Fremantle

From Fremantle

The port of Fremantle is only about 20 minutes drive from where we were staying West Perth and was definitely on the agenda for a day trip. We started with the prison, which was build by convicts in the mid 1800’s and is now a heritage site. Not quite as interesting as Alcatraz but well worth the visit.

This was followed by a leisurely stroll to the market, which is a mixture of a food stalls for the locals, and a variety of boutique shops for the tourist trade. Some interesting stuff there and I might have been tempted to buy something if I had not already gone beyond the limit of my baggage allowance.

After a break for a coffee, we continue though the town to the maritime museum. This is an impressive modern building which seems to have been constructed mainly to house the Australia II yacht, which won the Americas Cup for Australia in 1983. Freemantle seems inordinately proud of this achievement, perhaps with good reason. Apparently the whole city was given a major makeover in readiness for the return match in 1986 (which was lost to America). The smartly restored 19^th century houses now make Fremantle into a major tourist attraction and a favoured destination for Perth residents at the weekend. I can see why – the place has a very laid back ambiance, with plenty of good eating, drinking, and entertainment places.

We finished off the day with a fish and chip dinner from one of the several fish restaurants that line the boat harbour, before heading back to Perth.

Swan River, Perth

From Perth

Today we explored downtown Perth on foot and took a boat cruise up the Swan River.

The centre of Perth is quite compact, and really only consists of about 8 blocks between three main streets, so easy to see everything on foot within about 2 hours, assuming you do not stop off at any of the attractions on the way. Nothing that is too photogenic, but the city is still impressive for the quality of its newer buildings and its general neat, tidy, and clean appearance.

We stopped for a couple of hours in the city's art gallery, which includes a fine collection of modern Aboriginal art. In the afternoon, we did the boat trip upriver. Not much of note to see, but a pleasant enough trip.

Kings Park, Perth

Kings Park is a massive area of bushland in the heart of Perth. It contains some landscaped areas within the wilderness, including a very good botanical garden. We did a walk around much of the park on Alison's first day in Perth, followed by a brief tour of the UWA campus.

FFP10, Days 2/3

I was scheduled to present my paper on day 2 of the conference. I was initially only allocated a 20 minute slot, and it was going to be quite challenging to condense everything I needed to cover into that time. Luckily, another presenter dropped out and I was allocated an extra 10 minutes, giving me 25 minutes for the presentation and 5 minutes for questions. That made everything much less rushed and in the event the presentation went smoothly and got a good reception, particularly from the other cosmologists in the audience. It helped that I was sticking my neck out by making a prediction that could be proved or disproved within the next couple of years. Not many professional scientists are willing to do that.

In the evening we had the conference banquet and by chance I ended up sitting next to two of the most eminent bloggers in the physics world, whose output is read by thousands of readers worldwide. I had been familiar with their work for some time and knew of them by name, so it was good to have the opportunity to meet them in person.

The topics on the final day got ever more obscure and I have to say that I followed very little of what was said. The final session provided the opportunity for the invited speakers and Nobel Laureates to give their views about what would be the most significant developments in physics in years to come. Perhaps not surprisingly, they felt unable to predict the future!

Certainly the conference was well worth while from my point of view, event though many of the topics were beyond me, mainly because of the opportunity to talk to other researchers and exchange ideas. Next year's FFP is to be held in Paris. I may well attend if I have anything new to present by then.

FFP10, Day 1

The delegate from Rome adopted a rather liberal interpretation of the casual dress code.

My main reason for coming to Perth was to attend the FFP10 conference, or to give its full name, the Frontiers of Fundamental and Computational Physics. The event is hosted this year by the Physics Department of UWA. I had previously met the organiser, John Hartnett, at the CCC2 conference in Port Angeles, Washington, last year, and he had suggested attending FFP10 as he felt that people would be interested in the cosmological subject area that I tend to talk about.

This conference is a bit more mainstream than CCC, to the extent that there were two Physics Nobel Laureates at the event, as well as several distinguished invited speakers that I had heard of before. The other main difference was that the conference covered the complete spectrum of theoretical and experimental physics, as opposed to specializing purely in cosmology. This meant that many of the presentations were way outside my area of expertise, and much of it went over my head. However, the upside was that there were a few papers in obscure fields that discussed techniques or concepts that could apply to the sort of cosmology that I do.

The opening speaker on day 1 was Professor Gerard t'Hooft, who was awarded the Physics Nobel Prize in 199x for work he had done as a PhD student on quantum field theory. Happily, his talk was forward looking rather than being abut his past achievements, and he certainly had some interesting ideas about black holes and other aspects of general relativity. He was also an interesting guy to talk with in the coffee breaks.

In evening there was a public lecture by Prof Doug Oscheroff, another Physics Nobel Laureate. This time, the talk was explicitly about the process of making discoveries that lead to the Nobel Prize, and covered his work in discovering superfluidity in He3 (sorry about the techie stuff here). This was quite an entertaining session and he did manage to give some interesting insights about the element of luck that goes into some of these groundbreaking discoveries.

Perth

I took an overnight Air Asia flight from KL, arriving in Perth at 5:00 am, except that the captain said that it was 6:00 am local time, which was confusing to say the least (and slightly worrying?).

Picked up my pre-booked hire car and used the trusty GPS to get me to my apartment in the Subiaco suburb of Perth. I am staying in a house swap for the next 10 days or so. The owners will be coming to Brentford in May next year.

It turns out that the University of Western Australia (UWA) where my conference is being held is only 2km from the house, so I though I would stroll over there to have a look round. I went on a detour though Kings Park, which is a large park on the banks of the Swan river, virtually at the end of my road. The bit I walked through was quite wild, with what I assumed are Eucalyptus and Gum trees (and lots of flies!). The university itself is on a campus and is a very attractive place, in spite of having been build mostly in the 1960's I would guess. Its architecture is a sort of neo-classical style, but with some effective landscaping. One side of the campus abuts the Swan River, so students can just wander out to sit on the beach in their lunch break. It seems idyllic to me. The weather today was hot with a totally clear blue sky (makes a change from KL), so the place was probably looking at its best.

In the afternoon I drove to downtown Perth, which is compact and quite attractive. Its center really only consists of two pedestrianized streets, so easy to get around.

Living in KL, some final thoughts

One of the main reasons for my 2 month stay in KL was to see what it would be like to actually live and work here for an extended period of time. Now that this stay is coming to an end, I suppose I ought to do some sort of assessment, so here goes.

Working

I wanted to see whether I could carry out my normal day-to-day consultancy work in KL as effectively as I could in Brentford. There was also a local conference to attend and various visits to undertake to customers in the SE Asia region. Once I had sorted out a broadband internet connection, I found no problems at all in working from my new home. The company I do most work for is based in Dublin but has consultants and employees working from home all around the world, from Australia to Russia to Thailand. I was able to communicate just as well form KL as I would have back in the UK. The only thing missing was the monthly visit to the Dublin office, but that is not too critical at present. So 9/10 for ease of working.

Accommodation

I have already reported on the property market in KL, so I won’t go into much detail here. The key point is that I could live in a place that is 50% larger than my Brentford apartment, at 50% of the UK cost. Accommodation gets a 10/10.

Transport

As reported in an earlier blog, the car based culture in KL is probably my biggest grumble about living here. I would really resent having to buy a 4x4, but that seems the only option. 4/10 on that count.

Social

Probably the biggest surprise for me was just of easy it is to make new friends and meet people out here, and how extremely helpful everyone is in making a newcomer seem welcome. I was fortunate that more than half of my existing friends are already based in this region, so that formed a good starting point. But the hash club was a great place to meet new people, many of whom bent over backwards to help in various ways, from providing transport to showing me around KL property. Admittedly many of these were Western ex-pats, but many more were Chinese or Indian Malays. (Not many ethnic Malays, presumably because not so many are in middle class professions). The social scene is much more integrated than I had supposed. I guess the reason for the friendliness is that the (extended) ex-pat community is in a small minority here, so there is an element of sticking together, whereas in London no one feels the same incentive to club together and as a result it is much more impersonal. Of course, if I moved out here I would miss the friends back home, so it is not a one way bet. Overall, a 9/10 on this count.

Culture

Prior to coming out here, one of my main concerns about living in KL was that I would miss the cultural opportunities that exist in London. By that I don’t only mean things like the theatre, art galleries, etc, but also the day to day things like British TV and news papers. In the event I really did not miss these things that much. Admittedly I was only away for 2 months, and I am sure that over a longer period I would start to feel the absence of UK culture more keenly. However, the fact is that there were just too many other things to keep me occupied, in terms of social activities, work, and my various other interests. In the short term 7/10, but probably for a longer stay, 4/10.

Food

Malaysia, perhaps together with Singapore, is arguably home some of the best eating to be had anywhere in the world. Several styles of Chinese cuisine, Indian, Malay, you name it, Malaysia has it. And provided you steer clear of Western restaurants, it is incredibly cheap and good quality. You can eat like a king every day for less than £3. Definitely a 10/10.

Economics

Not only is the day-to day cost of living here very low compared to the UK, even taking into account the sick state of the UK£ (now 5.5 MYR as compared to about 7 MYR a year or so ago), but the Malay government have a special scheme called Malaysia My Second Home, designed to attract foreigners to invest in the country and set up home there. For someone in my position with a modest UK pension and earning a consultancy income outside Malaysia the incentives are almost irresistible, with all my income effectively becoming tax-free. Essentially, I could easily live out here on my pension alone, and devote 100% of my time to theoretical physics research (OK, that’s a bit excessive. Maybe 50% of the time on that and 50% diving). Other ex-pats tell me the decision is a no-braner. Anyway, 10/10 on the financials.

Conclusion

So overall, many plusses and not too many minuses. But I am not sure that I would be ready to commit myself 100% to living in Malaysia in the longer term just yet. Perhaps the way to go would be to split my time 50/50 between the UK and KL, at least as long as I was still working. The idea of not having to work anymore for a living is very tempting though!

Getting around in KL

View Kuala Lumpur in a larger map

To get anywhere in KL, you have to have a car. Simple as that. Somehow, when the expansion of city was being planned sometime after independence, whoever was responsible had not heard of the concept of public transport, but they were certainly familiar with the car. So they decided to build roads; lots of roads. In fact looking at the way that the city has been put together, it suddenly dawned on me that the planners must have been avid Sim City fans. The rest of this description will probably only be meaningful to Adam and a select handful of other ex-Sim City players.

So the first thing to do if you want to expand your city is to provide a road network so that people can travel into the centre form outlying residential areas. The path of least resistance is for the roads to follow the natural lay of the land, so in the Klang valley, this means twisting and turning every which way to get from A to B. Then someone thinks that it would be a good idea to have a new road from C to D, but this means crossing and interconnecting with the road from A to B. The result is a complete rat’s nest of twisty roads with no apparent logical layout, and a vast series of spaghetti junctions. The whole countryside ends up being covered in a mass of concrete. Granted the roads are of reasonably good quality, with three or more lanes and well surfaced. Not up to the best European standards, but certainly well ahead of 3^rd world countries like the USA.

With a city designed for the car, obviously everyone is going to want to drive everywhere, so a car becomes a must have possession. Yes there are buses but not very many routes or good frequency. There are also a couple of suburban train lines, but they serve only a tiny fraction of the residential areas. There’s also the token monorail in the city centre, but that looks more like something out of a Disney theme park.

Once you have the road network in place, people naturally want to move to desirable locations on the outskirts of the city, so developers build loads of high rise residential units to meeting this demand, and massive new shopping malls to service the new residents. As the units fill up, this generates more road traffic, so very soon you end up with congested roads everywhere.

Luckily I do not need to travel much other than to and from the airport and the weekly hash trip, but the car based culture still counts as a big minus point when comparing living in KL with London.

KL Condos

I spent most of today viewing several apartments in the KL suburbs. The viewings had been arranged by Soo, a fellow hasher, who has a sideline as an estate agent. Last year I looked at a number of condos in the Mont Kiara area of KL, which is near where I am currently staying and is very popular with ex-pats. This time I was recommended to look in the Bangsar area, which is nearby and also a very popular ex-pat location.

My conclusions? Bangsar is certainly a pleasant part of KL to live, with a lively village atmosphere and even a rail station on one of the few lines into town. I looked at a wide spectrum of apartments ranging from the ultra-luxurious to the merely comfortable. Certainly great value for money compared to the UK. Even the most sumptuous top-end place was priced at less than 50% of the value of my humble Brentford apartment, but 50% larger! Definitely one to think about, but I am in no rush to buy at present as the UK£ is still too sick relative to most Asian currencies.

View KL Property in a larger map

Big game fishing in Java

From Indonesia

I had been to Jakarta on at least two previous occasions, but in each case I had never seen the city during the daytime and had spent most of the time in my hotel. Turns out I was not missing much. Jakarta has to be one of the world’s least pleasant major cities, with no significant tourist attractions, and ghastly buildings in a sprawling street layout with no discernable centre to the city. To cap it all, the sky was a uniform grey smoggy colour. Oh, and there’s the traffic too. No public transport, so massive traffic jams everywhere for much of the day. Not a place to linger in, so I decided to head off to the coast for a day’s fishing with Jim, who had flown over from KL with me for a short vacation in Indonesia.

We arranged for a car to take us on the 3+ hour journey from Jakarta to Pelabuhan Ratu, and got there for a 9am start. Our boat crew were waiting and we were soon speeding out to the prime fishing area. I did not have particularly high expectations for the expedition as I have always assumed that fishing is just a form of escapist activity, and actually catching something is not really the objective. This was just as well, as we spent the first 7 hours zigzagging about trying to find those elusive big game fish, but without even a bite. As we were heading back to port, we encountered what for me was the highlight of the day – seeing numerous pods of dolphins swimming alongside our boat and performing jumps and other stunts for our benefit. Eventually all the pods congregated into a great mass of dolphins, surrounding a shoal of tuna, and presumably feeding on them, although we couldn’t see that bit. Our crew changed the lure on the fishing lines, and soon after that, we hooked a tuna. I left it to Jim to do the reeling in as he was more into the whole fishing thing than me. Unfortunately, after doing battle with the fish, and just before it was hooked into the boat, the line broke (faulty knot according to Jim), and the tuna got away. Apparently it was a good size (the one that got away always is) and would have provided a good dinner for the two of us. So we retuned to port empty handed, through a massive tropical rain storm that left us and the crew totally soaked. To make up for our lack of luck, later that evening back in our hotel we dined on Mahi Mahi (not sure of English name), which I have never had before but has to be one of the most tasty fish around.

Today, I took the even longer journey back to Jakarta airport (the non-motorway traffic is even worse in the middle of the day), and had an uneventful flight back to KL.

Petaling Hash, Batang Kali

View Batang Kali in a larger map

Weather -tropical rainstorm	a
Impenetrable jungle	a
Rivers to ford	a
Mud slides	a
Attacks by venomous reptiles	r
Man-eating Chinese ladies	a
Beers drunk at end	a

Up to now, all the hash runs I have been on have been rain-free, which is quite surprising considering the frequency of afternoon thunderstorms in the KL area. This run changed all that, with the first flash of lightning coinciding with the starting hooter. Thereafter it proceed to come down in epic quantities, turning the paths into streams, and the streams into raging torrents. Made for an interesting outing.

Batu Caves

This is listed in the guidebooks as one of the tourist attractions to be visited in the vicinity of KL. Not in my book its not! Its a Hindu temple set in a large limestone cave, which is accessed via a long and steep flight of steps. The caves on their own would be a reasonably impressive sight, but the so-called temple is a tacky collection of Hindu tableaux in a dirty and smelly concrete cavern, overrun with greedy monkeys. Well worth giving a miss. Luckily I was on my way to the hash and Batu was on my route, so not too much time wasted.

KL Orchid Garden and Aviary

From Orchids

From Birds

I did the butterfly park a couple of weeks ago. Today I decided to continue my exploration of the park, with a visit to the Orchid Garden and the Aviary. The orchids were OK, but I was slightly disappointed with the number of flowering plants in relation to the total number of orchids planted there but not flowering. The displays in the adjacent shops seemed to have much better and more varied specimens than the garden itself.

The aviary was massive; supposedly the largest walk-through aviary in the world. Hardly anyone else there, it being a Friday, but plenty of birds. A much wider selection than I have seen anywhere else, and seemingly well looked after.

Capacity Asia, Day 2

There has been quite a lot of interest in our product offering from a number of the companies at this event. Hopefully at least one or two will lead further.

It was good to meet the Asia Pac members of the i-conX team over the two days of the conference, and they always seemed to know the good places to go for a meal in the evenings, which was handy. On the final evening we went out to a large seafood restaurant not far from where I live. I have never seen so many different species of fish and crustaceans assembled in one place. (The photo only shows half the tanks).

Capacity Asia Conference, KL

It's a long time since I did one of these. This time around not too onerous as I do not have a speaking slot and merely have to talk knowledgeably about Routing Optimisation to network operators that stroll past our stand.

The telecoms industry has clearly moved on considerably over the past 5-6 years since my last conference, but still just about recognizable. Also noted that I am the oldest attendee by about 10 years! I guess that makes me a guru?

Singapore

Just come to the end of a 3 day break in Singapore, meeting up with Alison on her way through from UK to New Zealand. The idea was to give Alison a lightning tour of the things that I like most about Singapore.

Saturday evening turned out to be Halloween Night, and it seemed that the whole of the under 30 Singapore population were parading on Clarke Quay dressed as ghouls and demons. In fact they seemed to use the occasion as an excuse to dress up as just about anything from British Guardsmen to Rubik Cubes. We ended the evening with a visit to the Crazy Elephant blues club to listen to a great set from the house band supported by the ace guitarist (and club owner), John Chee.

The first full day featured a leisurely cycle ride along East Cost Park, watching the locals go about their Sunday relaxation by the sea. Pity about the backdrop of hundreds of tankers and container ships lined up waiting to go into the port. In the evening we dined out at Boat Quay, where we had my favourite Singapore dish – black pepper crab (see picture for results!).

Monday’s itinerary included a stroll around the Chinatown district, the Singapore River boat ride, and an enforced drink stop in a bar while we waited for the daily downpour to pass. The evening’s highlight was the Singapore Night Safari, which is still an entertaining night out, even on my fourth visit.

I actually had to fit in a work meeting on Tuesday morning, which gave Alison a chance to sample the Singapore shopping experience. After that, a laze by the pool was in order before our respective onward flights.