A day in Kuala Lumpur

We spent a full day in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia)

Although upon arrival I did notfeel any emotional connection to this country whatsoever, I kinda started to like it.

The big plus is obviously the languages: everyone speaks English here, with a very cute accent (emphasis on last word of a sentence), and Malay is similar enough to Indonesian that you can make yourself understood with Bahasa Indonesia. Whether you understand what they say back, is another question Written language is a totally different story: many ancient / obsoleted words in Indonesia are still in use in Malay.

Kuala Lumpur has very modern buildings, and they have really got their country organized well. Chinatown however is a lot less clean, and some streets are very narrow. Not that cleanliness is an essential requirement for me to feel comfortable anywhere. I never expected all of Asia to be as clean as e.g. Sweden.

If I had to grade the countries, China would get an 8.5 out of 10 (only not higher because of the language barrier, which is really my own deficiency), and Malaysia (K.L.) an 8 laaah…

Too bad that Indonesia, my “native soil” (well, my parents’) is said to be worse in every respect: dirtier, unsafer, more polluted, hotter, awful traffic in Jakarta, and mosquitoes. Well, at least I will have seen it with my own eyes then…

Around the world in 800 mins.

On Saturday morning, we went from Australia to Asia, and then via America and the Caribbean to Africa, to settle down for lunch in Scandinavia, where I also had a nice chat with a girl from Halmstad. After which had a quick visit to Eastern Europe, and crossed Germany and Austria, to finish the day on the Mediterranean, mostly Italy, Turkey and Greece. I hear you thinking: “How’s that possible? He’s dreaming”. Nope, we were fully awake, and visiting the Vakantiebeurs. Nine big halls of the Jaarbeurs in Utrecht were filled with booths of tour operators and national tourism organizations from just about every country in the world you can imagine. You name it, it was there.

And there were some really amazingly creative booths, e.g. in the form of an egyptian temple, the interior of a plane, a part of a rainforest, or a sushi bar. Since it was impossible to see everything, we decided to skip a few countries, which we weren’t too interested in, most notably France, who had 1 entire hall. The destinations I was most interested in, were: Australia, China / HK / Taiwan, Japan, South Africa, Italy, and of course Sweden.

If we had any feet left after 5 hours of strolling through the halls, we certainly didn’t have any arms left, due to the plastic bags containing a few kilos of brochures. Afterwards I regretted, I didn’t get a massage in that booth with the lovely Chinese lady. I must have been subconsciously deterred by the credit card swiping device staring at me on the counter… But it was definitely a fun day!

Swedish Christmas Dinner

Wednesday night was the Swedish Christmas dinner I had been looking forward to. And I was not disappointed, for it was a success in 3 ways:
1) I had nice talks with the church staff
2) The company during dinner was nice
3) The food was delicious, and looked pretty much like this:

(this particular image comes from Skivarps G�stgivareg�rd)

For starters there were:
- Cold cuts: ham, salmon, herring, and cheese.
- Red beet salad and nice sauces, incl. caviar sauce.
- Kn�ckebr�d, toast, nice brown bread

The main / warm dishes were:
- Mash potatoes
- Jansson’s Temptation, an oven dish with potatoes and anchovies.
- The Famous Swedish Meatballs
- Sausages called Prinskorv

And for dessert, there was a delicious ice cake.

To drink, there was gl�gg, beer, cider, and fl�derblomssaft. How Swedish! And apple juice for the kids…

Onze Taal Congres

Today I went to the most amusing congress I’ve ever been to in my life: the congress of the Genootschap Onze Taal   (“Our Language” Society).
The program consisted of:
- 5 invited speakers, all of whom were extremely amusing to listen to, and most of whom had something interesting to tell as well.
- 3 performances, first of all by famous comedian Freek de Jonge, the Belgian singers La�s, and 3 actresses including Petra Laseur
- 1 debate between 2 researchers on the proposition: “Changes in language are often decline of the language”

Anyway, it was not only highly amusing, but also quite interesting. Since it was intended for a general public, there weren’t any deep scientific analyses, but those would probably just have made it boring. We went home with a ”Gee, too bad it’s only once every two years”-feeling, rather than the “Gee, my brain is completely fried”-feeling you’d normally have after a scientific conference.

Kr�ftskiva i Haarlem

A bit late, but here’s an update anyway: I went to a Swedish crayfish party (kr�ftskiva) on Saturday, which was organized by the Swedish-Dutch Association.

Maybe the fun thing was so much the food itself, because the crayfish turned out to be small and very tough, and they don’t have a lot of meat. But it was fun battling with them, together with other people, and the side dishes were delicious: toast with pr�stost cheese, a nice salad, and nice ice cream and pancakes for dessert.
Even more fun were the traditional songs (snappsvisor) and the people. Not that many Swedish people, lots of mixed couples (1 Dutch, 1 Swedish), but at least everyone had some link with Sweden. Got to meet everyone on the board (bestuur / styrelse) of the club, because they had spotted my “weird” last name: neither Swedish nor Dutch.

Indonesia Raya

This morning, I had a very nice celebration of Indonesia’s 60th Independence Day at the ambassador’s residence in Wassenaar.

The program consisted of:
1) Reading of the Proclamation of Independence, as in 1945.
2) Raising of the Flag
3) Singing of the National Anthem
4) Speech by the Ambassador
5) Music & dance on the podium.
6) FOOD, lots of great food. There were about 20 stalls selling a huge variety of Indo food. The smells were so great, and the taste turned out to be good too. Too bad there were so many types, so you could only like try 1% of everything. But the fried noodles were very decent and the “pastel” delicious.

Although I didn’t really know many people, I did talk to a few students from Leiden, who were raising funds for a human rights organization. Might see them again on Sep 5th.

Later, when we were having lunch, we ran into a lot of friends from church: turns out they had avoided the official ceremony part, and came straight for the food

Indische Zomer

This Saturday, 7 former members of The Obscuri celebrated their dies natalis (anniversary) in The Hague, where this summer, lots of activities are taking place with the theme of the “Indische Zomer”.

So first we went to the Communication Museum, where they had a special exhibit about communication with Indonesia in the early 1900s: besides snail mail (which REALLY was snail mail at the time, as it was first transported by boat and later by plane), they used radio telegraphs, grammophones with spoken messages, and later telephone calls, which still cost a fortune. 12.50 Guilders for a 3 minute call might have been a week’s salary or more at that time?

Also very interesting were the demonstrations of a pre-war telephone exchange (made by L.M. Ericsson!), and a similarly old mail sorting machine. Even though both demonstrations suffered from the dreaded demo virus (things didn’t completely go as they should), we had a lot of fun with it.

Then we crossed the street, to Panorama Mesdag. This is a really awesome cylindrical painting, 14 meter high, 120 m in circumference, which presents a 360 degrees view of the beach of Scheveningen and the city of Den Haag. An amazingly realistic painting…

We ended this Indian Summer day with a sumptuous dinner at Restaurant Jimbaran, which turned out to serve authentic Indonesian food at very reasonable prices.

Free Blijdorp tickets

If anyone living in Holland wants to get 2 free tickets to the Blijdorp Zoo: surf to Robeco Direct and fill out the form.They’ll ask you how you want to invest >25000 Euros, which of course you can fill out in a completely fictitious way: what IF you had EUR 25000 to invest… Same like: what would you do if you were the Queen / Prime Minister / President of the the USA

Then, after a few days, you will receive in the mail 2 free tickets to Blijdorp. You’ll also receive an investment advice, but who says you actually have to DO anything with that?

Back home

On Tuesday afternoon, I had to go home again. But not without first having a very tasty lunch at a cafe which almost had a Mediterranean feel to it, probably due to the quiet inner court: Cafe Vanilj.

Even though this vacation was a day longer than last one, it’s never long enough…

M & M = Married

Today, my friends M & M got married in the idyllic Nydala Church, in central Sweden. They looked absolutely marvellous and happy. Congratulations!

Afterwards, they had a fabulous party at Ljunga Park Hotel in S�vsj�. Although saying it was the happiest day of their lives seems a bit pessimistic for the future, I can imagine it was the happiest day of their lives SO FAR…