Review: Stereophonics @ Life Centre, KL, 28.4.10

Preface:
I’m adding a new type of blog post: Reviews. I think this is a good idea seeing as people tell me I’m opinionated — which I am — and this will kind of be a way to formalise some of those opinions. Let’s crack on Shall we?

On monday, Kelly rang me from work asking if I’d like to see Stereophonics on Wednesday night. I’d heard of Stereophonics, but never heard their music. Whenever I hear the name it reminds me of Stereolab, a band I love, but a modern version. Immediately I thought they might sound like The Presets (link goes to Wikipedia, because the Presets website is advertising sunglasses to buy, and nothing about the music. Balls.), but in reality Stereophonics are nothing like that.

A wiser man than myself once told me Stereophonics are MOR (middle of the road) rock n roll. And they are. Think Triple M, and the soundtrack to the latest teen blockbuster. Not really my style. However, seeing as we’re in KL and live bands are few and far between, we decided we should go. Helping this decision was the offer of being on the VIP list, and getting free drinks all night.

Cool, right? Wrong.
We arrived maybe ten minutes before the band took the stage, and upstairs in the VIP area the bar had run out of beer. I’ll repeat that: the bar had run out of beer. They did however, have a good view of the stage from the upper levels, but it was so full of VIPs that we couldn’t see anything. We went back downstairs and paid for two Carlsbergs. In cans.

As far as knowing the material, I had downloaded the latest album and the greatest hits to get up to speed. The latest album actually wasn’t bad, with a handful of really catchy songs. The greatest hits, was half-full of 90s-era-sounding crap, fuzz-driven songs. I only made it through to song three before switching back to the latest album.

Kelly and I probably ran through the albums half a dozen times, and I was glad we did. Because it meant that we knew four or five songs and could enjoy those. The rest were of no use to us. I mean, it would’ve been great for a Stereophonics fan, but not for us.

Musically the band was very tight. You could tell they were seasoned professionals. The singer’s voice was nothing short of amazing. Kelly even remarked they sounded very much like a recording! I was extremely impressed with the voice, but not so much with the other members, as it appeared they weren’t playing anything too difficult. However, I’m not guitarist, so I could be proven wrong on that. They played simple songs, but played them well.

Due to the MOR nature of the music (and probably being unfamiliar with most of the material) I found myself imagining watching ISIS or Meshuggah for about 40% of the gig. Which was OK with me.

Stereophonics were on stage for the best part of 90 minutes, maybe longer, and then promptly said thanks and good evening. Now, those of you who know me know how much I despise fake encores. The are the times when a band ‘finishes’ their show without playing their most successful songs. I don’t know much about Stereophonics, but I know they didn’t play the first single of their new album “It’s alright”(?), or the most famous of all their tracks “Dakota”. This really shits me. Every fucking band does this nowadays. Just once, I’d love to see the crowd keep quiet, not cheer for ‘more’, and watch the band regretfully retake the stage to fulfil their musical obligation to the venue. That would make my day. Encores need to be earned, not given. The band should play their whole intended set, and then come out if there’s enough response. (I’m getting grumpy just writing this, but I’m glad it’s somewhat out of my system now).

So yah, they came out and played “It’s Alright” and “Dakota” and another track I didn’t know. And then we were free to go.

Grievances aside, we enjoyed being out to see a live band. It was a novelty we probably won’t get to experience that often in KL. Which is not all bad, ‘cos the amount of SMOKE in that place… I forgot how blessed we Melbournians are for having smoke free venues.

Highlight of the night? See the previous post.

Rabbit season

So…

We were in the elevator to our apartment after seeing the Stereophonics last night (review coming soon). When we reached our floor and the doors opened, there were three fluffy bunny rabbits mucking about (and doing little poos) in the corridor. True story.

What, you don’t believe me? Here they are in glorious tallscreen:

Front-runner for my most surreal moment of 2010.
Youtube version for the usual suspects.

Spolier: it turns out my Asian next-door neighbour owns them. He’s the guy you can hear, but not see, in the video. Which is a good thing, cos he was only in his boxers. Seemed nice enough though. They had carrots out :)

Notes to self:
1. Make sure I introduce myself next time I see him (with clothes on).
2. Listen to your music a little louder and a little later, ‘cos we’re allowed to have pets here, but I’m pretty sure those weren’t fish or small birds.

The fruit of Thailand

A while ago I wrote a post in which promised to show you the cards which went alongside the fruit the Mandarin Oriental supplied every day during our stay. There were beautifully illustrated watercolours on some nice off-white textured stock. They looked good. Now, with the set up of my scanner, you too can see:

Apple

Asian Pear

Longan

Lychee

Mafeung

Maprang

Orange Mandarin

Ranbutan

See what I’m tolkien about?

Beer

Before I get onto my beer news, I’ll talk a bit about something else.

Sexism

We new going in that sexism existed in Malaysia, but not really to what extent. Not to say it’s bad, it seems fairly benign. Benign sexism? Is that even possible? Well, I guess it depends who you talk to. Is it like mild racism? I mean, can you be only a little bit racist?

Anyway, the sexism we’ve experienced so far is in the form of: the husband is expected to be the working party, and the wife is expected to stay at home. Now, the wife can work — it’s not that women are stricken from the workplace — but it’s the husband staying at home that people are thrown by. This, of course, is the situation I’m in.

This distinction has been played out to us a few times so far. Here are two benign examples:

1. When we were shopping for cars, we stopped at a Suzuki dealer (for those curious folk, we were interested in a Swift). After looking at a couple of models, the salesman went to fetch some brochures for us. When he returned, I happened to have wandered off a ways, but Kelly was there to receive the brochures. However, even with an outstretched hand, he walked right by Kelly and toward me. It seemed, that a woman could not possibly be the decision maker and handle the taking of the brochures.
2. We’ve signed up for AAM (Automotive Association of Malaysia) for both cars. It’s the RACV equivalent in Australia. They help with breakdowns, basically. Anyway, as Kelly is the working party, all the forms are signed with her name and work details. On friday we received our AAM membership cards:

   

   Notice anything unusual?

   Yes, it seems the owner of any our cars, must be male, and the secondary card holder must be female. Unless of course, Kelly’s secretly fostered an appreciation of Formula One racing that I (but not the AAM) know nothing about, while I like to express myself with pink and orange organic, flowing plant forms¹. My card has the text “your no.1 motoring friend” beneath the AAM logo. A male obviously doesn’t want anything to do with “friends”, hence no tagline beneath Kelly’s logo. Friends? Pfft, friends are for girls. And the word ‘SHAPE’? Please explain…

So yeah, is this benign? I’m personally not offended, but I the male. If the (heeled) shoe was on the other foot I might see it differently. I think it’s kinda cute and funny. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t agree with this cultural norm, but I don’t feel we should be making too big a stand against it. I mean, it’s their country and culture we’re living in, so I’m rolling with it. Kelly feels differently, but not violently differently.

When in Rome…?

Now, beer

So I have a contact whom we shall call ‘Beer Man’ (primarily because I don’t know his actual name). Beer Man™ (I feel the trademark symbol is entirely appropriate here) is a guy you call when you want some beer. Beer Man™ is a good contact to have, because he apparently has a good selection of beer, to buy only by the slab, and much cheaper than the stores. He speaks very limited english, and only delivers. He is address-less. I’ve been told when I call, the conversation will go something like this:

Me – Hello?
Beer Man™ – Hello?
– Is that the Beer Man™?
– …
– Um, I would like some beer delivered please.
– Which beer, which one?
– (assuming I somehow know what beers he carries) Asahi. Can I have one case of Asahi?
– Address?
– *gives address in a broken English/semi-tryhard-Malay accent …a couple times probably*
– Ok. 20 minute.
– Excuse me? Sorry?
– 20 minute. Be in 20 minute.
– Oh, ok. How much will tha…
– *hangs up*

I’ll keep you posted.

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1. I am a graphic designer, but c’mon… ↩

Black and blue

This page looks awesome. Not by design, but by content. Design by content, or content by design?

The first week

For the first time in a long while, I didn’t do much. On saturday, I spent most of the day in bed watching (all 12) episodes of The Inbetweeners, a show that Davo had kindly burned to DVD for me before I left. (The inbetweeners, for those interested, is a British show about four adolescents and their search for “clunge”. It’s halfway between IT Crowd, and real life as a 17 year old male.) This was a rest I really felt I needed.

So far, since arriving in KL, I’ve spent much of my daylight hours, working for Six Degrees Digital, and organising things for life in KL with Kelly. Weekends have been spent going to furniture stores, and/or driving to different parts of KL to pick something up. One weekend, we got away and drove to Fraser Hill to see some country side (and a snake!).

We moved in on the Thursday before last, and stayed our first night in the new apartment on the Friday. I must admit, moving away from the hotel and into our place did give me a feeling of relief. There was (is) still much to do, but being somewhat settled, gave us both a feeling of optimism.

We’ve been slowly unpacking things and putting them in their rightful place. We’ve even found some stuff we thought was lost! A couple of things are still missing — my 60cm ruler for instance — but they’ll eventually turn up I’m hopeful sure.

Today, Kelly and I put up the handful of artwork we had from Oz¹ — the Japanese silks, the Nick Cave gig poster, the framed cymbal signed by Danny Carey of Tool.

Furniture

As you may or may not know, we used to live in a two bedroom flat in North Melbourne. The furniture we had there was always the interim-kind, the furniture you have while you look for the right furniture. In our current digs, that furniture really doesn’t cut it. The dining table, coffee table, TV cabinet thing, and the couch, all need to be upgraded. And if Kelly has anything to say about it — the sooner the better. Fortunately, I agree.

MKHomes is an establishment with the expat in mind. They have various types of modern and traditional furniture for sale, and for rent. We saw a couch that we really liked, and after some inquiry, measuring, artist’s impressions, and blueprints, we commissioned a custom-sized version of the couch we saw. It’s a massive upgrade both in terms of quality, and size. The current couch seats two reasonably well. The new one seats four very comfotably, and five or six with a bit of huddling. Colour? A textural burnt orange/red, with gold-ish woven fibres. Here’s an artist’s impression — the display couch photoshopped with our colour choice (please note, the cushions will be the same colour as the couch):

Here’s an image of the fabric sample:

And here’s the final schematic I made. Originally, the couch had some weird measurements and was about a foot too long for our living room. My redesign makes all measurements multiples of 300mm, allowing the couch to be pulled apart and put back together in different configurations. I believe the cool kids call this “modular”:

Kitchen

We’ve done a bit of cooking now and I have to say, after a week, I have mixed feelings about the kitchen setup. The main thing is the sinks. There’s one in the dry kitchen, and two in the wet kitchen. I’m always tempted to wash the dishes in the dry kitchen because it’s in the living area of the house (and in air con), but there simply isn’t enough room to do a full load, especially if you’ve used a few pots and pans to make dinner. Taking all the dishes into the wet kitchen to wash later is a hassle. The pots and pans live in the wet kitchen, plates and cutlery in the dry. It’s a bit here and there.

Another unfortunate finding of the sinks is that there’s no hot water. We had the Jill the real estate agent over the other night to point out a few things we needed repaired/finished, including the no-hot-water-in-the-sink issue, and after a call to the owner, she told us apologetically this was by design. She felt bad for not knowing this before-hand and letting us know — she assumed this being a modern apartment, it would have hot water in the sinks — but it had been designed to traditional standards, at least in this area. (The no-hot-water-in-the-sink issue extends to the bathroom sinks also.)

Apparently, many Asian households roll with warm water in the sinks. This is not uncommon. Now, while this seems to be a major issue, it’s actually not. The water out of the sink is luke-warm, room temperature, so it’s pleasant to splash some on your face in the bathroom. And because you can’t drink the tap water (more on this in a minute), you’re never longing for cold water out of the tap. We thought this was something that needed to be fixed, but in reality, it hadn’t bothered us at all. The showers all have very good hot water.

We have sorted which of out appliances go where — coffee machine, grinder, toaster, and kettle out front, juicer, breadmaker, and Kenwood out back. We’ve made a couple loaves of bread so far, and it’s pretty awesome! Once we get a handle on it properly, we’ll make custom mixes with seeds and other grains. The place smells awesome the mornings we make a loaf.

I’m also getting better at making (and drinking) proper coffee. We smuggled a couple bags of North Melbourne-roasted coffee beans in to the country (and by smuggled I mean packed and brought in through almost non-existent customs) to enjoy a good a good cup o’ joe, because we’d heard you can’t get a good cup in KL. According to Kelly, this is true.

Fresh juice is AMAZING! The fruit here is so sweet and tasty — I’m not sure I’ve had anything like it. And the store-bought stuff comes in different flavours like 100% pink guava. According to Kelly, this is great drunk poolside with Vodka.

There’s plenty of cupboard space, but annoyingly, not utensil drawers in the dry kitchen. We have utensils stashed on a pantry shelf. This is it’s own kind of disappointing, as I have 30 years of muscle memory to reach down and open a drawer with the first smell of toast hitting a chopping board.

To maid, or not to maid?

…was the question I was asking myself when we first arrived in KL. But now, it’s not a question of ‘if’, but ‘which one?’. You see, it’s very common for an expat to have a maid — either live-in, or part-time — to help with housekeeping. We met yesterday with Choo, a maid that Kelly’s ex-boss was using for years before he went back to Oz. She was nice, and charged RM700 per month (about AUD$230), for twice-weekly 3–4 hour sessions. That equates to about 10 bucks an hour. But we’ve heard that’s fairly expensive, and that for that price we could get a 24-hour live-in maid (which we don’t want). So, the next step is to find a comparison rate from another source and decide. The building has some maids already, so I’ll enquire about that service tomorrow. Some services can be as low at RM10 per hour (AUD$3.33!), but it really comes down to quality and trustworthiness. I’ll keep you posted.

Drinking water

As you can’t drink the water directly from the tap, we’re in the process of organising a water cooler for our apartment! One of those coolers you see in offices and doctors’ waiting rooms. They’ll deliver on any weekday, and bring the water up to our door. Radsticks! One step closer to my childhood fantasy of having my very own Slurpee™ machine!

Air conditioning

Thank GOD for air con.

Outdoor activities

As mentioned in a previous post, we have a gym, and a pool downstairs. This is pretty standard among apartment blocks in KL. we recently went to check out the Raintree Club *WARNING: background repeater requires sunnies :(* The raintree club is a social/sports club which as a member you’ve access to tennis courts, squash courts, swimming pool, gym, yoga classes, darts, a run down 3/4-sized basketball court, and even a bowling alley! The idea is nice, but a) you need to become a member and pay fees (which is reasonable, but fairly high), b) you need to drive to get there, and traffic in KL is a bitch, and c) you need a minimum spend in the bar/restaurant. B is the killer (for me at least), as I want to be able to go for a swim spontaneously, and not have to plan and endure a 30 min drive to do it.

So, to our disposal, a gym and a pool. Not too bad. But on saturday morning during breakfast, I glanced down a the street and noticed what appeared to be a publicly accessible basketball ring and backboard, complete with net (!), on a large square bit of concrete. Holy crap! Awesome! It looks a *little* dodgy, as it’s on a non-main road, and at the end of a car park, but so far I’ve only ever seen one group of guys playing indoor soccer on it, once, at dusk. during the day it might be pretty safe, albeit f@#king HOT!.

What do you think:

I guess there’s only one way to find out. And that’s monitor it for a week or so and see who uses it. So that’s what I’ll do. I could brave the traffic and ride my bike there. Should only take a few minutes.

So what now?

Well, over the next two and a half weeks, we’ll keep getting things in order and organising things, including Astro, the Foxtel equivalent, and attending Bahasa Malay language classes. Then it’s off to Poland for a three week holiday and and a wedding.

I’m hoping that after we return from that, things will be less hectic.

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1. I’m keen to create some new artwork. This might be a bit geeky but I’m thinking I’ll create some 8-bit NES characters in Lego to hang on the wall. Now that you can purchase custom amounts of lego blocks online, this is entirely possible. I’m not sure which characters to create yet, tossing up between Super Mario, Zelda, or Megaman. Wodjafink? If there are any rad games I’ve forgottenabout that I used to play, let me know (I’m looking at you Marty, James, and Goog) ↩

The shift

I have not been writing as often as I’ve wanted to. I’ve been really busy with work, and organising stuff for the apartment. In short, we’ve moved in — been almost a week now — and things are falling into place. The next big thing is getting some new furniture. More on that in a later post.

To tide you over, I’ve made a short time-lapse video of the movers bringing all our stuff in. The place was empty and there was nowhere to set the camera and laptop up. Fortunately, the angle looks good. Unfortunately, you can’t see most of the other rooms.

YT version for iPhone/iPad owners.

Shift

Today, we moved out of the Prince Hotel and into our new apartment. Well, actually we check out tomorrow morning, but we spent that day at the new place, with the phone man and moving men, and stanley knives, sticky tape, paper (TONNES of butcher’s paper), and air con.

Pretty tires right now, but I wanted to show both of you a few pics taken on move-in day. Day zero even:

Our apartment blocks (A & B)

The ugliest telephone in the universe (now ours):

Good packing job by the movers in Oz:

Unrelated but cool photo:

And then, there’s the view from the balcony:

Here’s a link to a youtube version for you iPhone/iPad owners.

More stuff to come soon-ish — we have no internet after tonight, so there might be a lull in reporting for a while. Stay tuned though, ‘cos I’ll be back with more.

Thanks for watching.

Raindrop

A wicked storm came through KL the other day.

A few unedited seconds.

Holy crap!

I forgot to tell you about the TOILET in Starhill Gallery! ZOMG!¹ I can’t believe I forgot about it!

So, while I wandered around taking the photos you saw in the previous post, Kelly went to look for the bathroom. I had no idea where she went, but it was a good 10 minutes before I saw her again. She asked me whether I had been to the toilet, which I hadn’t, and she slipped me a 1 Ringgit note, and took me to where the toilets were:

Down that corridor and to the right. After finding the toilet door, I cautiously pushed it open and entered. What was within, I never expected.

Inside the male toilet, was a set of dimly atmospherically lit corridors. Labyrinthian even. There was some sort of soft sound, but I can’t remember what it was. I walked on in the near darkness, poking my head into the doorways that ran off the main corridor — oh, a seated toilet behind another door, oh, and a little room with two urinals.

I walked forward a little further and I could make out a larger room, with some sot of statue. As I walked closer, I realised it was no statue, it was a person! No, wait, better: it was an employee! There was a man in the toilet, that was his job!

Also in the larger — but still atmospherically lit — room, there were two free-standing basins, with water spouts made from bamboo. I said to the man “I need to wash my hands”. He nodded and reached up above his head to grab a free-floating bit of bamboo. He pulled it down and swung it around a little bit, and I followed it with my eyes. His bit of bamboo was connected to another couple of bits which all worked together as a contraption. That’s the best way I can describe it. After a second or two, water started running into the basin.

I was a tad gobsmacked. The whole thing was like an Indiana Jones scene, where Ford would hear the contraption make its various noises and prepare for the worst, but he gets a trickle of water instead of death.

I washed my hands, and dried them on a real hand towel, and placed my one Ringgit in the bowl with the other notes, and quietly left. (Well actually, I didn’t quietly leave — I asked the guy whether he stayed in there all night. He said yes. I felt a bit sorry for him.)

When I came out, Kelly was waiting. She asked what I thought, and I told her the bamboo contraption was awesome. She looked puzzled. You see, in the women’s toilet, there was a giant copper wheel instead of a bamboo contraption, and there were two ladies operating it! Holy crap!

…thus concludes The Tale of the Two Toilets™

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1. This is probably the only time I’ll use ZOMG in a non-sarcastic manner ↩