I lived in a small village for large part of my childhood. Animals and wildlife were often seen those days… snakes, bats, squirrels, giant lizards, chameleon, various kind of birds and insects, and off course the mighty rats.
After years of intensive development, the jungle nearby my village was turn into housing zone. The wild animals, birds and insects are probably extinct from the area… but the rat population still remains as dense as ever.
I didn’t need to worry much about the menace of rats since I moved to KL about a decade ago. One of the distinct benefits of living in higher floors (condominium, apartment etc.) is the absence of rats.
I stayed on the 4th floor in my university hostel, then on the 5th floor of an apartment rented with other friends, and the past 5 years on the 7th floor of a condominium. I can’t recall any rats encounter over these years in those places; insects were rare as well.
Things are no longer the same though… after I moved to a terrace house last weekend. I haven’t seen a rat in view yet, but their damage has already been seen in just a week… urine, shit and bite marks.
After years of living without rats, I suddenly found myself naive and stupid in fighting this disturbing creature, but things need to be done… the battle begins, and it’s going to be a stinky one.
I have moved to a new house on Sunday (Sep 16, 2007). The family gathered for some house warming, and everything seemed normal until the night…
The alarm was triggered accidentally, and the automatic front gate experienced a short circuit and reacted totally out of control. We had to call in our contractor to switch of the system… what a night of saga.
It is my first stay at a landed property in Kuala Lumpur since moving here for studies a decade ago; I have been staying in hostels, apartments and condominiums prior to moving here.
The biggest different is perhaps on security issue… those days I needed to secure just my front gate to prevent a break in, but now… 4 or 5 locks.
Whatever, it’s good to change to a new environment. The place I was staying was a bit too pack for me and my sister. Didn’t expect such a bizarre first night though.
I am moving to a new house this coming weekend.
One of the problems… no house phone is available yet. Telekom told us that we will have to wait until 50% occupancy at the area before they install the phone line; or we can choose to pay for the installation fees to get the service.
Ok, we can still survive without a fix phone line; we are using mobile phones mostly… but it is quite a headache for not able to access the internet at my new house. It’s particularly disastrous for a person like me who works online for a living.
I am not sure how the telecommunication in other countries works… I felt that a phone line is a basic infrastructure these days. It is ridiculous that the service provider has to think twice before providing a line at a new housing area… we might expect these situation 50 years ago, but not in the 21st century.
Considering the monopoly of Telekom in Malaysia… we could do nothing much besides waiting. There goes our government’s ambition to increase the broadband penetration in Malaysia… we don’t even have a fix line in Kuala Lumpur. Sh!t.
Update - got our phone line in Dec 07 despite having less than 50% occupancy; thank goodness that logic prevails.
Went to MATTA Fair at PWTC on Friday (Sept 7, 2007) to book tickets for our Hong Kong trip in October… crowded as expected.
Hadn’t been to this travel fair since late 2005. One thing special about this latest event was the participation of some official tourism board, from Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia and Macau etc.
I was hoping that those official boards could provide me more info about their country (Korea in particular), such as backpackers information, but their info was quite limited to organized tour packages.
There were some cultural shows throughout the day, which were decent. The Taiwanese aboriginal dances were particular ‘eye-catching’…
