My Apartment, Future Music Festival and The Malaysian Formula 1

My Apartment, Future Music Festival and The Malaysian Formula 1 

Thug Life.

Through an unfortunate series of events comprising of not trying to piss my company off too much by taking more abominable amounts of leave and having earn't very little down to India and Indonesia, i found myself with a gap before my next jaunt away.I figure this is as good a time as any to mention (briefly) my work life, where i live and then other crap i got up to in KL February - March.

Work

Working Hard

I've already mentioned that i moved site after i got back from India. Well, life is a hell of a lot easier nowadays. Waking up an hour later and getting home at least 2 hours earlier has done so much to restore my personality and health it's unreal. For the 4-5 months i was working in the centre of KL i was dead on my feet, no energy to go out, get drunk, or generally be sociable in any way apart from the odd exception which I've usually mentioned here. Not to mention the move has freed up hundreds of Ringgits of petrol money.

So, i'm on another site: checking reinforcement, supervising concrete pours, making CAD drawings for Architectural works etc etc. To be frank none of it is that hard apart from the sun which is physically exhausting and destroys you as a human being. The photo above may look like it's cool, but that's 35 degree heat melting me onto that pile head.

At the end of the month me and Pooja blew off a company "Internship Bonding Session" which involved a lot of drawing, colouring in and happy clappy team building games to go watch a small experimental film festival named "Barricade". The theme revolved around the contesting of public space, be it by citizens of the state or by the state itself used as methods of policing or control. There was a strong political theme throughout the whole thing with film entries from a variety of countries.

The general election in this country is just round the corner and the current ruling party has been in power 50+ years (since the British left). There's currently a lot of buzz about the election and this event reflected that.

A worthwile event and something refreshingly different, although admittedly a lot of it went straight over me head.

Oasis Square

I moved to Oasis Square waaaaaaay back, but never really mentioned it or put forward any photographic evidence of the prison cells pit of despair that was the University of Malaysia and probably inspired some of the scenes from Hostel.

Anyway, the apartment:

View from the apartment balcony:

Some of the restaurants where we occasionally eat. At the moment of writing this some kind of proffessional filming is going on by the fountain.

The Room with the view:

Generally i try and spend my Sundays like the photo below, by the pool for 5 hours+, cold beer, lack of ambition and nothing to do. However all too often i wake up at 3am, go for the customary tandoori Sunday at 5 then collapse back into bed.

Future Music Festival

This:

Yeah, it was pretty insane. You can catch a glimpse of me in the prodigy pit around 7:05 getting the crap beaten out of me.

Stolen from Rory

It was one of those days really. A lot of the guys came round here before hand and began the pre drink that continued for the next 10 or so hours. Future Music was no Reading or any of the other major festivals in the UK but a combination of the occasional few acts and Assai made an excellent night out of it. Prodigy killed it, everyone was on top form and when bored of the music we went from stall to stall terrorizing the staff. At one point joe did a jump, then rotated 180 degrees in mid air and did a vertical swan dive into a huge container of water that proceeded to tidal wave over a stall selling Marlboro cigarettes. You had to see it.

The company "Marathon" and The Best Night Out in KL 

Saturday was upon us, but unlike everyone else in the Developed/ Developing world i was obligated to work my 6 days a week. This saturday our company and decided to inflict upon us an 11km run around the gardens in the centre of KL, registration at 6:30am which meant getting up around 5.

Moral was low.

The Warmup - Pooja

As it happened i had inflamed the ligament on the heel of my left food the week before during a 5km run in prep for this so could only muster a walk the entire way without inflicting a shooting pain on myself. About 300 people from the company had come out to do this with a particularly cringe synchronised warm up routine featuring Whitney Houston.

I managed to power walk it averaging around 7.5km an hour which i thought was decent. Sometimes being 6 "2 and a long ass stride. has it's benefits when your walk outpaces people on a jog.

With that grim task over we prepped for that night which would later be unanimously declared as the best night out in Asia, ever. Almost everyone was out apart from a few (Brad, George, Emma) that chose to blow it off and go watch the Backstreet Boys in front of the Patronas towers instead. Added to that, Parkin's and Ellie's friends from the UK were out, The whole of Balfour were down with their new man peter Kelly, Elias our Neighbour was there along with Neil who is one of Niall's mates who up until recently has been working in/travelling Australia, or something like that. s all great nights start we find ourselves round Deacons, seeing what things were left to destroy.

Stolen from Neil

 Once again my memory is very skatty although presumably at one point security were called^ but were powerless to resist our charm. I do remember being part of a group that hoisted one of Deacons sofas over the balcony and had it half way off (he lives on the 50th floor) before some buzz kill walked out, caught us in our crime and talked us down.

Stolen from Neil

It was the most standard of all nights, Deacons, Changkat - Havana bar then home but somehow it broke the mould. I woke up the next day round Jacks, firmly drunk with a destroyed back, got in a taxi asap, got home, had a shower then headed straight back out for:

The Malaysian Formula 1 Grand Prix

I've decided after my first Grand Prix that it's simply not a spectator sport as I had absolutely no clue as to what was going on the entire time. 

No Clue.

Although this is probably due to the cheap seats we chose (i didn't fancy spending 70 quid) so i can't complain really. A worthwhile experience and something to tick off but i probably wouldn't bother again. It doesn't help that i was dangerously hungover for the entire thing and had to spend most of my concentrating on not collapsing somewhere.

The next day we were up at 4am, why? Our flight to Thailand for the Full Moon Party on Haad Rin Beach and what would turn out to be the best week of my life. Easily.

Check out my Flickr for the polished photos at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/glenncook/sets/72157632067033774/