main issue is of course, the chore to obtain firewood...
Where from?
A neighbor of mine who has a wood stove gets his firewood from trees chopped down by people in the neighborhood, and also from the hills owned by a friend of his...
The wood needs to be split and put up to dry for at least a year and half before it can be used...
Which means, there must be a shed to store the wood while letting it go dry...
It will certainly be a chore...
We are using a keresene stove and a fan-heater now...
Another issue touches on where we should place the stove...
It can weigh up to 200 kilograms...
We finally went to a showroom to seek for some advice...
Hmmm, sounds good...
I found myself really attracted to what the man had to say...
It will cost quite a bomb, and the chimmney installation is very expensive as well... Still, to have a real fire in the room... wooh, cozy, I imagine...
And, I love baked food... fish, chicken, bread, pizza, cookies, muffins, sweet potatoes... plus, soup of course...
All these can be cooked with the wood stove...

Fishings boats in the night

Took these pictures last July...
The venue was the fishing port of Aji...
The night was calm, almost windless...
And the reflection on the water...