Malaise...ahhh

Just after I got back from home, we popped to Malaysia for a few days. I say “popped” because it is just a little jaunt over the bridge. It’s a bit like “popping” over to Wales for the day when you live in Bristol, I suppose.

Although getting over the river Severn costs about a fiver whereas crossing the causeway costs nothing.

Anyway, it’s a funny old place, Malaysia. You see, Singapore’s a place in which you feel very safe, it’s (fairly) clean, it’s a little bit… dull sometimes. It’s a kind of sanitised Asia with lots of the sensations filtered out. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Anyway, as soon as you get over the causeway and enter Johor Bahru (known as JB, would you believe), Peninsular Malaysia’s southernmost city, you seem to be plunged into the heart of Asia – traffic chaos, which means the spectacle of hilarious traffic police is never far away, a hideous smell of sewage or something is quickly usurped by a smell of delicious food cooking, pavements are blocked by hawkers, walkers, vehicles and animals. Or they’re simply broken. You suddenly feel like you have to keep an eye on your man bag, mainly because signs are up everywhere saying “Beware of Pockpicket”.

Why are the traffic police hilarious? Well, they seem to be quite similar in a lot of major Asian cities from what I can work out. They appear at seemingly randomly picked spots of congestion on their little motorbikes, park, slide off, straighten their tight little uniforms, walk into the middle of the road, and in a rather camp fashion, still wearing their white helmets and white gloves, looking not unlike giant tics, start doing their job. As far as I can work out, their job is to blow their whistles and wave cars on with a series of flamboyant gestures. This, of course, rather than making them look like they’re directing traffic, makes them look like they’re auditioning for the Village People.

Anyway, quite often I’ve seen this “traffic policing” happening on bits of road that aren’t actually junctions – they just wave on and whistle at slow moving traffic, as though they believe that the drivers are like donkeys that need a kick every now and then to remind them that they should, in fact, be pressing down on that little pedal under their right foot. “Oh yeah, I was driving, wasn’t I? So glad that ridiculous camp looking chap is there whistling to remind me to move forwards…”

In JB the traffic policeman was weaving his mesmerising magic at a junction. This junction had traffic lights, which were working perfectly. He was waving the traffic on just about in sync with the lights, except he let just one or two more cars through as they changed from green to red, whistling frantically. Give a man a whistle and he loves the power.

We watched him for about 20 minutes.

We didn’t stay in JB for too long. We were intending to hire a car and drive up the East coast. Every time we go somewhere we end up not doing anything like what we intended, so it was no surprise to us that within an hour we were boarding a coach that took us up the West coast. We ended up in Kuala Lumpur (known as KL, would you believe) the capital city. It’s a five hour bus journey from JB to KL and it costs about five quid for a seat with copious leg room. Winner.

Anyway, because Ella’s been very ill and was just starting to recover, we didn’t do a great deal of exploring in KL. What we usually do when we get to a new city is wander about fairly aimlessly for the whole of the first day, getting our bearings a bit. So instead we sat in a few cafes and bars, watched the world go by, watched the Charity Shield, that kind of thing.

On the last day we decided to go a bit further and went to see KL’s twin towers – pretty impressive, if you like tall buildings (which I do). You can go up to the bridge between the two buildings every day except Monday.

It was, of course, Monday.

When we got back from KL, the first time we switched the news on, we realised that we had been there at a time when the government had declared an emergency. Forest fires, burning in Sumatra, Indonesia, meant that smog had enveloped KL. I had thought it had been a little misty and that visibility was on the low side.

It made me ill, too. I had 24 hours of flu type symptoms – very achy, it was painful to breathe, temperature fluctuating and I had to lie down in a darkened room. Ella, still recovering from her tropical fever, had to go out and get supplies.

This forest fires thing is pretty serious, though – it’s the result of slash and burn land clearing strategies used by big palm oil companies, apparently. More about that here.

In my time here I’ve mainly been to Asian cities. Being a city boy myself, I find cities much more interesting than beaches. When I said this to Joe, he agreed completely. “What’s a beach?” he asked. “Cover yourself in fat and lie in gravel. What’s the point?” I almost agree. I find them beautiful for a day, then get a bit bored so head for the nearest town, or go off down some lanes or something. A city, however, has an ever-changing landscape, it’s always on the move, it’s varied and exciting.

I’m going to try to prise myself away from cities in the second year of my time here, though. Need to find some hills, some countryside, some mountains, that kind of thing. Get back to nature.

I’ll probably avoid the Sumatran forests in August, though.

I was saying why Malaysia was a funny old place. It’s a bit of an odd combination, I suppose. The roads are very good, which isn’t the case in many Asian countries. There’s obviously a lot of wealth there. It’s really cheap, though, probably a third of the price of Singapore, but not as cheap as Thailand or Vietnam. I suppose it’s how Singapore would be if it was bigger.

So, on that profound note, I think I’ll cut my losses and stop trying to describe an entire country from a three day visit in which I mostly sat in cafes, bars, coaches or spent lying down in darkened hotel rooms.

Jetlag And The Samuel Pepys Of Bristol or "No No No No No No No! No No No! No No No No No!"

Rather an unwieldy title, but it covers most bases.

I’ve always maintained that jetlag doesn’t exist. You just need to stay up until it’s time to go to sleep in your new time zone.

I got back here almost a week ago now and was fine for the first four days or so. I didn’t sleep a wink two nights ago, though. And here I am again at three in the morning, wide awake.

My friend Jonny claimed that he was suffering from “classic jetlag” when he came out here recently. Apparently, that’s the type you get when you fly East, or something. I’m sure he’ll define it more clearly in a comment very soon. But his “classic jetlag” kicked in the next day. Perhaps I’m suffering from “post-classic jetlag” or “neo-classic jetlag” or even “lagged jetlag”.

Anyway, Ella’s not been massively sympathetic. After not sleeping a wink all night and trying to stay up all of the next day, I finally succumbed at about 2pm the following afternoon and went for a two hour nap. Twenty minutes in, Ella came in and said things like, “Are you asleep?” and “Are you tired?” and “Did you forget to go to sleep last night?” and “Open your eye,” whilst forcing my eye open, “Oh, yes, you do look tired,” continuously, for about three minutes or so, all with a rather malevolent expression on her face, until I told her in no uncertain terms that she should leave me alone. She did. Five minutes later, just as I’d dropped off again, her phone alarm that she’d left under a pillow went off. I admitted defeat and got up. To say that she found it hilarious is an understatement.

I wasn’t too cross as she’s been rather ill recently, to say the least, with a tropical fever, so it was good to see her back to her usual self.

The following evening, we watched “Sexy Beast” which, in case you don’t know, is a British gangster film about a guy (Ray Winstone) who has retired from his life of crime to Spain in order to soak up the rays. However, a former associate of his flies over from London to persuade him to do one more job. He’s the kind of guy you can’t say no to, unless you want to be soundly beaten. Ben Kingsley plays this deranged, bad-mouthed psycho. Let’s just say I’ll never be able to watch Gandhi in quite the same light again…

In one scene, Kingsley just shouts the word “No!” at Winstone about 20 times like he’s firing bullets from his mouth or something.

That night, Ella couldn’t sleep (“jetlag by proxy”?) and ended up finally going to sleep at 7 in the morning.

I thought about it at 9am, then again at 10am, then again at 11am, then 11.30, 11.45, 12… by 12.30 I just couldn’t stop myself. I burst into the room, doing my best Ben Kingsley, “No! No! No! No! No!” rat-a-tat-tat.

Hilarious, I thought.

Ella, however, suddenly seemed to have lost her sense of humour. Understandably, as she’d had a bit of a relapse, which was why she couldn’t sleep.

Oops. Another clanger dropped. You should have seen her face, though…

Anyway, Jonny’s quite a funny bloke. He’s the Samuel Pepys of Bristol. He’s kept a diary every day since he was 19, I think, which is over 10 years now. He forces himself to do it every night and hates doing it but it’s like an albatross around his neck now. He can’t possibly stop. He’s not able to explain why. It seems like quite a good idea, though, because it helps him to remember things that he would otherwise have forgotten. It’s very factual and he always uses a special pen.

The other thing about Jonny is that he collects snow globes. Everywhere he goes, he has to get one. He got a particularly tasteful one in Singapore with gold snow falling delicately over the Merlion – Singapore’s national symbol, which, as you may be able to guess, is a cross between a fish and a lion. And Merlion sounds slightly better than Fishlion, I suppose.

Anyway, I asked Jonny about this obsession with snow globes. He said that he’d been building up a collection sporadically for a while, but the obsession really kicked in when he went to Prague and was hunting high and low for one but could only find one for twelve quid. If you’re unfamiliar with snow globe prices, twelve quid is at the very expensive end of the market. He spent days trying to find a cheaper one, but couldn’t. He went back to the shop three times before finally buying it and then, he said, “That was it. I had to keep buying them after that.” Another self-imposed albatross swinging around his collar.

He was only here for a weekend, but we spent a considerable amount of time searching for snow globes and waiting for him to finish writing his diary.

H, his girlfriend, finds this so annoying that she refuses to talk about it, other than to say, “It’s really annoying. I refuse to talk about it.” She also informed me that he checks his alarm clock at least three times before he goes to bed, not to make sure that he’s set it, but to make sure that it hasn’t turned itself off.

Other than that, he’s quite normal really.

All Right There?

Just had a fantastic three weeks at home, back in Bristol, where the sun shines and the drinks are slightly cheaper than they are in Singapore.

So, what stood out as my finest moment of being home? Well, there were so many. Learning to play poker, for one. Two of my friends, Andy and Chewie, have been playing online poker for a while. They live in the same house and sometimes sit at the same virtual poker table whilst being separated in the physical world by two flights of stairs. I managed to prise them away from their screens and introduced them to a deck of cards and some copper coins and I cleaned up on a number of occasions. Their tried and tested online poker faces were no good at a real table.

Also enjoyed a couple of Funky Onion nights. Funky Onion is a "legendary club brand" if you believe the press releases they write about themselves - Dave and Joe Onion are "renowned for their all encompassing music policy", apparently. Basically, they do a spot of djing at weekends. Anyway, I've not been to a club for a year, so I thoroughly enjoyed getting down to exactly the same records they were playing when I left a year ago.

Of course, seeing family and friends was fantastic after so long and staying with my brother and his family was sweet, although I got in trouble a couple of times for teaching my 18 month old niece street slang. Well, you know, you've got to connect on their level...

The Ashton Court festival was as good as ever, with the sun shining all weekend as I sat with friends within earshot of three different stages all at the same time, just like I do every year. It's a bit like listening to a badly tuned radio, but it must be good because I keep on doing it.

I'll probably think of some more highlights later, too, but the one that really stands out for me is actually all about me. Of course.

At the Ashton Court post-festival party, there was a bit of an open mic thing going on. After watching several bands play, it was suggested that Beyonce Knowle reform.

I suppose I should explain about Beyonce Knowle. A couple of years ago, we were sitting in a pub and we started coming up with names for Bristol based tribute bands. Knowle is a particularly salubrious area in Bristol, a magnet for teenage mums and white shellsuited boys in baseball caps and renowned for drive-bys and armed robberies.

It's not that bad really. I just wanted to avoid using the word chav.

Anyway, we decided that it was time for a Destiny's Child/Beyonce Knowles tribute band featuring vocalists with Bristolian accents, hence Beyonce Knowle. We certainly had some very talented musicians amongst us at the pub as we discussed this idea. But who could we persuade to dress up in drag and front the band? Joe took some persuading, but I volunteered with slightly alarming haste.

We did one gig and it was probably my finest ever fifteen minutes. There was something incredibly liberating about shaking my "booty", as it were, in my mini skirt and tennis shoes and explaining to the audience that I didn't think they were "ready for my jelly". I've played lots of "serious" gigs over the years and have never had such a frenzied reaction.

The review of the gig in the local magazine, "Venue", said that "Beyonce Knowle are an act that will forever stain the memory". Praise indeed.

That was all two years ago. Fast forward to last week at the open mic night and the talk of Beyonce Knowle reforming. The original band line-up was present. The stage was set. It was perfect. We would do our version of Crazy in Love, which we set to the music of Led Zep's Whole Lotta Love.

Of course, I'd forgotten all the words and most of the tune, but that hadn't mattered first time around, so I stepped up to the mic with some confidence and belted out the first verse. The audience looked a little bemused. I suddenly started to feel as if this wasn't quite such a good idea. Why wasn't it working this time around? Joe was supposed to be singing the chorus, but he seemed to be hiding behind his guitar, so I started to belt that out too. The look of bemusement in the crowd seemed to be turning into a look bordering on mass hatred. It might have been more appropriate to have been playing "I Predict A Riot" or "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" or something.

As I fumbled my way to the end of the chorus, I realised the major flaw in the plan. I wasn't dressed in drag. I wasn't subtly revealing my tasteful monkey posing pouch every time I bent my knees. It's that little twist, that little turnabout between a clever idea and a stupid one.

The music to the second verse started. A guy from the audience approached the stage. I backed away a little as he was holding a pint glass. However, he meant me no harm. He simply looked at me, shook his head as if in pity, picked up the mic and started singing Whole Lotta Love. Properly.

I was left standing onstage in something of a quandary.

Should I wrestle the mic back from him? Not massively dignified, but would've been very entertaining. Although I think he probably would've had the rest of the pub on his side. I'd have been like Paul Ince after Eric Cantona karate kicked that Palace fan - Ince apparently shouted to the entire crowd, "Come on then, we'll take the lot of you!"

Should I stand there and continue to behave as if I was still fronting the band? Rock posturing, thigh slapping and miming my way through the rest of the number? No. That would be rather sad.

Or should I stand there gazing with my jaw open in shock for most of the rest of the song before sloping disconsolately offstage shaking my head in disbelief?

By the time I'd weighed up these options, I realised that the song had finished and I'd been standing there gazing with my jaw open in shock, so I sloped disconsolately offstage shaking my head in disbelief.

As a lover of the film "Spinal Tap", I realised that this was actually a brilliant thing to have happened to me once the initially overwhelming feelings of rejection and bitterness had worn off. It actually calls to mind another musical gaffe from a few years ago.

Joe (him again... he must jinx me or something) was playing guitar in a drum and bass band and apparently needed a "guitar tech". I got the job. It involved sitting by the side of the stage and handing him the guitar he needed for different "tracks" as well as restringing his guitar if he broke a string.

Needless to say, he broke a string in the middle of a "flava", so I raced onstage with a spare guitar and took the other one off him and set about my job. I tried to tune it up at the side of the stage, but couldn't get a reading because of the hi-octane, high decibel banging "choon" the band were playing. So I wandered out the back through a door and tuned the guitar up.

It was a fire door.

I couldn't get back in again.

So, I had to proceed out through the emergency exit and emerged in the middle of St Pauls, made famous by the riots in the 1980s, carrying a Fender Stratocaster and a guitar tuner. I legged it round the block to the front entrance. I then had to explain to the bouncer who I was and what had happened (and he took some convincing - he found the idea of a local drum and bass outfit needing a guitar tech a little far fetched and suggested that perhaps the guitarist may be taking himself a bit too seriously), beat my way through the crowd before arriving triumphantly just as the band finished playing their set.

Those were the days...