Archive for March, 2007

Those of a sensitive nature should turn away now.

The one thing I’d always found challenging in Malaysia was the state of the public toilets. They used to be dank, damp, stinky and just plain traumatic. You’d only go if you were really desparate and would otherwise hold on for dear life until you got home. And if you did have to go, you’d try not to touch anything, look at anything and you’d hold your breath until stars flashed in your eyes.

This last trip I made back to Malaysia, I was completely captivated by the public loos. It began at KL International Airport (”The Best Airport in the World” according to the banners that greet you as you get off the plane - and I’m inclined to agree). The ladies room there were clean, sleek, bright and shiny with auto-flush toilets, lots of loo roll, soap and paper towels. Then in the malls where I was speaking at a number of book events, the toilets were lovely and sweet-smelling, with bright, clean surfaces and shiny tiles. And practically everywhere I went after that, the public toilets just exuded luxury and glamour.

Someone told me that these delights didn’t just happen on their own and that the Minister of Tourism issued an edict to the nation to get their toilets in order for Visit Malaysia Year. Can that be true? Or is it just an urban myth? At any rate, in my view, if anything tells you that Malaysia is a nation that’s achieved world-class success, it’s the state of its public toilets.

I was so horrified and appalled when I arrived back in the UK. The ladies toilets at Heathrow were the first to greet me and they were tatty, dirty, badly stocked and unkempt. Everywhere I go now in London, I find myself comparing the toilets to the joys of the Malaysian loos.

Pic: thanks to techno-impressionist.com

I was talking to a friend last week about the etiquette of an English dinner party. In the old days there used to be fairly rigid rules about how to behave but in the 21st century, where we’re all much less formal, you’d think that when someone invited you to dinner, it was just dinner and you would turn up and eat and that was all there was to it. But the more we explored it, the more there still seemed to be unwritten rules and rituals around the English dinner party. Here’s a list of things my friend and I came up with as essential etiquette when you’re invited to or giving a modern English dinner party:

1. These days you’re usually invited by email or telephone. Gone are the days of hand-written letters by fountain pen for your run-of-the-mill dinner parties. And with that, much of the over-formal formalities.

2. Most people ask what they should bring and are usually told: nothing, just yourselves or red or white wine. A Chinese young man newly arrived in England brought a bottle of sherry to a dinner we were both invited to although I specifically warned him ahead to bring wine (”Oh, I like sherry,” he said) and then spent the whole evening beating himself up that he’d brought the wrong thing when he handed over the bottle and the host had looked bewildered.

Even if you are told to bring nothing, you should always bring something - the best bet being a bunch of flowers or a box of chocolates. At the more casual end among good friends, you might be asked to bring dessert - we reckon that anything gooey and indulgent from Marks & Spencers should do the trick.

3. At dinner, the host usually has an idea in their mind of a seating arrangement even if there are no name cards for the table. The idea is to get a good mix round the table of people who don’t know each other but who might get on well, splitting up couples so they don’t end up next to each other or opposite each other while being not too far away from each other (diagonal seems to work best, we decided). In the old days, the host would also have to worry about seating boy-girl-boy alternately but in these modern times of girl-girl and boy-boy couples, that rule is by necessity much less rigid.

4. The old adage “no sex, religion or politics” still applies. The most painful dinner parties I’ve been to have usually been the result of someone unaccustomed to dinner parties ranting on about one or other of those topics. Everyone ends up feeling bruised and exhausted.

5. The idea is to be amusing, witty and entertaining, keeping business talk to a minimum. The objective is to end the evening with a warm glow from the food, wine and company. The rest of the world can be out there battling it out over sex, religion and politics and you’ve got the grind of making a living and whatever difficulties may be challenging you at that point. But for a few hours one evening, the world is that convivial dinner table and you can laugh with some friends and delight in a good meal and feel that life is good.

Pic: thanks to allposters.com

When I met Lydia Teh for lunch in Kuala Lumpur, we went to Delifrance in one of the many malls - a chain of cafes selling French-style pastries and coffee. In the UK, the equivalent is Delice de France and it sells croissants and chocalate or almond croissants with savoury flavours such as Chicken Feuillette or Ham and Cheese Croissant.

In the KL Delifrance, I was tickled and delighted to find Green Curry Feuillette and Beef Rendang Feuillette, the ultimate in fusion food. I had the Green Curry Feuillette and it was spicy and yummy, the combination of curry and flaky pastry reminding me of curry puffs.

If you know of any other fusion foods like this, do email me or add a comment!

“Biting her head off” in its most literal sense…

(Don’t worry, it’s not gorey.)

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When I was in Kuala Lumpur at the end of February, it was Chinese New Year and when my Mum and I popped into Standard Chartered Bank to get some cash, we found ourselves surrounded by lions dancing to a crashing, deafening beat of cymbals and drums.

The dance troupe were making their rounds of the KL city banks and financial institutions, their ritual intended to bestow luck and prosperity on their hosts. We watched with delight and amazement. I kept thinking how one would never see this in a UK bank!

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Photos: thanks to Miss Sun Piu Yee of Standard Chartered Bank, Kuala Lumpur who kindly emailed me these pics.

Asia’s love affair with technology and the web is taking its toll. According to Reuters, students in India are spending so much time surfing the internet and blogging that they are becoming isolated, depressive and even suicidal. There’s been a decline in real life social activities and sports on campus with students preferring the solitude of being with their laptops and computer in the virtual company of a billion bytes of humanity.

Read the full article here.

Photo: thanks to thetrial on flickr.com

This Twitter thing is exploding. I turn away from the computer for a second and someone’s invented this living, moving map that shows you where in the world someone is twittering from:

Go to: http://twittermap.com/twittervision

You’ll be hypnotised - and also probably get a bit queasy as the map zooms around the world showing you thought balloons whenever anyone texts a thought, a gripe, a moment from their lives up onto to Twitter. It gives “stream of consciousness” writing a whole new meaning.

What’s the point of it all? I think people are still trying to figure it out. Key blogging commentators like Robert Scoble (Microsoft) and Steve Rubel (Edelmans) are on Twitter engaging in a conversation with other key figures plus anyone who wants to add their tuppence worth - about twittering, blogging and the impact of all this on global ideas. Other people are just texting what they’ve been doing, sharing their lives with friends and hundreds and thousands of strangers around the world - and I guess that’s part of the aura of it: that as a visitor, you can glimpse into the lives of so many strangers and as a participant you can share what you’re thinking or doing at any given moment. It’s an act of defiance - or desperation? - against existential angst and the aloneness of the human condition.

PS. Thanks to Andrew Eglinton for telling me about the link.

Pic: thanks to academic.evergreen.edu

We’re not all about high-brow stuff and books here at Fusion View. Ladies, if you want some eye-candy, a pretty boy, a big slab of countryside hunk, we can help you find one.

Just head on over to Beaut Blokes at www. beautblokes.com.au and sign up for a weekend in the stunning Australian landscape with some stunning Australian men.

The strap line for the site is “revitalising rural communities.” It seems that too many smart women are heading off to the cities for big time careers, leaving too many beaut Ozzie blokes in the countryside. The Beaut Blokes events are aimed at bringing the women back to see what they are missing out on - hopefully, they will find the man of their dreams and revitalise the parched countryside.

This is not a solely Australian problem. In China, there are likely to be 30 million single men by 2020 - partly due to the country’s one child policy where many female foetuses were aborted and partly due to many young women preferring to move to the cities for their careers.

In the UK, farmers in Wales will appear on milk cartons with the enticing invitation, “Fancy a Farmer?” with contact details for the ladies to get in touch if he tickles their fancy over their breakfast cereal.

Here is a video to spark some controversy. If you are a cat-lover, you’ll see cute kitties doing their loveable thang in this video. If you are not so fond of them, you’ll see evil, spitting demons….

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Which camp are you in?

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