Monday, August 15, 2005

Still figuring this out..

I'm still trying to figure out this blogger thing. It doesn't have some of the things on my friends blogs - like a calender to note the last few blogs. I'm sure it should have a links page.. but can't figure that out either.

Oh well.. keep trying i suppose.

Haze, Americans and Putrajaya

The haze is totally gone. At least for now. Winds have pushed the smoky clouds northwards, so our neighbours in Perak, Kedah and Penang states will be facing the dense clouds until things turn back this way again. Definitely it's a temporary respite.

Had weekend with a very interesting American couple. Jamie and Kim, both living and working in Japan and are friends of an old friend (Chee Chuan). They were down for a holiday and both wife and me played hosts. They had a tough time in Pangkor Laut - haze and all, but they had 2 clear days just the days they arrived and left. Plane could'nt land and all.

I think we love playing hosts, taking people out to dinner and brunch seems to be our staple thing to do. Its always to Yut Kees over at Dang Wangi for brunch, and maybe a dinner of chinese, indian or malay food. This time dinner was Turkish - it would have been great but the Turkish baker (most excellent bread) was out of town. Back to Turkey it seems.

Playing host to foreigners is fun. For one thing, we meet new people which is what we both like doing it seems, and for me, its an excuse to go out to eat - talk about Malaysia and share a piece of local culture. At least for my part I make sure they go home having a good impression of the country. Somehow that's important to me. I don't really know why my wife enjoys it. But it's clearly a fun thing to do. We also went to Putrajaya to have a look. It rained most of the time, but we had brief moments to walk around. That was my first time looking around the Putrajaya main street. Nice place, would recommend anyone to take a look. Cool bridges and a good place to look at nice buildings.

Anyway we finished off the day back in KLCC. I went bag shopping while Jamie and Kim decided to kill time watching a movie. Their return flight is at 11pm so they had hours to kill. We finished at 4:30pm - and after dropping them off, had dinner and went home.

Wonder who's going to introduce us to the next bunch of tourists? heheh

Thursday, August 11, 2005

This must be what wood feels like..

Been a while since the last item. Damn its hazy in KL. The bloody haze has visibly gotten worse over the last 4 hours and visibility dropped from less than 1km to now less than 500m. Folks in the gov say its not going anywhere for a couple of months. At least October it seems.

The Air Polution Index (API) is reportedly still less than 300 over here. Which is utterly bullshit considering just outside of town where they mentioned it was 400, actually looked clearer than KL. Damn buggers are still hiding the actual numbers.

I don't see the point of making the air polution index a national secret. Anyway since they released it recently that's no longer an issue, only question is: are they releasing the actual number?

So from my view here at the Twin Towers, seems like the haze is glued to the windows. Must be what burning wood sees.