Saturday 12th April
Our last morning
in Kuala Lumpur involved breakfast and coffee at the Central market, opposite
Geo Hotel. This market is full of
better-than-normal crapola. In fact a
lot of the items for sale – gorgeous Kashmir rugs etc – don’t even come into
the crapola category. Pete and I admired
many of the things, admiring the ingenuity, the displays, whatever.
 |
| Sparkly THINGS! |
But one thing
about Pete – he NEVER feels the need to buy anything.* He just lacks that gene…
Until we got to
the wooden puzzle shop… We had looked at it last time we were in KL, and I had
seen his eyes widen in a most unusual manner.
He wanted to buy STUFF!!!
Unnecessary stuff! Aha – he is
human after all! I left him in this
little shop for a very long time, while I darted about Chinatown, on a mission
to buy a few small domestic necessities not easily found on Langkawi. And when I came back, he was still there,
with the ever-patient shop person, who knows how to do all of the puzzles. She certainly earned her commission that day,
and Pete came away with four little paper packages and a very happy,
anticipatory look.
But…unaccountably the white stars have rotted away so it is still just a bit shabby…I have just stepped outside to look at the flags on our neighbouring boats and…ours is not too bad at all!
He *says* they are for presents but I’m not so sure… He is having way too much fun! Ummm…not what I would call fun. I show the whites of my eyes when he dangles a completed puzzle before me and challenges me to re-thread that cord, undo that know, move that little ball from one impossible position in the intricate little wooden maze to another. (Sometimes I am NOT fun at all!)
This morning I hauled out my dear little sewing machine and did a few little jobs. #1 – fixing our poor frayed Australian flag, which is so tattered it is an embarrassment. It is now no longer rectangular but never mind – it no longer has a raggedy fringe!
But…unaccountably the white stars have rotted away so it is still just a bit shabby…I have just stepped outside to look at the flags on our neighbouring boats and…ours is not too bad at all!
Maybe this could
be the beginning of a mightily lucrative business - FlagRepair.com… Or maybe
not; I really don’t think any of these flags could be rescued, even with my
dear little sewing machine going like the clappers.
Job #2 involved
the help of… Mr Peter James.** Putting
more beans in the beanbag is definitely a two-person job. I got all of the ingredients lined up and
called Mr Peter James. Deeply furrowed
brow…no response…then a deep sigh. Don’t you know how busy I am? How stressful this is???***
Last night was BIG
at the beach bar. They actually extended
HappyHour until 8pm because there was no sign of anybody leaving before
then. We had music! Guitar, banjo, bongos, and the odd tambourine
or shaker circulating around the crowd.
I took lots of photos, very happily, with my iphone and they all came
out…black…
But, even without
photographic evidence, we had a great time, with los of chat, lots of catching
up. We were very happy to see Jon and
Irina (SV Footloose.) They are looking
very well and unscarred after their horrid motorbike accident on Langkawi late
last year. I took a very nice bit of
film of Irina being very enthusiastic with a tambourine but…I can’t upload it;
computer says NO!
I sat with Misty
and Peter and spent most of the evening laughing – Misty is VERY funny…She told
me about Peter’s romantic proposal of marriage… After they had been together
twenty years, and had been sailing around the world for most of that time, they
were coming in to a new port. Peter
said, very seriously, that he had a long to-do list when they got to
shore.**** Clean out the bilges, scrub the decks, touch up the paintwork, repair
the toilet, stock up the wine supplies, change the oil in the engine, get
married…And she said YES - he is a particularly nice man...
* This is
something I very much envy…I just have to see sparkly prettiness and…I want
want WANT to buy it. (But…I don’t…)
** In every
hospital queue we went into in Singapore, this is how they would address Pete –
Mr Peter James, are you ready to have
your eyes scraped? etc. Misty and
Peter (The Slashers, from SV Tamoure,) have just been to Penang for medical
treatment, and he was Mr Peter John
in every queue…
*** Yes of course
he did tear himself away from the puzzle and the beanbag is once again nice and
plump. And I have swept up all of those
annoying little escaping balls of nothingness.
****Isn’t there
always?? Look at the list below…I got
the following email from one of our sailing friends this morning; the boat is
getting some work done at Boat Lagoon (Phuket) … and bear in mind that the boat
in question is state-of-the-art, beautiful, quite new…
The list of work
is long: keel lock, rudder bearing, anti-fouling,
touching up of
paint spots, new staysail, mainsail repair and a new
sail bag, lots of
canvas work including a new dodger, stainless steel
work, a new
generator, a hard top bimini and some rigging.
Furthermore,
repair of the radar, the SSB radio, the outboard, and
installation of an
additional aircon.
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