Questa è Enida

We were in Adelaide for over a week in April, and we had a blast. At least three of us got the chance to ‘stock up’ on our sembang-sembang sampai pengsan sessions with our best friends from the Gawan-Taylor family. Johan and Edrick are not old enough to play together, but I am pretty sure it is sooner than soon. Cik Nan and I – in between kids, husband, work (for Cik Nan), house chores and cuti-cuti Australia (for me) – were so excited about the possibility of us moving down under. Be and Pete were already surveying the city for good jazz joints. I kept my eyes peeled for Malaysian restaurants on our way to Hog’s Breath. Kitreena and Sophia simply could not have enough of each other!

But then there’s timing.
Be, within April, was in the middle of a crossroad in his career. It was either going big in a small company, or staying small (but in a big project) in a huge company. Though the money was great staying, it wasn’t all that bad leaving either. But then again…timing was everything.

Nevertheless, we had a blast in Adelaide.
We rediscovered that bicycling CAN be fun given the right infrastructure, climate and attitude! I had been complaining thinking about how wonderful our sidewalks are, here in Malaysia. I am still complaining thinking. Especially when I have to walk around trees which sidewalks are built around. Don’t get me wrong. I love trees. Don’t cut ’em down, hell no! But there’s always a better way of building sidewalks around trees, don’t you think? If it involves some brainwork, that is.

Now, I am not going to complain discuss the existence of bicycle paths here in this beloved country. I’ll curse cry if I do. Believe me. Nobody bicycles in the city except for poor vagabonds. Or so the way we look at bicycling and the way we look at people who bicycle. However much I do understand the challenges we have with our climate, I still think that we should at least have proper bicycle paths in residential areas. It should be made mandatory – no bicycle path, no CF! We can change attitudes this way. Philosophically speaking lah kan.

Uh, I wasn’t going to write about bicycling actually. I had something else in mind. In fact, I have about eight dozen other things in mind. One of them is…I am actually looking if anyone could give me some information on location of recycling bins here in Ampang (and Kajang, for later). I thought being in this expat area I would spot those bins as easy as spotting red or gold heads, or blue eyes for that matter. But eh, not really apparently.

I now have about 47 plastic juice bottles and 39 milk cartons in the back of my CRaVe. What am I to do with this precious cargo? I called MPAJ this morning only to be passed around like a juice bottle myself. Nobody seemed to know squat about recycle bins. Come lah on! It wasn’t like I was asking for any available bicycle path or whatever happened to the Donation Bin at the corner of Jalan Kerja Ayer Lama and Jalan Ampang Jaya!

Anyway…
I was going through my old stuff the other night and found little things I used to pin on my softboard in my ‘flatlet’ room during university. And there was this saying…

“A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.”

Go figure, or go fish!