Almost there!

From now on, plan is: 3 hours sleep, pack the luggage, take a cab towards KL Sentral, shuttle to the airport, flight to reach Denpasar, cab to get in Kuta, rent a jeep, make it to Ubud, and finally enjoy some rest in the cheapest guesthouse in town before waking up with the dawn to climb Batur volcano...

That's what I call vacation!

Off to Bali!!!

Thursday night, almost 10p, and I am just about to get it over with this endless working day. The whole day was pretty intense. Worthless mentioning how exhausted I am now. Also, I'm already late for the dinner I am supposed to have tonight at some friend's in KL near suburb. I should be bored.

But you know what? I'm definitely not! I don't care, because tomorrow I am... off to Bali!!! For 4 days! Can't wait to take off :-)

Well, obviously one can argue that Bali deserves a longer time frame than four days. Let's just say we are making initial eye contact...

KL noise

When settling in a new place (especially in another country), one has to adapt (at least) a bit to one’s hosting country and its way of life. Among the changes, some are obvious: I mentioned about food in a previous post. Switching driving side is another obvious change you have to comply with, etc…

But after a while, when those new habits which were real brain surgery at first begin to become part of your everyday life, you can start focusing on those more subtle differences. Namely the noises. Yes, the noises. Places often have a very typical noise. Most of the time it’s barely noticeable. It’s just part of the environment. As I said, your mind is too busy to notice them at first, but thereafter you can identify them.

For instance when I moved in Brest, one of the biggest harbor in France, I got woken up every foggy morning (so basically each other day in Brittany…) by the foghorn… When I moved in Muncie, a small countryside town in Indiana, USA, it took me a while to identify this weird noise haunting the streets: Muncie is a major crossroads for train freight. And one surprising thing about US: as per federal law, trains are supposed to honk repeatedly while approaching the least crossroad… Thus this noise days and nights…

It took me while but I finally identified the typical noise for KL: having a mosque nearby my house, I can sometime ear the chant of the muezzin’s preach…

F.R.I.M

Sunday afternoon Marie and I visited the FRIM (Forest Research Institute of Malaysia). This is a protected wild area concentrating the majors species of trees and plants of the Borneo's primary forest. One good thing about this park is that although it's only 25 min North of KL, as soon as we entered it we felt like we were trekking in the heart of Borneo's jungle! We took the short loop (about 4 miles). This was enough to feel weird: I already noticed this, jungle trekking has a hypnotizing power on me! After some time I feel the same as after speleology. Perhaps it's due to the dense canopy above my head preventing me from seeing the sky and also from the thick silence due to the dense surrounding vegetation. Or maybe just the moist heat getting on my nerves?

Anyway, it was really interesting. We saw giant bamboos, screw shaped creepers, elephant trees, unattached trees, etc... Regarding the latter, the FRIM is really proud of those unattached trees, big time! Apparently the National Geo made a paper about it... Actually it's something truly unusual (cf. picture on the left). It was curious to figure out why on Earth those trees won't just overlap like any other tree! I googled it but didn't get a hit. Same for National Geo online archives. If some biologist specialised in jungle trees wander around please share your knowledge!

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Guru

The Bahasa Melayu word for teacher is... Guru! Sorry you probably don't give a sh... but it just cracked me up! It made my day!
Guru... hahaha!

Berhenti = Stop ; Beri Laluan = Give Way

I have been feeling like a teenager lately: I'll take the written part of the Malaysian Driving Licence test tomorrow morning. Therefore, I have been practicing the Malaysian driving rules and road signs all evening yesterday... Kindly reminds me of my 16th birthday! Well, might sounds a bit stupid, but driving here makes a hell of a difference compared to France. Beyond the anti conformist reverse British driving, Malaysian people make an intensive use of their honk. And I now understand why: as per the Road Transport Department of Malaysia, it is officially advise to do so in many case: overtaking, entering a bend, passing a cow... What about kindly waving cops?

Edit: I passed :-)

Where the hell is Matt?

I wish I was Matt! So does my colleague Sam who spends 10 min steering at this video every morning since a week. What Sam, don't you like seating at your desk?...

Makan lah!

It's been about 3 month now that I landed in Malaysia. Among all the changes from my previous life, food was a big one! Malaysian having a very rich ethnicity, food is accordingly incredibly varied. In Europe we sadly tend to call "Chinese" any restaurant serving any Asian food. But of course the variety is at least as wide as within European countries! And a Chinese Steamboat has definitely not the same taste as the Thai Fish Curry or the Indian Brinjal plate!

Add to this that dinning out at the restaurant is much much cheaper than in Europe and you will figure out why I spent 3 month without even peeling an apple! Though I like cooking, but even the dish I am the most proud of cannot compete with the mouth fireworks I experience on a daily basis down here. I just can't get enough of discovering new cuisines, new taste, new spices...

However after 3 month not even approaching my condo's kitchen I finally caught up with my favorite hobby: Marie and I spent some time Saturday cooking home made veggie lasagna from scratch. According to the Friends who came enjoy it at night, it was delicious! Either they were being really polite or I just didn't loose it too much during this no-cooking period...

Anyway, it was a lot of fun, a great time spent with some close friends, good wine enjoyed along with the lasagna... To be done again!

Work hard, play hard

I just found out that I got a meeting with the customer next Saturday morning... One noticeable thing about Asia: work never stops there! But what to say... when you got to see the client, you got to see the client. Period.

Call mom

In order to reduce cost, my company implemented a gateway to pass international calls over its own network. As a result, when I call my mother, I got to dial:

0320560827P820033495298713
(some digits randomly changed)

Gosh, I got to love her!

Merdeka in Perhentian Islands

It feels good to leave the boiling KL and relax for a bit on one of the most beautiful paradise Island in the world!

Well, when I say "relax", it turned out that things could have been much different. At first this trip started pretty bad: Merdeka being one of the busiest week-end, I made sure to book transportation, accommodation and PADI course for Marie and I ahead of time. So after an intense working day, we arrived around 9:30p at the Sentral train station, ready for an overnight journey across Malaysia towards Kota Bahru. I suggested going check the platform number and then having a coffee, since we had 1/2 hour before the train leaves... That's pretty much at this point that I figured out that the actual departure time was... half an hour ago!

Now, what? It's almost 10p, the busiest week-end of the year, all the transportation fully booked since at least a month! We had struggled to be able to take one day off, to get the PADI course booked, etc... No way to screw up the week-end like that! We felt so desperate :-( And I especially felt so stupid because I was the one in charge. So we rushed towards the Putra Jaya bus station at the other side of the city, expecting to take over the seats of some passenger not showing up at the last minute. And it turned out that it's pretty much was happen!... Great!

Enough with the complaining: the rest of the week-end was really enjoyable, though. The diving course was pretty intense since it's suppose to fit in three days, but as we took a plane on the way back, we where not supposed to dive 18 hours before take off, so we took the course in two days. The Turtle Bay Diver club on Besar Island deserves some advertisement here: the manager really helped us get the best out of our diving experience! They are both really cautious about security and ready to let the fun show up even 18 meter underwater. I recommend them.

The last day we climbed the hill along a dirt trail across the jungle. Intense and rough experience! But the overview of the two Islands from the top of the hill makes the hike worth it.

I can't wait to get underwater again!

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