November 29, 2005
The DOORS
The door is finally there!!! It didn't take even a year to get it installed in our kitchen. We started complaining about the noise coming from the construction site through the kitchen window sometime in April and look - by the end of November (+ 4 visits to measure) we finally have it!!! That's swift! This weekend we'll have a chance to test if it keeps a bit of noise from the living room.. Sometimes simple things can be very complicated.. For example, it took Kaj 5 visits to the locksmith + 3 for me to get a copy of our apartment key: "doesn't work? ok, here's another one, try this", "oh, doesn't work again, ok maybe this will work?", "but these are exactly the same, uncle, can you do something?" "ah ah.. ok lah, here's another one.." :) Kaj looses his temper about these things, but as we usually get things done (with 7 months delay sometimes.. :) I don't mind that much...
Last weekend I went to explore Dempsey road surroundings by bicycle. It is an amazing area of old military barracks. Still UNDEVELOPED. Not UPGRADED. Not RENOVATED. I can't believe that they just leave it like this (surely not for long).
There's almost no NOISE and no construction CRANES peeping from each corner. There's "antique" furniture warehouses, wine wholesalers and organic fruit/vegetable market every Saturday. Lots of space and place to rest your eyes on. No cafe though (why not?)! And very empty.. Not much of entertainment I guess..
There's a lot of old abandoned houses around that area (the one on the left is actually some Malaysian sultan's ex-palace - plans for upgrading/demolishing are already drawn for this one..). I find it very strange that this kind of atmospheric beautiful houses are left to rot in the prime areas of the town. Our school had some plans to renovate old army barracks in the city center, but the plan was rejected as too expensive - "its a conservation area, all protected, you can't build 10 stories up", was mentioned as one argument against. Unfortunatelly most of these beautiful areas it "State land. Enter at your own risk" or "No tresspassing. Offenders will be prosecuted".
And this is what happens when somebody takes the UPGRADING seriously. I couldn't believe what they've done to Clark Quay. The sheer horror of these FUTURISTIC structures and amazing LIVELY colours almost made me puke. This was the first place where we had a beer when our plane broke down on the way to Bali some 3 years ago. And it was beautiful! Good enough!! Not really needing any RENOVATION..
I wonder what will happen to Little India when they will decide to CLEAN UP. Its one of my favorite places in town, because it feels real with all the dirt and chatty people, vegetable stalls, messy colourful beautiful and its not RENOVATED. This Deepavali decoration elephant (picture on the left) is at the crossroad for about a month now, but nobody bothers to clear it.. Its somehow very nice!!! The picture on the right I took on one of my bicycle trips - its some kind of church/community center/playschool/kindergarden/school complex. And there are these live human sized sculptures of Jesus in all the Golgota scenes (must be at least 12, but probably more). What stroke me was that these sculptures are arranged around the childrens playground. What better way to grow good-God-fearing citizens there could be?!? I'm often shocked to find how deeply religion (Christian) is embedded in people's lives here. A boy that I met while taking pictures said "God bless you" when we were parting, a colleague that is leaving school may write a farewell email ending "Into the Lords hands I hand in my future", etc.
Some more nice discoveries on park connectors (bicycling trails along the canals). There's actually nothing more disconnected than "park connectors" here. The road may go some 2km and end abruptly bumping into an expressway (with no way to cross it) only to continue on the other side with fresh marking of 0km.. And no way to get there at all, unless carrying your bike into the bush and on that kind of railway bridge or making a 1/2 hour detour into the neighbourhood. If they're so good at digging, why don't they did a underpass for bicycles?!?! Obviously people who ride cars are more important. But why call it a "connector" if it is literally "disconnected"?!?!
Some remains of the Design Festival still, the Phunk Studio exhibition. One of the few homegrown design companies that somehow "made it" internationally.
Posted by gkligyte at November 29, 2005 07:47 PM