Shopping

So far I have bought a pair of Mizuho running shoes for GBP15, a spare set of glasses plus the lenses for GBP60, three trashy novels for GBP7, 2 Izod running tops for GBP10, and on Saturday I am going to have my hair highlighted for GBP25. Lunch for the five of us today cost GBP12 and that was expensive. I love my country. Sayangilah Malaysia!

Food glorious food!

I swore that during these 2 weeks in Malaysia, not a morsel of food was going to pass my lips that I could get in the UK. I have never eaten so much food in my life. I swear my stomach capacity has increased in the 1 week that we have been back. Last night I ate 5/8ths of a mooncake by myself, without even noticing it.

Tonight we went to have Teochew porridge in SS2. I think my parents are taking advantage of the fact that there are so many of us here to order everything they want to eat. They just eat a tiny portion of it and I have to eat the rest. And then as we were driving back, we saw them stopping off at the corner all-you-can-eat durian place to buy yet more food! They KNOW I can't resist durians.

Yesterday Big Squish roped me in on a mahjong playing session. The rules are manifold and curious and they all play like lightning and can stack the tiles (even Dad with his Parkinsons) faster than I can, while I play like a doped snail. All I can say is, the civilisation that came up with the rules of mahjong clearly had too much time and ingenuity on its hands.

I've finally finished watching Battlestar Galactica. I think I would have made a good crewmember aboard the Galactica. Or a good Cylon. Or a good Cylon Galactica crewmember.

What should I watch next?

Imperious

We went through Stansted on the way out to KL this year. We were walking to board the plane and I was sorting out the passports when I dropped one of them and barked imperiously to my little train of minions, Someone pick that up!

Unnoticed by me, some humble Eastern European airport worker, who was standing in the corridor minding his own business, leaped to attention and hurriedly scrabbled to pick the passport up.

I, in the meantime, was marching on, wondering why it was taking so long for the passport to make it back to me.

And give it to me! I commanded. The airport guy hastened to pass it to Mo who passed it to me, and I sailed on, unaware that any of this had even happened. I only found out about it when LSS told me later on. I am clearly turning into Margo Leadbetter. I only hope the airport guy does not go back to Krakow or wherever thinking that everybody in the UK behaves like that.

The Dedicated Postman

Big Squish raises one of life's little mysteries. When we left KL for HK some years ago, we didn't bother to give the post office a forwarding address, since we never get any mail. We forgot however that we do get bank statements. But instead of the bank statements being returned to the bank or being opened and abused by the new tenants of the house, they started mysteriously turning up at my parents' house. How can this be? They were still addressed to our old house. We can only conclude that not only did the postman know that we were no longer living in the house, he had also worked out that there was some enduring connection between the people who had lived in that house (us) and the people who were still living in my mum's house, three streets down. How did he know? What a soothing vision this is of a society and time that is so peaceful and civilised that the postman can notice something like that and silently deliver the mail to the right address, without a word, without a fuss, not just for a few weeks, but for months, which is how long it took me to realise that I was paying monthly service charges for a bank account I no longer used, and close it down.

It's not the same postman anymore. But wherever the old postman is, I raise my hat now to that unsung hero.

Another postal mystery relates to Big Squish's free subscription to the Max Planck Institute's monthly journal, which she contacted them to cancel when she was moving back from Berlin to KL. Not only did they fail to cancel it, from then on, the journal has been arriving promptly at her address here, even though she obviously did not give them her KL address. On the one hand you condemn their incompetence in not discontinuing the subscription. On the other hand you applaud their ingenuity in finding out her Malaysian address. I suppose people who can unravel the mysteries of the universe's laws can easily handle tracking someone down to the ends of the earth.

Tea v Coffee

Just reading a thing by David Mitchell in the Guardian about how he always wanted to drink coffee because drinking coffee is cool. No, no, no! Drinking coffee is not cool. The minute so many Tom, Dick and Harry's are jumping onto the coffee bandwagon that there is a Starbucks or a Caffe Nero on every corner, coffee has clearly lost any cool cache that it ever had.

I'm a confirmed tea drinker myself. The other day at work we were in another of an interminable series of meetings. There were about 10 people there, with the usual polyglot mongrel range of nationalities, English, Indian, Malaysian (me!) and ze French. Someone volunteered to do a tea run - all round the table he went: tea, peppermint tea, a nice hot cup of tea, oh tea please - even the Frenchman asked for tea. It was like an episode of Family at War, if anyone remembers that ancient telly series.

Literal-minded

Curly just called me a blackguard, all because I said she was my little Crunchie bar and I was going to eat her up. She has kindly pointed out that she does not have a honeycomb middle and that her insides are all yucky and full of stomach juices.

So much for June

Horrible hard-working June doing vile new job. No time to do anything except work. When I'm not working I'm spending all my time on the Harper Collins' Authonomy website, which is like a ghastly computergame that brings out all the worst in human behaviour.

The garden is lovely. All I want to do is spend all day every day sitting out there, with a nice cold glass of wine, reading my book, and looking at roses.

Everyone is complaining about the heat but our house remains mysteriously cool. It was hell in the winter (a frozen hell) when we used to go outside to keep warm, but now, when all around are sweltering, the interior of the house is like some serene Andalucian palace, with delightful coolness emanating from the walls. Garden ditto, due to all the lime-tree bower-like shade and the delicious refreshing breezes.

Have discovered local swimming baths at the Merton Road Aspire Centre. We go every Sunday after church. Curly has finally learned to swim unaided. Hooray! We are all looking forward to splashy fun at the Lake Club in KL in August.

Eating lots of white Magnum ice-creams. Yum!

That stupid Scot, Murray. What did he have to go and get all our hopes up for, if he was only going to dash them to the ground yet again?

I am leading a strange bipolar sort of life, where for 5 days in the week, I am in miserable hell, and for the remaining 2 days, I am in blissful paradise. When will the bank start offering round those delightful 4-day week or 1 year off for 75% pay cut proposals that everyone else is doing?

Neighbours

Spent much time in the garden this bank holiday. Amazingly, not everything that we planted has died, and some of the seeds are coming up.

Unfortunately, the fine weather brought the idiot twenty-somethings who live in the first floor flat in the building next to us out onto their roof terrace, which directly overlooks our garden. I don't know what I dislike about them more - their pallid white skin in their pointless bathing suits, their execrable taste in music, their moronic conversation - was I this stupid when I was twenty-something? Is it possible?

On the plus-side, it makes a brilliant situation for a sitcom. LSS has found himself a potential writing partner and is looking for sitcom ideas. Snobbish hidebound elitist forty-somethings, living next to braindead shallow twenty-somethings, in a hideous co-dependent relationship fueled by mutual loathing. Well, it makes me laugh. When I'm not weeping.

Christian Aid

went knocking on doors for Christian Aid on Saturday. The old gave. The young gave. The salt of the earth gave. You know who didn't give? Middle-class WASPS. Only two white middle-class middle-aged males gave me money - one was Irish and the other was Greek. Interesting.

Star Trek

Went down to Southside last night to see the new Star Trek movie. All I can say is, I'm sick of working for an investment bank. I'm going to enlist in Star Fleet.