… of War Games. For the War Games page, go here.

This is a time of personal introspection for our two main characters: Garza, after the inevitable confrontation with a frustrated Koul; and Cheloi, as she mulls over the consequences of Garza being Fusion and decides to think with a — shall we say — non-cerebral part of her anatomy.

FAVOURITE QUOTES

All she and Nils could think of was what was immediately in front of them–infiltrating the Perlim military structure — and the far future — a planet free from Perlim influence. Everything in between — her life, her dreams — seemed trivial.

The dinners were courteous, sometimes serious, sometimes entertaining, but always with an undercurrent of wary suspicion. Koul had done this with his plot to remove her from command, and she had done it with an explanation for their escape that all present knew skirted the bounds of probability.

Cheloi–Laisen–had only one life and even with the wondrous technologies of the Fusion, it was still too short to deny herself the touch of someone she had fallen in love with.
Perhaps Garza didn’t feel that same way. Perhaps it was some kind of a game to her. But not for Cheloi. She was through with denying herself this. For once, she would follow her heart and damn the consequences.

Little Dinosaur sidled up to me this morning, perching herself on my lap and nonchalantly draping an arm around my shoulders. “So, Mama,” she says in a casual voice, “my teacher told me that I don’t have to go to school in uniform today.”

I raise my eyebrows.

She nods. “All the kids will not be in uniform. A friend of mine is coming as a princess! With a big dress. And a crown. We can wear whatever we want.”

“Today?”

“Uh-huh.” She starts looking hopeful.

“And do you have a note from school to say that you don’t have to wear a uniform?”

I’ll give her that much, she thinks quickly on her feet and can already see the trap set for her. Deciding that even false legitimacy is better than none, she says falteringly, “Y-es.”

“Then could I have that note?”

She laughs. “Oh, Mama. I lost it.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie, but I need a note from school. If I can’t see the note, then I can’t do what it says.”

If I’m already having these kinds of conversations with her when she’s six, can you imagine what it’s going to be like in seven years’ time?

(J dropped the kids off at school and confirmed that every single child was in uniform. To be honest, I did have a wavering doubt. I see I’m going to have to do something about that.)

Because (a) we live in Lotus Street, and (b) we have a pond, I kinda got the idea that it would be great to put some lotus plants in our pond. Little did I know how incredibly stupid lotus plants are.

Like this. Don’t plant lotuses in square-edged containers. If you do that, the roots may end up in one corner, go round and round in that corner without finding the rest of the container, and the rootbound plant will die. Solution: plant lotuses in circular containers.

Or this. Never cut off dead leaves. The stems of lotuses are hollow, and if you cut away the discoloured leaves, water will get into the stems and — how ironic is this? — the plant will drown. Solution: don’t cut the dead leaves. If you hate the look of black/brown mottled and dead biological matter, hide those leaves under healthy ones.

And then there’s the koi who love lotus tubers and roots the way I love me some porky goodness. Koi have such a hard-on for subterranean lotusy bits, that they will excavate a lotus plant and eat its roots. The result? You guessed it, the lotus plant dies. Solution: Either don’t put lotuses and koi in the same pond (too late), or “mulch” the lotus container with sharp little lava rocks to deter industrious fish.

Now, believe it or not, I did a stupid thing. I cut the dead leaves off the lotus plants. Then I decided to go and read up on how to maintain lotuses. This is not exactly the correct order of things. Can you say p-a-n-i-c? Lotus plants are not cheap, no matter where in the world you live, and I was facing three examples of terminal cases right there. You can’t get some string and tie the stems shut because the stems are not really pliable like that. What I needed was something waterproof and pliable that I could use like a paste, to close off the holes in the stems (and they’re really obvious when you’re looking at them, scant centimetres under the killing water). What I also had were still a couple of hundred boxes with great stuff in them … still unpacked.

Well, people, if you’re ever stuck in that situation, I’ve found a solution. Lipstick. Using the tip of a metal nail file as a tiny spatula, I scraped off little mounds of lipstick and pressed them into the stem, making sure the lipstick covered all the tubules. I did that two weeks ago, and the plants don’t seem to be dying on me. In fact, I’m seeing new leaves emerge every few days. And some of the fish seem to like the taste of lipstick. While I’m currently breathing a sigh of relief over saving three expensive plants from my own stupidity, I’m trying hard not to think about lipstick and koi diets. One crisis at a time.

…but something just got me thinking. Remember when France opposed the American Iraq Adventure(TM) and Congress started calling french fries “Freedom Fries”? French toast became “Freedom Toast” and, I suppose, French bread became “Freedom Bread”.

Well, a friend of a friend is starting a riding school in the US, but the horses she’s using are Arabian breed. (That might not be the correct way to put it. Forgive me, I know virtually nothing about horses, except that they’re big, they pack some serious force per square centimetre, and it’s very high up when you’re on top of one.) Shouldn’t they be renamed, within the scope of our Nouveau-Terror World(TM)? Rather than “Sleepy Pastures Arabs” (which can give entirely the wrong idea), how about

Silky Oaks Justice Riding School?

or

Sunny Vale Justice Stabling?

Yes, I’m suggesting Arabs be renamed Justice Horses! Doesn’t that have a nice ring to it? That way, you won’t ever have to wonder whether that horse-breeder down the road is a true patriot. Or something else. Know what I mean?

Is now up at my site.

Cheloi and Garza may have escaped the rebels and found their way back to the Nineteen, but they’re not out of danger yet. Cheloi has to face, not only her wetware counsellor, Dr Copan, but also an intently interested and watchful Koul Grakal-Ski. What can she say that will get her and Garza out of Koul’s clutches … and the assassination plot of his that backfired?

FAVOURITE QUOTES

“Just remember,” he warned. “If your disinformation plan doesn’t work, you may have to make the hard decision, Laisen–Garza Yinalña or the Fusion.”

“No, Rumis. For the tenth time, I’m not getting shipped to Regional Medical.”
Rumis’ lips twitched. “I’m sure that was only the sixth time, Colonel.”

He was only the most ambitious and ruthless officer in the Perlim Empire, whereas she was a trained Fusion operative. When it came to deception, there was no contest.

Y’know, I try to keep a low profile regarding all this writing biz. I figure that the person probably most interested in the ups and downs of my career is myself … and hapless J, unable to evade me for too long, unless he scrambles into the Nissan and scarpers. But, eventually, he has to return. Eventually, they all have to return …

But my friend, Amber Green (who I never write to as often as I should; sorry, Amber!) just pointed me to the Erotica Bestseller list at Fictionwise and — guys and gals — I’m at #5 with my very first release, The Commander’s Slave. Go here to have a look, but I think you have to be quick because these things probably change quite quickly.

I’m going to print out the page and am thinking of doing something tasteful with it. Covering it with gold leaf, properly embossed to bring out every typed character, perhaps. Or surrounding it with a miniature Sistine Chapel mash-up in gouache on plaster, complete with aromatheraphy votives and a looped track of the Vienna Boys’ Choir. Something simple like that. If you have any other subtle decorative ideas, feel free to add your own ideas in the Comments.

Looking for accommodation for a family in Kuala Lumpur is a non-trivial task. It’s okay when you’re 2 adults and 1 child, but with 2 children, it gets to be a pain, mostly because most hotel rooms only have room for one extra rollaway bed and the kids are getting too big to share the one single bed. (And why is it that most hotel reception staff can only give you the size of the room — “It’s 47 square metres, ma’am”? I mean, am I an interior decorator? Can I magically divine what, and how, the furniture has been laid out and what will, and won’t fit? — rather than whether 2 rollaway beds will fit in there? But, as usual, I digress.)

So, when I found the Heritage Railway Station Hotel, offering a Family Suite for only RM$180 a night, including breakfast, I jumped at the chance. The old railway station in KL is a lovely example of Moorish-ish architecture (Yes, there are two “ish”s there for a reason; I’ll go into the history of KL architecture another time), and the fact that part of it had been converted to a hotel fulfilled all of my railway-heritage dreams. Which were soon dashed.

You know how you enter a place sometime, and take a look around, and all you can think is that it needs a damn good hose down and scrubbing? That’s what the Railway Station Hotel is like. The bones are terrific: great architecture, graceful curves, timber balustrades, old-fashioned wire-cage elevator. The execution sucks big time. The blankets and towels provided are so thin you can almost see through them. The room windows are small and dingy. The furniture is old and cracked, with ill-fitting doors and missing catches. Everything water-related that could leak in the bathroom, did. The hot water wasn’t. You can imagine the dust rising from the carpet, pillows and beds every time you rest your gaze on them. On the plus side, the air-conditioning worked. The mattresses weren’t bad. And the rooms are huge.

For breakfast, you have a choice of two dishes — local and western. (For us, it was fried rice or omelette.) If you want another cup of tea or coffee, you have to pay for it. With the exception of the young man at the front desk and one other person, the staff looked beaten down and demoralised. As we soon became. Not the kids, of course; they loved it. But that’s what makes tagging kids along such an adventure for parents.

Actually, in my opinion, the only reason to visit the Heritage Railway Station Hotel is for one man — the dude who seems to run the hotel’s “restaurant”. It might look nice in the pictures (if you decide to follow the link to the Hotel and have a poke around). But, in reality, imagine that room after being buried in dust for two centuries, then quickly swept clear by a bunch of inept archaeologists. Ah yes, that’s closer to what we faced in the morning. But back to the maitre’d. He is, without a doubt, a dusky Basil Fawlty: tall and lanky, with an eternally morose expression on his face, and a nervous, held-in, violent energy. He moved jerkily from table to table, barking out orders to the sole waitress, without changing the expression on his face. He picked up breakfast plates almost before the customer was finished. He crushed errant pieces of paper convulsively in his hand before whisking them away. Nothing ever seemed to please him. And he was a delight to watch.

I was waiting for him to berate a customer for not finishing her tea fast enough, or to take umbrage with a complaint from someone, but he was stubbornly uncooperative in this regard. Still, there was enough entertainment on offer for me to be engagingly distracted during breakfast.

Despite “Basil”, however, I will not be returning to the Heritage Railway Station Hotel and, unless you want to relive some B-grade comedy/horror movie vibe set in a creepy hotel, I suggest you stay away from it too. At least until it has swallowed swags of money and been properly turned into the gracious, and sinuously graceful, hotel it can be.

Central Market, as well as being a popular tourist haven, also contains an interesting shop that specialises in selling t-shirts with topical slogans emblazoned on the front. For anyone following the sub-prime fiasco, there’s “HSBC: Highly Suspicious Banking Corporation”, various ones alluding to “Singabore”, George Bush t-shirts, and ones poking fun at Malaysians (”Malaysians aren’t rude people at all! So, just get out of my f&$*$%ing way!”). Malaysian companies are also lampooned. My current favourite is from a local political controversy regarding a politican called Lingam, a taped phone conversation, an unidentified person at the other end of the call and allegations of corruption. It says, “I’M the one who spoke to Lingam”.

Out of curiosity, we visited the Mid-Valley Mall. Oh. Mama. I think it would seriously take two days to comb through every shop in that centre. It was HUGE! Blatant, marble-tiled consumerism everywhere. Made doubly frustrated by the fact that there was absolutely nothing I wanted to buy … except mustard. Yes, despite the prevalence of mustard seeds in this region, a good selection of mustards ranks up there with continental parsley as the holy grail for gourmets. We found a supermarket and stocked up on some jars. Who would’ve thought I’d now regard it as one of my major food groups?

It didn’t take long for KL to weave its chaotic magic on me again, but it was not the same with J, who thought the city was “a little mean” and full of angst-driven individuals. Admittedly, we didn’t get to sample a lot of food, but tried chicken at two places and found Johor chicken to be much more tender and flavourful in both cases. (My MIL says the eggs in Johor also taste wonderful.)

As a personal observation, almost all the Johoreans we’ve spoken to have been exceedingly welcoming people, and genuinely interested in our wellbeing, from the man doing our kitchen who got us in touch with a security ironwork company because he was worried about our personal safety, to the private taxi owner who picked us up even though we didn’t confirm the appointment (mobile ran out of juice) because he thought we’d have problems getting around without knowing much of the local language, Malay. They have all gone beyond their current jobs to organise services for us, and are delighted that we’re settling in their state. The vice-principal at The Wast’s new school, the nephew of our kitchen cabinetmaker, the manager at our leasing bank, even our car salesman (who bought us lunch, drove us to TW’s future school, and waited in the car while we participated in an ad hoc 30-minute interview), have unstintingly taken us under their wing, with humour and good grace. In J’s eyes, KL — with its capital-city, ‘you have to know what you want first’ attitude — doesn’t come close.

So, even though I was born in KL, I was happy to get back to Johor, and to a more relaxed and friendly people. And, just to top it off, Johor food kicks serious ass. Makan boleh!

Kuala Lumpur (KL) reminds me of Blade Runner, with ageing, decaying old buildings next to flashy architecturally innovative structures, interspersed with bright neon signs and too little greenery. At night, when you can’t see the crumbling bits too clearly, it looks pretty spectacular. During the day, you can’t help but wish there was an effective Town Planning Department managing the city’s strategy.

We stayed around the Petaling Street area, or Chinatown, as it’s known. I can admit that, in the past in various cities, I’ve been harassed by people selling pirated watches and handbags, or movies, or spruikers extolling the virtues of their clubs or restaurants, but it wasn’t until we were strolling down Petaling Street (and it’s pronounced Peh-TAR-ling, not PET-a-ling) that I was — for the first time in my life — surrounded by people hard selling … foot massages. Don’t ask me. Maybe the one thing KL tourists yearn above all else are relaxing foot massages. If you’re after one, go to KL’s Chinatown. Don’t look for them; they’ll find you.

When you’re suffering from the heat in Singapore, Singaporeans like to tell you smugly that at least their city’s cooler than KL. Don’t believe it. Not anymore. There is so much high-rise, crowded development in Singers that it’s difficult to draw a breezy breath anywhere. KL (with a maximum of 33 degrees Celsius for the days we were there) was relatively cool in comparison.

To be continued on Friday …

And Chapter Eleven of War Games is now available.

In the dark ruins of Sab-Inuk, Garza finally tells Cheloi one of her secrets, including her suspicion that it was Grakal-Ski behind their rebel capture. Cheloi is not too surprised by this, but is stunned when Garza tells her she is from the Fusion. She thinks this is a happy secret she can keep to herself, until she finds out Garza has told more than one person about her past. Cheloi’s life is about to get way more complicated.

FAVOURITE QUOTES:

“If you gave them information in an attempt to negotiate something like a prisoner swap, it was a wasted effort. Nothing, short of your miraculous escape plan, would have saved my life.”
“Saving you was the last thing on my mind.”

“I wanted to hate you,” she said softly, almost to herself. “I came prepared to hate you, for all you did to the people of this planet.”

“Grakal-Ski wants you dead,” she said abruptly.
“Yes, I imagine he’s been fantasising about that for the past couple of years.”

[EDITED to add] IPOCALYPSE UPDATE: Now a gentleman has obviously somehow got his hands on J’s number to ask for help with his Apple device. We’re sympathetic, but …

Yes, we’re finally back in the land of the virtually connected. With three machines up and buzzing around the Intertubes, life can finally start getting back on an even keel. In the meantime, lots has happened and I’m just sorry I missed out on commenting on so many great articles from people like Liane (congrats on your new Dorchester profile, Liane!) and Maria (and on your revamped website and always great ideas, M!), just to name two. With lots of additional links to follow, I’m going to be busy for the next few weeks.

What happened, you may ask? Before I continue, you need to know something. J is the reasonable, calm one in our relationship. I’m the person you probably wouldn’t like too much if you met me, especially if you annoyed me over something. After running through what little patience I had on the whole connection thing, I wrote a pithy email to whatever Time dot Com managers I could find suggesting, among other things, that their golf games were obviously more important than something as trite as “customer service”, and suggesting an alternative motto for their company. Within one and a half hours of that email being sent to the capital, Kuala Lumpur, four people were at our Johor house (a few hundred kilometres away), trying to correctly set up our connection. In the end, it didn’t come good till the following night but, while I still consider the upper management of Time to be gross incompetents (for reasons other than what’s detailed here), their people on the ground have, without a doubt, been courteous, friendly and helpful beyond measure. Thanks to the technicians who pulled significantly more cable than anticipated, and still completed the job on time, and to the Project Officer, Tahawi, who has to bear the brunt of customer complaints, in person, more than he should. Having said that, we still don’t have a phone (don’t ask), but at least we have the internet and Skype, so all’s not lost.

I also read about the launch of Apple’s iPhone, content to be an amused bystander watching the Apple lemmings rush their way to the store, and never thinking that we would get caught up in the iPocalypse ourselves. (We detest Apple, for Steve Jobs’ management style, for their arrogance, their closed architecture, their exploitative pricing policies, and other things that will come to me once I have another coffee inside me.)  You see, there’s some poor lady floating around Malaysia somewhere who somehow got J’s Malaysian mobile number and was under the mistaken impression that we were the local Apple store. She called, she sent SMSs, all to help with her iPhone, and didn’t quite believe us when we told her we were just private people and not part of the hospital-antiseptic-white brigade. We’re half-expecting another call from her later today, judging by the scepticism in her voice when she rang off last time.

And, just to finish, I know I’m behind with the Radio Free Bliss podcasts and will be initiating a more aggressive schedule and start sending out schedules and interview questions to all June and July participants this week. I’m baaaaaack!