Little did I know that there were masses of people on the streets of Kuala Lumpur protesting the use of English to teach Maths and Science in schools last March. Nor did I know that the Ministry of Education is actually bowing to public pressure and reverting the system back to being fully in Malaysian.

I'm quite upset they're deciding to scrap Maths and Science in English. On the one hand, the government's use of grades as a barometer of students' progress is both understandable and contentious. They may be worried about the longterm ability of rural students to get into tertiary education based on their grades. However, the simple truth of the matter is that students who learn Maths and Science in Malaysian will suffer grade issues in university if they don't grasp the concepts in English early on. The extra time required to mentally 'translate' concepts the kids already spent 6 years of high school learning in college is that grinding.

Because college subjects are taught predominantly in English, or using English textbooks, the students will face numerous difficulties first in understanding the text they're reading, and forming answers to questions in exams. They will have had enough traning in writing out essay questions in high school, but in the Malaysian Language. This is actually a problem that isn't just restricted to students who learn Maths and Science in just Malaysian, however, as students who have been taught the subjects in any language other than English have a preponderance to suffer. I've met students in college who learnt Maths and Science in Malaysian and Chinese while in high school, and they had to struggle with language barriers to engage with their lecturers in written and oral communication, even though they technically knew the basics of their subjects. I've also met white collar, working college graduates in Malaysia, who, after scraping through 4 years of English-language college education, can't be trusted to write decent business correspondence. I'm just not sure our workforce needs another dearth of successful entrepreneurs and workers who embarrass themselves in public while communicating with foreign businesses.

When I was in school, the only real option to study subjects in English was to attend expensive private institutions. Incidentally, students in private, English-language medium schools learn to speak Malaysian just fine. The private schooling system typically teaches from Malaysian-language textbooks, with lectures in English. Malaysian is taught alongside English as languages of equal stature. This method does not stop their students from taking the national university entrance exams (in Malaysian) or impedes their ability to excel at them. Studying in English also made the transition to British/American/Australian/Canadian/Irish/Singaporean university life (to name a few foreign locales Malaysian university students strive towards) much less jarring, as the students were both able to communicate with their lecturers and settle down in their new environments much more comfortably. If the government's concern is that rural students should also have a fair chance at higher learning, then it shouldn't make English an elitist field of study.

I hope that at the very least, the government is planning a compromise -- the option for schools or students to study Maths and Science in either English or their native language, an option that, in hindsight, was probably the path they should have started with. By the sounds of it, the current issue is training enough teachers with an affinity for English to teach subjects, and the idea of increasing lesson time devoted to teaching English is encouraging. That nationalist politicians are turning this into any sort of ethnic language/religious identity debate at all is exceedingly sad. This should be about creating students that can compete and participate in the world's leading universities and job markets, not how to racially polarise our country further.

When I first arrived in San Francisco, among the first people I met in the city told me that he thought, "Civil unions and marriages are just a matter of semantics." Prior to that, I had stated that I believed everyone should have civil unions, with marriages left as a personal ceremony removed from the state.

I was disturbed to hear his opinion, more so because in San Francisco of all places, coming from a well-educated, secular, liberal, politically aware individual, this seemed painfully paradoxical.

Initially, I tried to understand this contrast in values as a cultural difference. A well-educated, relatively liberal individual, probably raised in a middle-classed household and having grown up with the privileges and constraints of suburban America, could not have had the exposure to the type of religious and sexual dissonance present in other parts of the world regarding civil marriages.

I do not see civil unions, understood here to be the same as civil marriages, as a matter of semantics. I did not have the cultural or sexual upbringing to afford that view.

Where I come from, civil marriages are also only the privilege of a special class. In Malaysia, civil marriages can only be contracted by non-Muslims with the state. Muslim marriages fall under the jurisdiction of the Syariah Court. Should a Muslim person marry a non-Muslim, their marriage would also fall under the Syariah Court. Moreover, the non-Muslim partner would then be legally bound to convert to Islam. Though there are legal provisions in Malaysia for Muslims to convert to other religions (at their own behest), in practice, virtually all the cases brought to court have failed. It is otherwise a criminal offence to convert a Muslim to any other faith.

In a nutshell:

a) Marriages between a Muslim and a non-Muslim where the latter partner does not convert to Islam are illegal and not recognized by the state.
b) Marriages of the above kind where the Muslim partner converts to the non-Muslim partner's faith are illegal and not recognized by the state.

Both these situations could also result in legal prosecution (through the Syariah Court) on the grounds of adultery (an offence under only Syariah Laws) and forced conversion of faith.

Gays, lesbians and transsexuals are barely legally or culturally recognized as members of society in Malaysia, and far from even reaching the level of discussion required to further gay marriage. Marriages between two people of the same gender are illegal and subject to legal prosecution in both the Civil and Syariah Courts.

From a personal standpoint, what this means is that in Malaysia, I would not have been able to marry my husband. If anything should happen in Malaysia legally with regards to our marriage, the courts there would probably not recognize my relationship with him. In so far as the religious courts are concerned, I am twice over in defiance of the law -- firstly, because I'm an atheist, and secondly, because I married a non-Muslim who has not converted to Islam.

It is for this reason that, when scanner_darkly and I decided to marry, we opted for a civil ceremony in San Francisco. We treasure our civil union as a special contract we have with the state that recognizes our ties to each other under the law. It is a contract above the confines of religious rulings and a right shared by all citizens of the state -- or it should be.

Both of us firmly believe Proposition 8, which was put into place late last year and renders gay marriages in California illegal, is a very real infringement of basic human rights. Based on our personal experience, we do not believe a subset of citizens should be deprived of the same rights to legal recognition and protection under the law that we enjoy as a couple. At its root, no state should divide its tax-paying citizens into separate classes of people, whether these divisions are based on religion or sexual preference.

My marriage to my husband is a treasure. It is one of the most special, and most important parts of my life. I can imagine a situation where I would not be able to openly declare my husband as a member of my family either in my community or before the law, and I don't want that. Because I can imagine having to do this, I don't want it to happen to other people.

In August, we will be celebrating our marriage at a reception in Vermont. It was put forward to us that we should start a wedding registry. However, in lieu of presents, we would both sincerely appreciate it if guests would make a small donation to Equality California to help legal efforts to fight Proposition 8 and other initiatives that deny same sex couples their rights to marry.

The diverse fabric of society should be celebrated, not quashed. Please celebrate our togetherness by helping everyone achieve the same thing.

Ate at Flour + Water, which just opened in our neighbourhood to massive amounts of publicity. After an awful-ish week, and starting on another one, both the spouse and I needed a night off.

Small and not particularly cosy on the inside, the tables were so crammed together, people could barely move. It was loud. We had to shout at each other to be heard, which was what everyone else was doing too, and that only made the noise levels worse. As we waited for our food, I felt increasingly unwelcome there. I don't usually feel that way about eateries, so when it happens, it gets quite disconcerting. It really felt like too many people in too small a space.

I originally read the restaurant's menu online, and was keen to try their egg pizza. Unfortunately, we must have come in on restocking week or some such, since the menu was limited, featuring repetitive (and not necessarily seasonal) ingredients. No egg pizza for me.

We ordered 2 pizzas and 1 appetizer. After a 35 minute wait with no food, the waitress brushed us off with, "The kitchen is backed up," then looked embarrassed when our pizzas came a minute later. She seemed almost ready to argue with us about whether or not our appetizer arrived too, though she eventually just took the appetizer off our bill when we requested that.

Now, when a restaurant has a nice name like "Flour + Water", I tend to assume that their food will taste like a little more than say, flour and water. We both agreed that our pizzas' crusts were some of the best we'd had in the city. They were thin crusts, with a lovely yeasty quality, and just the right amount of bite. However, the toppings did the crusts no justice. My Pizza Margherita was bland. The ingredients (tomato paste, mozarella cheese, a few leaves of basil) tasted fresh, but lacked any distinct flavour. On a pizza as straightforward as a Margherita, every ingredient should shine. It's about the natural zest in the tomatoes, the creamy richness of the cheese and the salt of the pesto lurking beneath it all. It's like the har kau (prawn dumplings) of dim sum -- a litmus text of the chef's skills. Failing this is like a crime against the cuisine.

I didn't try scanner_darkly's pizza (something with mussels, which I don't usually eat), but I did notice it seemed a little bare as well. Literally, a basic pizza base with mussels on top.

By the time we left the restaurant, it had gotten even fuller than it had been before. At the time of writing, it's a 2-week wait just to get a table. There was a pretty large crowd of walk-ins jamming up the doorway too. It's a little sad, but I have a feeling this place may run on yuppie/foodie hype for a while yet.

On the way home, we chanced upon a cool-looking German cafe that had mysteriously appeared a block away from our street. Only opening for lunch, the menu had a good selection of tasty things like cheese spaetzle and sausages cooked in beer. It must've just opened (to no fanfare), since we don't remember seeing it there before leaving for Malaysia.

Today, the husband tells me there is an intriguing creme brulee cart touring the Mission. How is there a creme brulee cart running in a 3 block radius from our house and neither one of us has noticed it yet?! Expect stalking, with spears.

On Sunday, in a fit of hunting down possible washer/dryer combos for our apartment, I playfully decided to enter "washing machine cat" into Google. The intent was to see if anyone had come up with an automated pet washing machine yet that would do cats. Although I figured I'd also get bastards somewhere who'd think of videotaping their cat in a washing machine (and there's a fair bunch of them), I wasn't nearly expecting to read about this unsavory case. The idea that anyone would do that isn't surprising, but it is nonetheless very grisly. Unfortunately, the result is that every time I reach down to play with Sif, I'm now also thinking of Paws' last moments -- which is just nightmarish to imagine.

I found out today that the Terrible Beauty, Fearful Symmetry anthology, which features my story, Mosquito Story, will have at least 400 pages worth of stories alone. I dimly recalled there being a long contributors' list, but never quite expected this. Looking forward a fair bit to receiving my copy in 2 - 3 weeks.

Have of late been experimenting with onigiri, as it provides us with a simple, freezable snack/meal. I occasionally get cravings for yaki onigiri, which I've been able to make from reheated frozen onigiri, though the best texture and crunch comes from onigiri that had been cling-wrapped in the fridge overnight. (A case of yesterday's dinner being today's breakfast). Getting the rice not to stick to the pan turned out to be an exercise in patience more than it was practice. I discovered this entirely by accident one day when I deliberately left the rice balls on the stove for about 10 minutes (on very low heat) while I answered emails. The trick is to pretty much leave the rice balls alone and not touch them, even though you're really tempted to, for a bit.

I've been trying to make a habit of putting together a batch of onigiri every weekend. I usually get a batch of about 11 onigiri. Since scanner_darkly and I will eat about 2-3 a person in one meal, there will usually be about 5 or so onigiri left to freeze. (Or have for breakfast the next day.)

Also discovered that grape tomatoes, seasoned with a bit of spring onions, olive oil, basil, salt and pepper (seasoning first zapped in the microwave for about 45 seconds to cook the onions), tossed with salted pecans and cubed silken tofu, makes a really tasty appetizer with an onigiri breakfast.

Have also been getting back into writing, which was shelved for a while due to AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHWORKWORKWORKWORKGETITOFFMEEEE! and sheer inertia about the subject. Started up a story idea I'd been toying with for about a year now, and naturally, Finches.

We had to lift the back of the sofa bed so the mattress would actually give us a modicum of back support. What this really means is that the back of the sofa now actually covers the space of our backs, while also concaving ever so slightly upon itself. This has vaguely upsetted the fluffy cat, who had taken to leaping onto the back of aforementioned sofa and being a neckrest cat -- her last bastion of exercise, pretty much. She has yet to discover that the back of the sofa is still accessible via piles of pillows on either end. Being the nice persons that we are, we now offer an airlift service for her to access her favourite perch in the interim. This gives us exercise, instead of her. Still, there are few things more amusing in this house than a cat of the same proportions and lumpiness as a shaggy throw pillow, melted over the back of the couch. Indeed, there are fewer things more amusing than the resultant neckrest cat, a happy cat all out of happy.

Haven't had a beignet since I was wee, but we just got home from Rodgers Coffee & Tea, which makes New Orleans style beignets fresh in the morning on weekends. The owner, a very nice elderly gentleman, said he used to make the beignets with buttermilk, but switched to soy milk to suit the tastes of his large vegan customer base. Personally, I think the lack of buttermilk takes the slightest bit away from its flavour, which lacks just that slightest hint of richness without buttermilk, but beignets are almost 100% fat and sugar, so they're terrifyingly rich anyway. Still! Beignets! Covered in powdered sugar! Among the few food groups I will eat covered in powdered sugar! (Maybe once a month, or three.)

Boggling amount of different organic coffees -- very, very good coffees. His scanner_darkly-ness says this is the best coffee he's had in the city, and he knows that subject better than me. They also have a nice-looking selection of teas. I had a hard time deciding whether I wanted tea or coffee, specifically their Assam or homemade Chai mix (which stressed they were doing North Indian-style). Ended up having the Terrific Turkish, with a hint of optional cardamamom. Seth had #7, something with a hint of chocolate. Terrific Turkish was very Turkish, in that it was very strong, had a Guiness-like bitter aftertaste and a very sharp tang of cardamom. It was nice, but I should've probably gotten a small rather than a large, since it was strong enough, after half a cup (served with heavy cream and sugar, mmmm), I could actually feel my skull tightening up for a migraine. Seth kindly traded his cup for mine. #7, whatever it is, is very nice. Had the loveliest hint of chocolate, which brought out the flavour of good coffee beans. Most mocha-chocolate-flavoured coffees I've had in SF seemed to overpower the beans with the chocolate. This most certainly didn't.

Yesterday, we went off to try Yamo, which I wanted to visit since moving here a year ago. This is a greasy hole-in-the-wall Burmese big wok noodle place, that is exactly as I have just described it. When we walked in, we scooted round to the back next to a couple of big, beary biker dudes, and for a while, couldn't figure out if service involved us shouting our orders to the cook. The three elderly ladies shuffling behind the counter next to massive woks are awesome and quite amusing to listen to. They spoke in Cantonese to each other, and a minimalist form of English to the customers. We did eventually get our orders in. The big, beary biker dudes next to us looked like regulars, and turned out to be really nice people. I asked what salad it was they had, since it looked good. (Answer: Mango Salad -- looks like a redder version of Thai kerabu.) After that, things just went really well. I chalk up sitting next to fearsome-looking big, beary dudes that worry even my husband who turn out to be well-spoken, super nice polite people another reason I like this city.

I got the chicken noodle soup, which from Yelp photos looked like laksa. Husband got the Yamo House Noodles (chicken). The menu and setup resembled something I'd go to in Malaysia for good noodles, because really, the best noodles are always from greasy hole-in-the-walls where you can see the giant wok going up in flames on the stove. Husband was still vaguely worried about the concept in general, until our food arrived. Chicken noodle soup turned out to be laksa, except everywhere in place of regular broth in their soup's base, they added coconut milk. It was very tasty, but as rich as some French cream sauces I've tried, so I may get something else next time. Noodles at this place tend to mean Japanese yellow noodles, the kind that is like a thicker ramen, though I've heard you can ask for hor fun (flat rice noodles) as well. Husband's food took a little longer to get to the table, but it was also really tasty. Same yellow noodles stir fried with a topping of chicken in dry fried garlic dressing. Very garlicky and good. They also had grass jelly drink (which I had), and soy milk, which definitely complete the greasy big wok noodle experience.

Within ten minutes of sitting down (we got in about a quarter to six on Saturday), the place developed a line of hipsters, which I just found funny. This does not look like a hipster joint (isn't Valencia another two blocks out?). Hipster couple who sat next to us vaguely confused the cook with requests for tofu instead of chicken in their Chicken Salad. The lady who took the order started yelling to her co-cook in Cantonese, "Hey, when did we have this on our menu?" To which the other cook, who was busy tossing something on the stove, replied, "Who cares? They're paying!"

I started guffawing into my bowl at that point.

Very much coming back here too, as I'm curious about their Tea Salad (lots of vinegar squirted into it though, I noticed), or perhaps the beef version of the House Noodles. Also a very cheap place to eat. All dishes average around $5.25. Now all I have to figure out is why there aren't any (Hong Kong) Cantonese big woks near where I live. The quest for egg sauce hor fun continues.

Woke up on Tuesday morning trying to remember the flower arrangements at the wedding reception in Sabah. I felt bad because I couldn't remember the flowers that my Eldest Auntie personally put together.

I then realized the reason I couldn't remember what everything looked like was because I spent the entire reception without my glasses. My memories of this event are defined by blurry distances and rushed costume changes, and occasionally, when I had the chance to stare at things close up, deep pink stargazers amidst softly lit candles, set amidst tall glass jars and fat goldfish like little floating flowers at each table.

I was, mind you, horrified at the goldfish, and asked my mother what would happen to the fish after the dinner. It turned out that the kids from each family present were promised two goldfish by the end of the night, and Eldest Auntie, who was responsible for the decorations, was keen to reassure me she didn't want dead fishes on our hands either. (As it turned out, only one pair of goldfishes wound up as pets that evening -- the other four were returned to the petstore.)

scanner_darkly had great fun teasing me about the "suffering floating flowers" for the rest of the evening. It was all very beautiful to behold, but I fear I may have spent far too much time preoccupied with the bad animal karma of it all to have fully enjoyed it.

But yes, I have vague memories of stargazers and goldfishes in tall glass cylinders, with tinkling silver balls suspended on silk ribbons at the side. The stage, in comparison, was sort of tacky. The hotel set it up, which is the only way we can explain the golden hearts and our names in gold foam, or that ghastly fake pink and white cake we had to pose with for pictures.

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I'm prefacing this by indicating that I miss my fluffy cat dearly, and have thus made up for the lack of fluffy kitten belly to rub by staring longingly at my husband's belly instead. This has disturbed him, and he has thus indicated in turn that I should either play Patapon or go do something else before I used him as my replacement fluffy cat.

The tiny Islamic bookstore at KLCC has closed down. This saddens me a great deal, as it was a goldmine of literature on critical and comparative religious studies, with a particular slant towards Islam. A book I have always wanted from that store, but was never able to really afford until now, Feminism and Islam: Legal and Literary Perspectives, will have to wait till I'm back in the US and able to order it from Amazon. This is a wonderful collection of essays from Muslim feminists across the Middle East, and, if I recall correctly, includes an enlightening dissertation on misogynistic hadith writers, naming specific authors and citing their influence on Islamic jurisprudence and general opinion over the centuries. At least, I've finally found the title of this book again, as I'd forgotten both the title and author over the years, and was largely dependent on visiting the late store in question to find it.

Toured Kinokuniya with scanner_darkly. We were both thrilled to comb through the Middle Eastern History section together, and equally horrified by Kinokuniya's knack of combining odd and unusual books with mind-numbing price tags. Took down a list of titles we went back to our room to compare prices with on Amazon. The most expensive book we wanted, which I think was Women in the Medieval Islamic World (The New Middle Ages), was RM500 (USD142). Well and truly beyond our means.

I wandered through their Women's/Gender Issues as well as their Islam/Women's Issues lists, while the Trusty Guide broke off to explore Asian History. The Gender Issues shelf was dominated by books on women who needed to stare at themselves in the mirror and feel good about themselves -- feel-good, positive thinking books that made me blanch. There were a couple of critical studies, including about three books on Malaysian women's issues. One of them was an amazing hardcover called Readings on Women & Redevelopment in Malaysia, which turned out to be a primer on women's participation in every industrial and legal niche in the country, complete with tables and numbers. This was a comprehensive compilation of research from over 20 scholars in the field. Just flipping through this book taught me things I never knew about my country, including the fact that non-Muslim polygamy was only banned in 1980 -- 6 years after my parents got married, and also introduced the right for non-Muslim wives to divorce Muslim husbands who converted after the marriage was contracted. I'm still torn over whether or not I want to get this book. For all that it is an amazing primer, it was also published in 1994. The numbers are now outdated by 14 years. Women were afforded full equal rights under the Malaysian Constitution in 2001 -- this came along with various amendments to laws regarding marriages and registrations that are likely not covered by this book. It doesn't help that this book is also quite expensive, and while it still bears merit as a historical artifact (and an artifact on milestones in women's history), the lack of an update bugs me.

In comparison, the Islam/Women's Issues shelf very nearly made me cry. Approximately half the books were written by men. I'm not in any way implying that men make bad authors of books on women -- I've read far too many things written by women that pretty much prove women have no trouble writing awful things about their own gender -- but at least in the field of religious studies, male scholars with far-reaching and expansive views on the role of women in religious societies are gems and precious seeds of thought that should be thoroughly nurtured. Which is to say, the books I found here that were written by men were preoccupied with the roles of good wives in harmonious marriages, and the books written by women were hardly any better in terms of their scope. There were no critical studies. No exploratory essays on how women figure into the history and current affairs of religious jurisprudence. Just motherhood, harmonious relations with husbands and raising a generation of harmoniously Muslim children.

I remember walking back to my husband in disgust, and going forth to peer at Asian Literature for Su Tong. The Chinese lit shelf was next to the Japanese lit -- weighted down by Murakami and horror novels that were best known for their movie adaptations. Read synopses of various Chinese authors writing in English about China. Most seemed to be stories that sounded like the plots of mainland Chinese movies, involving dry observations about the materialistic new generation of young Chinese, or quiet, ponderous dramas about youth caught up in the quest to succeed at all costs. It's a specific kind of despair that can be amusing, but requires a particular mood to plow through. The Chinese shelf was covered in Amy Tan and Pearl S. Buck where the Japanese one had Murakami, both authors that make me grind my teeth in different ways. I finally found Su Tong on the bottommost shelf, squeezed between Amy Tan and new translations of Red Mansions. They had a nice copy of the Raise the Red Lantern collection, which I was temped to get to replace my own well-loved copy. I got Madwoman on the Bridge instead, as it has more new novellas by him, so I could have something to read on the plane. Su Tong excels at novellas. Raise the Red Lantern is beautiful on paper -- I've never watched the movie -- but really the tip of the iceberg in terms of what he can do to characterization and plotting in so little words.

We walked through the Manga/Graphic Novel section together, my husband and I. I'm glad we share a love of books, and a goodly sum of books on the same topics. I passed by a tastefully dressed young lady fully swathed in a headscarf and a conservative pants suit who bent down to pick up an X-Men collection. It made me smile, if only for the comical sight of a person you would not think would read about well-endowed women in spandex apparently doing so. It made me hope that readers in my country will change what 50 years of deeply structured and mortified national indoctrination cannot do, gain a wide view of the world, from as diverse a number of sources as possible. I often wished that books were so inhibitively expensive in Malaysia -- leaving a wide swath of books available only to the financial elite -- but that's changing. There were always options, and these options are growing, like the rental bookstores I used to haunt as a college student, and secondhand bookstores. And there should be places like the new breed of cavernous bookstores, filled with books about evolution, socio-political comparative studies and foreign literature, from the stuff you bring to the laundromat to the literature you nibble at slowly, thinking deeply along the way.

Before we left, we went to stare at books we were still dawdling over purchasing. I happened to head back towards Gender Issues, and stopped at the shelf beside it to peruse a book, when a Chinese lady, with no particular distinct features, in simple pants and a blouse, determinedly trudged forth and jammed books back onto the Gender Issues shelf. She turned to look a person beside her as I looked up at the sound, and there was a man waiting for her, possibly her partner -- a fair, slightly balding Bengali man with a thick Indian accent (I wasn't certain, but he may not have been local) -- who whispered an urgent order, "That's right. All of them." To which the Chinese lady pushed in a final book on the top shelf and left, staring longingly behind her.

I found it amusing, if not hideously appalling. One of the books she put back was Readings on Women & Redevelopment in Malaysia. The other was a book that appeared to be the only copy in the shop, Feminism and the Women's Movement in Malaysia: An Unsung (R)evolution, a compilation of research on the history of women's rights in the nation. This I picked up immediately, and trudged over myself to Seth. I told him the story of how I found it. He raised an eyebrow appropriately. I brought only enough cash for either Su Tong or this, though, and this book was almost 40% more expensive than the novellas, for a somewhat slimmer volume. So my wonderful, loving husband, who endeavours to keep me smart at every opportunity, bought it for me.

It was an evening well spent in general, among books of every kind. Kinokuniya was practically my refuge for a long time, when I waited for my father to emerge after work, or when my parents needed to dump me someplace as they went about their business. Going back helped make me feel safe. I'm glad I was able to share it with a person who enables me to feel safe.

Arrived in Sabah yesterday evening. The trip was relatively painless. The food was nice, although the fried rice we got with our satay was totally stirred in with chilli powder and intolerable. Munched on Ferrero Rochers (came with the flight) and talked to a very friendly stewardess who apparently really likes California for the Mexican food. Naturally, we recommended she get a burrito next time she was in town.

My parents got us a room at the Tanjung Aru Beach Resort here in Kota Kinabalu. I dimly remember this place from when I was very little and staying in KK, mostly that the beaches were, and still are, covered in tiny little crab holes, filled with tiny little crabs, and the tiny little balls of sand they push around that feel like mushy peas under your toes. The view from our room is peaceful, overlooking a bay and the hotel's lawn leading to the marina. Seth and I woke up at dawn and walked along the beach. We bumped into all kinds of small, incidental animals -- crabs scuttling between the rocks that formed the wave breaker, the ubiquitous pipit, various magpies, wee fishies swimming right at the edge of the sand on the beach, a black crane, black water birds with red rings around their eyes, the native giant bees, moths and red ants, and a flock of chubby little birds with teal heads and tail-ends but bright orangey-red chests. Most of all, there were the swallows, who nest in the recesses of the the hotel's ceiling along the pavillion facing the sea. These were the same variety of cave swallows that native tribes harvest nests from for soup. We saw swallows in all stages of their life cycle -- mothers warming their eggs, parents feeding their chicks and generally having a good time darting out in circles around the hotel.

Our room is gorgeous. Dead flowers strewn everywhere, as a honeymoon suite is wont to be. I had no idea rose petals individually felt like tiny ice cubes until I tried sleeping on them. There's an unopened bottle of champagne slowly stewing in a bucket of melted ice from yesterday. We were so tired after the flight over and dealing with the people around us we pretty much fell like rocks into bed the moment we had a chance to crawl back to our bedroom, skipping dinner. The husband drew a bath for me because I was sore from the flight, stressed out from the family, and at a point where I was Tiny Fists of Rage at everything. Oddly, while my body registered that the bath was warming, soothing and nice for achy muscles, my brain kept finding it boiling -- even though I knew my heat threshold was usually high enough to tolerate this. As a sign of possible illness, I spent the night alternating between being very cold and very warm in a room that should have had a relatively even cool temperature.

I'm meant to be experimented on in a couple of hours by well-meaning aunts and my distinctly sledgehammer-like mother. Something about facials, make-up and doing my hair. My only vague idea of facials is being ordered to stay still as a pre-teen by my mother as she prodded into my face with cotton swabs and tiny metal implements, making me whimper from the pain of forcing blackheads out of my pores, and being told that the professionals who do facials also do this, just much more roughly. I find it all very...perplexing. My personal feelings about make-up start and end with I've never had any need or desire to apply it on myself, and thus never bothered with it. I get slightly leery when people suggest they can make me look pretty with the stuff. I don't have any trouble with make-up on other people, or anyone else having an interest in it. I just prefer to stay away from the stuff. I was expecting at least that from my aunts though.

The best part of this came when my mother said, "You need a rehaul." She turned to my husband and asked, "Don't you think she needs a rehaul?" And my husband very quietly said, "No."

We're both carefully trying to steal as much time as we can from this trip to actually enjoy the stuff being thrown at us, and each other's company. So far, we've managed to create pockets of space for ourselves -- brief ones, but pockets nontheless. I'm really happy I'm doing this with scanner_darkly -- who's been absolutely polite and charming where I've had to struggle to be. It's been great to watch him loosen up and think about things we can do together, like retreat to our hotel after walking around all day and plot games, or write. That, at least, has made me extremely glad.

I bolted awake at 3AM this morning. The connecting flight from Taipei yesterday happened in a startlingly newer plane than the one from SFO. For a start, it had the nicer seats with back support, and had the little TV screens with in-flight entertainment on-demand. Even the food was better. It was presented in an appetizing manner (read: didn't look like patients' dinners from a public hospital) and wasn't nearly so awfully microwaved-flavoured. Unfortunately, scanner_darkly got a regular aisle seat, which gave him zero leg room and had him hunched forward for 5 hours. He was unable to enjoy the added back support, and had no real means to lean back. By the time we arrived in KL, he was in chronically bad back pain.

My mother greeted us at the airport. In her bustling, mommy way, she immediately got us bottles of water and coffee and made us sit down and wanted to make sure we were absolutely comfortable and got lost on the way to the elevators to the carpark, and was altogether very sweet and welcoming. My father arrived from his flight out of Bangkok about 15 minutes later. Dad was also very welcoming, but wanted all our attention now, and needed to show us his latest odd gadget and insisted on driving after skipping 3 time zones and having a total of 5 hours sleep in the last 3 days and got lost on the way to the city from the airport and has trouble reading signage and drove in a scary manner. My parents almost immediately began working together in their peculiarly cohesive yet divisive manner in the car, while Seth was straining to listen to their questions over his back pain and I just got rapidly irritated and sarcastic, as much as I would prefer not to react that way to my parents.

The hotel room we got was sweet. It's surprisingly roomy, very well-lit and the tub is most awesome to people with repetitive desk job injuries. We had to shell out extra for a King-sized bed so Seth would have leg space, but the same room came with a view of KLCC's garden and the Twin Towers in its full, shiny glory. It also came with free breakfast at the hotel's restaurant every morning of our stay -- which, as we discovered this morning, was an excellent buffet breakfast, with a wide variety of foods to cater to every taste. They had chawan mushi, four different kinds of rice congee with trimmings (kimchi! crullers!), cold soba and soup noodles, among all the regular things like eggs, yoghurts and breads. Seth and I both had very good waffle, crisp throughout, with just enough bite in the middle. I had to have congee. My throat was too constricted not to have something that comfortingly smooth to swallow. I got a nice, large pot of tea (none of that skimpy one-person round pot business) to go with. It's good to have breakfast that makes you feel healed.

We leave for the airport again in about half an hour. My parents have us set up for Sabah, so the next time I write, I'll likely be holed up at a beach resort somewhere. We return to KL in 3 days. Goodness, trains, planes and tea ceremonies. I saw the dresses Mom will have me in yesterday. They're pretty, the husband thinks they're elegant and lady-like, but dresses. I think my mother takes far too much pleasure in dressing me up like a girl.

In the wee hours of Sunday, two people in matching black leather jackets -- who came to own these jackets independent of the other, although the similarity was endearing -- and a penchant for black leather boots said goodbye to their very fuzzy cat and left San Francisco for Malaysia. scanner_darkly had been down with a cold all of last week, and I'd been slowly fighting off his plague with vitamins and minerals ever since. We'd both been pretty worried one of us would end up sneezing in fits right as we were about to travel, and since Seth was basically almost well, the most likely candidate to fall outright ill was me.

We left the city in relatively high spirits, with sporadic sniffles. Our China Airlines flight was a surprising deal when we picked it up, complete with a 2-week hotel stay at a pretty good new hotel right outside the Petronas Twin Towers. It was enough of a deal we both immediately wikied the airline to make sure it was the 'correct' Republic of China's carrier, and largely wondered how this wasn't made of abestos and cancer.

Take-off was uneventful. I noticed it was a heavily mixed set of passengers, as our flight apparently connected to journeys towards Manilla, Okinawa, Hong Kong and Ho Chi Minh City. I wished I was a little less sickly to appreciate all the languages floating about, but it was not to be. We'd realized on the way to our gate we hadn't been good about buying souvenirs for the horde of relatives we were visiting, so I'd picked up boxes of See's chocolates at Seth's recommendation for a local flavour to pack home. My feelings for my relatives are entirely ambivalent and bland. Many of the ones we were visiting were very kind to me as a child, and are very excited to meet me and my new husband, but I hadn't seen them in years. The most I could hope for was that I saved face (and particularly my parents' face) by at least appearing that I thought of them in my travels.

The first sign we got that this trip would be awful came when we realized they weren't serving light refreshments, not even glasses of water, after take-off. Apart from dinner, which was dreadful chicken rice to the point of being inedible, none of the passengers were served anything to drink until about 8 hours into the 12 hour flight. The passengers that did get drinks had to walk up to the nearest cabin crew members and ask for it, which was really how I reckoned the cabin crew figured out they'd need to wander around with trays of water after a bit.

Both of us had determinedly tried to sleep early in the flight, with unpleasant results. The flight hit numerous turbulent spots, and we'd wake up whenever the cabin crew began scurrying about in the cubicle next to us, or when the very long line of passengers would sporadically show up for the bathroom in the row directly ahead. I got progressively sicker throughout the flight. Seth and I took our Sudafed, which seemed to dry our sniffles but make us mentally worse. I broke out in a cold sweat and vaguely delirious fever with 6 hours in our flight left to go. The turbulence and dehydration made everything much more awful than it had to be. I've been flying since before I learnt to walk right -- this was seriously one of the worst flights I've ever been on. Seth was wonderfully kind throughout. At one point, I turned to him and said that if I continued to feel the way I did when we hit the ground, I would need to seek medical assistance. There were times I thought I would throw up, but thankfully didn't. Seth went out of his way to keep me rehydrated and appropriately tissued.

We're currently waiting for our 5-hour flight to Kuala Lumpur in Chiang Kai Shek International. We eschewed breakfast on the plane for being hungry and much less green in the face, so we landed starving. There was only one eatery in sight in the entirety of Terminals 1 and 2, which was all out of hot noodles and soups. He had a cold ham and cheese croissant, and I had a cheese tart. Our lemon tea was disgustingly sweet enough that it marched right past even Seth's tolerance of sugary drinks.

I'm logging off before my batteries run out, but at least I'm sure our experience will improve once we hit Kuala Lumpur International Airport. For a start, there's good coffee right outside the arrival gate. And my parents will be there. I'll need to put up my best "I'm sick" face. Maybe that will gain their pity, and result in us being delivered to our hotel instead of family craziness before dinner.

"You're like the goth version of one of those brides who goes through her white fluffy lacy album with her girlfriends. 'Look at my flower girls!' Cue: 'Awwwwwwwwwwwwww!'

Except more, 'Look at my dead tree full of crows!' Cue: 'Awwwwwwwww!'"

From May 10 to May 24, we'll be heading to Kuala Lumpur. From August...something or other...past August 15, we'll be in Vermont. I originally wanted to bring my new husband home, to one of my favourite cities in the world, so he could meet my parents. We were to have a quiet week together, and I'd show him the places I grew up, visit museums and galleries I haven't seen in some years, or never had the time to see when I lived in KL. He was to bring me to Vermont, so we could share some time with his immediate family, and meet some of his favourite relatives.

My parents had different ideas. His parents had different ideas. My mother practices Feng Shui. She's practised it for upwards of 20 years. The weird Malaysian trip dates were her idea. The August date in Vermont was a collaborative effort between mothers on both sides. The amazingly similar ideas of inviting "close relatives who knew me/Seth as a child" (I have 7 uncles and aunts on my side alone) to a "small gathering" (about 2-3 tables at a wedding dinner is about as far as restraint goes) sprang up independently on each side of the family, and evolved into equally amazing similar convergences of people, as culturally speaking, parents everywhere will turn the joining of two families into a large communal event.

I guess that coincides with what we currently know about the social evolution of humans.

For the last month or so, we've been scrambling to get tickets in time, travel documents in order, and I've been covering the cat in hugs, because I don't want to miss her for two weeks. We still have to get full measurements for both myself (Mom's threatening me with a dress) and my husband (Mom's threatening him with a suit), and I'm sure there's something in this about people slapping me with paint and trying to make me look like a girl. Still, it'd be kind of an adventure, and we'll have stories to tell. Our hotel is centrally located in a place I'm quite fond of -- the KLCC park. It's within walking distance to one of the nicer places for dim sum, Boh's cafe (if it's still standing), the Petronas Gallery, the subway to Jamek Mosque (and the Islamic Cemetery -- I wonder if they'll let me in with a discreet camera), the subway to my parents' apartment and a relatively painless interchange each for Chinatown and Low Yatt Plaza (the computer fish market). We will, within 12 hours or so of landing in KL, need to fly an additional 2 hours to Sabah, to my mother's family, for 3 days, before running back to KL for a week.

Then we will return, and resume a relatively moss-like existence, slowly growing around the plushie cat and various game-shaped consoles.

My mother offered to pack a few essential items I might need from my room in Perth. I'm tempted to ask for my bear -- the big white Christmas Jelly Bear I've had since I was seven.

Then again, the cat might pee on it in envy.

Woke up this morning to the cat clambering up onto the bed to nuzzle between us. It's her wake-up call these days, purring loudly so we both stare into her big black eyes. We went back to sleep, because it's nice to a have a cat purring between us in the mornings. The next time I woke up, there was a cat wrapped halfway around my head, as my head seemed to be slowly getting nudged off my pillow. Sif has gone from a neurotic, traumatically broken cat to a more chilled out cat these days. As it was, by the time she turned on her side and began leaning her full weight against my head, I was wide awake. Now she's hanging out next to my chair, so I can reach out to scratch her behind the years. She's a terribly good gaming cat too, quite happy to sit with her people between speakers blasting out simultaneous gunfire and spell blasts.

The Trusty Guide is busy playing Killzone behind me. I like listening to him and watching him play. There's something very soothing about watching the dear husband set up gun turrets and take down ISA soldiers with a shotgun. Sometimes, I help bodycount to keep track of his medal winnings. I might pick up the game myself one of these days. I've just got to get past the twitchy controls.

After three years, I've finally finished Digital Devil Saga. I got stuck for the longest time tracking the optional bosses, until I got so sick of upping levels, I quit. Once I picked it up again, I demolished the final version of Beelzebub and set about on what I thought would be "the quick last boss". My policy with most of these run-around-and-smack-random-encounter RPGs is to not leave a dungeon until every single member of my team has at least been raised a level. So by the time I was at the final dungeon, each of my characters was at least level 80, strong enough, I thought, to breeze past anything. The last dungeon of DDS was not quick. It could've been one of the most badly-designed dungeons I've ever played, which is sad, since DDS is an otherwise underratedly good game. For its time, the scenery managed to be very intricate, with Indian temple-esque detailing on every wall, cornice, doorway and floor tile, while the story, which is loosely based around Hindu/Buddhist concepts of reincarnation and atheist-death concepts of Nirvana, really sets the mood (gloomy and increasingly disconsolate). Having helped Seth tag team Persona 4, the latest in the MegaTen franchise (together we logged some 100 hours of game time), I've actually come to appreciate how far the MegaTen games have come in designing sleeker, leaner dungeons, and especially, improving status attacks. It took me at least another 5 hours of running into seemingly endless portal mazes to get to the final cutscene for DDS. I hate portal mazes, almost as much as I hate water pump mazes. My levels by the time I hit the final boss? 85.

Walked over to Jim's for breakfast. Jim's is my definition of ye olde American diner, at least, what I remember of them from my childhood in Houston and New Orleans. The waiters are sweet. The food comes in massive American portions, and they make tasty hash browns. The bottomless coffee goes with our books. We usually leave once the mariachi band moves in. This is usually accompanied by parents with their screaming children, who have apparently never heard of a baby plug. Afterwards, we headed to Duc Loi Supermarket on 18th. This is a spiffy new Asian market that's often surprisingly quiet. They have a large assortment of very Asian products, but no dried normal won ton noodles -- lots of "imitation egg noodles" and "vegetarian egg noodles" though -- and plenty of very fresh, tasty Asian vegetables. I was hoping to find a replacement pack for the nice scallop-flavoured won ton noodles I got at 99 Ranch over New Year's.

Last night, we watched the first Red Cliff. A combination of being old fans of Koei's Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Dynasty Warriors franchise, and attempts at reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms with varying success meant there was enough geekery between us to point and cheer at the screen when Zhuge Liang showed up and squeal like little girls at Guan Yu's beard. There was also much cheering because Red Cliff starts off with one of the most famous rescue attempts in history, and it's completely exciting. The movie gives cursory nods to some favourite staples from HK period drama movie tropes of old, such as scholars talking via decidedly rock star-like slide guitar qin battles (it's obligatory!) and lots of smirky, silent pauses in conversations when the chief strategists on each side come up with a cunning plan. It has one of my favourite things about period dramas, namely, pretty hair ornaments. There were plenty of John Woo moments where the aforementioned director was so John Woo, including a scene Chow Yun Fatt abandoned at the last minute for the much nicer to look at Tony Leung (we spent half the movie looking out for him, honest) but that was clearly made for Chow Yun Fatt -- the also obligatory leaping in front of a flying arrow for a comrade-in-arms slow-mo sequence. The movie does drag out its middle far too long, giving fuel to my opinion that sex scenes in most movies (except movies of the more erotic genres) are frequently added to take up film time, although quiet, smirky moments between scholars are still cool. I was waiting for the scene where people would get together in a poetry recitation battle royale, but maybe they saved that for the next movie. Since we bought Red Cliff II too, I'll find out tonight.

How did I not discover this comforting, wonderful drink sooner? It combines all that is good about creamy steamed milk and subtle, spiced cookie flavours.

Ingredients:

1 cup milk
A tiny pinch of allspice and cinnamon

Method:

1. Gently warm milk in a small saucepan over medium-low to medium heat. (Don't bring it to boil!)
2. When milk is thoroughly hot (after it starts developing a thin skin over its surface), whisk milk until frothy.
3. Pour into serving mug.
4. Scatter spices on top (like ashes on the surf!). (Yes, I had to try to fit that in.)
5. Stir. Serve.

Great for cold, cold days.

First up, Terrible Beauty, Frightful Symmetry, the anthology in which my reprint of Mosquito Story will be appearing, is coming out on February 27, 2008. This should be the last time its publication date has been shifted. I'm very keen to see this in print. I know the publisher and the editors involved have been doing everything they can to make this anthology a reality, and I admire their tenacity in that regard.

According to Simon & Schuster's website, Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues (otherwise known as Morbid Curiosity Magazine's Spin-Off Anthology of Awesome) is set to come out on October 13, 2009 from Scribner. Edited by the lovely morbidloren, this anthology features over 40 essays on the morbid and the macabre, including one of mine -- The Bomoh. It's also coming out on my birthday, which makes this double the awesome.

Awesome awesome awesome!

First up, from the Fix. And then, from the Internet Review of Science Fiction.

There's a couple of very interesting contrasts at work - from how much of the cultural background of the protagonist manages to come through to different reviewers, and how the cultural view within the story is ultimately interpreted. I guess it's nice that I was able to evoke very different reactions from different people.

A Foreigner's View of the River can be found online, at Fantasy Magazine.

'Cause they're a treat!

I actually like making tea eggs on a regular basis. Like hard boiled eggs usually do, they keep fairly well for about a week in the fridge, and they're ready to be chopped into salads, toppings, stuffings and munched on for a snack. The sauce the eggs need to be steeped in is its own perpetual machine. Once you've made tea eggs once, the sauce can be frozen for as long as you need it around. Further batches can be made with the defrosted sauce, and additional ingredients can always be added to top up the remainder. The same sauce also does wonders for steeping other boiled proteins - shelled boiled peanuts, tofu cubes, boiled beef or chicken - just not fish.

When I first started making this, I ended up making huge batches because I followed my mother's recipe for lots of 24 eggs and up. The recipe below should work for 6 - 12 eggs.
( Tea Eggs )