“It tastes like the best tasting thing you can think of, vanilla ice cream, or chocolate cake, in the toilet.” This was how Sara described the fruit that is distinctly Malaysian…the stinky durian. “My grandmother used to buy a huge four-foot bin of these, and we’d eat every single one […]
In the Meleka Palace Hotel in Kuching there was a sign above the elevator, warning that ‘no durian fruits were allowed on the premises.’ I read the local paper today to discover a photo of a man wearing a motorcycle helmet, holding one of these famously stinky, spiky fruits. Durian, […]
“Have you been to the fish spa?” asked Sara, our guide. “Oh you’ve got to try it, I tell everyone.” she said brightly. “In fact I am going there after I drop you off at the hotel!” The fish spa, we learned, is a place called Kenko, on an upper […]
We took our friend Bidari up on his kind offer to drive us over to the Sarawak Plaza to his friend’s record store in a hotel van. He picked out a bunch of CDs and a kind young lady unwrapped each of them and played cuts for us to choose. […]
The last time I visited Malaysia, I remember the music was one of the highlights of the trip. It was in a market, the tunes blared out and just caught me. On TV early one morning, watching thousands of men circling the Ka’aba at the great mosque in Mecca–a ritual […]
We didn’t fly over the pole, we headed straight for Stockholm and an hour later were airborne for a tough eleven and a half more hours. Then a little break in KL and after two more hours, we landed in Kuching. This city is named for the Malay word for […]
I usually pack for a one-week trip. But last night I stuffed my biggest suitcase fuller than usual because my trip tonight will take me far, far away on the longest non-stop flight you can take. I’ll take off from Newark tonight and go over the pole to Kuala Lumpur, […]
I read in Global Voices today that the Iranian Parliament is considering a bill that would put bloggers in the same category as rapists, murderers and thieves and make them eligible for the death penalty. The bill would ‘toughen punishment for disturbing mental security in society’ and that ‘establishing websites […]
This expression cracked me up when I read it on a poster selling power tools. Indeed, my hands don’t bear the callouses found on hard-working carpenters, iron workers or painters. But today I did one of the jobs that gives you callouses and it felt great. I painted the front […]
I thought it was a bit of an extravagance when I bought my “GNCAFE” license plates for the cafe truck. Today I realized that I’m in little league when it comes to extravagant plate splurges. In yesterday’s WSJ, I read about vanity plates going for millions of dollars in Abu […]
Last night Garrison Keillor sang in the rain. In his white shirt and red tie, fifteen minutes before the live Saturday night broadcast of “A Prairie Home Companion” at the Koussevitsky Music Shed in Lenox, he serenaded joyful fans seated on the lawn with a version of the Gene Kelley […]
Andy Rubin had a meeting with Google’s Larry Page that turned out much better than he expected it to. Rubin, the inventor of the Sidekick phone, wanted Page to give his endorsement to his new telephone software called Android. An article by Daniel Roth in this month’s Wired gives the […]