Cuts and Saucers

Haircuts, flying saucers.

I have been writing about haircuts previously also in one of my blogs. But anyways, generally, haircuts in Asia are nice: Cheaper than in EU, they always wash, sometimes massage, and the feeling is overall refreshingly gay. Its not one of those overweight lung cancer mamas playing with your hair, its either your Japanese school girl fantasy or alternatively gay Kim's super-fantastic gay barber.

I had the gay alternative today, but I'm really happy with the result. "Senior Stylist" was 65 RM and considering how rarely I bother to even comb my hair, I'd say the price was fair. But definitely on the fucking expensive side when Malaysian haircutting is concerned. I think you can get a regular haircut with 10-15RM if you're not too picky nor staying in the expensive areas.

On another news, I found out that Malaysia is being stalked by an U.F.O. I'm not that scared honestly, but I can already see the mass hysteria after I post this pic so let's just do it for the fuck of it;

Picture was taken by my girlfriend. That's an obvious Nazi UFO right there. Behold!

Tomorrow life is "ho best".

I decided to dig an old draft from the depths of infinite bit-space, and finish it , to commit to our blog in somehow, since I've been recently very lazy with my posting. This is excusing myself, but I tend to do that sometimes, so deal with it or go cry to momma. Anyways, the post.. ;

Malaysia has been criticized by some because of its "tomorrow" culture. Simply put, it means that in Malaysia everything is done "tomorrow" - nothing happens today, now, very soon, or currently. There is just "Today I'm having this and that, but TOMORROW everything is fixed." Sounds great until you realized that this applies to every single thing on every single day, so virtually nothing is ever happening.

In work life this is quite annoying; boss is pushing me to push projects through, and then I have to explain him every day, today and TOMORROW that why the fuck nothing is happening today. Luckily enough, he seems to be quite accepting to the concept of tomorrow as well. I've learned, however, that telling him "next week" is way worse. If you tell "next week", he says "ALWAYS THE NEXT WEEK! CAN'T WAIT ANYMORE!", despite its possible/happening/etc or not. 'Tomorrow' answer, however, makes him smile despite the thing happening or not. Strange.

Well. Anyways, I guess the main thing to pick from this post is that making a successful business is quite difficult in Malaysia if you depend on contractors or other outsourced elements, because I'd claim that managing them takes a lot more effort here, than in Hong Kong for example, where everyone is more than eager to work. Culture and motivation issue then, so to say.

More for me

Fasting month has just begun in Malaysia, and for muslims it means denial from each thing that is good for man - like sex, alcohol and cigarettes. It also means no eating before... was it... before 19:00 I think, or something like that. Fasting month means, however, nicer lunching for me because halal restaurants aren't filled with hungry Malaysians. They have to starve and worship. How very sad.

Furthermore, this season since 1st of September should mean a big bunch of incoming public holidays, which I'm of course very excited about. Malaysia has the 2nd most amount of public holidays in all of Asia, if I remember correctly - this is naturally due to various ethnic and religious groups represented in the country, and each want their share of free days. Actually it creates a bit of a mess for companies to manage all, since some holidays only consider muslims etc. Simply put - each holiday is lost revenue to some. But guess what? I don't give a flying fuck 'cause all the more for me.

On another subject, OP pointed out last week that our blog doesn't have _that_ many readers actually, so I decided to change the Bruce Lee picture to something more appealing. Enjoy!

Mess

Today I'm going to whine about dress code. My company has one, and I'm quite sure a great number of companies in Malaysia do also. Dress code custom is ridiculous, it's just like the old rule of taking one's hat off when eating. On a practical level you DON'T need to wear a suit when typing and making phone calls nor you need to take your hat off while eating, because there is no practical reason behind either of those.

Does everything need to be practical? Well certainly not, but how about letting me mind about my hat and my dressing and my practicalities? Dress code has been invented by someone sometime and the reason is "because". For example, last week I poured coffee on my pair of trousers which I've just picked from a dry clean service. Today, I poured melting butter from my toast on my other trousers (also dry cleaned last week). If I had jeans, I couldn't care less - wipe n wash. But now, I have to went again through all the trouble to bring both of my trousers to dry clean service, open my wallet, hand them money, wait one (1) day, and then I can mess my trousers with some other funky stuff again (;)). Just because my boss wants me to look professional. People who have no real problems have great talent of making their life harder in some other ways.

Hopefully it's something really permanent next time when I mess my trousers again, like epoxy paint or superglue, so I need to spend more fucking money to buy more fucking ridiculous suits and trousers to be allowed to work in this company 'cause I fucking need to look fucking professional. I mean, in army I understand the dress code because they actually DO have some practicalities behind it, but on a real life. What the FUCK?! Maybe you, dear reader, think that I'm whining about the slightest things - sod off to you too.

Thank you Mr. Dress Code Inventer. You ruined my day today again, as you have done for oh so many days before.

Everybody Poops

In Malaysia there are two types of toilets; the NORMAL one (yes, the porcelain seat is for normal people) and the-hole-in-the-ground-surrounded-by-a-porcelain-frame. The latter one is supposedly more common in India and China than in Malaysia, but it sucks nevertheless. If your knees aren't made of steel, that is.

Regardless of the toilet format however, Malaysians have a tendency to wet the WHOLE BLOODY TOILET when they take a poop. This is very annoying. When I have to go for the big second one, I don't like to do it in a fucking swimming pool. The thing why the toilet is wet, is because some people wash their assess instead of/in addition to wiping them. Maybe this sounds very nice to someone who likes to be a goddamn hippie, but on the other hand, excessive amounts of clean water is wasted in the process. I'm not an expert enough to tell which solution is more tolling for the environment, but both of them are that for sure. The fact is that there are too many poopers in the world, rather than people are pooping in a wrong way.

Imagine yourself having a stressful day, stressful meetings, tons of coffee, some quick lunching etc. This all means that a grand grand snake is building up during the day. Then after your work, when the mental pressure is relieved, the physical one in your intestines begin - and it usually comes fast as hell, so you gotta find the closest toilet 'cause normally you haven't reached home yet. You can probably imagine how FUCKING NICE it is to go to take a poop in a tiny all wet cabinet with the pissy shopping mall piano tunes mixed with farts , everyone else doing the same pooping thing next to you inside other cabinets, and the whole place stinking like there's no tomorrow.

This post is a direct traveler and expat tip; don't use public toilets, observe your snake build up, and time the sinking operation. Starhill Gallery in Bukit Bintang has excellent and clean toilets by the way. They're dark, silent and peaceful , and although a little bit costly, its definately worth to pay RM 1 for a good ol' stress relieving peaceful shit.

Mit Gas

Having a car in Kuala Lumpur is a necessity. Having said that, having a car in Kuala Lumpur is nowhere near as useful as one might think. If anyone has ever experienced Kuala Lumpur traffic jams, I'm sure one knows what I'm talking about. I'm not sure if the traffic here is extremely bad in comparison, but it still is bad nevertheless. Any situation where you would be better off with a bicycle than a car, is an extremely bad use of car for me.

The traffic problem is two-way; public transportation sucks 'cause the jams are huge (and to be honest, the whole system is under development), and the jams are huge cause public transportation is not used. Rise in gasoline prices has (surprisingly) added to this problem a great deal. One of the worst traffic jams I've ever experienced was the day prior to adjusting gasoline prices. People were queuing to gas stations like it was free money for free (practically it was) and sucked them dry. This was just one day's problem however.

The real problem at this moment, which is more persisting, is that rise in gasoline price caused demonstrations in the roads in Malaysia (as well as in other countries). If these demonstrations weren't hassle enough, police decided to set up road blocks to control the security threat these demonstrations posed to people. The Star is a rather objective newspaper in KL, you may wanna check it out to get a better view of the current situation (the picture in the article gives a very good impression how a traditional KL traffic jam looks like);

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/7/15/nation/21822758&sec=nation

Anyways, knowing that there are traffic jams in Kuala Lumpur is not very useful, but "the local tricks" are. After few months of driving around the city I've found out some very common useful tricks;

- Avoid the most direct routes. If you choose a longer road in distance, you get only about 50% or less of the cars than on the main roads, and can arrive from 15 minutes to even 1 hour earlier.
- Be rude. This is probably the main reason behind traffic jams anyway (or the city's road "design"...), but believe me, without being arrogant you will get the shortest stick. No matter how noble or polite you want to be on paper, it is easily forgotten when you're still stuck for the third hour in a normally fifteen minute trip.
- Avoid driving during the rain. I don't know if water is forming the extra cars or what, but for some funny reason the amount of cars in the roads during rain is at least tripled from normal. I guess Malaysians are made out of sugar.
- Abuse the jumpers. If you see a driver jumping in a queue, or using any other masterful traffic jumping/switching lanes tactic, and slowing down everyone else - copy that and do it for him or her. They usually regret their own rudeness, so you can freely exploit that more than often 'cause they let you in front of them more easily.
- Traffic light stop. Every single moped in KL are already going when they see the crossing traffic light turns to red, and soon theirs will be green. Thus, I don't understand why people still go during a yellow one. So be careful. But here's one trick to "pay back" if you're bored and the car behind you is annoying; look for a blinking green, stop, and you hear a horn. When the blinking green turns to yellow, press the pedal and leave the sucker standing stupidly with his red light. Works every time, but better be sure the driver is not fit for vengeance.

Seriously, I don't want to recommend rude, arrogant and plain awful driving to anyone since it is the major reason behind traffic jams. But the fact still is that a lot of people think "eye-for-an-eye" in the traffic, and you should too. Nice people always end up with nothing and thats the rule of (urban) jungle forever and ever. And always remember to blame either the government or the gas prices on bad traffic and your bad driving.

On the Ease of Eating

I'll throw in a second $0.02 worth of opinion to the discussion on food.

One of the things I appreciate in Hong Kong is the ease of eating. It's safe and they have a great selection available almost anywhere. The advantage over Malaysia lies in the ease of finding a restaurant. The information on where to eat is available easily and finding a restaurant doesn't really rely on prior knowledge. Malaysia, on the other hand, has more Indian food - perfectly suited for me.

In both Malay and HK eating the food will be safe and decently priced. And to be honest, I prefer both places to Chinese eating.

I'll share a short news story:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080711/ap_on_re_as/china_dog_meat

It's just a short article on how Beijing is taking dog off the menu for the Olympic Games. Nothing new in the fact that the Chinese eat dog, but it serves as a reminder that while eating in Continental China it is very possible to order something quite unpalatable.

Chicken feet in vinegar is the only dish I have been literally unable to swallow at all. Smoked tofu came close, and there have been various oddities ever since. I never ran to anything as strange in Malaysia or Hong Kong.

Seafood is, like Pekka mentioned a good alternative. If you are open minded enough, most of the things that crawl from the ocean bottom to your plate are fresh and according to some, tasty. I'm not that open minded, but I can eat the shrimp and crab shoved on my plate.

The key in eating in China is to find a dish or two that you like, and when asked what should be ordered, always pick the favourite. The other people will order stuff too and you will be safe in the knowledge you get something you like. It's a way of betting on a winner.

There are other tips as well. Eat in a restaurant where you see locals eating. Perhaps it is a coincidence that a restaurant is empty at the moment, but I haven't really gone wrong in following the popular opinion. Even a small dodgy looking place gets an instant "good enough" certificate if it's full with people eating.

In China, you are allowed to say you don't like a certain dish or a food. The Chinese consider it as an honest response and won't think twice of you eating something else instead. This is true especially since the Chinese have a large variety of food. Guangdong food is seafood based, Sichuan is spicy, Shanghai sweet and so on - the Chinese understand fine if someone doesn't like something.

It also helps if you don't really think of what exactly do the crab eat on the ocean bottom, or how clean the water is in the pool used to grow the fish.

OP out.

About me and Kuala Lumpur

Dear beloved readers. My name is Markvs and I'm a cockface. Not a joke, I'm a shithead for real, and I do my best to insult directly or indirectly each and every single one of the rubbish, which form the human landfill that chums on the face of earth.

So I live in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and I pretty much like it here. I hate the people - as usual for me regardless of my location - but I love the food and Malaysian pricing. Generally Kuala Lumpur is a slow-paced big city, but with its own personality. Traffic jams are huge and common, the city is designed by "dropping" some high buildings around the city and building the roads randomly to cause extreme traffic and confusion. No wonder KL is not a major tourist attraction.

I really don't know what else should I write in this introductory post so maybe I write something about Japanese noise. If jewtube works in your country, please go and see.

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Inspiring, am I correct? This stuff is the shit, and albeit it may seem like total crap to your narrow-minded assumptions of what art should be like, I'm sure you can't deny that you're fascinated by those performances in a twisted way. I don't know Japanese people, their culture, their pop-culture nor anything else valuable - but I know they are hella good in Street Fighter III - 3rd Strike, and they are extremely good at being random.

Thus, I'm being random as well, and my jump from Kuala Lumpur presentation to Japanese noise is just a mere homage to Japanese randomness. If you don't like it, I'm honestly not very sorry and won't be held responsible of your moral values going down the drain when you see a woman peeing on the stage.