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|         _______                 | "Nuclear war can ruin your whole          |
|     ,--'.:::::.`-._             | compile." -- Karl Lehenbauer              |
|    /..:::::::::::..\            |                                           |
|   /..:::::::::_;::::|           |                                           |
|  || `---'----' _|:::|           |                                           |
|  ||            `;:::|           |                                           |
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|  |-( @ )-( @ )--|O):|           |                                           |
|   |  ` |   `    |/::'           |                                           |
|   .    v        |:/   jeremy@   |                                           |
|    |   ___,     ||    malcolm   |                                           |
|     \   --    _/|     .id.au    |                                           |
|      \_____.-'__/-.__           |                                           |
|      _|     _/|::.\.::-._       |                                           |
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| "Cameron Highlands" ::                                 [2010-03-08 07:19PM] |
|                                                                             |
| We just returned from a quick weekend trip to the Cameron Highlands in      |
| Pahang state. On the way up the winding mountain roads, we saw many bamboo  |
| roadside stalls from which the indigenous inhabitants, the orang asli, sold |
| bottles of local honey, as well as strings of bean pods, and I think        |
| tongkat ali which is believed to be an aphrodisiac.                         |
|                                                                             |
| Incongruously, the favoured architectural style in the Highlands seems to   |
| be Tudor. Then again, it is quite an English holiday retreat, with its      |
| cool temperatures, and the wide availability of Devonshire teas, served     |
| with locally-grown orange pekoe, and locally-made strawberry jam.  We also  |
| picked some strawberries at a farm next to our hotel, and can attest to     |
| their freshness. If only I wasn't so busy at work, we could easily have     |
| spent longer.                                                               |
|                                                                             |
|                                                          reply (0 comments) |
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| "New Haven" ::                                         [2010-02-15 09:00AM] |
|                                                                             |
| I am about to leave New Haven, where I have been staying for a conference   |
| at Yale University. I had the bad timing to schedule my visit for the       |
| height of Snowmageddon, with the result that both my flight to the USA, and |
| the internal connecting flight, were cancelled. Happily I was placed on a   |
| new flight to Boston (and upgraded to business class - what a revelation!), |
| from where I connected to New Haven by rail, actually arriving earlier than |
| if my original flight hadn't been cancelled.                                |
|                                                                             |
| Yale is a beautiful campus as you'd expect, and it dominates the stately    |
| and quiet town of New Haven. I had some time to stroll through it on my     |
| first day, so I took in a couple of galleries and a museum, most notably    |
| the Yale University Art Gallery, which exhibited artists such as Monet, Van |
| Gogh, Cézanne, Duchamp, Pollock, Lichtenstein and Warhol. On my final day I |
| spent time further out in suburbia (while waiting to check in at the tiny   |
| airport), and admired the distinctive wood-panelled New England houses, a   |
| couple of them with friendly snowmen standing guard outside.                |
|                                                                             |
| To matters culinary, since New Haven was supposedly the first American      |
| city to which pizza was introduced (their local variant is actually called  |
| "apizza"), I had to try a slice here - it had that crunchy texture that     |
| you can't seem to find outside the States, even if you order a "New York"   |
| crust.  Before I left I visited another Italian restaurant for a lasagne,   |
| which came with two crusty garlic bread rolls and a side salad, and a       |
| slice of cheesecake.  And I shouldn't omit to mention the New England clam  |
| chowder that was served with our steaks at the speakers' dinner.            |
|                                                                             |
| On the way back, I have a ten hour layover in Amsterdam, so I might check   |
| back in to the Yotel at the airport: it's a bit like a Japanese capsule     |
| hotel, or a ship cabin, and you can rent one for as little as four hours    |
| for a shower, nap and to get some work done, if you don't have access to    |
| an airline lounge.  It costs about half as much as a full night at my much  |
| larger hotel room in New Haven and without the free breakfast (admittedly,  |
| the budget American hotel chains are very good value), but it's probably    |
| worth it ahead of another 12-hour flight.                                   |
|                                                                             |
|                                                          reply (0 comments) |
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| "Kuching" ::                                           [2010-02-08 02:05AM] |
|                                                                             |
| We spent this weekend in Kuching, capital of Sarawak, which is the largest  |
| state of Malaysia.  Like Western Australia it is the largest but most       |
| sparsely populated state, and is situated to the south of the other East    |
| Malaysian state of Sabah (with Brunei sandwiched in between), and to the    |
| north of the Indonesian part of Borneo.  We stayed in the Tune Hotel,       |
| which is a chain owned by the same group as Air Asia, and with much the     |
| same philosophy - pay extra for the frills (which are meals for the         |
| airline, and towels and air conditioning for the hotel).  But the bed was   |
| comfy and it was situated right on the riverfront - indeed, opposite the    |
| Hilton.                                                                     |
|                                                                             |
| On our first day we took in the sights on the waterfront, which included a  |
| colonial English courthouse and jail, a couple of brightly-coloured Chinese |
| temples and an ethnological museum (Chinese of various ethnicities form     |
| close to a majority in Kuching). Then after lunch we took a tambang (a      |
| small, mostly oar-powered ferry) across the river to the spectacular        |
| hat-shaped legislative building, for a fare of 40 sen each (less than 15    |
| cents).                                                                     |
|                                                                             |
| We then did a spot of shopping, and it struck me that there are some        |
| things commonly sold here that we will never, in a million years, buy; for  |
| example, margarine (I think) is sold unrefrigerated from open vats, beside  |
| mounds of preserved fish and over-ripe fruit over which flies buzz.  In     |
| the more touristy pedestrian mall of Jalan India, sexual pills and potions  |
| are sold from open briefcases (for a quick getaway, I presume); most        |
| prominent is a botanical paste called Gambir Sarawak, but also knock-offs   |
| of the V and C drugs (I won't spell out their names here to avoid lowering  |
| my pagerank!).                                                              |
|                                                                             |
| The locals are more friendly than in KL, with many of them greeting us      |
| (not only Doyle, which we're used to) with a cheery hello.  In one case,    |
| admittedly, a youth greeted me with the more dubious "Hello, Orang Putih"   |
| (white person), to which I was sorely tempted to reply "Hello, Orang        |
| Melayu!"                                                                    |
|                                                                             |
| The next day we took a coach to the Sarawak Cultural Village.  Sarawak is   |
| Malaysia's most multicultural state, where Muslims are in the minority,     |
| and a variety of indigenous inhabitants still live and practice their       |
| traditions.  The Cultural Village showcased these minorities through        |
| recreations of their houses, inside which locals were practising their      |
| traditional arts: cooking biscuits, grinding rice or tapioca, blowing       |
| darts, threshing pepper, forging swords, dancing and making music.  All     |
| this in a steamy rainforest between mountain and sea, where red-winged      |
| dragonflies hovered and wood-boring insects the size of birds buzzed.  A    |
| cultural performance featuring dances from all the ethnic groups rounded    |
| out the attraction.                                                         |
|                                                                             |
| It was a little sad to consider how much of this culture was lost when the  |
| country embraced Islam, which has certainly made as much of a mark on       |
| Malaysia as the secular West, and not all for the better.  Indeed, the      |
| traditional practices of the local ethnic groups are still being            |
| marginalised by the government, which for example still has an active       |
| policy of resettling the nomadic Penan tribes into towns (why am I put in   |
| mind of Australia of the early-to-mid 20th century?)                        |
|                                                                             |
| My lunch at the Village was Sarawak laksa, a noodle soup, slightly milder   |
| than the Penang variety, but fragrant with coconut milk and coriander, and  |
| brimming with shredded chicken, bean sprouts, strings of egg and prawns.    |
| Another specialty we tried on this trip was kolo mee: a noodle dish         |
| featuring both minced and sliced pork, a meat which is much rarer on our    |
| side of Malaysia. We also learned about, but weren't brave enough to try,   |
| Chinese birds-nest soup, which - yes - is a real birds nest, or rather the  |
| remains of which after the twigs and feathers are removed: to be precise,   |
| the bird's solidified saliva. Rather more appetising are the                |
| rainbow-coloured kuei lapis (layer cakes) that are a local speciality; real |
| cake, too, rather than the glutinous jelly that is sold under the same name |
| in KL.                                                                      |
|                                                                             |
|                                                          reply (0 comments) |
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| "sadlittlewebjournal 2.9.2 released" ::                [2010-02-02 04:35AM] |
|                                                                             |
| Since it was a public holiday today, I put the time to good use by (a)      |
| fixing our front door; and (b) releasing another point version of the       |
| software that runs this blog, sadlittlewebjournal.  This version fixes a    |
| few annoyances - that the facility to post by email didn't work with        |
| complex MIME emails (for example, mine are digitally signed), that the RSS  |
| feed didn't preserve the line feeds in the original post, and that special  |
| characters such as € didn't come out correctly.  Additionally, I have also  |
| improved the comment spam filtering in this release.  Download from the     |
| link below, and please let me know if you have any difficulties.            |
|                                                                             |
| [related link]                                           reply (2 comments) |
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| "The Netherlands" ::                                   [2010-01-13 05:39AM] |
|                                                                             |
| The last country we visited on our European holiday this year was the       |
| Netherlands.  We stayed at the home of two expat friends from Australia,    |
| now living in Amsterdam but currently on holiday back home.  One of them    |
| is an amateur interior designer, so their classy apartment looks like       |
| something straight out of a catalogue!                                      |
|                                                                             |
| Amsterdam is a city built around a series of concentric canals.  Walking    |
| around them takes you around some beautiful old gabled buildings and        |
| churches, as well as the infamous Red Light District - which I encountered  |
| largely by accident when women in lingerie or swimsuits started looming     |
| out of the windows as I walked by.  However the closest I got to seeing     |
| the inside of one of these red-lit apartments was a mock-up in a nearby     |
| museum (honest!).                                                           |
|                                                                             |
| Amsterdam's inner city is, to be frank, probably a bit too touristy,        |
| without any free museums or galleries that we could find (even most of its  |
| churches have been converted to other uses), and it is overcrowded with     |
| "coffeeshops" (which sell more joints and space cakes than coffee - magic   |
| mushrooms are also legally sold).  So after I'd had my fill of the inner    |
| city I ventured out to a nearby suburb, away from the tourist crowds, to    |
| soak in some warmth at a local sauna.                                       |
|                                                                             |
| Because we were staying in an apartment with a kitchen, we cooked most of   |
| our meals - but trying to choose local dishes and ingredients where         |
| possible.  These included, on our first night, meatballs with stamppot,     |
| which is a mixture of mashed potato and spinach, and "bitterballen" which   |
| seem to be little crumbed and fried balls of a gravy-like mixture.  (OK,    |
| we didn't make that at home; we had it at McDonalds.)                       |
|                                                                             |
| We also had an unexpected taste of home in Amsterdam, because of the        |
| Indonesian culinary influence that was inherited from Holland's colonial    |
| past.  This is found in the number of Indonesian restaurants, in the        |
| serving of satay sauce rather than gravy with meat (though it's quite       |
| awful compared to the real thing), and even in the name of one of the       |
| country's biggest seasonal markets - "pasar malam besar"!                   |
|                                                                             |
|                                                          reply (0 comments) |
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