Hannah Campion - Fine Art

AN Blog Tuesday June 24 2008

Tuesday June 24 2008

On a slightly different note – the three main backgrounds here are Malay Malaysians, Chinese Malaysians and Indian Malaysians. Get this wrong or call everyone risk offending or worse still insulting your new friends. The way of life here is laid back, friendly and certainly cheaper to eat out than in GB. An amazing fresh Indian, Malay or Chinese meal will cost as little as 10 – 15 Malaysian Ringitt for 3 people including drinks.

Speaking of ‘drinks’ I tried ‘Lye Chee Kang’ last night.... Picture this..

An open air road side restaurant with flaming ovens cooking tandoori and naan breads. Elfin like stools to sit on colourfully cartoon like in bright red and traffic light green. Small circular tables with a hole in the middles for an umbrella for when it chucks it down, another exciting electric storm for me another way of cooling down for my new Malaysian friends.

Rini tells me I have to try this drink with a chuckle. It looks like good old fashioned Coca Cola to me mmm safe. As i begin scooping and stirring the plastic ice-cream bowl I see bits floating around.. Ok be brave Hannah – Rini and Hana both assure me they are not alive nor even remotely animate at any point. Unless you count the gelatine in the jelly they use to make the things in the first place. I think on a scale of one to ten I have a fairly vivid imagination and in particular I have some cracking nightmares - so when i scoop the coke only to see brown small flat leechy looking things bumping into what can only be described as baby frog spawn – I nearly died. Not wanting to offend I really tried to drink it but just couldn’t as I was picturing myself in my studio being attacked and eaten alive by man – no human-eating slippery leeches and frog spawn which melts away your skin exposing your organs.

Ok perhaps I am exaggerating but honestly it did look suspicious – taking me back to a time in Portugal on a jeep riding day out where we stopped at a water hole and I went for a refreshing swim and dug my feet in the lovely soft sand. Then I stuck my toes out of the water with a wriggling and realised my skin was moving with hundreds of small ish leeches! Apoplexy set in at this point and I zoomed off to get back to dry land over the other side as quickly as possible.

PS what is really great here is that 1pm means 1.45pm – soon means half an hour and I am on my way means I haven’t left yet.

Malaysian Promise

I like it -> I am always on time ->

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August 2008