Best of Broadway! Lah!!

This is the town square at Fraser Hill. Fraser's Hill is at 1500m and hence a lot cooler than KL.


The title was the name of the drama production put on at the school this week. The Lah is a Malaysian thing. Sentences in English are usually ended with lah or can lah. I guess the way Canadians say, eh. I tried to include a movie clip of the finale but had problems. Instead I put a short clip from the play from the Annie section. A lot of my Grade 5 munchkins were involved in this. The scale of the production of the production was something else to behold. About 250 kids from Grades 2 to 12 were involved. The level of talent is very high. A lot of parents, I'm sure, have had their kids take voice and drama lessons. Maureen and I worked at all three performances as 'head of the house'. I'm not really sure what our duties were other than supervising the ushers and making sure the audience behaved itself during the performances (no flash photography, no crying kids etc.). The director is a cute little Filipino gal, who has studied drama all over the world including some famous school in New York. She is married to a Canadian fellow and just completed her Master's last year at Simon Fraser. We thought the production was an unbelievable undertaking but found out the 'big one' is in the spring. The extra-curricular expectations here are pretty high. I guess when parents (well their companies in 99% of the cases) pay $22500US in tuition a year they can expect a lot in return.

Maureen has been bagged all week after her adventure in Singapore. She went with 7 other teachers, 5 from our school and 2 from another international school. They decided to fly because the price difference between the bus and plane was negligible. The problem arose when there flight was delayed in the return by 5 hours. She didn't arrive in our condo until 3:15am Monday morning. Needless to say this kind of slowed her down for the week and has left her fighting a cold. Other than that she really enjoyed Singapore.
Singapore was part of Malaysia for a short time in the early 60's. Singaporeans are mainly of Chinese decent and after a series of squabbles with the Malaysians they were booted out of the union of Malay states in 1965. From 1959 to 1990 Singapore was ruled by Lee Kuan Yew. He pushed through an ambitious plan of modernization and industrialization that has created one of the most prosperous cities in the world. He and his political allies have also created one of the most controlled states in the world. Maureen was scared to death of dropping a kleenex out of her purse or some other such offense as there is an immediate $500 fine. There seem to be rules and fines for everything including gum chewing. The other side of this of course is that everything is very well organized and run. There are no traffic jams in Singapore. People actually signal and shoulder check when they change lanes there. Crime is non-existent. Those in possession of drugs are executed. There is no defense or excuse.
The other downside of being in such a prosperous city is that everything is extremely expensive and believe it or not Maureen didn't shop. She really does like bargains. She did have a Singapore Sling at Raffles though and checked out the city thoroughly.

Saturday night the Parent Association hosted a dinner for teachers. The theme was western. The group was rather small but we managed to have fun. Maureen taught a group of keeners a five or six line dances. As the event was outside this was enough. They all needed to wring out their clothes after. All this is still a bit hard to comprehend. It's turned December, the Christmas decorations are up but it is so hot and humid outside.

Today we drove up to the hill resort of Fraser Hill. We managed to get in a little hike. There are lots of birds up there. We were looking for exotic types like hornbills etc. but only managed to run into a large owl. There were a number of Malaysian bird watchers on the trail when we told them of the owl they were unbelievably excited about this and we had to show them where we saw it. I guess owl are rarer than hornbills in Malaysia. The cameras and lenses these guys had were very large and expensive. We did have to pull off a few leaches after our walk. They like to crawl inside your socks.




Broadway Lah video.

Carpets

Carpets have been sort of theme over the past two weekends. Last Sunday we accompanied Chris and Cindy to a Persian carpet auction. They had been there the day before, bought 5 carpets and were going to show us the ropes. Apparently Chris has done considerable research on carpets so he was going to give us expert advice. Another teacher, Laura (from Regina via Laos), also joined us. The Iranian carpet fellow was having a 4 day auction, Sat/Sun last weekend and this weekend, selling 104 carpets each day. Well, when the auction started Maureen started to bid on the first carpet but Cindy outbid her and got it. Our group bought the first 6 carpets brought out to auction. We ended up with two rather nice ones, a runner and the one pictured above. I kind of dragged Maureen out, kicking and screaming, after we bought these two. Good thing because Chris and Cindy bought 8 more and Laura bought 5. They do go really cheap and they are beautiful handwoven carpets. (There are some advantages living in a Muslim country as trade between Iran and Malaysia is free and open.) This weekend Maureen is in Singapore with some of her primary teaching buddies. My job was to go back to the auction and look and see if there were some that were going really cheap and pick up a few as gifts to take home. Well ,I went but I failed in my task. I ended up buying a rather nice larger carpet and then I hightailed it out of there. It is so beautiful and went for such a good price.
Report cards are over and done with. I got to spend my birthday doing parent teacher interviews. 100% of the parents turned up for their interview. They are all very keen and concerned about their child's education. Now Maureen and I in the middle of our teaching assessments. Maureen had her first visitation by the principal last Friday, fortunately no one drowned (her station is the pool now). Mine is next week.
I had the weekend to myself with Maureen in Singapore (except for a couple of hours at the carpet thing, but they feed you an Iranian lunch, so it was ok) I went biking up Genting Highlands again. I really love that ride. It is so lush and green and virtually no traffic on the road. It is about a 18 km ride to the top which takes a little over an hour and a half. The ride down is fast and wild. I was on my own and I guess the monkeys think you are an easier target. I had two of them charge at me. It is a bit freaky as you know they can leap about 30 ft if they want to. Last thing I want is some monkey putting his fangs into my neck. I need pepper spray!!
I knew I was going for an even longer ride today so I went for a massage last night. The only massage I've been able to find is of the Thai massage variety. The women who do the massage are all pretty stocky and very strong. With a Thai massage, the masseuse digs her elbows or feet between each muscle fiber in your body. They stand and lean into the massage with as much force as possible. The more you call out in pain the harder they seem to push. After the massage they then wrap your body up into unbelievable contortions. It feels good at the end but I think I'm going to find a gentler variety of massage.
Today, Malcolm (a teacher from Manitoba who retired, moved to BC and then figured he wasn't quite ready for retirement) and I did a 65 km ride to and from Fraser Hill. Fraser Hill is another old tea plantation and ex-get-away for the expats to a cooler climate. This is another curvy road up the mountain. This is the main road to Fraser Hill but still had very little traffic on it. The ride was great even though we got caught in a tropical rain storm on the way home.

Old fart on the road up to Fraser Hill. After the parent teacher interviews we went out to dinner with another teaching couple from the school (Australian). The guy shares the same birthday as me, only two decades earlier. This is a large reservoir of drinking water for KL.A sample of the jungle views on the ride up. Looks like BC except that the vegetation is all tropical: palms, bamboo, etc. And when we got soaked by the rain, we were warm. While we were stopped here we could hear the monkeys jabbering away in the trees around us.

Week 16

That is hard to believe. We've been here for 16 weeks and it still feels like we are just beginning to settle in. As we listen to report of snow and the onset of winter back home it seems even more strange. The weather is the same now as it was when we arrived. 32 degrees and humid. On the way up the elevator today, a little girl and her dad got on with us. The girl was in a school uniform and we started talking to her about school. Her dad said that at the end of this week, a seven week holiday would start. Maureen asked if it was their summer holiday. They kind of gave us a funny look and said, "No it is just holidays." I guess it is always summer here. Sunrise and sunset has also been consistent. The sun has risen at 7:00 am and sets about 7:00 pm everyday.

Well, for those of you following the blog you'll be happy to know that no shame was brought to the Bukit Utama Line Dancing Club on account of Maureen. She enjoyed herself last week but has decided that 3 days per week are a little too much of line dancing even for her. She will back off to one apparently. I've included a picture of some members of the club and one of the whole group preparing to strut their stuff.


On Wednesday (Tuesday back in NA remember) we were invited to one of the American teachers condos for an election party. There are a number of Americans at the school and they were ecstatic with Obama's win. I think we were invited to accept an apology on behalf of the group, who had for the last 8 years been claiming to be Canadians when traveling around, as they were embarrassed about their leadership and foreign policies. Here is a photo of them smiling and flashing the V sign.

Last week was an awful week at school. On Tuesday, one of Maureen's Grade 2 PE students, asked to go see the school nurse part way the morning. She was complaining of being dizzy and nauseous. The nurse called her mom to come and get her. Her condition rapidly got worse and by the time the mom arrived the nurses had already made arrangements for her to be transported to a doctor's office about a 1/2 block away. They immediately called for an ambulance and rushed her to the hospital. She was put on life support right away but did not make it. The whole school is still reeling from the shock and speed of her death. Tomorrow evening her memorial service will be held at the school.
The school really is a center in the lives of the students and parents whose children attend there. Yesterday(Sunday) I was at school doing some work and about 30 families(all Swedes, if I can judge by the blond hair) showed up to play game on the sports field. It was neat watching the families all have fun together. The school is the expat families focal point. Hence the reason for the memorial service at the school.

Friday night about 50 of us hopped on a bus and rode to the Heineken brewery for a tour. One of the parents from the school is the master brewer and he invited us for a tour. It was rather interesting. We got to see the production end of things which was rather fascinating considering the volume they put through. 70000 cans and 50000 bottles and a bunch of kegs every hour. What most enjoyed, of course, was the opportunity to sample their products in pub that they have. They also fed us and gave us a goodie bag at the end of the night. I've included a photo of some of the revellers.

The rest of the weekend was pretty quiet. We did manage a bike ride ourselves out to the rubber plantation. It is actually quite close to us and provides a bit of a respite from the city. I've included a photo of the planation itself and one of a tree being tapped.

Halloween, River Rafting, and Terry Fox Run

Another eventful and hectic week and weekend has come and gone. I think the highlight was the river rafting trip we did on Saturday. (I say I think, because it was all pretty good.) We traveled about an hour and half out of KL to Sungai(river) Selangor. It is actually hard to believe but we haven't had rain for about a week now, so the river was a little low. Just high enough to be navigable for rafting. We spent a lot of time leaning to the left, leaning to the right, charging to the front of the raft and then to the back to get over and around the rocks in the river. It was quite exhausting actually. There about 12 of us from the school who went and we were joined at the river by about 15 Malays. The whole trip took about 4 hours to complete. The first part was pretty rough but the last was fairly calm although the river moved fast. Most of us spent the last kilometer or so lying back in the water and floating downstream. It was great fun although we came out of the water looking rather like shriveled prunes. At the end of the trip we were treated to a rather delicious Malay lunch of Nasi Lemak. I've included a little video clip of my raft crashing down one little rapid.






Friday was Halloween, of course. I love how they do it at this school. Nothing, except for the K and pre-schooler classes, happens during the school day.(The pre-schoolers, by the way, attend school from 8:30 to 1:30. The K students go all day) The parents arrive at the school right at 3 o'clock and get to work. Because most of the kids live in condos, making trick-or-treating problematic, the school event is the main thing for them to do. The kids come to school at 7 pm and wind their way through the hallways and get treats at each floor or area of the school. Between 3 and 7 the parents have transformed the school into a Halloween heaven for kids. Each grade level is located in a different floor or wing of the school. The grades go from Pre-school 1 (3 year olds) to Grade 5. There is quite the competition among the moms to create the best Halloween hallway and so the decorations are something else. Most of the moms are well-educated with professional backgrounds who are now stay-at-home moms while their husbands work for multi-national corporations based in Malaysia. They're bright and energetic and know how to get things done. After the kids were through with the trick-or-treating they could then go to the breezeway (best way to describe this is the big open area inside the school entrance where parents drop-off and pick up kids) for games the parents had set up or go to the courtyard where they had a hip-hop artist doing his thing. Maureen and I dressed up. She was a gypsy and I was a pirate. Our only duty was to wonder around and talk to the kids and their parents. The middle school was having a dance so we checked that out also.


Twister was one of the games the parents had. Kids and parents get involved in it all.

Today was the Terry Fox Run. Maureen had spent all week showing the Terry Fox videos to her students, having them do a mini-run in class (at 32 degrees and 85% humidity they don't run for long) and encouraging them to come out to the TF Run at Lake Garden Park in KL. Lots of them showed up to run with their PE teacher. Last year there were over 5000 participants in the run and there were at least that number again this year. It is very well organized and lots of fun.




The rest of today, Sunday, I am spending doing report cards. I suppose that explains why I'm filling in the blog earlier than usual. Maureen is off to some kind of line dancing event. There is a group of women, about 25 I think, who practice line dancing at our condo 3 days a week. Maureen joined up with them. There is some kind of big extravaganza event today with all the line dancing clubs in KL. Line dancing is a big thing here for some reason, along with karaoke. I'll probably take a miss on both of those experiences. Anyway the local dancers have been after Maureen to make it to practice regularly so she doesn't bring shame to the club. I'll let you know what happened with that next time.


This raft didn't quite follow the chute. Believe it or not they survived the landing.


Maureen the Gypsy queen.The MKIS Sr. girls Basketball team at the Terry Fox Run.

Happy Deepavali

The fireworks are still going off as I write. Last night they were firing off for about 4 hours. This weekend was Deepavali, the Indian Festival of Light or Harvest Festival. We got today, Monday, off and were able to enjoy another cultural event in Malaysia. When we arrived at school last Monday there were rice creations like the one above all over the school. Students, parents, and staff of Indian origin had spent the weekend putting together these rice reliefs. This one was rather large and what you see is only one part of it. These were all over the city where ever people gather, the malls, public offices etc.. This one had to be covered up at night or the monkeys would destroy them running around.
The week was a busy one at school. Besides Deepavali, there was a read-a-thon, and UN Day. On Friday all the different nationalities (that had there act together) put on a little performance for the rest of the school to demonstrate their national pride. It was a great event. It gave a perspective of how many from each nationality are at the school. The order seems to go Dutch, Korean, American, Philippine, Swedish, Australian, Brazilian, Swiss, Indian, and others. The Canadian group is rather small and weren't organized enough to get a performance together, although Maureen has plans to change that for next year.

A Dane and Dutch girl in National colours.
My class dress for UN Day. There are Korean, American, German, Swedish, Australian, Singaporean, Danish, Swiss, Argentinian, Italian, Chinese, Indian, and Taiwanese, and maybe some more.

We did have a long weekend but decided to hang about KL for a change and be a local tourist. On Saturday, after tennis, we met up with some other teachers and headed off to Brickfields or Little India to check out the festivities. I could almost imagine what it would be like in India. The area was packed full of people and there were hundreds of stalls selling every imaginable item. As Deepavali represents the beginning of something new the Indians by a lot of new things, clothes etc. Maureen did manage to end up with a nice looking Indian outfit. The sites, sounds and smells are still with me a couple of days later.The stalls at Brickfields extend right onto the street and the street was bumper to bumper traffic.

On Sunday I made use of the GPS I purchased and we drove downtown to on of the parks, Bird Park. It is a very large area, acres and acres, that have been netted off and have birds of every variety in. It was a great way to spend an afternoon. We tried to head up to one of the towers but the crowds there were a little much for us. We joined some friends for dinner at a Mexican restaurant and then headed to a open area cafe/pub to watch the soccer match between Liverpool and Chelsea.


There is 9 hole golf course that goes around our condo so we tried that out today. We thought we might try golf once a month or so. It is actually a nice little course and we enjoyed going out with a couple other of the teachers from the school. This evening we were invited out to a Deepavali open house at our condo. The realtor that we got our condo through is Indian and he invited us. The food was incredible. Maureen got the opportunity to dress up in her new outfit.

Kuala Selangor

Last week Maureen had her students present the hip-hop routines they had made up in PE class. She invited parents to come and watch the performance. Most of the moms here are stay at home mom (as the dads earn lots) so she had large audiences come for each class. Not sure how the rather proper administration felt about the kids wondering around out of uniform and showing 'attitude'.


We figured out one place we will take visitors to when they come to Kuala Lumpur. Kuala Selangor has the Firefly Park. The variety of firefly found in the park is quite large, about 6 cm long. They gather in a certain species of tree called berembang by the thousands after dark. The incredible thing about them is that they flash in synchrony. It is like watching a Christmas tree display minus the tinsel. We drove to the park after school on Friday, about 1 1/2 hour drive from KL. Our accommodation was right at the park in chalets that are on stilts out on the water. After dark we got in a electric motored boat for a tour up the river to view the fireflies. The display and experience were absolutely incredible. It really was quite magical drifting up the river in the silent boat watching the fireflies put on a show. Apparently there are usually hundreds of others viewing the firefly but for some reason we hit a quiet night and had a boat all to ourselves. We travelled with some other teachers from school, Chris and Cindy.

The next day we toured around the area visiting an old look-out hill used by the Indian, the Dutch, and British as a look-out onto the Straits of Malacca. At the base of the hill is Taman Alam Nature Park. We toured around and explored the park until the mid-day heat drove us back to our air conditioned car. HSBC is a big sponsor of the park and replanting of the of the mangroves in the swamp. We met a large crew of HSBC bank employees up to their armpits in mud having a great time planting trees. This was interesting for us as HSBC is the bank Pedja works for back in Vancouver.There were lots of monkeys at the look-out. They were of a much friendly variety then the ones at school. Most of them we just chilling out like this one in front of the cannon.
Maureen with Chris and Cindy on the boardwalk in the mangrove area of the nature park.

On Sunday we got up early and headed off on a bike trip to FRIM (Forest Research Instutute of Malaysia). It was an epic ride there of about 15 kms of freeway and interchange biking. We did have some great biking in the park itself. There were about 15 of us. Maureen was the only female but she showed us all how to endure the mud. We came in from the backside of the park and rode through to the entrance where we had a great breakfast from a vendor of Nasi Lemak. It was delicious. A heaping plate of this and some sweet hot tea set us back the equivalent of about $.75US. The bike trip of about 55 km took us about 5 hours to complete and we arrived home ready for a quiet afternoon.Riding on the trails in the forest reserve was quite nice. There were lots of people around enjoying the biking or hiking on the trails. The ferns and vegetation are something else.

The mud in places was something else also.Just at the foot of the FRIM park there are hundreds of flower and plant stalls. Many of them sell orchids like this.

Happy Thanksgiving

I'm sure everyone back in Canada is well stuffed from dinner and looking forward to all the creative ways to use up turkey leftovers. We were thinking of everyone. Holidays times with friends and family are special indeed and not being with folks at home does tug at the heart.
We did manage to have a Thanksgiving Dinner with about a dozen other Canadians and their families. It was a bit of a challenge with limited resources as far as kitchen supplies but everyone chipped in and we were well fed. One of the teachers even managed to find a turkey for us. The teaching staff does have a good mix of younger and wiser, more mature teachers such as Maureen and I. The get togethers are kind more like the old days in BC when there was a mix of ages in the teaching profession that would hang out with each other. We sort of forgot what it was like to have wee ones around though. It was rather noisy and we have been cleaning up play dough and other toys for two days now that found there way into various crevices in the couch etc..
Saturday we had a wonderful cultural experience. One of the teachers is married to a local Indian fellow. (Maureen has habit of calling these folks East Indians and the little grade one Indians are always correcting her. "What are you talking about maam? We are Indians not East Indians." Imagine the accent)
Lucas(the eel man in a previous post) played field hockey for the Malaysian national team some time ago and knows Maureen coached field hockey for years. He invited us to attend the JollyLads Veteran's Field Hockey Banquet. All the male field hockey players here, similar to Canada, are of Indian background. The banquet was held in a rather nice hotel downtown. We arrived about 7:30 and the entertainment started soon after. There were two dance groups, a couple comedy acts, a couple of musical performers, and a number of official ceremonial events. Dinner was a brief respite in between the acts (all of Indian variety) It was very good and very spicy. The acts were rather amazing. Great dancers and musicians and even though I could only understand about 1 in 3 words from the stand-up comedian (he was really laying on the accent) he was hilarious. The entertainment lasted until midnight and then the dancing started. The music was Bollywood and everyone danced. Maureen and I learned Snoop Dog's dance moves to the Bollywood film he was in. (Not much more than tapping the chest and pointing in the air) The men all brought a bottle of Scotch to share with the table. Maybe that explains why they all danced so well.
Lucas seemed to be related to most folks there and introduced us to more cousins than I have known anyone to have. One is the deputy chief of police for KL and I figure that might be a good contact.
I guess this a big affair in the Indian community. The ambassador from Romania to Malaysia was there as the guest of honour. We got to watch him try to unsuccessfully hustle some of the better looking girls.
Anyway it was a fun evening. Needless to say I didn't make it up in time to do the early morning bike on Sunday.