Singapore, April 2005

Well I made a quick visa run down to Singapore with my 'Guru' Diane. the city puts London to shame......so clean, efficient, easy to use and informative public transport, polite service, large green spaces, multi-cultured, modern city. I loved it. Although the prices were going on British prices, still it was worth every cent.

We were staying in Little India, arriving Sunday night, when all the Indians gather there to meet their friends, thousands of them...thought I'd turned up in time for some festival!! But no it was the usual Sunday get together.....picnics an all!! By evening all the women go home to cook dinner, look after granny, put the kids to bed, do the housework, you know, the usual, while the men stay behind chatting with their friends, you know, the usual!! Men have more to gossip about!

So the place was packed, the night markets were stunning...after having so much trouble buying anything fresh in KL, my mouth was watering seeing all the fresh fruit and veg stalls.

Dinner was delicious, more south Indian food.........

We also met up with Diane's Chinese friends who own a couple of Indian Restaurants and a massage parlour. Got a free massage.....wonderful, and treated to dinner.

I visited the zoo. For once the animals actually looked really content to be there, playful, happy and lots of baby animals too. Compared to other zoos I have seen, this was much more informative and relatively open, so animals didn't necessarily feel too locked in, although a panther escaped when I turned up and I had to single handedly wresle the beast and charm it back into its enclosure. Got a few free carrots for doing that! Yummy.

Then onto the science centre......with my square head on, and my note book and pen to take notes, got a few strange stares, but the info would be very useful for the Tamil Foundation Science Fair and Young Scientific Explorer Projects. And compared to the KL Science Centre, which was the worst thing i have ever come across, the Singapore one was excellent.

They really have everything sussed. Except for the food thing! Can't eat anywhere! Can't eat on the trains, in the stations, in any buildings, any public places, on the streets! It was as bad as Malaysia during Ramadan! So I had to carry my chocolate around with me all day til I got home! Boy, was that frustrating.

Bustling China Town, and up market Orchard Road, got plenty of shopping done!

So back to KL in time for yet another public holiday! Last week was Tamil New Year, today is Malay or the Muslim New Year! No end of holidays.

Starting a new job as an English teacher at the International school here. (Website is www.elc.edu.my - take a look, its a beautiful school). Got the job inadvertantly, straight after the interview, they starting congratulating me, so I guess i'd been offered and accepted the job without realising it. I think I will have to tone down my enthusiasm at interviews in future. I WAS quite enjoying semi retirement you know!

Teaching 100 first language English kids a day, but they are my favourite age, 8-9 year olds, so looking forward to it, although its going to be like being back at work....timetables, schedules, planning, reporting, early mornings and all! See how it goes...no news on Sri Lanka yet, may have jeapodised that by taking this teaching job though. And how to remember all the names??? And parents evening.....aaaarrrrggggggghhhhhhhhhh.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Feb / March 2005

So concert went well...collected half a million. Made many new friends and met many strange / interesting characters!

Straight out of the concert and into the next summer camp...using my new manual that i had prepared. All my favourite kids came back as this was a follow up camp to review how they were getting on with their English....although being here mines getting progressively worse as i 'off the light' and 'no have' anything and 'did you eaten yet' and 'did you have got'....etc...think my Tamil is better than my English these days!

Straight out the summer camp and into organising a thank you dinner for 150 volunteers that helped with the concert....entertainment and all......am beginning to realise just what a waste of time men are! If it wasn't for the women the concert or the camps or the dinners wouldn't have happened...the men just want it all to be organised....cant lift a finger themselves and then at the last minute want us to change everything! If it wasn't for the children, dont think i could stay in this job! Sounding like I'm in a bad marraige now!

Other projects I am starting up with Tamil Foundation at the moment :-
READ......involves visiting various Tamil schools and reading stories to the children to develop their love for reading.
No Child Left Behind........where I make daily visits to three very slow learners at a local Tamil school and work on a one to one basis withthem to teach them to read using the DISTAR method.
Young Scientific Explorer......developing science programmes, science fairs, competitions etc

So no rest.......................

Around the corner from my Tamil Foundation office is a shop on piles. I got quite excited thinking it was the concrete type. So I went up to the shop to see what the photos in the window were........they were pictures of people's bums with big blobby things coming out. Quite fascinating!!!

Healthwise...well I have been suffering for the last 6 months with a swollen lacrimal gland in my left eye.....been on steroids.....getting hairy and musclely in all the wrong places, had a biopsy, was wheeled into the cold operating theatre, everyone wearing masks, gloves, bright light in my face, only my left eye exposed under all the green cloth, then they cut bits out of my eye and stitched it all back together under local aneasthetic (involving injection in the eye!) so I could feel everything.....the scissors cutting, the needle sewing, the aneasthetic was wearing off before they even finished makinghte last cut......was just screaming in my head! Results were that it was just a 'normal' lacrimal swelling not a tumour. So more steroids.....dont think I need any more hair or muscles, so have thrown the steroids in hte bin and am going for more torture with acupunture....needles in my face with a current running through them at half sec intervals giving me painful electric shocks for half an hour every day! Together with some sickly Chinese medicing to drink.

Then I had my full blood test done to check if everything is ok there...and surprisingly it was...except that I now have high cholestorol! Which actually isn't very surprising seeing as the healthiest food I can get out here is McDonalds burger and fries. So bought myself some running shoes and go running every morning now.......just that its pretty hot out here.......35 degrees C....makes it difficult.

Anyway went to visit some Tamil schools out in the villages.......was bizarre, like Little House on the Prairie. The situation there is so bad though. The schools are hugely underfunded, buildings unsafe and in a state of disrepair, no computers, very few books, the kids come from very poor families, many of the kids dont get any food at home.....7 year olds weighing 15kg and looking like a western 4 year old in height. Most of the kids have 5 to 8 brothers and sisters, the parents dont look after the kids at all, often the kids come from broken homes, sometimes the parents dont even send their kids to school for months or years, some of the 7 year olds cant even hold a pencil, the uniforms are too big or too small, but the kids are sooo good, so loving, polite, they just need love and they only get that from their teachers...etc etc. And Malaysia claims to be such a modern westernised country with the rich getting richer! Makes me sick.

Also recently went on a trip with Tamil Foundation for their annual meeting to Frazers Hill, an old English hillstation. But it was so cold up there....25 degrees! I got ill with fever from the cold. While everyone else was in T shirts, I was in 2 T shirts and a jumper......they couldn't believe I was from UK.....don't know how I would survive if I ever went back to England....don't want to think about it!

But apart from the fumes in KL, still loving Malaysia...have made it my home, have all my young Tamil brothers looking after me, a bunch of cool lads who zoom around on their motorbikes! They look after me very well. And my mad girl friends, one of whom is a news reporter on TV, one other who is a QS and depressed, another who is a lecturer in Pyschology and is also depressed, my Guru - Diane, the rest are all nice, quite, homely, Tamil girls, who would never go out or do anything. And I have many adopted children and familes. Also Mr Pathi, a lawyer, founding member of Tamil Foundation, he has given part of his offices to Tamil Foundation to use, so that is where I work and he has given me a room upstairs to live in. A very generous man, gives a lot to society, is very well known in Malaysia and is quite senior in the Tamil Tiger Movement (he's the older man in the concert newspaper cutting photos).

Well all for now...off for some lunch.....fried, spicy uthapam with sambar!