Paddleboarding Weekend

Serina has been one of my best friends for years, and when we met up at one of our favourite stalls for dinner recently, we had discussed how best to celebrate her upcoming 40th birthday. I had a voucher for an experience gift company that I had to use by early Oct, so we decided to celebrate her birthday early by redeeming a package for a Stand-Up Paddleboarding session on Saturday, Oct 4.

Serina had been spending really long hours at work and had developed a cough and sore throat as a result. I wasn't much better with my month-long cough. And so the two of us wheezing, coughing asthmatics decided to throw caution to the wind and go paddleboarding anyway, to hell with the consequences.

The guys in our lives were happy to accompany us although they have absolutely zero interest in paddleboarding. Aravind breaks out in hives when exposed to a combination of sunlight and lake water, while Shalan doesn't have an affinity for water activities that do not involve the sea. Still, we were glad they were willing to come and take photos of us having fun out in the lake.

We carpooled to the location without missing any turns despite never having been there before. The paddleboarding lesson took place at Kundang Lake, not far from my childhood home. When I was growing up, my peers who live in Kuang and Kundang often took up holiday jobs at Kundang Lake, working at the food stalls or helping to man the jet ski and paddle boat booths. Those of us not fortunate enough to live within cycling or walking distance of the lake would take up temporary jobs in town, usually in the local bookstores and shoe shops. Growing up in a small town means that teenagers took a lot of pride in taking on adult responsibilities. Nobody had the opportunity to travel abroad for vacations, so we usually worked during the school holidays. Some of my peers did it to help their families out. I blew all my wages on comic books, beer and football magazines.

Our instructor Wilson was there early and our first impression of him and the company he represents is a very positive one. He was friendly, welcoming, professional and helpful to all four of us. Serina and I love swimming and kayaking and picked up the technique of stand-up paddleboarding within minutes, thanks to Wilson's clear instructions.

Meeting our instructor, Wilson (in the blue rashguard), and choosing our boards.

Starting off on my knees.

Heading out to the middle of the lake and getting ready to stand up.

This is my "nailed it" face.

Serina nailed it too! This is my favourite photo in the whole album because my Serina is happy.

This is fun, and a whole lot easier than surfing. (I have weak upper body strength, so paddling against the breakers for surfing tires me out within an hour!)

Wilson persuaded us to race against Wong, a veteran and former student of his. We're on! Here I am, catching up with Wong. I screwed up while trying to circle the buoy.

Wilson greeted me with a high-five on my return.

Wilson got Serina and me to race each other around the island twice. Here he is, steadying our boards for the race.

I took the lead... for the time being! Serina has stronger and longer arms and better upper body strength than I do, so she overtook me halfway around the island.

Serina won the race! I love to see Serina looking so happy!

We're both winners! We're sisters and friends forever!

We love stand-up paddleboarding!

With our instructor Wilson and the supportive men in our lives.

I would recommend this company and their services to anyone interested in trying out paddleboarding. Our instructor made safety a priority and inspired confidence. We had great fun and would engage his services again if another occasion arises.

OXBOLD SPORTS SDN BHD

No 5-1, 1st Floor, Jalan PJS 8/17, Sunway Mentari, Bandar Sunway, 46150 Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia

Hotline : 019 – 663 8336

Website : http://www.oxbold.com

E-mail : info@oxbold.com

This Week's Photodump:

Captain, our office cat and filing manager. She is a very good stress reliever for my colleagues and me. Nothing like hugging a good-natured cat to put a smile back on one's face. Plus she is cheap to hire. We pay her in kibbles and cat treats.

My poor wee Battletank in the rain. We've had a week of thunderstorms and flash floods.

This cutesy turtle postcard is not for a fellow Postcrosser, but will be mailed to Encik Mat Hashim and Cik Ida of the Turtle Conservation and Information Centre instead, to thank them for helping me facilitate the Turtle Volunteer Programme last weekend. I kinda like sending Thank You Postcards, can you tell?

Some of the cutest postcards I have ever purchased in Malaysia. Indigenous wildlife dressed in batik. My fellow Postcrossers will love these. The orangutan one is headed to Russia, elephants are off to the Netherlands and the tapirs are going to Belgium.

Postcard BY-1387911 of storks from Minsk, Belarus.

Postcard DE-3505357 of seals and marine mammals near the coast of the North Sea from Silvia in Germany.

Postcard RU-3003284 of a Great Grey Owl from Anastasia, who lives in St. Petersburg, Russia.

This is the view from my wee bookstall at the Free Tree Society nursery. They had their World Habitat Day tree giveaway on Monday, Oct 6, as it was a public holiday. I set up a little stall to display MNS Green Living educational materials and sell pre-loved books.

With my friend Bernard Eng, another eco-warrior who organises monthly tree-planting campaigns, during the World Habitat Day free plant giveaway at the Free Tree Society nursery in Bangsar.

I received my World Animal Day 'Pet Hero' certificate from the SPCA on Monday. Our senior office dog and greeter, Sherry, gave her woof of approval.

A block of good weather on Monday afternoon after a week of thunderstorms meant I had the opportunity to bathe and tickwash all the SPCA dogs.

This Old Town

“Heard a siren from the docks,
Saw a train set the night on fire,
I smelled a spring, on the smoky wind,
Dirty old town, dirty old town.”

~ “Dirty Old Town”, The Pogues

Nothing of especial importance took place during my Lunar New Year celebrations this year. All I remember of it was the customary increase in the amount of housework I had to do, the shuttling back and forth between Rawang and Petaling Jaya (due to the fact that Bravo, my rescued dog, is still living with us in our bachelor pad in PJ), the files I managed to complete on my computer (which makes me wonder why I bother leaving the office at all), the hours spent volunteering at the SPCA (especially bathing and tick-washing the much forgotten Sick Bay dogs) and the unpredictable and volatile weather.

Last year’s Lunar New Year bike rides led me to document the neighbourhood that I grew up in (See this post). This year, I thought of taking a few photographs (merely of cellphone quality, mind) of a few of the remaining landmarks that are of any sentimental value to me in the old town.

My parents, who were originally from Penang, the Pearl of the Orient, came to Rawang to teach in the 1970s following their graduation from the teachers’ training institute. Rawang Town has its roots in the tin mining and rubber industries, and remains a largely working-class small town with little to offer visitors. Mining pools dot the landscape, and the “town centre” used to consist of only 2 roads, Jalan Maxwell and Jalan Welman. The cement factory, then known as APMC (Associated Pan Malayan Cement), dominated much of our small town life, especially since we could not ignore the rock-blasting exercise which was carried out every Monday and Thursday at their limestone quarry.

Most of the buildings and landmarks that were of any significance to me have already been demolished in the name of development. There was a provision store we called the “Bengali Roti Shop”, due to the fact that they baked their own bread, near the old marketplace, that the younger population of Rawang Town used to hang out in because it had comic books and magazines galore. Tired of grubby fingers pawing through the pages of latest issues, the shop owner would leave one copy unwrapped and charge us 10 sen to read all the unwrapped copies of magazines and comic books that we wanted. Where that charming little shop once stood, a row of faceless shoplots now stand, offering knockoff tees and cell phone accessories. Rawang “New Town” was built on the site of our town library, football field, basketball court and a handful of picturesque post-colonial bungalows which served as government offices.




Jalan Welman is made up of over 40 shoplots on each side, and now consists mostly of Indian restaurants and provision stores. I remember that there were 3-6 shops in a row all selling school uniforms, schoolbags and school supplies. In our teens, we would try to get temp jobs at these shops during the school holidays, especially during the back-to-school rush. We were paid by the hour and we blew the money on – what else? – comic books and beer.




Jalan Maxwell is just as shabby, but it did have the only supermarket in town then (Bintang Supermarket, opened in 1987), the only KFC outlet (I was never much of a meat eater so I went there for the soda floats) and the town Post Office (where my Primary 5 class teacher, Cikgu Ramlah, lived, as she is the postmaster’s wife). I still find it quaint that my teacher lived a floor above the Post Office.




Rockman Inn, in Jalan Maxwell, was the only boarding house in town back then. It occupied the 2 levels above the town’s only 7-Eleven convenience store and was located next to the very grotty bus station. I used to spend a lot of time at the 7-Eleven outlet in my teens because one of my male friends worked shifts there and would let me read the magazines for free. Sometimes he offered me chewing gum or Slurpee and claimed that he had palmed it, but looking back on it, I think he paid for it out of his own salary and told me he nicked it just to impress me. My schoolmates and I would ride on the smelly buses to KL to attend intensive tuition classes before major exams, and my friends and I learned a lot about the birds and the bees from the lewd graffiti at the back of the bus seats.




The Sun Cinema, located in a back alley running parallel to Jalan Welman, screens mostly only Tamil and Hindi movies these days to cater to the majority Indian population. It was closed down at one point and converted into a pool parlour. I remember this back alley for the stray dogs that chased our bikes, the scrap metal collector who lived among his piles of soda cans, the schizophrenic male who would rail and rant at the world in the middle of the road and the shops and clinic that I found temporary employment with during my school breaks. The said shops and clinic faced Jalan Welman, but this was the back alley that I rode my bike up to on my way to work.




And here’s the cinema that I actually patronised! It has since been converted into a tacky shop selling kitchenware. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, it was called ‘Rex Cinema’ and screened mostly English and Cantonese movies. My parents weren’t too happy with us frequenting the cinema as it was dirty and had an unsavoury reputation as the site of at least one rape incident and another murder incident, but I don’t think parental disapproval has ever stopped any youngster from doing anything they wanted! Not even finding a flasher behind the cinema stopped me from spending my allowance watching Batman movies at this grotty place. (The flasher wasn’t as dangerous to us as we were to him – my 2 female taekwondo teammates and I chased the flasher down on our bikes, yelling and whooping like Apache braves. The flasher stumbled and fell several times and almost got involuntarily castrated when his pants got caught on something. No-one ever saw the flasher again). My parents were right – the cinema was filthy to a fault. The flip-up seats were full of wood lice and the floor was full of sunflower seed shells that were never swept up. Sometimes, in the middle of a movie, rats would come out to eat the crumbs on the floor and we would be able to see the rats silhouetted against the cinema screen when they stood between the screen and the projector. I found the rodent shadow play hilarious and occasionally more entertaining than the actual movie. The cinema didn’t have a proper snack bar, but there were mobile (and probably unlicensed) concession stands that offered insalubrious treats such as garishly-coloured preserved fruits, cordial drinks that were probably nothing more than food dye and lots of sugared water, and crisps with enough monosodium glutamate to make all your hair fall out.




The Sri Veerakathy Vinayagar Temple has undergone a facelift in the last decade. My parents still dutifully visit this temple annually on Vinayagar Chathurti, or Lord Ganesha’s Birthday, which usually falls around August-Sept each year. I wouldn’t be so contemptuous of the current temple committee if they’d only try not to make a circus out of Vinayagar Chathurti by setting off firecrackers and having neon light displays on a day of meditation and prayer.




All roads lead back home – well, not all roads, but the old market road which passes by the front of two houses of worship leads to Old Waterfall Road, which in turn, leads to my neighbourhood. The Chinese Quan Yin temple marks the end of the town and the beginning of the residential areas.

As a teenager, I spent a lot of time on the school field and unpaved rural roads practicing running, for I represented my sports ‘house’ in cross-country running and the 400m, 800m and 1200m track events. In retrospect, my love of long-distance running symbolised my desire to run away and flee from the small town ties and mindsets that tried to hold me down. A small town is no place for a young person with ambitions and ideals. At the age of 17, I saw my opportunity to run, and I did, never looking back. 16 years later, I don’t have to run any longer. I can’t say it feels perceptibly good to return, or that I feel any pride in this provincial town. But I can look back with a smile and a shrug, and remember the good times and good friends I had. There’s a life to be lived, and places to explore, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.

Those funny, familiar, forgotten places.

I am not a person given to nostalgia. I don't always think that places are better off left as they are, or that change is necessarily bad, unless, of course, it involves the destruction of a place or object of environmental, cultural or historical interest. I have never felt the need to revisit my childhood. My childhood was so awesome, so balanced, so full of adventures and experiences that I do not miss it. It was a childhood that prepared me well for adulthood and I was ready and happy to move on.

However, the 5-day break that I had for Lunar New Year gave me ample opportunity for long bike rides and quiet contemplation, and it occurred to me that photographing and writing about some of the places in the neighbourhood that I grew up in might actually be fun. Many of the places and buildings I once knew have already been muscled out by development. With a camera phone in my pocket, I set off on my trusty bike to record images for posterity.

My bike rides were by no means quiet. The festive weekend meant that many of my friends had similarly returned to their parental homes for a few days, and I bumped into some of my childhood friends -- Devaky, Sumitra, Parames, Vimi, Jeremy and Rafiz -- on my bike rides. They left our hometown, Rawang, perhaps for the same reasons that I did.





My trusty steed, the T-Bolt that I so fortuitously acquired in a slogan-writing competition in 2002, still has her place of pride in the middle of my bedroom.

This is the bedroom of my childhood and youth. Hardly anything has changed in this room from the time I moved out at age 20 - 21. Most of my trophies and medals were for long-distance running, and I occasionally wear those baseball caps and refer to my bird migration map from time to time. I still come back to the parental home on weekends to clean the house, do yard work and spend time with my parents and our canine children.



The street scene outside the parental home is very similar to what you would find in most small towns and residential areas in Malaysia.

Just down the street, beyond the deciduous trees you see at the bottom of our road, are railroad tracks, which are still in use today. One kilometre away is a limestone quarry operated by what used to be known as Associated Pan Malayan Cement (later, British Cement and then Malayan Cement).

I grew up sleeping through the sounds of trains screeching on the tracks and blowing their horns a mere 200 metres away from my home, and of rock blasting being carried out in the quarry two afternoons a week. When I grew older and attended more camping trips, I had friends who marvelled at my ability to sleep through any noise. It took me a number of years to realise that I had my childhood to thank for it.



The railroad tracks that run through the back of my neighbourhood have since been fenced up to prevent track intrusions.

I have crossed these tracks countless times in my teenage years before the electric commuter trains were introduced in 1994 - 1995.



A forlorn-looking decommissioned KTM commuter train sits on the side of the railway tracks.




Down the street from my house, there is a cul-de-sac with what used to be a dirt path to the right of the last house in the row.

Our neighbourhood, New Green Park, was constructed within what was once a rubber plantation, and in the 70s and 80s, there were pockets of rubber estates everywhere in the neighbourhood. We had a weekly domestic help whose house was located in the rubber estate, and we would go to the well outside her house to draw water each time we had problems with our water supply. We entered the rubber estate from a path to the right of the house here.

As you can see, no-one uses the path anymore and it is now completely recolonised by Macaranga, creepers, weeds and Acacia mangium plants. It says a lot about our present generation of children that they no longer see wooded areas as a source of unstructured fun.

When we were growing up, we used to have battles and games and foot races through the rubber estate and secondary jungles, and I spent many happy hours observing animals and plants and collecting insect specimens for my 'research'. Covert Dad always made me release them where I found them at the end of each day. It was here that I learned the basics of birdwatching and I identified many lowland species using field guides borrowed from the town library.



This is where the dirt path through the rubber estate ended.

The dirt path also served as a shortcut to the next neighbourhood, Taman Rawang Jaya. This was once a cul-de-sac where the children played basketball and chilled out with our bikes. At the height of the BMX craze in the mid-80's, we constructed ramps out of plywood and practiced our bike stunts here, as it was the widest cul-de-sac in the area.

The cul-de-sac that was once such a source of recreation is now a makeshift car workshop, and the dirt path we used has been completely overgrown with weeds as well.



This is my kindergarten teacher's house.

My former teacher, Mrs. Balendran, who must be 60 if she is a day, now owns both houses and operates the kindergarten out of the house on the right. Back in 1982 - 1984, she and her husband lived in only one of the houses (I think it was the one on the left) and conducted classes out of one tiny room in the back. It was probably the first British Montessori kindergarten in the district. I still encounter Mrs. Balendran once in a while and she keeps confusing me with Covert Twin. Strange, because Covert Twin and I look nothing like each other.



As you can tell from the blue hills in the distance, Rawang is located within a valley.

The economy of Rawang in the past had depended on 3 commodities: Rubber, tin and limestone rock/cement. The mining pools and rubber estates in my neighbourhood remind me of my town's humble beginnings.






This former mining pool had served as a duck farm before it was later converted into part of an industrial infrastructure .

Rawang was a former tin mining town, and its landscape is pockmarked with mining pools such as this one. There is even a neighbourhood called Rawang Tin, as it was populated mostly by people in the mining community.

As a child, I used to walk the overgrown path down to this particular mining pool in Taman Rawang Jaya to watch people fish. Quickmud is common along the banks of mining pools, especially during the monsoon season, and once I fell into quickmud which reached waist level within seconds. I had the presence of mind to adopt the lean-and-roll technique that I learned from a National Geographic article on quicksand and went home safely that day. My parents still do not know of that incident.

The duck farm has since been relocated and there is now a limestone processing plant where the duck farm once was. Those railroad tracks on the left are connected to the tracks down the road from my parents' home.



Neighbourhood provision shops like this one used to be far more common.

There used to be at least 5 other such shops in my neighbourhood, in the days when people realised what insanity it was to drive out to town for onions or sugar or ice cream. The introduction, growth and subsequent ubiquity of hypermarkets and chain stores brought about the demise of such shops. This is the only shop left in our neighbourhood. It is commonly referred to in our mangled English as the "Up Shop", due to the fact that it is located on a hill overlooking a football field.



As you can see, the shop still has a coconut grating machine, which is covered with a tin basin to keep vermin out.

As a child, when sent on a coconut-buying errand, I would often hope that the coconut the shopkeeper chose would have a spongy coconut embryo (also known as a sprout, or locally as a 'tumbung') for me to munch on.



This is the football field which the aforementioned provision shop overlooks.

It has a playground at the lower end of the field, but it wasn't for the playground equipment that I frequented this playing field as a youngster. See the slope with the steps built into them over yonder? We used to pilfer cardboard cartons from the "Up Shop" to slide down the said slope with.



Strange. The slope had seemed steeper and more dangerous and more exhilarating when I was younger.

I had until early adulthood held on to the belief that the said slope had a gradient of at least 60 - 75 degrees. I realise now that it couldn't have been more than a gentle 45. Still, I rode my bike down the slope several times, just for old times' sake.



The road leading to our neighbourhood used to be known as 'Jalan Waterfall' or 'Old Waterfall Road'.

According to Covert Dad, when the area was opened up for housing development, it was just an economically unproductive rubber estate and there had been a small waterfall where the access road now stands. The waterfall dried up after the trees were cut because it was no longer a natural watershed area.

Looking at the gradient of the slope and the remains of the natural 'rock steps' that the roads and houses attempt to level out, it is not difficult to imagine how this road could have once been a cascade.



This is the last remaining wooden house in our neighbourhood.

Where our neighbourhood ends, Kampung Rajah begins. Wooden houses like this one used to be more common at the boundaries of the two residential areas, but many have since been torn down and brick houses have been constructed in their place.

It will probably be a matter of time before this house makes way for development as well.

And all I will be left with then is probably just my memories of these funny, familiar, forgotten places.