Things I Will and Won't Miss about Malaysia

At some point after I get my degree, I plan to leave Malaysia and either live somewhere else in the Commonwealth or in the Netherlands. Here's what I will and won't miss about living in Malaysia.

Things I won't miss:
1) The weather. Malaysia has three seasons, and all of them are terrible.

You've got the default season, Hot, where the humidity and equatorial sunlight conspire together to make you start sweating from the second after you finish your morning shower all the way until you get back home, shut all the curtains, turn on both air-conditioners and your fan to prevent everything from melting. You can also look forward to baking inside of your car if you leave it outside for more than five minutes. More than once I've been unable to even leave the parking lot because my steering while is so hot that driving is impossible without oven mitts.

Next you've got Haze, which is what happens every year when Indonesia sets itself on fire to get rid off all the excess wood they end up with from their deforestation and everyone upwind of them gets to enjoy a post-apocalyptic version of their cities where schools close, streets empty, visibility is reduced to almost nothing, and anyone brave enough to venture outdoors does so with surgical masks and bandannas around their faces like they're in a zombie movie. Actually, Haze might be my favourite of the three seasons just because of how awesome everything looks.

Finally you've got Wet, where it rains everyday and flash floods pop up everywhere, ruining your floors if you happen to let the rainwater seep into your house, and causing insane traffic jams on all the roads. One time I was driving to pick my sister up from something or other and I had to drive through what used to be a highway but had temporarily become an urban river. When we got home I noticed that my license plate had been ripped from its screws and swept clean off. Floods are hardcore, man.

2) The traffic. Rain isn't the only thing the causes jams. Cars will also slow to a crawl if there's an accident up ahead, or some particularly exotic roadkill (think python or monitor lizard or giant rat), or if the police have decided to send an inept traffic warden to direct traffic at a busy junction, or if it's between six to nine on a weekday morning, or if it's five to nine on a weekday evening, or if it's anytime on a Friday, or for seemingly no reason at all. It's one of the reasons owning a motorcycle is so great.

3) The hotness. Not to be confused with item #1 on this list, the hotness here refers to the ratio of beautiful people to normal-looking people to ugly people in the country. While we seem to have proportionally as many ugly people as any other country, everyone else seems to be exceedingly plain-looking. Good-looking people are few and far between. It's probably part of the reason that modelling and acting for commercials pays so well around here.

My beliefs about how hot the populations of other countries come from what I've seen personally (for Holland, Australia, and the States), or from documentaries (Australia), the sounds of their voices while I'm at work (Australia, New Zealand), and pictures of my Tumblr followers. That last one might just be because everyone on Tumblr is attractive. It's weird but I challenge you to find an exception to that rule.

4) The food. Every local and tourist you ask will disagree with this point, but however much I wish I did, I do not share their tastes. A lot of the local food here is pretty okay, but everything else is either too spicy or looks like vomit. I don't care how good of an acquired taste it can be, if it looks like someone barfed on my plate and it has the texture of regurgitated toilet paper, I won't be that interested in eating it, no matter how cheap and readily available it is.

Also western food is amazing and freshly-baked bread is amazing and the candy overseas is amazing and those are all things that are nowhere near as common here as they are in, say, the Netherlands or Australia or  New Zealand. Also also, bacon. Malaysia is a predominantly Muslim country, and as such most places do not serve pork. This means no bacon burgers, no bacon pizzas, no bacon anything. It's the worst, you guys.

5) The accents. Malaysian accents tend to be more of the comedy variety, which is part of the reason why killing dudes is so fun in Just Cause 2 ("HE CUT ME WITH HIS WIRE THING") and the Petronas Twin Towers levels in Hitman: Silent Assassin ("You wanna boom-boom with Charlie?"). I'd much rather listen to accents of the sexy (Australia, West Coast USA, New Zealand, parts of the UK), super-chillaxed (Netherlands), badass, or unclassifiable (South Africa) variety.

6) The cockroaches. They fly, they aren't afraid of the light, they're huge, they seem to crawl onto my body way more than random chance would allow for. Also they are everywhere.

Apparently Corinna had never even seen a cockroach before she visited Malaysia. I don't seem to remember ever seeing one in any of my visits to Holland, either. There were some massive mosquitoes that one time, but that actually turned out to be a good thing because it made them so much easier to swat.

7) The ridiculous censorship. Some examples: "I ****ed a Girl"/"I kissed a ****" (actually acknowledged by Katy Perry when she performed here), "Inglourious ********", "Super Sapiens" (Hellboy), Snakes on a Plane (Which was censored for the first fifteen minutes before the board eventually gave up and let everything through except for the "Enough is enough" scene, which is arguably the best one in the movie), District 9 (Where the censorship board was confounded by the speed at which everyone was talking, which resulted in them censoring the words immediately after "Fuck"), Hancock (Where the use of the word "Asshole" was actually a plot point, but every scene with it was cut), Kick-Ass (Where nobody was censored except for Hit-Girl and anyone swearing at Hit-Girl), and The Grey (Where almost a quarter of the movie was cut because Liam Neeson yells at God).

8) The grass. Not cannabis; the actual grass beneath your feet. It's all crabgrass, which is itchy as hell and grows super-fast and doesn't even look that good. It also sucks at collecting morning dew and the ground underneath it is always waterlogged like mad for days after rain.

Things I will miss:
1) My friends and family. Once I leave the country I won't be seeing them again except on Christmases and weddings and maybe the occasional Chinese New Year. If I go to Holland, though, I will have a whole other side of my family to get to know, which could be fun. I'll finally meet my female cousins. Except for my sisters, it's all boys in this generation of Cheahs.

2) The internet. Australia's internet regulations are ridiculously backwards, and the censorship is almost worse than Malaysia's. Also laws against piracy are actually enforced in Europe, which means that I'll have to deal with being months behind American TV shows and I'll actually have to deal with EA and Ubisoft's backwards DRM which causes an endless supply of headaches for legitimate customers but does nothing against pirates.

3) Cheap stuff. Movie tickets are cheap, petrol is subsidized, electronics are cheap, food is cheap, and alcohol is cheap unless it's beer or you actually care about the quality, in which case it is crazy expensive. If I'm overseas, though, I'll probably be using a stronger currency, which will at least make buying things online relatively cheaper.

4) The malls. Like the cockroaches, our malls are huge and everywhere. If you've got the cash, you're never too far from someplace where you can get a good meal, watch a movie, get your groceries, buy a book, buy some clothes, or rush-buy a gift for someone whose birthday Facebook just reminded you it was.

So yeah, the fact that the former list is twice as long as the latter should be a good indication of my feelings about this country. It's nowhere near the worst place in the world, but there are so many places that are so much better so I see little reason to stay once I have the money and skills to survive on my own.

The Last Day of the First Week of My Last Semester

Four day school weeks are nice.

My classes started at eleven today. I ended up leaving a little later than I should have due to procrastination. My motorcycle ride took five and a half minutes, and I arrived in class just before Ms Selina. Psychology was fun and interesting. During class I checked how many pages there were, divided that amount by 14, and then resolved to read 42 pages a day so that I'd be finished with the book in two weeks' time.

That's what I spent my break doing, mostly. I read the entire preface and ten or so actual pages (I didn't count preface pages as part of the daily 42 because they are in Roman numerals), and then I had to go to my Finite Maths class. I was a little early, though, so I went up to Giant for a while to grab something to snack on. When I was there I started looking for the packet of chips that would give me the most bang for my buck, and settled on an 80g pack of Roller Coasters for one-something ringgit. It was pretty tasty.

Finite Maths was again covering stuff I had already learned. I ended up falling asleep halfway through class, but the lecturer gave us a break so I went to wash my face so I'd be more alert when we did the exercises and stuff.

After Finite Maths I went over for my Physics lecture. We learnt about matter phases and deformation from stress and pressure and stuff. It was cool.

Back at home I made myself some pancakes from batter in the fridge. I also fell asleep while reading a few more pages of the psychology textbook. Ian woke me up because he was heading to the CC to play Left 4 Dead.

Left 4 Dead was awesome fun. We were at a different cybercafe than last time. The graphics were spectacularly better, and there were headphones so I could finally hear what the game sounded like. It sounds awesome. Also the guns and gore are absolutely beautiful. We had a good time playing with friends, even though I lost pretty much every round.

On the way home we stopped for McDonald's. As I was eating I found another cockroach on me, for a lifetime total of a dozen or something. I stopped counting a while back. I do not know why those bugs are attracted to me; I shower everyday. Maybe I just have some kind of animal magnetism. It would explain why my cat is so attached to me, at least.

Anyway when I got back home I finished up my daily reading and did my sit-ups and came here to write this. Tomorrow I'll be sleeping in and then I'm taking Hannah and Stefanie to Central Market. I forgot why. I think Stefanie persuaded me to do it just for the warm fuzzy feeling that comes from being a helpful brother. Stefanie is dangerously persuasive. I like it better when Hannah's the one asking for favours; then at least I can extract French fries or something from her. Oh well.

That is pretty much it for this post. Oh yeah, Elo came back today. It was nice to see her again, I guess.

Finally here is a list of people who want to be on lists:
1) Joanna Noelle Ambrose

Wish granted, I guess.

Last Laps

So it was the last day of my semester break. I woke up, went through my morning routine, took a nap, went with Hannah to drop Jan off at Mid Valley so he could watch Avatar in 3D, came home, did my final ten laps, met the very fat cat that scared Amanda on New Year's Eve (She shouldn't've been scared of him; he's very friendly and affectionate), did another hundred sit-ups, and then realized that I had to pick Jan up.

When I opened the door to leave the house, this huge thing went buzzing past me. It slammed a wall and collapsed upside down and started flailing about. At first I thought it was a bee or something, but upon closer examination it turned out to be a cockroach. There are huge flying cockroaches in my house. Wonderful.

I killed it with a shoe.

The mall looks really eerie at night when it's all dark and closed up and stuff. Jan was waiting for me outside because I was around ten minutes late. He didn't seem to mind.

Anyway now I'm back home and all packed and ready for college. Packing basically consisted of emptying out my files from last semester, stuffing the paper under my desk, putting the empty files in my bag, and zipping it up. I'm waking up at six-thirty. Should be fun.

So I did not complete any of the plans for my blog. The posts are still in Times New Roman instead of Verdana. The list posts are still list posts. The old posts with mistakes still have mistakes because I didn't review them. Other plans I didn't go through with include: spending a whole day driving around and getting lost, and meeting up with my friends to go see a movie or something. Oh well, at least I walked to Menara KL and KLCC and did ten laps every day. I wonder if I'll be able to stick to this sit-up thing for the rest of the year. It's getting easier every day. I wonder if I'll add push-ups.

Cake, Coffee, and a Cockroach

Today I got a free donut and free cakes which came with free coffee. It was good.

First, though, I'll talk about two perhaps interesting things from yesterday. The first thing is when I was eating lunch with Amanda and Davinia and they were telling me about Ms Tay and how she was the only lecturer this semester that they weren't too fond of. Apparently she marked them down on their research papers for submitting just a few minutes late, and she had a pretty bad attitude to teaching. I told them about how she told me not to care for the other, slower students and just watch for myself. I guess Ms Tay doesn't have much tolerance for uncooperative students. Ah well, she's from what I've heard she's still better than Ms Chris.

The second thing from yesterday was when I had a roach on my arm again. It was on some weights than I had retrieved from my parents' bathroom for my sister. This time I didn't freak out when I felt it crawling. I followed it until it was in a good position for whacking, and I whacked it. Once it was disabled, I grabbed it by the antennae and dangled it in the faces of my younger siblings before flushing it down the toilet because drowning is the worst death and I really hate cockroaches even though their only crime is being ugly and invading my personal space. I think that I'm over my fear of roaches now, though.

So, anyway, today. This morning, I met this dude in the elevator. He was stopping on the first floor instead of the ground floor, so I asked him why. He told me that it was a faster way to the underground carpark, and proceeded to show me the shortcut. Now I can shave precious seconds off my route to my motorcycle which will allow me to leave later to college and thus wake up later. Yay.

When I arrived in Moral Studies just as Ms Geetha was going through the scores. I got 36 out of 60, which was more than most people I know, although Carmeni came close with 35.5 and Annora beat me by a whopping five marks with 41. That was because I got 9/20 for the group project, which was the worst score of all the hundredsomething students in the HMC department for that area. It won't matter, though, because Ms Geetha told us that no employers look at LAN scores when they're hiring. All I need to do is score 14/40 or more on the finals and I'll pass. The class ended after only fifteen minutes or so, but I stayed behind to compare my scores with everyone else's.

After I had satisfied my curiosity, I went with Joanna to pick up donuts for her class parties. The lady at Donut Empire told us about the different types of donuts, which was as delicious and more interesting than it sounded. After Joanna had selected her two dozen donuts for her two parties, she got a donut for herself and a donut for me. I really enjoyed my donut, and it has cancelled out any lingering upsetness I may have harbored against Joanna for not inviting me to her birthday party. My forgiveness is very easily bought with sugary treats. I think the world would be a better place if everyone was like me, because that way we could end all wars with a just couple hundred bakeries.

When we were done with our donuts I said goodbye to Joanna and went home to faff about on the computer and do a bit of EMA homework. I topped off my break with a nap and drove back to college just as it started to drizzle.

As I was approaching my classroom for Physics, I spotted the end of Joanna's Legal Studies class party, so I popped into class, greeted the lecturer, and popped out again to ask Jo about leftover donuts. There were none. The remaining two boxes were headed for the Human Communications class party at the other side of college. I made a mental note to check it out as soon as Physics was over.

We got out scores for Physics, and I was one point away from the top scorer with 54/60. I have a shot at a High Distinction, but it's going to be tough. I need to score 31/40 for my final exam, which is going to be a challenge. We'll see how it goes. Anyway, Samuel and I decided to get Tze Yeng some cake because he had written all the reports for our lab group and was responsible for something like 10 of our marks or something. Mr Najmuddin decided to join us, so the four of us made our way through the rain to Secret Recipe. Mr Naj said that he would pay and we could order what we liked, so we each got a slice of a different cake. The waitress informed us that each slice came with free coffee or tea. I had a moist chocolate cake and black coffee. The cake was okay, but chocolate indulgence (The cake from Joanna's birthday) is definitely better. The coffee wasn't strong or bitter enough, but it cooled quite fast so that was nice. Mr Naj told us about spending nights in cybercafes playing Starcraft and Half-Life 1 multiplayer when he was a student. We also talked about tall, cool places to visit in Malaysia and gastronomic restaurants.

When the cake and coffee had finished we thanked Mr Naj for the meal and the lessons and we went our separate ways. I found my way to the Human Communications class party and had the role of class photographer thrust upon me since everyone else was actually part of the class and wanted to be part of the group photograph. Half the shots I took were shaky, but the other half turned out quite okay, I think. After the pictures were done I had some jelly and 100-Plus and I was given half a bottle of Pepsi to take home. That was nice.

When the party was over we went to the hall to play with ice. It was okay, but I bruised my shoulder a wee bit.

After we ran out of ice I went to the lab. Joanna was hanging around with Alan, who was arguing with this tall Nigerian dude about whether Nigeria was a better country than Zambia. It was a fun argument to watch and participate in. Later on the conversation turned to the murder capital of the world, which the Nigerian dude insisted was not Johannesburg, although all the Africans in the lab agreed that that place was pretty dangerous. That was an informative conversation. Later on the conversation turned to Alan's hair and the stuff Joanna could put in it and soon it was time to leave.

When I got home everyone in the family wrote their name and Christmas wishlist on a piece of paper. We then mixed up the papers and picked one out. The gift for the person I got should be pretty easy to get, if I remember about it.

So anyway, in less than 12 hours I've got an EMA and I have not finished the homework for it yet. I guess that's my job for tonight. Oh and apparently people (one person, at least) do read my blog. That is good to know.

Guess What I Stepped on When I Went to the Kitchen to Get Something to Drink?

A cockroach. And I was barefoot. After a very brief freak-out as it scrambled away, I thought "eh, fuck it, I've already stepped on him, won't make much difference if I do it a couple more times". That bugger was fast, though, and he managed to scramble into the darkness before I could smear my sole with his insides. When I had turned on the lights and returned, he was nowhere to be found.

Knowing my luck with roaches, he'll probably turn up again pretty soon, most likely on one of my limbs when I am in a state of undress. When that happens I will finish what was started tonight.

Your days are numbered, you roach bastard.

This One Time I Killed A Cockroach That Saw Me Naked

(Originally written on the 13th of May, 2008)

I hate cockroaches.

I'm terrified of them. It's only roaches, not any other insect. It may have something to do with their slimy bodies or their hairy sharp-looking legs, but the most disturbing thing about cockroaches is knowing that for every cockroach you see there are always dozens more hiding away. They’re like ninjas in that way.

To a normal person with a fairly clean house this fear would not be much of a problem. However, although I have a fairly clean house I am apparently not a normal person. Normal people don't have cockroaches appear on them at random times for no reason.

I've had a cockroach suddenly appear on my arm while I was taking a whiz in the jungle which resulted in frantic brushing off of the area for the next few hours every time I felt a movement, I've had one crawl up my thigh towards my manparts which resulted in frenzied slapping and more brushing, and I've had one drop on my shoulder while I was changing my shirt which has led me to conclude that there is something about me that cockroaches seem to find irresistible.

One night as I was exiting the shower I saw something scuttling across the bathroom floor. Without my glasses I could only just make out that it was a cockroach, and a pretty big one at that. I was absolutely mortified when I realized what I was looking at since these things have a history of crawling on me and now I am totally naked.

Panic took hold of me. The roach was too close to my glasses for me to risk grabbing them, so I sprang for the nearest weapon, which happened to be a bottle of heavy duty toilet bowl cleaner. I decided that it would be easier for me to poison the bastard than crush him with the bottle, so I unscrewed the cap and squirted the cleaning fluid with as much precision as I could manage without my glasses (which is not much precision at all). The roach ran from one side to the other and I traced its path with a blue trail of cleaning fluid across the tiles. The roach then scuttled under the door and out into the bedroom.

I had lost. The roach had escaped to terrify me another day, and I was left with a whole bunch of cleaning fluid to mop up. I put on my glasses and was about to start cleaning up the mess I made when I heard a meow.

My cat is the best cat that a guy who hates cockroaches could want. I’ll wake up some mornings and find hairy sharp-looking legs strewn across the living room floor and a limbless, chewed-up cockroach corpse under a chair or table. He likes to bat them around a bit before he tries to eat them, you see. It’s not just cockroaches that he hunts down and kills; one time I came home to find a dead pigeon in my bed and my cat next to it. He was pretty pleased with himself after that one.

Anyway, I looked in the direction of the meow and sure enough my cat was batting at the now belly-up roach. So I did manage to poison the bastard. Usually I’d leave the roach to suffer and die but my cat was in the room and I didn’t want him to start chewing on the toxic carcass so I decided that I had to get rid of it soon.

I shooed my cat away and threw some toilet paper on the writhing roach. Its flailing legs moved the paper around a bit, but it didn’t manage to uncover itself. I smacked the bottle of cleaning fluid on top of the paper and heard a crunch and a stain appeared on the paper. I kept hammering the paper with the bottle long after the roach would’ve been dead and then hammered some more. I picked up what was now nothing more than guts and crushed bits of exoskeleton in yet more toilet paper and flushed it away.

After washing my hands and putting on my jammies I climbed into bed and pulled the covers tight over myself while my cat kept watch on the bedside to ensure no cockroaches would be crawling over me at night.