"-I can't walk to Uni! - why? - because of the monkeys!"

Somewhere in Malaysia, 1:00 am local time.
For some reason, sleep did not come yet. I start recalling the day...
Waking up around 9 am to the commuter train to the city, I reach the Times Square mall area around one hour later. Shopping galore, I manage to grab a pair of skater shoes, which look amazingly like the old ones Im trying to replace, slippers. I also find the shop I had spotted two days ago, which had the "buy 1 free 1" sign over a huge pile of jeans, and get a really good deal from it. I end up finding myself cornered in a muslim style shop, the saleswoman trying to mae me buy every single item: for me, my mom, my girlfriend, my sister maybe, or also for any friend because everybody likes that color, and if you take a shawl then you need a "broche" (en francais car j'ai oublie), etc.
I got the best our of it, and was happily surprised when she started bargaining. It seems I got some skills from my stay in Beijing.
Shoppping is huge fun, but time consuming, it is already time to go back if I want to do anything else from my day. around 5 pm, Choy drives me through the campus of his university: UKM.
It is immense actually, much larger than any of the two campuses I had visited lately in Singapore. golf course, swimming pool (were people swim with way too many clothes on... covering the body is an ethic issue), two stadiums. And many faculties, almost everything except medicine, as the hospital is much further away.
Two days ago, when I had asked a malay student if she walked to university, she had answered: "no. and you will easily see why. actually it is because of the monkeys". I thought it was probably a joke, in fact it is very serious: some species similar to "chimpanzes" (chimps?) brings havoc to the place. They eat fruits that fall in the middle of the road, disrupting car traffic (thought they usually flee when one approaches), they turnover trash cans, doubling or tripling the work of the cleaning staff. They rarely attack students though, so they are tolerated. But if you drive to your class, you better make sure that your car windows are closed if you dont want to end up with a primate tribe on your backseat.
The law faculty is really nice, painted pink though, and has a relaxed atmosphere to it. The monkeys playing around, the surrounding forest of palm trees, and the foutain at the entrance may have something to do with it.
On our way out of the uni, I spot a cloud in a shape that I had never seen before. Actually, I had been saying "amaaaaaaaaazing" at least 500 times since the morning so Choy was not so attentive to it anymore, so I had to repeat and ask him to stop the car, and I tried to capture the cloud in a picture. I don't think I did. Something to do with contrast and white balance. Anyway, it's just that is was a low cloud with a large, vertical part in the middle, like a chimney going up to the nest level of clouds, and it was really "thick" for a cloud, looking quite dense.
After staring at drops of water in suspension in the atmosphere, we head for food at a local foodcourt, and order a bunch of different meat sticks (mutton, beef, fish, chicken), served with a bowl of sauce. I have been told the sauce was made of sesame and some nuts. It tasted a lot like sesame, only. And we added a loooot of chili to it. After a very filling meal, we went to Putrajaya, the adminsitrative capital, and tried "kembu" ( I think), a local fruit that I cannot describe without comparing it to all of these: lemon, apple, pear, "grenade"( in french), pitanga (brazilian fruit) and coconut... yeah, it's like the platypus of fruits!
I'll tell you more next time, for now the sleep has come back.
and I got tired of waiting for emails. When I dont get any email in 24 hours except automated notifications, and when absolutely no one is on msn+skype, it almost feels like I dont exist!!
talk about existential crises in our modern societies hehe