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!