Monday, February 12, 2007

On The Train and Plane, Feb 22, 2006

I am flying off to KK today and I left the house early to catch the 6.30am train. My strategy is to store my luggage or straight away check-in at KL Sentral.

At Kajang boarded a mum with her kindergarten going daughter and the daughter is sitting next to me. I wonder where and which school she is going. In a very competitive world today parents will do anything for their kids and sometimes I wonder as well whether it is for the benefit of the child. I am not questioning the sincerity of the mother or any parents for that matter but my question is have we really sit down and think this through? I know some parents do this because it is part of the solution to their problems more than anything else. Is it important to have a four or five year old to be able to read or do math or for them, with our guidance, to explore this world by themselves? Being a parent it is not that clear cut and easy. Looking at the environment around you sometimes you cannot help it but to be competitive thinking that your child will lose out. What’s my stand in this? Come visit me or talk to my children. It is certainly not perfect or great but I do what I believe is good for my children.

This is the scene now, next to me a child sleeping in a sitting position and her body swaying to the motion of the train and next to her a lady also in the same predicament. Oh yeah, the professionally done announcement by KTMB I mentioned yesterday was probably a test because it is missing from this train.

I got off at KL Sentral with the intention of storing my luggage but I was a bit too early as the place would only be opened at 7.30 am. So I decided to see whether I could check-in early and I could. I checked-in my luggage and left for the office.

The plane cruised through a nice weather to KK and we landed safely around 5.25pm and we took a cab to Hyatt, where I am now. The room at Hyatt is good but it was spoiled by its location opening out to the lounge down below. Not only I could not have a waterfront view but unwanted music coming up from down below. We just got back from a walk along the waterfront where we had dinner at Anjung Senja. When we paid for the food I could help but mentioning to my colleagues that we had been had. The seafood should be cheaper here instead we paid more than what we normally eat in KL. That took the fun out of walking back to the hotel a bit. As we walked back to the hotel I could see a different live on the street. It is like walking through Chow Kit and the old central market in KL back in the early 70’s. It used to be clean and nice now rustic and smelly. But then again that just another live in another town in Malaysia. Let see what I can discover tomorrow.

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