Friday, July 15, 2005

Homesick

Well, not really.

Am back for the morning, heading to the airport in a few hours.

Johor is disgusting and KL although friendlier, was equally bad. Only because everyone tries to rip you off and everything looks like it was due for a makeover 10 years ago. Honestly. Hotel bathrooms would have been acceptable 20 years ago. The building is so old everything from piping to the elevators resound throughout the building, and when the lift doors open you half-expect a corpse to fall on you. Johor service sucks ass and don't even get me started on the hotel room. It's at times like these when you are reminded how much of a budget your programme is on. You'd think the hotels would be better with a name like "Hotel Grand Continental". And they dare to put up that cert that says they are 4 Stars. 4 Stars my fat, hairy ass.

Day 5 & 6: Smoke got in my eyes

Batam on friday was the shits. All bathrooms had no flush. How it works is, there's this pail next to the toilet bowl with a little bailing bucket floating in it. So we figure, we're expected to pour water into the toilet bowl to clean up our own mess.

I don't even want to think about it anymore. Did I mention the horrible tour guide we had? That and we all diarrhead after the seafood at "Golden Prawn 933 Seafood Restaurant". Yes, roll your eyes now.

I can't even remember what we did the rest of the day but I do recall the dialogue we had with Steve Chia, Irene Ng and Ong Soh Khim on Saturday. Pure mud-slinging if you could imagine with me. Very civil opposition-PAP exchange about everything from election procedures to how they obtain funding for campaigning between Steve and Irene. The other woman however, needs to relook her PR skills. Not only was she sharp and tactless, I swear, she had a different smirk for evey comment made by Irene Ng. Perfect amateur if you ask me, and with a video camera in the room even.

So it was saturday night and we were free for the night. While most went out to club, ab and I stayed in to watch Desperate Housewives on the laptop after I met the parents for dinner. Sunday was a lazy day cept for me feeling unwell with the same symptoms I've had for the past 4 days. So there I was on a Sunday morning, feeling the shits, and preparing for a road trip the next day. No choice, had to see a doctor.

Walked all the way from the hotel to Thompson Medical Center (the only clinic open then) and voila, ab's diagnosis from 3 days ago was true. I had come down with UTI. Not amusing at all. And yes, I've already heard the jokes about how I got it in the first place. Total bill: $131.25. Consultation was $40 and my antibiotics cost $5 per pill. #$%*$%@#

Dinner was at Jet's place and gosh, we had REAL steamboat. The foreign students had a lot of fun. Nic was his usual, taking photos of everything. He was so fascinated with lychees and rambutans. Snigger.

Day 7: It's Singapore, but 30 years ago.

I couldn't remember what Johor looked like, cos the last time I'd been there was like, almost 10 years ago. But my memory was easily jogged, because everything looked exactly as I remembered it. No face-lifts, no clean streets, potholes in the roads everywhere.

And I've already spoken about the state of the hotel. I have to add on about the service. They have problems with English, every one of them. Even reception. And they refused to listen to us because, I assume, it's just too difficult to listn to your customer when she's talking. After an hour of haggling to make her understand what my roommate and I were upset over, she gave attitude and tried connecting the call for the 4th time. This time it was successful. So I left my roommate to make the call while I went upstairs to watch Desperate Housewives. And the poor girl came up crying after her call because the reception scolded her in Malay and the whole staff burst into giggles (including the manager).

Such is life. Thank goodness KL was much better.

Day 6: Road trip.

The drive to KL was torturous. We had the oldest bus I swear. At every stop we made we'd see newer and more decent looking coaches parked in the parking lot. I don't even want to be reminded about how the seats shook and exploded bacwards everytime we hit a huge bump.

Some tried going to Zouk but it was closed. I was shopping my ass off at bukit bintang and the few of us, Janet, Nu, Quincy, Ab and I had great cheap restaurant food at this place called Nando's.

Day 7: I need a smoke.

We visited Putrajaya on the outskirts of KL and boy, amazing architecture everywhere. You only wonder why no money is going to giving crappy places like JB a facelift. And personally, I think the MSC is a waste of time and money. And $20 says they can't make it by 2020.

Institute of strategic international studies (ISIS) was cool. The director Dato' Jawhah is really a very good speaker.

It was a gruelling day. We went down to Chinatown to shop a bit and yes! I bought shoes again. Heh. Then we went back to bukit bintang for a good supper and some shisha. The shisha in KL is so much smoother than the ones we get in Sg, that and at half the price. I wanna go back there... cept without that weird dude sitting behind us who wanted to share my shisha.

Day 8: Like a Rhinestone cowboy...

We had another dialogue, this time with the dude from JUST and one law prof. The topic du jour was Islam and development. Boring as hell. The topic could have been expounded upon in a more interesting manner by a monkey if you ask me.

Road trip back to Sg in the afternoon. And yay! Met the parents for dinner and now, I'm home swweet home, but not so sweet. Let's see what happened last night:

The brother was settling down at the tv with his dinner and my father said hey don't sit there. There's been an ant problem there you see. And the bugger didn't bat an eyelid. He's been like that forever. Always acting like people are invisible when they talk to him. I couldn't stand it this time so I said hey, whey do you always act like they are invisible when they talk to you? And not surprisingly, I got the same treatment too.

Disgusted, I said, "I think you are the most inconsiderate person I know." He turned around to face me, flipped me the finger for 5 seconds and turned back to watch his tv. My mother saw the whole thing, and really I didn't want her to see that. It was disappointing enough the way he treated them, but to see her own son treat his sister like that I think is more panful than anything. She said "What was that? You don't do that to you sister!" She was shocked, to say the least, and told me to stop talking.

I overheard later when he was on the phone, saying something about looking through the workbook again at the part that talks about the problems in relationships commonly arising from lapses in communication. I wanted to laugh but I really felt more disgust than anything.

Wait til I blog about what the slut did last week. But this entry is so cheery already I don't want to spoil it.

Felt so lousy at night after the incident I asked Ab to come over. Lucky he could drive over and we went to Simpang for supper, then a long drive along East Coast. Talked some, bitched some. If he could, he says he'd beat the crap out of my brother. And I try to kick myself when thinking bad thoughts about him, like how I wish he'd die. But no, it's a nice thought, don't wanna kick myself just yet.

Day 9: TGIF

So we're heading to T2 at 4 to catch the flight to Bangkok. Just hope I can get the brother out of my mind. Feel so helpless watching my parents do his laundry, clean up after him, give him shelter, and get repayed with sheer inconsideration and rudeness. I'm still holding back the tears, I hope I can stay strong.

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