Peaceful Sunday

I head to the pool again this morning, which is deserted again and lie in the sun for a bit, before doing about 40 leisurely lengths and then deciding to go down to Mont Kiara shopping area for some breakfast, shopping and a nose around the shops there.

'pavement'

I walk over the road to the shopping area: it’s quite funny that despite all the fantastic building that’s going on, and the pretty good road infrastructure that’s in place, they seem to have completely forgotten about providing decent pavements. Maybe people really don’t walk anywhere as the place is pretty deserted - mind you, it’s about midday and scorching, so perhaps that’s the reason.

So I spend some time taking photos of the new area – it’s very new here and in about 6 months I reckon there will be some people here! Actually, the main shopping area has a bit more going on, and I decide to sit outside The Coffee Bean with a warm banana muffin and a coffee to watch the (hot) world go by. No sooner as I had sat down, this car starts beeping its horn right in front of me, and from what I can make out, the driver is trying to get out of a parking space in which he’s been completely hemmed in by triple parking! One of the shop owners comes and sits next to me and starts chatting about how crap the Malaysian drivers are and how parking is a real problem round here.

    

Above him is a sign for what is probably the biggest car park in Mont Kiara, and all of 50 metres away. I point this out to him, and he says that all Malaysians are too lazy and would rather spend ages trying to squeeze into parking spaces, or (like here) just abandon their car in the middle of the road and double/triple park to be outside the shop they want to go to, and besides they don’t want to pay for a parking space (1RM – 20p)

The intermittent polite honking soon turns into a continuous BEEEEEEEEEEP for about 2 minutes until the offender, who has now finished her shopping, returns to her car and drives away, freeing this prisoner from his parking space.

I walk around the blocks of the shopping area, and there are quite a few restaurants, small shops etc here, which seem quite good. I find a "cheap" DVD store and buy several cheap DVDs for about £2 each, including films that have only just come to the cinema (e.g. Salt) and a few others I haven’t seen – Sex in the City 2, Terminator, Clash of the Titans, Amelia and Julia & Julia...

I then head over to Cold Storage and buy a plant before walking home in the sweltering heat.