For the past few weekends in earlier February I have been going to Malaysia in search of surf. First, instead of going to Kuala Lumpur with some friends, I went to Cherating, east of Kuantan, on the South China Sea coast in search of monsoon surf with UCLA Arye. He brought his board all the way, and I ended up "borrowing" a cute board, pictured here. Cherating was quite the quiet little town as it was off-season. The waves, however, were perfect minus the crazy current that was a battle 'til the end. The second day the current wasn't as strong, but we had to leave earlier than we wanted to. On our way back, we met these local kids, all around our age, who took pictures with us and eventually we bussed back with them(the local busride back was amazing, so packed, at one point I was standing at the open door as we sped along). We had lunch with two of the guys and it was quite the enlightening experience. We talked a lot about our differences. They asked me about how I felt about the veiling of women, and of course I just said that I respect their choices, it's their religion. One of them told me that they think of it as protection, not oppression. We also discussed our schooling and money-related things, and it was brought to my attention how priviledged I was. Arye's surfboard was 20 hrs of work for him, while for them, they would have to work twice as much while concerned with numerous other things. We ended up watching a ridiculous Thai exotic horror movie at the theatre, and headed back to Singapore late that night.

Other things to note about Cherating were:

1. Fiddler crabs beckoning down by the riverside, favourite part

2. Shandy(beer lemonade drink)

3. Puppies(3)

4. Our hut's broken toilet that violently sprayed water all over the place

5. The effectiveness of a mosquito net

6. A crazy compilation of music blasting from an old radio nextdoor

7. Feeling overexposed in a Muslim country

The next weekend I went for a day to Desaru in search of surf with Arye and Leonardus. It was closer, but not as good as Cherating, nor a beautiful of a beach. I caught quite a few waves on Arye's board though...

1. Giant owls

2. Biggest Monitor Lizard I've seen yet

3. Saw some surfers from Singapore who we had met a day earlier. Apparently they were involved in some surf contest there last month. I would have liked to see it during better conditions.

OK...so wednesday of last last week, technically called January 31, 2007.
In the morning I went to the National Stadium with Waterloo* Akheil and collectively, we purchased 8 tickets to the first leg of the Singpore Lions vs Thailand Tigers Asean Football Championship. After class, I went to the swimming pool at Clementi with UCLA Arye and Malaysian NUS Jason. It was great...refreshing and lovely. After swimming in the evening, I rushed back to PGP, got ready to go to the game and met up with Western Zohara, Akheil, and Queen's Clare and caught a cab to the National Stadium. It was wild. A huge sea of red shirts(Singapore) and a small pond of yellow shirts(Thailand)...The crowd was intense and sooo full of energy, I was just overwhelmed by the buzzzzz(and the cursing in multiple languages). It was beautiful. The quality of the match itself, however, was comparable to watching Naomi's high school soccer games(no offense) along with 5 injuries involving stretchers, numerous uncalled fouls, and referee stalling. Hilarious. Singapore won 2-1(thank goodness for no shoot-outs, it was close). After this, we wandered over to McDonalds, then to Dbl O because we can't help it, then to St. Jame's Power Station, another huge club with Ladie's night. And here we danced like crazy until closing. Mosied on to 24 hour Cheese Prata...the usual plan of action on Wednesdays, then on our way back to PGP at around 5am, Holland Leonardus pops out of a dark corner and mentions going to the Thaipusam event the next morning at 8:30. Wow...To think that I went to sleep at around 6:15AM, woke up around 8, and jetted to meet three people, all who were not Leonardus, and went to Little India to watch the Hindu festival, check it Wikipedia-style: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaipusam We(UNC Matt, USC Katie, USC Evan, and I) got caught in the procession, found ourselves taking off our shoes and entering the temple. I was about a meter away from a possessed man, who I'm guessing was embodying some kind of Hindu monkey god...not sure, but he certainly looked and acted like it. I was actually afraid for my safety for a while, but he recovered quite well.




And here are some pics:






















*People mentioned are labeled by their university or where they're from.