Our Rubber History is s-KEW-ed

I was at the Kew Gardens yesterday with former colleagues from Cambridge.

In front of the iconic Palm House

As a Malaysian, I have come across hearing about this place some 20 years ago when I studied the "Alam dan Manusia" subject (Nature and Human, direct translation) in primary school.

Kew Gardens is where we got our first rubber seeds from the British. So whenever I hear of or see Kew Gardens in the map, I would always associate this place with our rubber.

As a kid, I absorbed facts without questioning regardless whether they were right or wrong, but there was an occasion when I asked the teacher if Kew Gardens belonged to Lee Kuan Yew!

You know I'm really not a bright person since young. Who would have made up Kuan+Yew=Kew??!!

Anyway, if you're laughing now, imagine 38 others doing the same to me in class. It was more traumatic as a kid then. You can imagine why do I still remember this after 20 years! Haha!

Anyway, when I was at the Gardens yesterday, my mind was set on two things - the treetop walk and the Palm House. I learnt that the Palm House is the tropical climate glasshouse which would feature among which, the rubber tree.

Treetop walk

When we reached the rubber tree, the guide from the walking tour explained that "Kew does not have a very proud history of the rubber tree". It grabbed my attention.

Mary, our guide told us that the British came across the rubber tree in Brazil. They saw the potential use of rubber and smuggled some seeds out of the country.

Mary explaining the rubber tree

When I checked in Google awhile ago, "some" was obviously an understatement to the real figure of 70,000 seeds!

The seeds reached Kew Gardens after many attempts as rubber seeds die easily. Furthermore, it takes ages to get from one place to another in those days (there were no planes then!) and by the time the seeds arrived Kew, they would have withered.

But you can't go too wrong with 70,000 seeds! I am sure at least a few thousands survived.

The survivor seeds were cultivated in Britain and then dispatched to two British colonies. First it went to Sri Lanka. Then it went to Malaya, as we were known then.

Even though the seeds went to two countries, it was in Malaya that rubber grew up to commercial scale. As it is now, rubber is one of our biggest commodities in the country.

I was still thinking why weren't we told of this other side of our rubber history and how it came to Malaysia. To prove my point that we weren't told the story, I tried Wikipedia in the Malay language version and I was right that there was no mention of the "theft"!

I tried to reason out that's probably because it's not an important historical fact. Stolen or not, rubber is one of Malaysia's commodities and no one can take that away now anyhow.

Furthermore, our history books were probably altered by the British before we got our independence and that would have gone under the scissors.

Unless someone can tell me that they know about the theft, I can safely assume that most, if not all Malaysians would still know about the truncated version of the history of rubber. But if I'm the only one who was not paying attention in class some 20 years ago, or the teacher didn't tell us that, then I'll hunt my primary school teacher down to apologise.

But I am lucky to learn about this somehow and ironically, in Kew Gardens. Not too late to know but it was a long way to find out that our rubber history is skewed!

Over to you, London

I was at The Mall (in front of Buckingham Palace) today for the London 2012 party.


That's right, now the eyes are on London after the great performance by Beijing.

With colleagues who are working on the project

Beijing has raised the bar for hosting the Olympic Games so high that it will take a lot for the next city to come out with a better show! Fortunately or unfortunately, the next city is London. I said "fortunately" because you need a city that is known for its arts and culture to compete with the stuff that Beijing has shown the world and London has the right sort of diversity, capability and capacity to do that as compared to the other short-listed cities in 2005, say Moscow or Madrid.

I mentioned "unfortunately" because of reasons that you and I would know by now. Raising the bar means London has to do much more to meet the heightened expectations of the world. This may mean more cost and more cost means more money from the taxpayers.

Guess who's that? I was surprised to meet him in this country when he should be in Beijing for the closing ceremony!

If today were an indication of how London would perform in 2012, I think this City can do it. I say this in all fairness even though the sneak preview of London in the Beijing closing ceremony was not what I expected. I thought they could do better.

Really, can you remember anything about it?

The only thing I can remember about the performance is the "transformer" bus and a very ecstatic lad for getting a ball by David Beckham! In fact, some UK politicians are pretty pissed over the 3-minute video shown over in Beijing.

Yes! Beijing snubs foreign media and does it again with the footprint of fire for the closing ceremony.

London's excitement has only begun. Even as Beijing is playing host to the Olympics, London has already made itself look like a host city as if the Games were starting next month. Tate Modern for example, has already put up a roadshow of Team GB for London 2012, and the London Eye has recently turned into the colours of the Union Jack to mark the event.

Open-air Britain United showcase in front of Tate Modern

London Eye in the colours of Union Jack

Today's performance at The Mall was just as impressive. Two big events were scheduled to happen in London today; the Notting Hill Carnival and the London 2012 party. If all 40,000 places for the party were filled while another competing event was happening not far away, that means a lot for 2012.

The next four years will be crucial. I hope the support and spirit of the people will be maintained or continue to grow until then. I really hope to take one of the seats for the opening and closing ceremony of London 2012. Oh well, we'll see...

For now, Beijing is done and thank you so much for a fantastic event. Now it's over to you, London!

The crowd for today's party at The Mall

Il Divo

Red Arrows painting the sky with the colours of the Union Jack

Yes, Michael Phelps was here today. So happened I was standing right in front. I was surprised when he looked towards me and showed his medal, as if he knew I was going to ask him for that! Haha..

See this and remember.

Look familiar? People just take everything and anything in this country. Isn't it scary? And they are just children!!

Still a soft spot for Japan

The world remembers them for their atrocities. Investors hate them for their puny interest rates. Their own people call their leaders as the puppets (sometimes puppy) of Bush. And I am always disgusted by their try-hard interpretation of American style. However, one thing that most, if not all, can agree on is that the Japanese are the most polite and well mannered people in the world!

And this reason alone can make me speak for hours about the country.

I helped a Japanese locate her husband not too long ago. Mrs Matsukawa insisted that I gave her my address and I did.

Today she sent me a letter. I remember she couldn't speak a word of English and that's why I ended up helping her.

Letter from Mrs Matsukawa

When I opened the letter, she wrote to me in English! I know the one-page letter is not a great deal to many of us but for someone who couldn't speak a word of English except "yes" and "no", that's truly remarkable!

I remember when I was studying in Japan and given the assignment to write a letter in Japanese to our lecturer, it took me half an hour to come up with one meaningful sentence, 5 hours to cover half a page and the next day to finish a page. After that, a few more hours to be corrected by our Japanese "buddies". That was also when we know more than "yes" and "no"!

So when I read her letter, I was very touched. It was no mean feat for her to come up with that. Her English was appalling but that's not important. The most important thing in language is to get the message across and it wasn't impossible to make up the entire content of the letter.

She enclosed photos of her trip and then invited me to Osaka for a visit. As if sensing I would visit Niigata or skip Osaka for other places like Tokyo and Kyoto even if I made a trip to Japan, she listed alternative plans like coming up to meet me in Niigata or Tokyo if I hadn't thought about visiting Osaka.

Mrs Matsukawa and hubby in London

Now anyone who's not gullible would not buy this so-called "invitation". I would just brush it off as a gesture of thanks in the form of invitation out of courtesy instead of taking it real.

However, when she listed alternatives, and explained about the ways she could drop by to see me in Niigata or Tokyo without having me to go to her, that's really something else!

She reminded me of my host mother. She reminded me about all the nice Japanese people I met when I was studying in the country. She reminded me of going back there.

Now I must keep reading the first four sentences that I started this article with to keep myself in check and from getting too carried away. I hate to admit it but I still have a soft spot for Japan.

Driving Theory Test

Today is the day of reckoning for my driving theory test after poring 81345352353461342423 hours for the test and familiarising with the questions through the mock tests.

And I passed. I scored 100% in the multiple choice section which surprised me greatly considering the position I started from three weeks ago.

When I first started, I failed in all of the 11 mock exams that I took. What a shame!

I know it shouldn't sound like it needed a lot of hard work. So I was shattered when I underestimated the test.

Then I started becoming serious in what I needed to do. Instead of jumping straight into the questions I took the hard way by starting from page one till the last page in the Driving Theory Pack that I bought to help me.

One of the questions which I could always remember was:

"A van signals and cuts in from right, what should you do?"
A. slow down and maintain a safe distance, B. flash your headlights, C. sound your horn, D. accelerate to prevent the van from cutting in."

When I started by jumping straight into the mock test, I depended a lot on instinct and common sense. So I am person who would choose answers like B or C. I thought these were the sensible things to do.

Sound the horn to tell the driver, "You're such an idiot!" or flash the headlight and hope that it will scorch him alive in his seat! . Of the two, I would deduce that the best answer is C because B that blinds, is an offence. Of course, in a very REAL situation, you'd probably be expecting the answer to be E, which is "stick two fingers up at the driver". Unfortunately, A is where the point is. Today I was asked this same question. I smiled looking at it and thought what would I have put if I didn't practice for the test!

Well, now that the theory test is over, I'm one step closer to getting a full UK driving license.

For the next stage I would have to sign up for a few hours of practical UK driving habits into my system before taking the exam.

This means I have to do away with the bad Malaysian driving habits for the moment like not giving way to other vehicles because it will save me 2 seconds of my journey time, blowing the horns at cyclists and buses, double parking and lip-move profanities at annoying drivers who cut in and out like their fathers' road!

Now if you're not Malaysian and reading this, you're probably thinking that putting a Malaysian on the British roads is really not a wise thing to do. As I'm trying to learn the "British way" of driving, , I am really serious in redeeming myself and becoming a well-mannered driver, just as long as I don't meet a crazy Malaysian on the road.

Proms Bus No.9 in A

I just returned from the Royal Albert Hall for the BBC Proms.

Royal Albert Hall-outside

Inside

I thought I was going to see the proms alone but Owen agreed to come this morning. The proms was a very good experience. In fact, getting into the Royal Albert Hall in itself was an experience.

BBC Proms

But this is not what I wanted to blog about. I would rather talk than write about the proms because it was such a fabulous performance it would take me a while to write it.

It's about bus no.9.

After the proms, I spotted bus no.9 which I needed to take to Charing Cross and walk home from there. The bus was about 50m in front.

I ran to catch it. But the door slammed on me. I backed off.

The bus was packed, so the people turned to my direction and probably checked if someone got killed by the door.

I was lucky. There was a queue at the traffic lights in front. So I quickened my pace to the next stop only to find that the stop was not in use because of an ongoing road work. The bus passed by a grumpy me. What a luck.

So I continued walking further down the road. The next thing I knew, I have reached Knightsbridge, where Harrods is. I spotted another bus stop about 100m in front and then a bus no.9 passed me.

It signaled left and stopped. I ran quickly to it but I missed it by 5 seconds. Damn! Again! How can I miss two buses in a night!

Then I remembered this morning watching news that the 100m world record of 9.6 secs was smashed by Usain Bolt, not me. So I had to concede I couldn't run as fast and the bus driver would have retired and got his pensions by the time I arrived.

I continued walking. Then I reached Hyde Park Corner.

Just as I was checking the bus route map to see if bus no.9 stops here, one arrived right in front! Yay!

Finally I caught bus no.9 after the third attempt.

It felt like one of the pieces played in the proms depicting anger, frustration and then, victory in the end. I have forgotten the name of the piece but I'll just call it "Concerto Proms Bus no.9 in A".