I'd Almost Forgotten

The title is something that people say a lot as they get older, I think. Well certainly I do for whenever something happens, quite often I remember another incident from a while back where something similar happened and I think this. Well recently that came back again over a series of evenings spent eating.

Sounds silly I know but if you've read an earlier blog post of mine you'd have read that I injured my calf muscle playing tennis, which is an injury that only time heals. And in this case it took 7 weeks of almost total inactivity (I exclude walking here) before I ventured back out onto the court again and on that occasion most gingerly. My timing was off and almost all of my movement was very wary so the result was pretty dismal overall. But at least I made it through the game(s) without reinjuring myself which is something that I have done fairly regularly in the past. So, all good then.

What I had forgotten though.... well almost.... was the structure and order of tennis matches as played at Penang Sports Club.

As I sit typing this blog, I am in Bermuda for our annual pilgrimage and only a couple of days ago I met for lunch with my regular tennis buddies (Friday) and on the following day played tennis at Pomander Gate's court number 2 (of course) and then sat under the palm trees drinking beer and talking nonsense for several hours. The first thing one of my buddies did when he arrived for lunch on Friday (this is Wilfred) was order 4 Tequilas and then came the chickens of red wine and then.... well it all ended fairly badly of course. But that was the realistic expectation going in had one had the wit to look back on past history and run the comparison ruler across this occasion versus so many others.  That is the structure and order of my tennis in Bermuda. I do wonder whether I or anyone else could possibly have any sort of alternative impact on similar occasions in the future.  Wilfred will always order the opening tequilas and the red wine chickens will always flow. That is what happens so all that stuff about only eating salad and drinking mineral water, however good and worthy it sounds, simply ain't going to happen.

Now my seven weeks of inactivity were not the same. It started with total inactivity and RICE (rest, ice, compression and elevation) which in my case meant lying on the couch for a few days watching mostly TV sport. This sounds great but in reality after a day and a half of this, I was going nuts. I cannot imagine how really sick people cope with this. It is appalling. Dull and boring, yes, but the worst part is how you feel not being able to do anything even though your mind is just about firing on all cylinders. I resorted to chocolate during this RICE stage and thankfully it was only for the first two or three days before I was able to get up and motor around a little more every day.

Looking back from here, Viv and I did quite a bit in this time including going to Sabah for 10 days so it wasn't all bad but it did help me forget about tennis. Quite a bit in fact. I made all sorts of resolutions that realistically I will never keep: I'll probably only want to play tennis 2 or 3 times a week; cut back on the post match beers; do a strenuous hike once or twice a week (they are actually great in Penang); and several more involving lettuce and no chicken rice. Then Viv went away for a couple of weeks with her mum, Anna, and I started thinking about tennis again.

It started with the feeling that my leg was pretty much OK and I did a couple of heavy hikes with Viv's brother Anton and wife Catherine (well heavy to me anyway. They had no problems) which felt just fine. So I contacted some guys to see if they'd mind having a none too stenuous doubles with me and they said OK. So we played and all went well and afterwards we sat down and ....

.... this is the bit that I'd almost forgotten....

... for the tradition at Penang Sports Club is that after the match you sit down under the stars with your doubles group and drink beer (or whatever else takes your fancy). Losers pay first. Some times this goes fairly quickly but on others people seem to have a thirst that cannot be quenched. Also, and this was very nice, quite a number of others dropped by to enquire about my injury and then sit down for a beer. So it was one of those occasions and of course at the end, someone said "what about dinner?"

Usually it ends up with anywhere from 6 to 10 people joining in.

First was curry mee (noodles) and deep fried fish belly....

Penang style white curry meets with minced pork, deep fried snapper belly, deep fried fish skin, chicken and veggies steamed, local Penang sausage called Loh Bak

Next was an amazing and awesome steamboat...

Steam buns, deep fried squid, shrimp, clams, scallops, long razor type clams, chicken, fish balls, more squid, veggies, rice porridge... never ending

Next was the seafood restaurant at that famous but weird place on Green Lane in the rain....

Shrimp in maggi sauce, the specialty -- spicy crab, steamed curried fish, veggie omelette...

Next was Korean at the place nearby...

Pickles, kimchee, more shrimp, pork belly, curry noodles... too difficult to name them all

Next was the champagne brunch at the wine shop....

Oysters, smoked salmon, artisanal cheeses and cold meats, lamp rack, wagyu beef...

Next was the Japanese home style cooking ....

Fish balls, deep fried shrimp, grilled eel, grilled small fish, raw baby squid, traditional spider rolls, grilled mackerel, crab, Japanese curry noodles...

And then, and then, and then.... Viv and I left Penang holding our tummies and thanking goodness that we were leaving for Bermuda on our pilgrimage when we could lighten up a little on the eating until we arrived in Toronto (our waypoint) when first thing we did was....

Ribeye at Barbarians in Toronto!!!

"Don't know about the Dicky Dirt, Trev"

We have lived outside the UK, well actually England, since 1985 and on occasion some people ask how English I feel and such things like that. Well the answer is a tough one as whilst I still have the same English voice that I have always had, we have lived essentially in a North American environment for nearly 35 years. So I like (a lot) and am used to lots of things that North Americans take for granted. Stuff like driving big cars, pancakes with maple syrup, great steak restaurants, fantastic cocktail bars, big houses, tall ceilings, wide and long parking spaces, yes even tall buildings, but not bacon or sausages I'm afraid. English are still the best there. Chocolate too.

So mixed feelings is I guess the answer.

What about politics? Please don't ask me that! It is only the current Brexit mess that has forced me to even know the names of current British politicians. And armed with that knowledge I now regret even that as I don't think many of them have covered themselves in glory and seem to have succeeded only in ruining a previously very good reputation for a parliamentary system that whilst quirky had stood the test of time and sort of kind of worked. But I do know the American politicians and system reasonably well. Canadian too. All I will say there is that seemingly no leader anywhere is currently giving a great impression of being a statesman. Everyone is too busy taking care of themselves and their re-election prospects even as the (whichever) country is at risk of going to the dogs.

Politics isn't the theme of this blog though, rather it is the question of Englishness. Great word that. The French with all their Academie Francaise hubris don't have a word for it. They'd probably use 7 or 8 words along the lines of 'le coeur et l'âme d'être français' and that still doesn't mean the same thing.

I just returned from England where I watched a couple of Tottenham Hotspur games, one Premier League and the other Champions League, and rediscovered (I did need reminding) what a great city London is. Huge, busy, so many different languages on the street, so many different ethnic restaurants. Even one of those really annoying advertisements you get which end in a voice speaking really fast telling you what the ghastly side effects of this new wonder drug is, was a French girl. Speaking English very fast and with great articulation. Made me really sad to think that this could all go soon.

Some things don't change though.

It was at the first football match which was the first game at the new Tottenham stadium. Great stadium, lots of fanfare, completely inexplicable opening ceremony which had a rapper and a gospel singer duetting something for some reason that eluded me. Great seats, wonderful view, good facilities inside for the fan and the really neat thing that I liked was that whilst it was built along the lines of a US NFL stadium (as it plans to host NFL games too), there is absolutely zero parking. The stadium is right in the middle of Tottenham, so houses and little shops and pubs across the street and all around. The local co-op is just around the corner. Walking out of the train station, the stadium was right there in your face and well so was the rest of Tottenham.  (An aside here: I do hope my reader understands that Tottenham is nowhere near the centre of London. It is 30 minutes by overground from Liverpool Street Station. Miles away in fact. Tottenham Court Road is in central London and I suspect its name reference is pure accident).

It was at the other end that things of course fell apart and sometimes you do wonder. The stadium build overran by 6-7 months and it is clear that the club is hurrying to get it open so at least some games in the 2018/19 season can be played at the new home. I don't want to think that that is a money reason, but it obviously could be. Most things are.

Opening night for the stadium

So the station is half built and on coming out at the end it was clear that nobody had mentioned to the train/tube people (it isn't London Transport any more, it has another name that I don't remember) that around 10 pm over 60,000 people would be coming out of the ground looking for a way to get home. Stuff like this is something I definitely do think the English (OK British. Why just diss the English on this?) do not do well. In the USA/Canada, this would have been thought through and dealt with so that within 30 minutes everyone would be gone. It took ages but as Tottenham won 2-0, all were in good humor.

Great view of the match

Credit where it is due though for by the second game, this had been resolved. Sort of. For someone had hand written a time table of trains heading back into London so that at least we all knew what the situation was even though we still had to wait. And as a subsequent follow up, I just received a notice that the club is now putting on free shuttles from the ground to 4 or 5 different public transport hubs around so at least this issue has been recognized. It would have been better or course to consider this in advance rather than have to scramble around for bandaid solutions.

Now that I have exposed myself as a football fan, I will get to the point. Having returned to Penang I found myself staying up half the night watching Tottenham games and by association other games that have an impact on the final league standings. So I don't know how I ended up watching a West Ham game a few days ago. But I did. These days there's always at least two commentators for every sporting event, the primary one and then the analyst. I missed the names for this game but the analyst was clearly a West Ham fan and potentially an ex-player so the primary commentator spent a lot of time making general clarifying comments for the audience as the analyst was getting quite worked up as it was a really close game.

The camera panned round into the crowd and found a familiar face, someone I immediately recognized as one of the greatest footballers of the time that I was growing up and familiar with when I was living in England, namely Trevor (or rather Sir Trevor) Brooking. The analyst picked up on this fact and waxed lyrical about him before coming up with THE line of the day:

"Oooh, don't know about the Dicky Dirt, Trev".

Now my home town is Southend-on-Sea, only some 20 miles down the road from West Ham and our local patois is not entirely dissimilar to cockney, which was what the analyst was. It is curious for only a couple of days previously I had had dinner in Penang with someone from Streatham in South London and to the untrained ear, the accent is the same. Sort of what is these days called 'Estuary English'. But it isn't. South London is quite different from Estuary and very different from Cockney and indeed my own Essex whine (which I keep only for special occasions and school friends). But I understand them all intuitively so as soon as these words were uttered I almost wet myself laughing.

This would have been fine at any other time but unfortunately I was drinking a cup of tea and my laughing made me ingest the tea which went down the wrong way, sparking a mass of coughing and spluttering, gulping for air, more laughing and culminating in the spectacle of my tea making a reappearance out of my nose. From where it ran down onto my shirt. Sorry Viv!

What made things funnier I think was the realization that I was probably one of only 5 or 6 people in the whole world who actually understood what had been said for this was the Premier League's own feed so it would have not been sold in England, only outside. In England, the Premier League rights are owned by Sky and BT Sport only. It occurred to me then and now that it would be almost impossible for any non-native English speaker to have a clue what had been said. It wasn't rude although I was waiting for the rest of the program for the analyst to make the ruder follow on comment, say, about Trevor Brooking's neighbor, referring to him as a 'friend of Trev' -- which is!

Confused yet?

Not our war, mate

Quite a few points to ponder coming away from Sabah/Borneo unrelated to cute jungle creatures, rather the nastier aspects of history. In this case WWII. It is my age, I know, and background that gives me this interest in this time of history. For both my parents, it was the defining part of their lives. Had WWII not happened, there would have had to have been some extraordinary circumstances and coincidences to have taken place for me to be sitting here typing away like this. Anyway this is my blog, so there!

When big history remembers WWII, it is the western front and D-Day, the US' staged jumps through the Pacific islands and the Soviet march to Berlin. Rarely do people remember all the rest. That is why the army that conducted the Allied Burma campaign was referred to as the 'forgotten fourteenth' and General Slim is all but forgotten/ignored despite his record of almost unblemished major victories. So who remembers Sandakan?

What? Who? Where?

This is the top right part of Borneo. In WWII there were no roads in the interior, just jungle trails. Everything that moved, moved by sea. The Death Marches of 1945 went in virtually a straight line from Sandakan to Jesselton... but none got there

It is difficult to visualize if you don't know where it is so hopefully the map helps.

The Japanese landed here very soon after the first landings in Malaya and were as successful as quickly as on the mainland. Borneo was considered a source of raw materials for Japan after sanctions were imposed by the USA and Britain over atrocities in China by the invading Japanese armies choked off the supply of oil and other raw materials. Japan has virtually zero natural resources so imports everything. On the other hand, oil, timber and a host of other raw materials are to be found in abundance in Borneo and elsewhere in the region. Hence the notion of the 'Greater South East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere' -- what a euphemism! Chairman Mao didn't have to look far for inspiration for his little red book!

As is documented elsewhere, the Japanese were awful colonial masters. Terrorising, torturing and killing virtually anyone they came across, it must have made for a shocking time for the local population of whom one in six were killed during their less than 4 year occupation. As for the POW's who were shipped in and housed at a camp at Mile 8 (outside Sandakan town and into the jungle), their job was to build a runway for the Japanese Air Force. Over 3,000 mainly Aussies plus also British had the job but did it (deliberately) so slowly and inefficiently that by early 1945, it was clear to the Japanese that even if the airport could be commissioned, it would never be used because of the dominance of Allied air power. So they stopped work, burned the town to the ground and marched all the POW's out into the jungle in a series of Death Marches and massacred them all. Only 6 survived (all Aussies) because they were able to escape and were helped by local people which is how this story is known. Who knows where else in the Co-Prosperity Sphere did this get repeated but with no witnesses?

The survivors

But seemingly this story is known only in Sandakan (and of course presumably in the families of the dead).

We only learned the story because we visited the memorial with a group of Germans as it turns out. Both Viv and I were riveted by the sad story but the Germans were in and out in less than 10 minutes. Not their war. Theirs was probably worse by a magnitude. But it did make me wonder because all of this was fully known and a number of Japanese were tried for war crimes and executed, just why is it that the world excoriates the Nazi regime (totally justifiably) but pretty much gives the Japanese a pass? Is it because 2 atom bombs were dropped and people feel guilty about that? For I certainly don't. The Japanese would have fought to the death. At the time of the surrender there were 2.5 million Japanese soldiers still under arms and given the experience throughout the Pacific campaign, there was no chance they'd simply surrender. Allied plans called for at least 1.5 million US and British troops to take part in the invasion of Japan with the transfer from Europe already taking place... Including my mother who was an army driver and had received her posting instructions to 'somewhere in the Far East'.  Bloody Hell, Mum!

Anyway, I now know and I will remember.

Is IPL the Future of Cricket?

I truly hope not but I am absolutely riveted by IPL 2019. It is on TV at ungodly hours of the night so I slavishly stay up all night and feel wretched the following morning/day but do it again that same night. Again and again.

It is wonderful!

The format seems simple: 8 teams play one another home and away. Top 4 play semi-final and final. Pretty easy. Actually it sounds like they took the same format as the Bermuda Evening Cricket League, the oldest T20 competition in the world.

Imagine some of the best players in the world, batters and bowlers, hammering away full bore over a very much shortened period to say a 5 day test match (my preferred format for cricket). Colorful outfits for the cricketers (even we played in colours in latter years), same for the huge screaming, howling crowds and 1,000 decibel Indian hip hop music played continuously and you have total bedlam. It is absolutely wonderful!

As I type I am watching a re-run of a game from a couple of nights ago, only in my own defense because Johnny Bairstow and David Warner are batting together. Again. As a batter myself I just love watching great batsmen batting well. And these guys batted really well in this game. Really well. Again. Ironically neither will be available for the latter stages of the tournament as they have cricket commitments elsewhere so their team will have to do without them. This will be tough as they together have scored over two-thirds of the total runs scored by their side so far in the 8 matches played. Absent them, I wouldn't say the team is rubbish but well they don't score many runs. So maybe yeah, their team is rubbish.

Both got hundreds in this game.... which of course I watched!

The format allows for up to 4 non-Indian players per team and these days there are many cricketers who only play this type of cricket: fast, hard going, every ball hit hard. A new breed of cricket mercenary. The likes of Chris Gayle spring to mind in this category. No longer play test matches or for the home nation, just T20 all over the world. The money attracted to this event is huge so attracts the top, top players .... like Bairstow and Warner and of course the terrific Indians too, remembering they are the #1 Test nation at the moment. Still. And with a population of 1.4  billion all of whom are insane about cricket. Little wonder that this event is a success.

So all those ingredients: money, 1.4 billion cricket mad Indians, great event well supported the world over, ever more proliferating short format cricket events... this means that the organisation has to be tight too. And it is... but of course with a twist. Or rather conditions.

India has the money and the population. England and Australia are the only cricket playing nations anyone wants to watch playing tests. Nobody wants to play in terrorist dogged Pakistan. So given this, it is very unsurprising that these three nations have cricket solidly stitched up, money wise, TV wise, pretty much everything wise.

This reflects reality, so OK I suppose. But then again I just watched a documentary on control of cricket and it is just like the cronyism at FIFA and UEFA in football, and I presume every other sport that generates money. Oh hold on wait, it is pretty much only football and certain cricket events and the rugby World Cup that generates money in sport. And of course the Olympic Games. Whoops, nearly forgot tennis. This is starting to make sense.

Now, first job with anyone looking to take control is first take control. Next job is to keep it. So having taken control of the International Cricket Council (ICC) that's what they did. Top jobs for the boys (and I do know one such from Bermuda in this category -- alright Neil?). Everyone else gets favors aka scraps. But do not, and I do repeat, do not allow anyone to come in who may ultimately challenge you. So the ICC has so far not granted sanction to China to become an ICC affiliate country. According to this documentary, something like 300 million Chinese play cricket! I may have got the decimal point misplaced but what if I haven't?

It is really difficult to not get cynical when a game gets hijacked by business interests and money as many sports have. Trouble is that when the sport is so good and the event so wonderful, you just forget about 'that other stuff' and just enjoy the spectacle.

And what a spectacle IPL 2019 is!

Headhunting

We made it back from Sabah a couple of weeks ago now and if you are interested you may follow the daily detail on Chris' wonderful Track My Tour App... thanks as always Chris.... right here. If not, well that's OK just follow on from below once I get going.

Sabah is well within my 3 1/2 hour circle for direct flights from Penang...

Sabah is the top right bit

So Borneo, well Wikipedia has a lot to say of course (see here and thanks for this) and as you take a look at where it is located on both the maps, remember that 73% is Indonesia so the rest of it is now Malaysia with a hint of Brunei thrown in. That is the top part. The left hand side is Sarawak and the right is British North Borneo that was but is now known as Sabah (again thanks Wikipedia -- see here). So now you have all the history that you could possibly want and need, that is the 'official' history. Of course, what is said and what is not are sometimes worlds apart. I cannot say that our 10 days there gave me any great insights about the histories of things but present day observation sure adds some color and textures to what is formally stated.

The old British version of Borneo. Looks like the Dutch were pressing into the British but that wasn't the case at all. The island is so big, they barely met even though the green runs next to the pink. The Dutch were in the south of the island.

Direct flights to Kota Kinabalu (KK from now on as the name is far too long to keep typing) from Korea, Japan and China mean that this formally lush and serene paradise island (actually it never was that!) is now no longer quite so serene. At sundown, the coastal beaches facing the setting sun are overrun with coaches and coaches of tourists bussed in just for the occasion which I have to say is pretty darn amazing actually (not the coaches although that is quite a sight too but of a different kind). I have watched loads of sunsets but never before has it been so cloud free for all of it as the first I witnessed here. One minute the sun is there, the next ... poof... its gone!

Our first sunset!

Our last sunset

Anyway I was busily being cynical about bus loads of tourists clustering together on limited beach space for the 30 minutes that the sunset takes to happen; well approximately if you don't add a couple of cocktails along with things, like we did. Then it gets a bit longer.

But it wasn't me though being the cynical one, it was our Grab driver who rolled his eyes when talking about this. I merely nodded sagely and noted it for future reference as it joins in with a whole lot of other stuff that is out there clear as day but totally either missed or ignored (deliberately or not I wonder) starting with trash. It is everywhere. I asked one of our great guides/drivers/boat crew from Borneo Ecotours (terrific incidentally, thanks guys!!) about this and he was polite and diplomatic to a painful degree. Obviously it doesn't show people in a great light and this is the problem (I don't like that word but this time I will use it because it is a 'problem'). For the problem is that the newly wealthier tourists don't think of the environment at all. Hoovering up all endangered species they can as face cream, special soups, or just deep fried with noodles.

Not endangered of course but rather nice deep fried with noodles

Nothing on land, sea or in the air is off limits. Factor in also on a local basis the indigenous peoples who are poor as church mice and therefore have no compunction hunting a particular creature to extinction if there is the possibility of making a little extra money. And finally.... and this is something I really do not get .... there are really very, very few trash bins so even if you didn't want to throw stuff all over the place willy nilly, the only alternative is stuffing it in your pockets. Which let me tell you people do not do.

This is one of the picturesque tourist islands near the beach. At least this trash is in a bag but that does not deter monitor lizards from getting stuck in one bit. Incidentally I thought these were horrible creatures until our guide told us that is these lizards that clean up the jungle and keep it both clean and smell free. They are carrion eaters. Sounds nasty but very necessary.

If you listen to David Attenborough on the wildlife shows -- which I do as he is simply terrific, there probably is a better word for it but I cannot think of it. On a plane recently I watched a wildlife program about penguins narrated by Morgan Freeman, who has a great voice, but.... it just is not David Attenborough so even though it is really well done, it just isn't.... well David Attenborough, so it can't be right. Well, not as right as when David Attenborough says it. So when David Attenborough speaks, you listen and you give weight (or should anyway) to what he says. He says that Borneo is a stunning paradise for wildlife and then goes on about habitats and stuff. And he is right but then when he is joined by olive oil manufacturing companies who say 'yeah, look at those palm oil plantations...' that is when you should stop and start to think: 'why would that olive oil company (could be any related company) agree with David Attenborough on this?' Answer economics.

This is where I get a bit cynical about the whole eco thing because whilst I totally agree that we are making a mess ecologically speaking and doing things that will have a significant deleterious impact on the planet at some point, I do also think that some of the people going on about it have motives that are not 100% planet positive related, rather money related. And for others, well it is a bit rich them having a go at a newly emerging country trying to make its way when they have systematically cut down all their first growth trees, exterminated all their large mammal populations, turned their countries into concrete jungles, etc. etc. All for them to have a better life. So it's OK for them to do it, but it's not OK for someone else to have a go at making a better life for themselves??

Nice mess we've made for ourselves, isn't it?

It would be nice to see all those eco-friendly joiners in and armchair experts actually come out to all those places and see for themselves and.... try to do something about it out there instead of complaining to their MP back home or gluing themselves to a London Underground (happened yesterday.... really!) or having sunrise group yoga sessions for the world before their Starbucks soya milk lattes. It really isn't easy and there is no easy solution as economics and sinister lobby groups do rather get in the way as they cynically and self servingly talk about carbon footprints and the Paris Accord. But really, will pressure groups in so-called developed nations of the west actually convince the rest of the (developing) world to do what they couldn't and didn't do and in fact raced full pelt to actively do once they found out they could?

Sadly my bet isn't on the answer 'Yes'.

Being in the jungle even if for only a few days and staying at a slick resort does not make me an expert by any means but it does seem meaningful to me that one of our guides is an ex-hunter turned eco-fanatic. Clearly engagement did work with him and of course his uncle, presumably the senior partner in their previous enterprise who became the guardian of the last two Borneo rhinos in existence. They are still alive but sadly both males so don't expect much unless a miracle happens. The species was declared extinct in 2015 but there are still large tracts of first growth jungle remaining -- that is 100 million year old forests that have remained untouched by humans -- where people have never ventured so who knows maybe a miracle will happen. Hope so.

It was all rather wonderful though to be somewhere where critters that David Attenborough in his whispering voice tells us are endangered with their habitats disappearing all over the place simply wander up and start chowing down on some of the many jungle fruit seemingly on every tree and bush. Totally unconcerned by our presence. We kept tripping over orang utans and proboscis monkeys but still the thrill of seeing them in the wild remained. Catching some sun bears wrestling was rather wonderful. As for those noisy hornbills, well you couldn't keep them quiet. What a racket. Sadly no elephants this time nor rhinos and leopards, but there was this rather amazing civet (weasel shaped cat creature) that acted just like my cat Bella (alright ex-cat).

Through a telescope, well it was a long way away but somehow the ranger spotted it

Proboscis monkeys by the river bank. During the heat of the day, they retreat into the jungle but return at dusk to sleep 

This sun bear was terrific to watch enjoying that carrot. Surely not a jungle fruit? Well no it was in the sun bear sanctuary, there being so few remaining in the wild. That's what people think but as they never see them, how do they know?

During the time we were in Sabah, we heard about the kimodo dragon island nearby on one of the Indonesian islands being closed to tourists to protect not the tourists from the dragons, but the other way around. At about the same time, newspapers reported the illegal transshipment of one in a cooler box. The report that did make me almost cheer was that of the unfortunate poacher in Africa who seeking rhinos was trampled by an elephant and eaten by lions. He ticked all the boxes in a wrong way! However, it all makes me realize that there is less and less time still available to visit and see all the marvels that the world has to offer before things change forever and they are gone. We'd better get to it then.

The Olympic Spirit

Avery Brundage, the long time head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) before money, corruption and scandal was a fervent believer in the Olympic Spirit which was as he defined "just taking part" and I do agree with him. I find the modern Olympics have transcended what I consider sport to be -- some exercise that I enjoy doing which someone years ago has turned into a game -- into little more than a mincing machine of ever increasing physical achievement, TV rights and therefore money, and regrettably poor behavior by people who really should know better.

Happily though the Olympic Spirit does live on for on the last 3 days we have enjoyed a wonderful tournament that brought 41 teams from many countries nearby as well as other clubs within Malaysia to Penang Sports Club which has been at its most beautiful. In all nearly 500 people, all in the masters division (40+). According to one of the guys at the club, this is the largest tournament of its type not only in the country but also in the Far East region! That's pretty darned good.

Over 500 people came to the gala dinner in the marquee next to the club house and grass courts

Obviously the host club has to have sufficient resources to be able to manage the logistics and the club does: 19 courts -- 10 omni synthetic 'grass' courts plus 9 truly lovely grass courts. Not many places have grass courts these days; the amount of time and attention needed makes them so costly but here in Penang labour costs are more reasonable and the groundsman, a 80 year old who has retired every year for the past 10 years and has successfully been persuaded back each year too, is a virtuoso. Grass courts are a really big attraction for people who rarely get to play on them. Factor in an army of volunteers, two hawker stands creating food for the throng and a generous sponsor who provided an ocean of cold beer and what could else would you need?

What a lovely sight that is. Grass courts with the club house in the background  and the Penang Hill way back

Last year there were 32 clubs competing so 41 is a big jump particularly when you consider that not all those clubs that wanted to take part were able to. Simply not enough room. So 12 ladies doubles, up from 8 last year. 5 in the over 65 group, the so-called Grand Masters, versus none last year, and 24 men's doubles.

I was in the 65+ group having reached that landmark a couple of weeks ago and was keen to take part as this year will be my best chance of being the most competitive, seeing as I am the youngest and presumably most mobile in the group. Viv was a volunteer but all my regular tennis buddies were there as the club had 6 teams entered, 2 in each group.

My team was called the Legends, something that I was very pleased about as my last cricket team in Bermuda was also called the Legends so this felt like completing the circle and according to everyone at the club, we had a real chance of winning our division. Annoyingly I had tweaked my achilles tendon a few days before the start but had iced it and had physio aplenty to give myself the best chance of recovery and it seemed to go OK as things felt fine. However this wasn't the case for everyone as it was really hot. This is the dry season so humidity is down but the heat gauge is up. On the day before, the reading reached 39 celsius (or 102 Fahrenheit) around 3 pm which of course is the prime time for playing tournament tennis.

The first match I played was against an Aussie team from Darwin (all the guys were comfortably in their 70's and were totally rock solid even if they weren't as mobile as before) and the pair I played had one guy with Parkinson's who unfortunately for him passed out on court during what was likely to be the match's final game (they were killing us and were 2 points from victory). So we won that one and then another and another and another and all of a sudden after 2 days we were 4-0 having lost only 1 tie (ours was considered a victory!!). So it was looking like we could in fact live up to the pre-tournament hype.

On the last day, we were due to play on grass and if I haven't said it before I'll say it again... the courts were absolutely lovely. My partner hated them and told me he'd do anything never to play on them but I thought they were just great and on this occasion we started off just fine moving without much effort to 5-2, 40-0 and multiple set points. Cruising, one may say.

Our final opponents in green before our last match with a couple of special coin tossers

However one may also say there is many a slip between cup and the lip and annoyingly that was the case here for as I turned to run back for a lob, I felt sharp pain in my ankle like I'd been hit with a bat or something and sadly that was my game over. It was also the match over for us. And even more annoyingly it was also the entire rubber over too as one of our other pairs proceeded to lose their tie.

My team... runners up, not winners. Grrrr....

I know, its the taking part that counts but it is really gutting to lose like that. Most of all it is letting the other guys down in that fashion. Mind you I hadn't exactly been the doyen of good taste myself as earlier I had found the trophy and well...

Don't you hate sayings? It seems that there's one for every occasion... both for and against any subject. 'Look before you leap' versus 'The early bird catches the worm'. 'Fools rush in' versus 'Faint heart never won fair lady.' The one that springs to mind here is that horrible one about pride coming before a fall. I'm sure you know that one. I do.

Past Historic

I have basically dropped the ball on following up on our visit to the historic tin town of Ipoh with a post on this blog but in self defense I have been thinking, well a bit anyway, about how I should couch the blog.

If you fancy following the moment by moment stuff, then I would urge you to take a look at my Track My Tour, wonderful app, thanks Chris as usual, which I have attached here. Viv and I really enjoyed our short visit but it wasn't quite what we thought and why we thought it may have been as enjoyable as it was. If you see what I mean (and rereading that last bit, I'm afraid I don't quite know what I was trying to say). Take it as being the things we thought would be good were either absent or underwhelming, those that we hadn't considered or felt were of lesser importance really stepped up and more than filled the gap.

It is the history that I am referring to.

So brief back up again: we wanted to visit Ipoh because it was an important historic town in Malaysia's development and was pretty close to Penang, in fact about an hour and a half on the motorway. Also we had been advised the food was really good there as was the famous Old Town White Coffee (it was).

So history: Ipoh was pretty much nothing more than a collection of huts before tin mining and the devastating series of Tin Wars (see Wikipedia link to the four different but rapidly consecutive wars collectively called the Larut War here) prompted the protagonists, initially competing Chinese regional tin miners but later also the Malay rulers who fell into a civil war in the state of Perak, to call in the British to restore order as they could not. These wars fell between 1861 and 1874 when the final Treaty of Pangkor was signed and this pretty much signaled the start of Ipoh as a place of significance. It also signaled the arrival of the British who to that point in the development of the country had held themselves only in the Straits Settlements -- Penang, Singapore and Malacca.... but also Pangkor, which was the port town for the Perak River, the means by which most tin made its way to the outside world.

The little blue bits are the tin lakes that now dot the area. Imagine 100 years ago these were mostly open cast mines.

Say what you will about the good and bad of British imperialism and Pax Britannica but this treaty brought peace to the area again and a new level of organisation and infrastructure that had previously never existed. It also forced the British to redefine their relationship with Malay states and set the starting point for closer cooperation, then the colonial era which followed. In a nutshell, the British took administration, foreign policy and defense. The Malay sultans kept religion (Islam) and cultural matters. Of course this meant almost total British control. However it wasn't as though the non-British parties didn't go into this eyes open. Probably though they may not have thought through the exact level of control they would be giving up by inviting the British in. Or for how long it would last.

In Ipoh, we went to two Chinese tin mining museums. One outside Ipoh and one in the old town. Both of these were private museums funded by in the first case a wealthy Chinese tin mine owner and in the second case by the Haka Tin Miner's Association. So both I knew would be as politically incorrect as could be imagined... and they were, all with the perfectly acceptable intention of providing the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth (Jack Nicholson speech in "A Few Good Men" springs to mind here).

Pre-1800 tin mining was pretty much a fringe thing conducted by local Malays. It wasn't until global demand picked up during the Industrial Revolution along with prices that the Chinese became interested. That also coincided with numerous rebellions and civil unrest in the fin de siecle period of the Ming dynasty, so people left China in droves for peace and an economic uptick.

Open cast mining was not eco-friendly and was very labour intensive. It also required massive volumes of water to be diverted from the Perak River and pumped through hoses to wash away soil and other detritus from the underlying tin ore.

This is wonderfully documented by the first museum as the owner has all the industry statistics you could possibly want for this industry and dutifully and relentlessly published the lot of them on frame boards in the museum along with dioramas 'interpreting' those statistics.

Data going back to 1800!

Mostly they were statues of Chinese workers 'coolies' holding some sort of tool connected with mining. In this time tens of thousands of mainly men came each year for the next 60 years. In all about just over 1 million. Most came for the mining which was centred around this area. I haven't read anything that talks about the demographic impact of having this many new immigrants in a specific location, in a specific industry, and in such a short period of time. But it must have been overwhelming for the indigenous population and obviously contributed in no small measure to the Larut Wars, which were essentially inter-Chinese turf wars squabbling over resources. No wonder the sultan lost control of things. (Malaya's population in 1950 was still just 6 million!).

We had a guide for both days we were in Ipoh who was very informative and in his non PC way told us: "The Chinese miners were only here for the money. They didn't care about who controlled what or how they got the tin. They just knew that tin was worth money and that was it." He was more direct than that on a wider variety of subjects too but I just restrict myself to this.

So there you have Malaya in a nutshell (and still pretty much modern day Malaysia too, from what I have seen). The Chinese just want to do business and don't care about how they go about it, whose toes they trample on, who is the 'ruler' and that other stuff like personal freedoms, rights, rules about intellectual property, all of that. So for them in 1874, getting the British in was a no brainer. Obviously the Malays may have had different priorities.

One downside to this is heritage. Living in a UNESCO world heritage site (Penang) it is almost ironic that this should be the case for this UNESCO accreditation comes with specific rules and regulations governing what you can and cannot do to 'heritage' buildings and other artifacts. The practical downside in Penang is the almost endless number of colonial era mansions that are derelict and left to rot. Conflicting reasons for this. One is that the UNESCO rules make it very expensive to renovate (ironically McDonalds and KFC have taken over and renovated mansions for their purposes) and the other main one being that they are owned by old time trusts (Chinese clans presumably) with many different strands of ownership meaning that nobody can agree on anything, so nothing happens.

Specific to Ipoh and the reason that I have taken the path in this post are the railway station together with the city administrative building right opposite. Both are WWI constructs in the Imperial fashion -- massive long white buildings -- the railway station is in use but much changed to accommodate modern traffic whilst the city council building has been abandoned and is being left to rot whilst the current city employees work in their new blinged up glass and concrete high rise just down the road. So from a 'heritage' position ... and this is something that Ipoh Tourism really focuses on (that is if you read their website blurb and visit the Tourist Information office) and if you have followed my trail to this point, you will remember that prior to 1874 Ipoh did not exist so anything 'old' from then will perforce have had to be .... Imperial era construction, which sad to say is being ignored probably to ruin at some point. You can already see green plants growing out of the walls of the old city building. As Ipoh virtually burned down in 1892 it had to almost entirely be rebuilt. This is where the town's grid layout dates from.... again here heritage = Imperial era construction.

The magnificent railway station in Ipoh. Its derelict brother lies just across the road... in fact I took this picture standing right in front of it

Heritage wise, this visit for us really didn't work out as we thought but then again it did. For those parts that did elevate our time here were those specific private museums and the energy and dedication put into those. So all of what I said about the general attitude completely falls apart when you consider just how conscious these private benefactors (who were outside the norm) are in preserving the history of the tin miners of Ipoh. They did a great job. Other heritage, not so much. You can see it being ignored on a daily basis as younger people in the modern times presumably simply don't care about the past so much. I think it's a shame but then again I just turned 65 so am what is now considered 'past historic'.

PH definitely looking past it on the left hand side in front of some Ipoh street art that our guide rather amusingly dismissed out of hand. He was right though, most of it was just graffiti masquerading as something else

Looking at it a different way, heritage is expensive and a question of priorities. As a lover of Italy, I am continually amazed by the almost total disregard by the population of the old ruins of this and that that lie around everywhere. To restore everything to its former glory (and define that if you can) would be prohibitively expensive and time consuming. In the US by contrast, a country with virtually no similar heritage or history, every speck of rock that can be deemed 'heritage' of some sort or other has its own national park surrounding it with display panels, interpretive films and tourist centers. Last year we visited the site where the 1850's go west homesteaders covered wagon tracks can still be seen. You can't see anything. The site is a huge..... prairie covered in grass.

I will leave this post with some comments from a magazine that I just read whose editorial reported that even though 2020 has been designated Visit Malaysia Year, Tourism Malaysia is cutting funding for marketing purposes. One should remember that the country is up to its ears in debt from past corruption scandals and over spending on infrastructure that nobody needs or uses, so the new government is presumably doing its best in prioritizing what it can without continuing the damaging debt trend. This said it could also up its game a bit for as this same magazine says "it does suffer a bit from the all too common local hallmarks of subpar service and mediocre maintenance."

Ipoh was great fun though. And the food.... well who wouldn't love to find a fantastic tandoori restaurant laid out just like a high end steakhouse in the US? Visit the Tandoori Grill!!!