monitored for training purposes

Posted on March 4, 2013 by YS — No Comments ↓

Well, it’s been a touch over two weeks back in australia, and all of it in the country at my mum’s place. Some time was spent house-hunting and some time has been spent waiting for the place we got become ready to move into. I’m heading back to right near where I was living before moving to s.korea, in Geelong west. I’m happy about that. It feels like the right place for me. Hopefully it’s practical re study and or work for me and or J-e.

It’s a bit difficult getting used to watching tv shows that are on free-to-air tv again because of all the commercials. Watching a 90min movie takes two and a half hours. But because of the digital thingy now there’s a lot more choice than there was 8 years ago. We cleaned out the gutters on the roof of the house. Easily the best, well-mulched soil on the whole property up there.

In Australia and especially out here in the ruralscape, life is all lived in what the nerds call meatspace. A little less so in Korea. I’ve been trying to buy a few things like a futon and a fridge and initially tried looking things up on the internet, but when places actually have a website, usually it’s just a static page with no prices and no way of doing online purchases. Not that I’d buy either of those things sight-unseen. With real-estate being a lot less available in seoul, web-shops are much more common.

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the heat at midday

Posted on February 24, 2013 by YS — No Comments ↓

Well I’ve been back in Australia a week now and already I’ve found something to complain about! Telstra: it’s so poorly run. Why is there default setting to interfere with your life as much as possible? I got prepaid 30 day things for both the internet and mob. phone but once that 30 days is up I’ll be spending my dolla elsewhere.

This is a bit later than when I’m usually here each summer, but this one seems like a particularly dry one—down here in the south-west of Vic. at least. I am sad to find out that the Poly-Waffle has been discontinued! We went to PakoFesta in geelong west yesterday—first time I’ve been able to go in nearly a decade. Was great to see the parade and interesting to see how the ethnic mix has changed slightly. Sweden, Finland and France used to have contingents but don’t now. And a couple of new African nations were there walking along and getting their groove on—new enough that the organisers haven’t made wooden signs for their countries yet. I am embarrased to say that I couldn’t really pick the flags, although I’m pretty sure one was South Sudan and the other would be geographically close to South Africa because the design was very similar to SA’s flag. Also, as with many areas of life, China was there, making a lot of noise and being over-competitive. I don’t remember them having a contingent in the past. I used the hipstamatic for all the fotos which probably wasn’t such a good choice.

Tagged with: 2013, geelong west, pakofesta, polywaffle, telstra
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And now for the good stuff

Posted on February 14, 2013 by YS — 3 Comments ↓

It seems silly to go on holiday and only blog about the bad stuff. So here’s the good bits I haven’t mentioned yet.

at Tropical Spice Gardens

Accommodation: In Kuala Lumpur we stayed at the Classic Inn for a total of 6 or 7 nights. I definitely recommend it. The staff really make an effort to see that you’re happy. I actually stayed here two years ago too, but then I was in a single room. There was a slight misunderstanding on the first night when we got put in a musty-smelling twin-room with no window (avoid room 105 if possible) but once I kicked up a bit of a fuss (brought on by a distinct lack of sleep) we moved to a better room = ask for room 107; it’s a twin-room but you’re with your with your sweety you can just push the beds together. It’s got a window, is relatively quiet in that it’s down a separate hallway, but the window opens onto the front common area, so if the Inn is full then there will be people out there talking til late. That’s to be expected I guess, after all, it’s not a monastery. Also, the wireless node is on the ground floor so you get the best reception if you’re in the ground floor rooms (the rooms on the top floor don’t get any waves, I believe).

They give a free breakfast of coffee, (very grateful for that) fresh fruit, toast and Malaysian-style pancakes or cold noodles. They do laundry for a very reasonable rate and they’ll store luggage (again price is very reasonable) if you want to head off to other parts of the country. All the other features are on their website. The best thing about the place, I would say, is it’s location. It’s easy to get off to all the touristy places and all of the domestic stuff you might need (supermarket, reliable eateries) is literally just across the road.

Penang To be honest we really wanted to go to Langkawi Island but it was all booked up. Penang is a bit more urbanised, or to be more exact, suburbanised. There’s a ring road around Georgetown, the capital, that reminded me a bit of Melbourne or Sydney. Things are spread out across the island which mean you’ll be catching a lot of buses or taking taxis or renting a car. We stayed at the Hydro hotel, which, on the whole, was quite good. The room we stayed in was big, had a partial sea view, balcony and was quiet. They have a pool too, which is good because apparently the nearest beach, batu Ferringhi (not Ferengi) was too polluted to swim in.

The best place we went to in Penang was Tropical Spice Garden which had a whole bunch of spice and herb plants spread around some lovely little pathways. If, like me, plants don’t rock your boat then you might be more interested in the … monkeys!

I’d been waiting my whole damn life to see monkeys in the wild. Last week I did.

There’s a bunch of little (I don’t know what kind) monkeys up in the trees and if you’re lucky (like if you go in the morning) you’ll see one or two come down out of the canopy to a lower level to eat flowers. It wasn’t crowded at TSG and it’s a good way to get away from the main road and its traffic noise.

Also while there we had the best meal of the whole two weeks, at their connected restaurant, called Monkey Tree. It’s actually Thai food and due to the spice gardens, they use all their own fresh lemongrass etc.

Mouthwatering!

Tagged with: accommodation, classic inn, hydro hotel, kuala lumpur, monkey tree, monkeys, penang, review, tropical spice garden
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The sample relies mainly on the material object

Posted on February 14, 2013 by YS — 2 Comments ↓

One last little bit of bad news. We’ve been staying near Imbi, Times Square in KL and been eating inside the ginormous Times Square mall often. Tonight we went to a place (I think) called “Shabu-Shabu”, 4th floor West. Shabu-Shabu is my sweety’s favourite. However the place is infested with cockroaches!—No joke. They started crawling all over the table as soon as the pots started to heat up. Normally that would’ve been enough to justify going apeshit for me but I’m trying to take it in an Indian, karma-like way. What happens will happen—most likely the place will get shut down.

Tagged with: coachroaches, health hazard, imbu, kuala lumpur, shabu shabu, times square
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Ipoh, Merak: What a dump.

Posted on February 11, 2013 by YS — 2 Comments ↓

You know I have to disagree with the philosophy of the lonely planet books, the way they put a positive spin on everywhere they research. It’d be more honest and better for everyone all around if they told you to just avoid places that had no redeeming qualities.

Anyway, it could be worse. We could’ve been involved in a bus plunge or been taken hostage or something. And it was our own fault for ending up here. We didn’t plan far enough in advance and didn’t realise the lunar new year would have such a huge effect on accommodations in this country.

The only interesting thing about Ipoh is the local buses. They look like they were made by people who’d only heard descriptions of buses and never seen any.

It’s mostly my fault. We had to leave Penang and I was given the task of finding the next place to go. There was still a week or a little less til we were due back in KL for the flight out, so I was looking for somewhere in between Penang and KL. In korea, I always like to see the average cities – to see the real korea. And so I thought Ipoh would be similar in Malaysia’s landscape. Fuck knows why I end up turning every trip into some grim documentary. Aren’t holidays supposed be about escaping reality? In conclusion I will say that there appears to be some sort of electioneering on the streets of Malaysia, and it’s promoting “1 Malaysia” in the sense of three ethnicities, one country but when I look at the differences in wealth between KL and Ipoh, the split isn’t between ethnicities, it’s between the city and the rural areas.

In Ipoh, we are staying at the Tune Hotel. It’s like staying in a Borg Cube! From the same people who brought you Air Asia, Tune Hotels give you what you pay for and not a jot more. When you pay for the room that’s what you get – the room. You pay extra if you want air conditioning, tv, or even a towel. You can pay some extra for wifi internet but you pay in 24hr blocks, and the password they give you is only valid for one device. That’s probably to stop people setting up server farms during their overnight stays. Just like making bookings with Air Asia, there’s a lot of things that can catch the first-time customer out. Like, if you’re ordering the towel and you’re two people, then you need to enter (and pay for the use of) two towels on the booking page. And if you’re staying for two days and you want a fresh towel for the second day, you need to order that too. I’d be interested in trying the flat-rate room for one night to see what it’d be like with no a/c, which is almost mandatory in this heat. Here’s what you do get : bed, pillow, linen, ceiling fan, coat hanger (or 3), 1 international powerplug, 1 british style powerplug, combination mini-safe, shower, toilet, hair dryer, bin, mirror, and a window. Every room is the same size and has a window—that’s Borg-style democracy for you.

What you don’t get is a mini-fridge, optional breakfast, phone, toiletries of any sort apart from toilet paper, and you don’t get any love neither. But sadly, this is probably the future of hotels. Or business hotels at least. To continue the science fiction analogy, I can remember back to my younger days working as a room cleaner at the Park Royal in Melbourne, and it was always obvious when a business person (let’s face it 90% were businessmen) had occupied the room because I could hardly tell they’d been there. Nothing was touched – not the coffee satchels, not the little bottles of shampoo—nothing. And in a few odd cases the bed hadn’t even been slept in—like they’d just stood in the corner and plugged into a power terminal for the night. Those kind of people would love Tune Hotels.

Tagged with: air asia, borg, depressing cities, ipoh, lonely planet, malaysia, merak, travel, tune hotels
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I hope you make a whole lotta money

Posted on February 7, 2013 by YS — No Comments ↓

Two days now gone on the island of Penang. It’s quite nice here though much more built up and populated than I thought it’d be. It was actually the second choice since Langkawi island was all booked up due to the Lunar New Year coming up on the weekend.

I’m sure I mentioned it the last time I was in Malaysia but easily the most interesting thing about it is how the the cultures live together in one country. I don’t want to be some guy making sweeping generalisations about whole nationalities based on a few anecdotal experiences so I won’t say much about it, except that I really quite like the Indian people here.

We went to have a look at this Hindu Temple in KL the other day and after seeing this all-star line up I was sad to realise that I only know one of them by face: Krishna. Vishnu and Shiva are probably in there but I don’t know who’s who. Note to self -> bone up on oriental mythology.

Tagged with: hinduism, malaysia, travel
Posted in local and/or general

Kuala Lumpur days 1, 2, 3

Posted on February 4, 2013 by YS — No Comments ↓

Anyway, so we’ve been pootling around here in Kuala Lumpur for a few days now and generally having a nice time. It’s been warm and humid but not nearly as much as I remember it being last time (2 years ago). On the whole people are really polite and friendly. The kind of polite you just don’t get in korea—like “do you want to go in front of me?” at the checkout counter kind of thing.

I’ve probably been eating too much, but doing plenty of walking too so hopefully it’ll balance out. Food and beverages (everyone’s just saying F&B now) are much cheaper than Korea but the standard of living isn’t any lower. It’s hard to work out but I’m guessing that people here don’t get paid as much. I’m starting to think there’s some kind of global conspiracy where the proletariat get the same kind of income in any country which is set in relation to how much food and various services are. I.e. you could live in Norway where supposedly the standard of living is high, and you get high wages, but then the cost of groceries is ultra-high too. I remember back to when I was travelling through countryside Vietnam and noticing that the price of petrol was hella cheap—like 9cents a litre, but then thinking well, when you think of what the average peasant on a motorbike earns, then that’s not cheap—but then, how do the Vietnamese petro-corporations get the oil to sell at that price…? It’s a mystery.

The Scarlet Ibis – more hardcore than your average Ibis.

We went to the Bird Park today. They say it’s the largest free-flight bird aviary in the world, and that they have 200 different kinds of birds in there but I would say it’s closer to 40. When I really make myself think about it, I don’t really like places like this anyway. Similar to zoos. Invariably the animals don’t look well, or they’re stuck in cages that are way too small. I know it’s nice for the kiddies to be able to see the animals for realz, but mostly when I see the kind of kiddies that get taken to the zoo/bird park, they’re the ones that should be locked up.

I think if there was a worldwide referendum to get rid of all zoos, and even all safari jeep tours, then I would vote YES. If you want to have the experience of seeing those animals in the flesh then you have to go out there by yourself and risk being eaten by them. Same with more normal animals, like the barn owl. If you live out on a farm and walk into the barn one day and see a barn owl then that would be an amazing experience! and one that you would not forget quickly.

The KL City Hop on – Hop off Bus Tour. I guess I would say it was okay in that the bus wasn’t too crowded and it can be a good way of getting to several different tourist areas in one day. However the 24hour pass is not valid for 24 hours. We bought ours one day and they were punched for 10:30am, and then went back the next morning at 10:10am to be told that we couldn’t get on.

I’d say this was one of those situations where, due to a lack of training, the staff (pictured) make bad decisions which eventually come back to bite them on the arse. For the most part the Tourism & Hospitality sector in Malaysia is pretty good, (you’d hope it was, considering it’s something like their 4th largest industry) but I’ve learned from many, many experiences of touring around korea that when you run tourism operations with untrained, low-paid employees, you’re going to lose in the end.

Tagged with: bus tour, city tour, hop on hop off, KL bird park, kuala lumpur
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tony fernandes ate my lunch

Posted on February 2, 2013 by YS — No Comments ↓

First thing I have to say is golly it’s nice to be on holiday. It’s been a long 12 months and when I do take the opportunity to visit somewhere different I usually end up having to go by myself, but this time my sweety is with me.

And we tried flying with Air Asia. It’s a different set up they’ve got going. It’s all online booking, and lots of detail to it. You chose where you want to sit, and there’s different areas—like a no kids ‘quiet zone’, “hot seats” ie. the first row of economy/coach class (you know if I owned my own airline, I would call economy class Riff-raff class) and instead of business/1st they have premium. We went for the No kids section and it worked well.

Meals are not standard either. You can order a meal when you’re doing the online thing, and it costs about 7 bucks. There’s a fair few different choices, and in theory it’s a good idea. In reality, the meals we got were really crappy.

This was my green curry. It was mostly rice. When I say crappy, I mean really cheaply put together, and small. Airline food has never been known as being good but this is a new bottom. J/e’s chicken rice was also regrettable. All part of the learning-curve I guess. The idea is to eat up good before you get to the airport and then bring wholesome munchies for mid-flight—except their rule is you’re not allowed to bring food or beverages (everyone’s saying F&B these days) on board, but how are they going to know if you bend down, stick your head in your backpack and munch away like a horse on chaff. A horse bag.

There’s no screens anywhere, not even a standard one at the front of the section on the wall showing where the plane is in geographical space. I kind of missed that graphic. But really it’s a clever idea. Those back-of-the-headrest things are looking mighty dated now that everyone’s carrying their own tablet/phablet/smartphone around.

There’s no complimentary newspapers, blanket, pillow, there’s no free drinking water (gulp!), the only coffee available is cheap instant stuff – 5 ringgits please, and when we got to KL A.A. have their own budget terminal where the plane just pulls up on the tarmac and you deplane down a set of steps like when the Beatles invaded America. Air Asia’s gone budget in areas that other airline’s wouldn’t think of changing, and it’s working for them. Apparently it’s the fastest growing airline in an era when airlines are going belly-up left, right and centre.

Tagged with: air asia, airlines, budget, food, review, tony fernandes
Posted in local and/or general

we are reasonable people

Posted on January 31, 2013 by YS — No Comments ↓

I’ve been an appreciator or what Ninja Tune produces since I came across Amon Tobin’s stuff in 2000. Being without regular, good FM radio has been one of the many bummers about being here. One small thing I found to fill the gap has been the Solid Steel weekly hour and half (or something) of beatz overseen by the record label’s honchos, Cold Cut & DK, and usually has a guest of some kind. Some of the mixes they’ve done over the last year have been sweet, especially a Beastie Boys special with DJ Cheeba. Also I thought it was a really cool move getting a bunch of the label’s artists’ music into the soundtrack for the computer game, ‘Sleeping Dogs’, which was released last year.

Anyway, Ninja even made the effort to track me down to this here website and emailing me a few new tracks from folks they’re working with. And they’ve said it’s alright for me to share with you. So, of the four, I liked this one the best: Moire – INTO. It’s very 1st world urban sounding. It’s the sound of London, baby! [I’ll leave that file there for a few months but not forever. More reasonable people, HostCentral already give me so much, I wouldn’t want to vampire their bandwidth.]

It’s been a strange year for me listen-to-musically. My music library basically fucking broke when I tried to transfer the files for itune (on a mac mini) to itunes on a larger capacity windows box. Every song got a doppelganger, and the whole thing never really recovered. Also, the collection got so big and out of hand that I was losing control of it. I’m still kind of stuck using itunes and I’m really not happy with it. Electronic music files and the internet has introduced me to so much stuff I’d never have heard otherwise but it’s so easy to lose, or forget—so ephemeral.

The most serious problem I’ve had is tracks mysteriously disappearing from itunes. Eg. an album of 12 songs will be there and viewable in the itunes window, but when I go to click through them, 1 out of 12 will say, for eg. “The song “Windowlicker” could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?” and I say, ‘Yes, you better bloody well locate it’ but it’s nowhere on the computer. Yet, strangely, it’s still on the phone, from when the file was on the computer and copied to the phone. But I don’t think there’s any way for re-upload it from the phone to the computer. Thankfully, it’s not at the ratio of 1 in 12, but any loss is bad.

An internet search shows me plenty of other people have this problem but nothing’s being done about it yet.

My attitude toward music has grown a bit hackneyed in the last 12 months too. Sometimes it just feels like a thing I use to distract my monkey-mind. I haven’t felt comfortable blasting the speakers in this apartment because the walls seem thinner and I don’t know the people living around me, whereas I did in 2011 (and I knew there was no one downstairs). I use music to blot out the noise of people on public transport—that ain’t good. And sometimes I get sick of all the old stuff I listen to habitually, but at the same time don’t feel like there’s any space in my life for new music either. For a long time I’ve been working on a theory that there’s only so much new music that I can connect with in any given period of life. There needs to be some new stimulus—like being in a new place, a new feeling, a new season, a new section of life, for the new music to attach to. It’s been slow going for me in those areas of late.

Tagged with: itunes, missing files, music, ninja tune
Posted in local and/or general

boxes and boxes

Posted on January 30, 2013 by YS — 1 Comment ↓

Packing day is done. And it was a lot less trouble than I thought it’d be.

When I came to Korea I came with one large bag—not even a suitcase—just a cheap nylon bag I got from the Vic markets. And now there is 35 or something boxes and it all has to go in part of a shipping container. It’s nice being in the apt. with nothing here. I’d like to be a minimalist kind of person the whole time but it’s just not me. We don’t actually get on a plane til friday so there was a couple of things that had to stay back, like the mattress. It wasn’t coming anyway since 8 years of compression has left it pretty useless. Come Fri morn I guess we’ll either toss it out on to the footpath (pavement) or burn it. Thankfully the weather deities have been smiling on us and the last day and the next two has been/will be unusually mild. Tomorrow’s top: 14℃ !!!

This meant that the heavy coat could go in a box, saving precious room in the suitcase—the suitcase I’ll be living out of for the next 1-2 months. Before getting back to Australia we’re off to Malaysia for two weeks, which I’m looking forward to. Most of all I think the food. Korean food is good but it does get a bit monotonous.

Tagged with: 2 justs, life, mundanity
Posted in local and/or general