Christmas Day, like any other public holidays in Malaysia, also means that shopping malls will be crowded, and the roads near them will be choked.  So it was pleasing when a friend decided to drive to Port Dickson. Highways seem less claustrophobic. The soundtrack of choice was Jiwang plus Rock Kapak.

The last impromptu trip there was in 2002 or so, with two members of the Four-leaf Clover Society. This time, as the car approached the Port, the air didn’t smell salty. But cats were still everywhere. Here are some shots of kuching perched here and there, their shapes accentuated with clouds of fishnets in a fishing jetty around Teluk Pelanduk.

At a beach in Kemang, we found a secluded area with rock pools and large rocks punctured with barnacles. Emotional landscapes! Just like in that Jóga video. What was there to do but rest and rilek on one of the rocks with a towel for a pillow and join the arthropods. At that moment, I wanted to be a barnacle forever.

I saw red with my eyes closed — sun through the eyelids; as I opened them everything was dark blue and turquoise, a perfectly natural saturation for what was right in front of me: calm sloshes on remarkable wave-carved formations… and the setting sun.

My father recently traced back his ancestral roots in Hainan Island. His phone had limited memory — a few megabytes — so he had to be rather selective of what images he would save.

The above features the tombstone of his great grandfather, apparently a minister during the Qing Dynasty.

However a few days ago she met with an accident — her femur is now in three pieces.

Whilst cycling one misty morning after tai-chi, at around 6am when the palm trees are shrouded with mist and the wind that knocks against moving skin is as cold as air conditioning, she lost balance, distracted by thoughts of the ghost belonging to a girl who was killed near the dirt tracks she was riding on. Small hearted now; she once expressed how she was so startled by the silhouettes of some dark men behind the chicken fences of her half-wooden house, further camouflaged in the morning by all the weeds and undergrowth (she nearly fainted). Probably plantation workers of some sort…

But living alone near so much nature makes one humble…

I fear she would not be able to cycle or jog in the near future. She is in her mid-70s… She has survived another bicycle accident where she fell at a slippery slope and nearly broke her clavicle. Strong Hakka woman.

I present here a video of her cycling away from me, one gentler morning near Chinese New Year; birds and other rejuvenating sounds can be heard quite clearly:

The front gate of your home had ornamental swirls that seemed to originate an era when Malaysian architecture still believed in craft. The stillness of the neighbourhood was the most perfect setting for your post-midnight contacts with your black and white friend.

Tropical branches filtering my view but I could sense the good vibrations you were emitting, even though you and me are both so tired from painting a gallery wall earlier. Ah Heng barked a little. You met my eyes again, curious to why I haven’t reversed. It was a warmth shared between the creatures that were awake and very much alive, you and me and Ah Heng. I let this sweet energy sit next to me on my journey home to my little room here, where I am laying now, alone but not at all sad.

Unsweetened soy powder plus oats (all organic as per Dominic’s advice), some sugar in the form of digestives — set perfectly in a bowl made of olive wood — from a girl friend who was on a holy pilgrimage.

In other news:

IT’S 3AM WORK IS DESTROYING MY HEALTH AND SOCIAL LIFE!

Tony Takitani