Ruminations

Just realised that I forgot to document the rest of Day Four - Thursday (16 March). After my class, I hopped into a cab to go to KLCC. The taxi driver was a garrulous sort who literally started talking as soon as I got in, and didn’t stop until he dropped me off. Towards the end of the trip my end of the conversation consisted of just “uh huh, oh really, yes” (in Cantonese) and I wasn’t paying much attention at all.

KLCC was really crowded. I’d thought of having lunch there, but I changed my mind because practically every restaurant was packed, with lines and lines of people. I spotted the pretzel place that M and I had come across back in ‘03 when we were last in KL, and had a cinnamon sugar pretzel for lunch instead.

I went straight to Kinokuniya - and had this “ahhhhh” feeling when I walked in. However, the KL branch isn’t as big, nor is the stock anywhere near as extensive as the Orchard Road, Singapore, shop. I still had a good time looking around though, and ended up spending some 200 ringgit - bought mainly dictionaries. Also found the Times bookshop and bought a couple of books there.

I didn’t do particularly well in terms of book purchases this time. I was very cautious because I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to fit them all in my luggage. I ended up with:

• Kamus peribahasa kontemporari by Ainon Mohammad and Abdullah Hassan
• Chengyu ci dian: Han-Ying dui zhao (Chinese idioms and their English equivalents) by Chen Yongzhen and Chen Xisi
• Kamus seerti Bahasa Melayu (Malay thesaurus) by Abdullah Hassan and Ainon Mohammad
• Basic guide to Chinese genealogy by Danny Boey
• Jia Ya shi ji: Wo de qing chun jiao niao (Collection of poetry by Jia Ya: Little bird of my youth)
• Xin Hua xin ci yu ci dian (Xin Hua dictionary of neologisms)
• The Chinese dilemma by Ye Lin-Sheng
• Malaysian short stories edited by Lloyd Fernando
• Kangxi zi dian 康熙字典 Qing dynasty dictionary that I have long coveted!
• Town boy by Lat

Found a music shop which was selling DVDs of old P Ramlee movies. I had no idea which movie the song Bila Mama Pakai Celana appeared in, and the people in the shop didn’t know either - so I just chose three. Unfortunately I don’t think I chose correctly:

• Seniman Bujang Lapok
• Siapa Salah
• Sumpah Orang Minyak

Still, they’ve been fun to watch!

When I got back to the hotel it poured with rain and the thunder and lightning was spectacular. Actually, now I think about it, it rained every day at around the same time in the early evening the whole week I was there, really heavy rain that an umbrella would have been useless against. D and I had arranged to meet up at his hotel (less than five minutes down the road from my hotel) at 7pm, and luckily it stopped raining long enough for me to walk there. There was a big open monsoon drain on the way to the hotel, and it was full with rushing torrents of brown water - if anyone fell in they would have been injured or even killed, for sure.

We decided to go to Petaling Street in the city, but it started raining again so we had quite a wait for a cab - we sat in the hotel lobby and talked shop, comparing notes about the trip so far. When we finally got there Petaling Street was the same as ever - full of stalls selling everything from tropical fruit and kitschy souvenirs to pirated movies, fake Louis Vuitton bags, and Rolexes, and lots of t-shirts. There were also a lot of fake MontBlanc pens - even fountain pens! - but I didn’t manage to get any because at around 9:30pm all the pirated goods vendors started packing up and literally running away.

Apparently someone had tipped them off that “enforcement” (the police, I suppose) were coming to do a raid. It was quite amusing to watch these guys dashing around frantically lugging their boxes of DVD covers and huge racks filled with fake Adidas shoes… We didn’t actually see any police around (Aunty T told me later that they would have been in plain clothes), but the tip off meant that about half the vendors fled the street in a split second, so everything quitened down and a lot of the other “legit” vendors also left not long after.

All in all it was an interesting day.

Categories: travel

Today is my last day of teaching. I finish early too (1pm), and am thinking I might just have to squeeze in a trip in the afternoon, to KLCC to visit my favourite bookshop, Kinokuniya. I can’t come to a Kinokuniya town and not visit!

It’s been a very interesting visit, and has given me a lot to think about, in terms of the services we (the library) offer to offshore students - students who are enrolled in the university but based overseas and looked after by a different educational provider. I think we’ve always assumed that students, being younger, are more tech savvy, and will be able to navigate their way through any online resources we offer, but I don’t know if this is the best assumption to have. I think the students here could really use a lot more guidance and ongoing help - how are we going to provide it to them? (I’m not assuming we will be able to come back every semester - finances being the main issue - it would definitely be good if we could, though!) I was quite amused at how attendance at my class was somewhat low on the first couple of days, but by the last day for Curtin students, we had to shift a class from the 25-seater lab to the big (80 seats? 90?) lab because all the students decided to turn up (word of mouth that what the librarian had to say might be worth listening to? I like to think so anyway)!

I’ve been impressed by the level of service and dedication the tutors here give their students, and am now wondering what we in the library can do to help improve their access to resources and more importantly, their knowledge of these resources. I met quite a few of the tutors and they had no idea of the range of resources and services that were available to them, and their students. The tutors also have a lot of issues with merely getting access to the resources - accounts not valid and so on - and I am going to have to see if this can be improved for them.

It’s also been really good to actually meet people after emailing them for a while - makes all the difference when you can put a face to the names.

Two more sleeps (sad, but I can’t help counting down, I miss M!).

Time for breakfast.