Darkschunt 
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Ooh, by the way, I finished Jane Austen's Emma. I don't know what the people in The Jane Austen Book Club novel were going on about when they were saying how Emma and Knightley's relationship lacked passion and how Jane FairFax's and Frank Churchill's love was far more believable. I thought the Emma-Knightley relationship was passionate and sweet and believable and way better than Jane&Frank's. And I like Emma. She may be spoiled and all but she's wonderfully human and that's what's so nice about her. She's got faults too.
On Monday night, Potatoes, me, CircleySquare and SydneyBoy headed down to the new...um...town? can we call it a town?... known as Putrajaya to check out all the modern architecture-ness of the place and all. We made it down there in no time at all, thanks to Potatoes' superb driving skills! She's definitely the best driver I've ever met in my life.
Anyway, it was pretty exciting and fun down there. I don't think I've ever felt this patriotic before in my life, just looking at all the stuff down there!
We ended up first in the big square, where a big mosque stares down on loads of families picnicking in the well-lit square with their children racing around like maniacs, even though it's almost eleven at night. On the way to Putrajaya, I had been commenting on how clean the place had looked in pictures which my mom had shown me when she had taken my grandparents there for a vist once. "All that cleanliness probably wouldn't last long, give it a year more," said I, or something along the lines of that. When we arrived, it was fairly obvious we wouldn't need to wait a year - already there were crushed potato chips and Sarsi cans and cigarette butts everywhere and when CircleySquare tried the water fountain, she discovered something suspiciously like puke all over it. Bleh. Maybe they have cleaners who would magically whisk all rubbish out of sight by dawn. Maybe we need a strict littering fine like they do in Singapore. Only in Putrajaya because it's pretty much a hopeless case anywhere else in KL.
Anyway, the mosque itself was pretty exciting, though I would have expected it to be much bigger. I wanted to go inside and explore the place but I figured if we so much as took a step inside, we might suddenly get swarmed on by clerics screaming, "Out! Out! Devil children!" I wonder if we could ever really enter a mosque although we're not Muslim? I've never heard of any total restrictions on that. After all, anyone can walk into a church or temple, regardless of religion. I have a hankering to enter the mosque. I want to visit a mosque and visit that place where all the Muslims go for haaj where that big black rock is said to reside and where no none-Muslim is ever allowed to enter. I want to enter all these forbidden places, just because they're forbidden.
On another side of the square is another exciting building - exciting for us, anyway. It was some palace place with domes like a mosque although what with the mosque and the domes of the "palace" and the square, the place was looking more and more like a scene out of The Saint or at least a Russian scene out of a movie where the main actors meet up in the square wearing black leather Matrix-y coats and try to blend in with the crowd while eyeing the mosque and palace because those places are where an assassination will take place later. Already, CircleySquare and Potatoes and I were imagining ourselves dressed as Persian assassins in our black puffy pants and black silk scarves wound round our faces and a whole belt of bells slung around our waists. We'd knock over every important artifact in the palace hallways with our puffy pants and the bells on our belts would constantly be ringing but we'd be so cunning and stealthlike and so very talented in our assassin-jobs that we'd be able to evade all guards as we climb our way up one of the soft-aquamarine-lit domes of the palace. ;) As we made our plans, SydneyBoy continued to snap pictures on his tripod of the mosque and the palace, looking very innocent-tourist-like, and yet with a slim black belt which I guess he was using to hold his tripod or whatever camera stuff within but which we all agreed looked very much like it was used to hold a sniper. This is the sniper we will be using while we are attempting to climb up the back wall of the mosque in our puffy Persian assassin pants, and then make our way to the tallest tower of the mosque where it is purported that our dear friend, Backstabbed, is being held hostage.
But that is another story, so nevermind.
Anyway, we ended up traisping up the steps to the "palace" (we're not too sure if that's where the Agong lives or where our prime minister lives), looking over the dark, um, I'm guessing rolling hills and quiet lakes and lush lawns (at least that's how they looked in the dark) which lay between the mosque and the palace. It was all very pretty and Aladdin-like and we ended up snapping pics while standing on the extremely spiky false Japanese grass which surrounds the outer walls of the palace, several feet away from the guardhouse and directly in front of a sign which says something like "Keep Out/Forbidden Area" in several languages.
After the picture-snapping, we piled back into Potatoes's car and drove down the long road where all the fancy-schmancy buildings and all that modern-abstract-art decor resides. Even the traffic lights looked very abstract-artish, with long bendy poles that looked like they came out of a Salvador Dali painting. There were also these strange things which lined the roads and looked like little time capsules or modern dustbins. I was fairly sure they were dustbins but everyone said they weren't. Only some of them were. Some but not all.
All the ministers and government offices have moved to Putrajaya so we got a good look at the new court of Justice which has been given the grand name of "Palace of Justice". It was pretty but we agreed that it would look much cooler if they had painted it black with murals of various forms of capital punishment on the exterior walls. And when you push the entrance doors open, you'd come across a noose with a fresh body hanging from it. It would be the body of whoever the latest victim who got sentenced to capital punishment was. They'd need a fresh body every now and then, when the old body starts stinking up, and so lots of people going on trial at the Palace of Justice would very soon be sentenced to capital punishment, even if it was for something minor like... like forgetting to pay your car fines. Now that would indeed be a very intimidating Court of Justice. The talk of the world.
But no, we got pretty ivory walls and pretty words that say Palace of Justice. I forgot, but I think there may be an ivory dome perched upon it. It looks more like a hotel than a Palace of Justice.
There are a lot of precints in Putrajaya. Precint 1,2,3,4, 5,6, you get the idea. I think they got tired of coming up with various names for the areas and just decided to label them with numbers instead.
There were also a lot of bridges. There was a pretty bridge with pretty streetlamps that led us to what we thought was a convention centre building which Sydneyboy declared looked like an evil robot monster. And there were two glittering bridges with lots of abstract-art-ish structures. I hear they're building a third one. I approve. More bridges and more staircases. I like bridges and stairs. There's also a kind of lighthouse tower which seems to have no purpose whatsoever, and this great huge metallic structure where several office buildings reside. You can drive up to the metallic structure and walk through it and come upon several small grassy squares with lots of pretty, smooth, gray rocks arranged around the grassy areas that look like great places for a pagan rite. Circleysquare stole one of the rocks.
Anyway, we eventually got tired of looking at Putrajaya and drove home. I swear you could have smelt roasting ham on the highway. By the way, does anyone agree with me that the smell of petroleum is also very much like the smell of ice-cream, particularly a Swensens sundae? It's one of the yummiest smells in the world.
We made it back to good old PJ (Petaling Jaya, not Putrajaya) and opted for a midnight snack at McDonald's. Unfortunately the one that we chose had a 24 hour drive-thru, but did not open its restaurant 24-7. Nevertheless, we managed to get them to bring out chairs for us to sit and eat at one of the outdoor tables. And anyway, there were still a fair good number of people hanging around both in and outside the restaurant, eating, until like one am or something. So they weren't really closed. Either that or the workers were very nice people and we commend them especially for their brilliant customer service.
On Monday night, Potatoes, me, CircleySquare and SydneyBoy headed down to the new...um...town? can we call it a town?... known as Putrajaya to check out all the modern architecture-ness of the place and all. We made it down there in no time at all, thanks to Potatoes' superb driving skills! She's definitely the best driver I've ever met in my life.
Anyway, it was pretty exciting and fun down there. I don't think I've ever felt this patriotic before in my life, just looking at all the stuff down there!
We ended up first in the big square, where a big mosque stares down on loads of families picnicking in the well-lit square with their children racing around like maniacs, even though it's almost eleven at night. On the way to Putrajaya, I had been commenting on how clean the place had looked in pictures which my mom had shown me when she had taken my grandparents there for a vist once. "All that cleanliness probably wouldn't last long, give it a year more," said I, or something along the lines of that. When we arrived, it was fairly obvious we wouldn't need to wait a year - already there were crushed potato chips and Sarsi cans and cigarette butts everywhere and when CircleySquare tried the water fountain, she discovered something suspiciously like puke all over it. Bleh. Maybe they have cleaners who would magically whisk all rubbish out of sight by dawn. Maybe we need a strict littering fine like they do in Singapore. Only in Putrajaya because it's pretty much a hopeless case anywhere else in KL.
Anyway, the mosque itself was pretty exciting, though I would have expected it to be much bigger. I wanted to go inside and explore the place but I figured if we so much as took a step inside, we might suddenly get swarmed on by clerics screaming, "Out! Out! Devil children!" I wonder if we could ever really enter a mosque although we're not Muslim? I've never heard of any total restrictions on that. After all, anyone can walk into a church or temple, regardless of religion. I have a hankering to enter the mosque. I want to visit a mosque and visit that place where all the Muslims go for haaj where that big black rock is said to reside and where no none-Muslim is ever allowed to enter. I want to enter all these forbidden places, just because they're forbidden.
On another side of the square is another exciting building - exciting for us, anyway. It was some palace place with domes like a mosque although what with the mosque and the domes of the "palace" and the square, the place was looking more and more like a scene out of The Saint or at least a Russian scene out of a movie where the main actors meet up in the square wearing black leather Matrix-y coats and try to blend in with the crowd while eyeing the mosque and palace because those places are where an assassination will take place later. Already, CircleySquare and Potatoes and I were imagining ourselves dressed as Persian assassins in our black puffy pants and black silk scarves wound round our faces and a whole belt of bells slung around our waists. We'd knock over every important artifact in the palace hallways with our puffy pants and the bells on our belts would constantly be ringing but we'd be so cunning and stealthlike and so very talented in our assassin-jobs that we'd be able to evade all guards as we climb our way up one of the soft-aquamarine-lit domes of the palace. ;) As we made our plans, SydneyBoy continued to snap pictures on his tripod of the mosque and the palace, looking very innocent-tourist-like, and yet with a slim black belt which I guess he was using to hold his tripod or whatever camera stuff within but which we all agreed looked very much like it was used to hold a sniper. This is the sniper we will be using while we are attempting to climb up the back wall of the mosque in our puffy Persian assassin pants, and then make our way to the tallest tower of the mosque where it is purported that our dear friend, Backstabbed, is being held hostage.
But that is another story, so nevermind.
Anyway, we ended up traisping up the steps to the "palace" (we're not too sure if that's where the Agong lives or where our prime minister lives), looking over the dark, um, I'm guessing rolling hills and quiet lakes and lush lawns (at least that's how they looked in the dark) which lay between the mosque and the palace. It was all very pretty and Aladdin-like and we ended up snapping pics while standing on the extremely spiky false Japanese grass which surrounds the outer walls of the palace, several feet away from the guardhouse and directly in front of a sign which says something like "Keep Out/Forbidden Area" in several languages.
After the picture-snapping, we piled back into Potatoes's car and drove down the long road where all the fancy-schmancy buildings and all that modern-abstract-art decor resides. Even the traffic lights looked very abstract-artish, with long bendy poles that looked like they came out of a Salvador Dali painting. There were also these strange things which lined the roads and looked like little time capsules or modern dustbins. I was fairly sure they were dustbins but everyone said they weren't. Only some of them were. Some but not all.
All the ministers and government offices have moved to Putrajaya so we got a good look at the new court of Justice which has been given the grand name of "Palace of Justice". It was pretty but we agreed that it would look much cooler if they had painted it black with murals of various forms of capital punishment on the exterior walls. And when you push the entrance doors open, you'd come across a noose with a fresh body hanging from it. It would be the body of whoever the latest victim who got sentenced to capital punishment was. They'd need a fresh body every now and then, when the old body starts stinking up, and so lots of people going on trial at the Palace of Justice would very soon be sentenced to capital punishment, even if it was for something minor like... like forgetting to pay your car fines. Now that would indeed be a very intimidating Court of Justice. The talk of the world.
But no, we got pretty ivory walls and pretty words that say Palace of Justice. I forgot, but I think there may be an ivory dome perched upon it. It looks more like a hotel than a Palace of Justice.
There are a lot of precints in Putrajaya. Precint 1,2,3,4, 5,6, you get the idea. I think they got tired of coming up with various names for the areas and just decided to label them with numbers instead.
There were also a lot of bridges. There was a pretty bridge with pretty streetlamps that led us to what we thought was a convention centre building which Sydneyboy declared looked like an evil robot monster. And there were two glittering bridges with lots of abstract-art-ish structures. I hear they're building a third one. I approve. More bridges and more staircases. I like bridges and stairs. There's also a kind of lighthouse tower which seems to have no purpose whatsoever, and this great huge metallic structure where several office buildings reside. You can drive up to the metallic structure and walk through it and come upon several small grassy squares with lots of pretty, smooth, gray rocks arranged around the grassy areas that look like great places for a pagan rite. Circleysquare stole one of the rocks.
Anyway, we eventually got tired of looking at Putrajaya and drove home. I swear you could have smelt roasting ham on the highway. By the way, does anyone agree with me that the smell of petroleum is also very much like the smell of ice-cream, particularly a Swensens sundae? It's one of the yummiest smells in the world.
We made it back to good old PJ (Petaling Jaya, not Putrajaya) and opted for a midnight snack at McDonald's. Unfortunately the one that we chose had a 24 hour drive-thru, but did not open its restaurant 24-7. Nevertheless, we managed to get them to bring out chairs for us to sit and eat at one of the outdoor tables. And anyway, there were still a fair good number of people hanging around both in and outside the restaurant, eating, until like one am or something. So they weren't really closed. Either that or the workers were very nice people and we commend them especially for their brilliant customer service.
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