Malacca and KL trip

Just went on a weekend trip to Malacca and KL. Must say that Malacca is definitely more fun than KL All the little roads with antique and craft shops. I bought some incense and stuff at really good prices (about half that of Singapore but apparently they are even cheaper in bangkok.) The historical peranakan houses were beautiful. I especially like the air wells that are situated in the centre of each houses. Most of the air wells had clay urns of various sizes filled with lotus pads and cute little guppies. One had quite good sized black gold fishes swimming merrily in it. One shop was selling 3 pewter figurines of buddha in the classic poses of speak no evil, hear no evil and see no evil. So cute!!!!!! but quite expensive too. The whole set was selling for $380. Even though it was ringgit and pewter, it was still too expensive for my pocket. Sigh. Wandering along the streets, we stumbled across this little boutique hotel that had REAL swallows nesting in the display rooms. Its a really nice hotel with heaps of antiques and yet still managed to look pretty modern. The rooms look pretty nice (from the pictures that we were shown that is) even though we werent allowed to go up and take a look at them. They were quite reasonably priced too, about 110 for twin including breakfast. The hotel converted its large air well into a quiet little bar area reminisent of the basement area in Chijmes complete with a small water feature and wooden tables and chairs and lots of greenery. Think we will definitely be staying here the next time we visit Malacca again.
The trip up to KL was more to see the fireflies which were located quite a way off from KL actually, in Kuala selangor to be precise. It was a good thing I decided that we should be staying in the firefly resort and not in KL. I think the driving back to the capital would have just killed everyone. Driving there was bad enough with the hot weather. At first I thought that Malaysia is a lot hotter than Singapore until I realise that its cooler driving in Singapore because of all the trees that we have on the roadsides. Thank god for big road side trees in sg. I will definitely appreciate them more from now on. On the way to the resort (along highway 54), there were a couple of places selling bak bu teh. One of them had quite a lot of customers. Should have stopped and have dinner there instead of at the seafood restaurant at the resort. Oh well. There are also quite a number of nurseries and fish shops around that area.The firefly tour was quite surreal, decorating the trees like xmas lights. Combine that with the quiet and dark surroundings, they were actually quite impressive. Too bad for mossies and annoying tourists who insist on taking pictures with flashlights. DUH like the photos will turn out to be any good with the flashlight outshining the fireflies. The resort was quite cheap with the usual amenities all available except that the water was a bit weak. Thank god that didnt happen to me while I was showering. Anne and Greg got themselves locked in their room in the middle of the night. That made quite a interesting conversation for everyone in the morning. Everyone just couldnt stop laughing. Thank god it didnt take them too long to open the door otherwise we would have been stuck there for quite a while. We headed off to KL at about 9 plus in the morning and didnt get there till like almost 12. Whew. thank goodness the firefly tour is not something we will be doing again. KL was just like any big city. There wasnt really much to see and as it was reallly hot. We decide to to visit somewhere with air-con ie KLCC. That stands for KL city Centre bTW. That is also home to the Petronas Twin Towers. Tickets to go up to the tower were all snapped up before we got there so we decided to take a break and have some coffee instead at Dome. The whole place just reminds one of Suntec City except that its probably a lot more crowded. Oh ya, the towers were quite impressive with their metal and glass cladding. Very high tech. It was decided while sitting down for coffee that we would head back to Malacca for dinner and more wandering. On the way back, we passed this really impressive building near the mines hotel built like a castle. Apparently that is also a hotel. Wow. I wont mind going there there just to vege hahahaha although its probably a bit far from Singapore. Sam said he prefer going to the Bintan kind of hotels ie Bayan Tree hahahahaha. Well if he is not complaining I definitely wont mind going hehehehehehe. There were preparations for a night market when we got back to the antique street. Too bad we couldnt stay for that. We did managed to sample some poh pian though and those were quite delicious. Dinner at Capitol Satay (or lok lok as I remembered it from before) was really good but it probably would have been better if the weather wasnt so hot or my throat wasnt so scratchy. Oh well. I still managed to enjoyed it though.
All in all, I felt it was a pretty good trip. I just hope that everyone else felt the same way too.

�Who�s your Spaghettio?�

Another hotspot article

Apr. 1, 2001 Sometimes in a moment of carnal bliss when my body is about to lose itself over the cliffs, I look deep into my husband�s eyes. He asks me: �Who�s your Spaghettio?� After two years of marriage, utterances like this seem normal. I once told Bart I thought the phrase �Who�s your daddy?� sounded sleazy. He made it his mission to come up with alternatives. Some memorable ones include �Who�s your Pizza Papa?� and �Who�s your Snausages?� If anything will save Bart and me from marital staleness, it will be our inherent silliness. We have adult playtime, if you could categorize any of our behaviors as adult.

I have had more than my fair share of �serious� sex, ranging from prolonged drunken hook-ups to long-term relationships. Sex was never silly. It was usually quite dramatic. We were having sex and we were going to do it in every way we thought grown-ups were supposed to.

Example: One of my first boyfriends had a penchant for soft bondage. Which is fine, in its place. After about the 10th time I heard, �You�ve been such a bad girl, so I�m going to have to punish you,� the shock wore off. Besides, the preparation was labor-intensive and the lingerie was itchy.

Another paramour from my past loved acrobatic sex in public. I�m pretty fit and far from shy, but the reality was sand in my panties (and close regions), friction burns on my back from the hood of my car, and trips to the chiropractor. There are some things you just don�t want to explain to a doctor!

So, when I started dating Bart, I was unprepared for the level of zaniness we would eventually achieve.
Our first few trysts were very serious. The more we got to know one another, the more we realized that wasn�t what we needed. We�d both been in enough relationships to be tired of the sex we�d been getting. We carved out our own pattern. Our sexual behavior lost the imperative to constantly behave like a porn star.

I say �constantly,� because saucy behavior certainly makes our sex life fun. We�ve done it in the passenger seat of my VW (no small feat, given the size of the seat), and I adore sporting sexy stockings. Yet, our sex life isn�t built on extra frou-frou. It�s pretty much built around our wackiness.

Take for example, the newest addition to our repertoire, �The Boob Buzz.� The proper technique to master this advanced foreplay maneuver is to sneak up on your mate (for example, when he or she is drying up after a shower). Then expose their greater chest region, lock your lips over a nipple and make a raspberry sound. Escape is the key component, as your mate is likely to be quite startled. Cackling �Beware the shame of the Boob Buzz,� is optional, though my husband would argue that it is an integral part of the process.

Overall, language is very important. If Bart turned to me on the couch tonight and said, �Why don�t you go get your vibrator, so I can shove it inside you,� I would feel a bit put off. I�ve had guys suggest this before and, shockingly enough, it was never a turn-on. On the other hand, when he asks me to, �Go find Mr. Bumpy so we can go lose him again,� that is a different invitation entirely. The absurdity lightens the mood. We are just going to play. I lose some inhibition and am ready to try new things.

Another one of our marital oddities is Bart�s �Butt Dance.� This one requires no language at all.
Sometimes when I come home decrying the injustices the world has committed against me, Bart walks over silently, turns his back and drops his pants. He then begins to gyrate his naked bum back and forth. The element of surprise here is paramount. Music also helps. Tom Jones is a good start. After about 30 seconds, Bart�s pants go back up and he walks away as though nothing has happened. I am usually quite stunned, but feeling better as well.

I don�t think Bart and I are alone in this type of behavior. I recently related our escapades to a close girlfriend. It seems she and her husband have their playtime too. Each morning before work they hide a little, sentimentally significant plastic statuette somewhere in their condo. Until it�s found, they are not allowed to leave the house.

Maybe marital oddities aren�t really so odd after all. Rituals help make every relationship unique and special. They bring a couple closer together and help create a world in which only the people involved are a part. From a butt dance, to ridiculous nicknames, to running after each other around the apartment naked smearing each other with grape jelly, every successful relationship has its own playful side that keeps it interesting and light-hearted. People planning to be together for a long time, or even a few fun minutes, owe it to each other to explore that side. If you can play well together when things are sweet and cute, you solidify your interactions for the times when you need to work well together. The absurd creates a foil for the serious.

I don�t regret the un-silly sex of my early erotic encounters, but I like the freedom of being able to define my own sexuality. People joke about married sex being boring. But for me, it�s really the ride of my life! There�s innocence to it, and a variety I have never had.

While I will admit that I am the straight one in this comedic team, I have to remember it wouldn�t be funny without me. As long as Bart continues to dish it out, I am right here to take it.

But maybe tonight, in the heat of passion, I will cry out that age-old question: �Who�s my Red Ryder?

Another perspective on Sept 11

Something to ponder on (Its an article in hotspot if anyone is interested)

Sep. 19, 2001 This is a powerful and interesting view from a colleague of my friend who is a professor at ....

The author is a Afghan American whose is a college professor in the USA. Hotspots.com received this email fowards on September 18, 2001 which was originally sent out around the 13th of Septmember. We're awaiting his permission to give him credit for this insightful email and welcome your comments as well.

One more perspective to this tragedy...

Dear Colleagues,

As we reflect upon the tragic events of this week and an appropriate "response," I thought you might like to see this letter from my college roommate, who grew up in Afghanistan. I think he offers an interesting perspective on Bin Laden, the Taliban, and Afghanistan.

Dear Friends,

Yesterday I heard a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio allowed that this would mean killing innocent people, people who had nothing to do with this atrocity, but "we're at war, we have to accept collateral damage," and he asked, "What else can we do? What is your suggestion?" Minutes later I heard a TV pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be done."

And I thought about these issues especially hard because I am from Afghanistan, and even though I've lived here for 35 years I've never lost track of what's been going on over there. So I want to share a few thoughts with anyone who will listen.

I speak as one who hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. There is no doubt in my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in New York.

I fervently wish to see those monsters punished.

But the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who captured Afghanistan in 1997 and have been holding the country in bondage ever since. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a master
plan.

When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think "the Jews in the concentration camps." It's not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would love for someone to eliminate the Taliban and clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their country.

I guarantee it.

Some say, if that's the case, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban themselves? The answer is, they're starved, exhausted, damaged, and incapacitated. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food. Millions of Afghans are widows of the approximately two million men killed during the war with the Soviets. And the Taliban has been executing these women for being women and have buried some of their opponents alive in mass graves. The soil of Afghanistan is littered with land mines and almost all the farms have been destroyed . The Afghan people have tried to overthrow the Taliban. They haven't been able to.

We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. Trouble with that scheme is, it's already been done. The Soviets took care of it . Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals? Done. Destroy their infrastructure? There is no infrastructure. Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that.

New bombs would only land in the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan, only the Taliban eat, only they have the means to move around. They'd slip away and hide. (They have already, I hear.) Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans, they don't move too fast, they don't even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs wouldn't really be a strike against the criminals who did this horrific thing. Actually it would be making common cause with the Taliban--by raping once again the people they've been raping all this time.

So what else can be done, then? Let me now speak with true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. I think that when people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be done" many of them are thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. They are thinking about overcoming moral qualms about killing innocent people. But it's the belly to die not kill that's actually on the table. Americans will die in a land war to get Bin Laden.

And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that, folks. To get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I'm going. The invasion approach is a flirtation with global war between Islam and the West.

And that is Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants and why he did this thing. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there. AT the moment, of course, "Islam" as such does not exist. There are Muslims and there are Muslim countries, but no such political entity as Islam. Bin Laden believes that if he can get a war started, he can constitute this entity and he'd be running it. He really believes Islam would beat the west. It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and the West, he's got a billion soldiers. If the West wreaks a holocaust in Muslim lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose, even better from Bin Laden's point of view. He's probably wrong about winning, in the end the west would probably overcome--whatever that would mean in such a war; but the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden yes, but anyone else?

I don't have a solution. But I do believe that suffering and poverty are the soil in which terrorism grows. Bin Laden and his cohorts want to bait us into creating more such soil, so they and their kind can flourish. We can't let him do that. That's my humble opinion.