I enjoyed facilitating the financial modules of the Company Directors Course in Sydney on Friday 23 September. I ‘lost’ my photo album book at the course on Sunday I attended with Phil and Katharine. I found it hard to take and went home at lunchtime. However, after a lunch I started again on the Apple Macintosh and had success. I applied techniques learned in the morning and created a 56 page Lake Eyre album. I still have some finishing touches before I arrange for printing.
Monday 26 and Tuesday 27 September I worked on the wall garden. The earth is now all sifted, the bricks cleaned and a portion of the wall rebuilt. While I was overseas, one of my sons wheel-barrowed three loads of bricks from under the front of the house to the back and Barbara cleaned any that were dirty. So, now it is a matter of finishing the wall building and filling the garden.
Wednesday night we attended the Mary Poppins stage show at the Capitol Theatre. We enjoyed tapas at a Spanish Restaurant and the show was absolutely fabulous. It is the best musical I have attended – the staging, the scenery and scenery changes, singing, dancing and acting were superb. The story is positive and uplifting and as I was feeling teary with happiness I thought of the value of applying the positive thought in my own life. At the end Mary Poppins flies off from the stage over the audience and disappears into the high ceiling of the ornate Art Deco theatre. The audience was enrapt by the performance. Thursday I visited with neighbours Joy and Graeme.
Friday 30 September I flew Qantas to Singapore for my eleven days abroad. Saturday I caught up with friends Lay Geok and Danny for morning tea, Lee Hiah for lunch, and Yvonne, Alita and Vissia for dinner. Morning tea was on Keppel Island at a café. Lunch was Japanese, at Akashi Restaurant, Vivo City. Dinner was at the White Rabbit, near Dempsey Hill, which is an interesting area of antique shops and restaurants in the old British Army Base. Sunday I facilitated the financial modules of the International Company Directors at the Sentosa Resort, Sentosa Island and flew in the early evening to Kuala Lumpur.
Monday 3 to Wednesday 5 October I facilitated my 3 Day MBA in Finance (a fancy title for Financial Management for Non-Financial Managers) at the JW Marriott Hotel. Both seminars were well received and I coped well with four days facilitation in a row, including changing countries. On the Monday and Tuesday evenings I went to bed around 8 pm to make sure I had enough sleep.
Wednesday afternoon I caught a taxi to Simon and Diana’s place. Simon was there to greet me. We headed for a resort hotel where Diana and their children were enjoying time with their friends from Sydney. We enjoyed an adults only drink time followed by a Chinese dinner in a nearby popular restaurant.
One of my enjoyments of Malaysia is teh tarik (pulled tea) and roti. Simon and Diana indulged my passion several times. There is a 24 hour restaurant about 2 minutes walk from their home. I had a couple of breakfasts there and also enjoyed teh tarik in other places during my four-day stay.
Thursday afternoon we drove to the state and island of Penang where we stayed at The Blue Mansion, a fantastic UNESCO endorsed boutique hotel in the middle of the Georgetown World Heritage site. Diana could not have chosen better! This Chinese mansion was built in 1880 by Cheong Fatt Tze, a successful businessman and Mandarin. It was one of several mansions he built in Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong and two in mainland China. In these homes he housed his eight wives. Over the years three of his wives lived in the Penang mansion including his favourite seventh wife, 50 years his junior and father of his last son, who inherited and lost the mansion. From being neglected, the mansion was bought by concerned locals and faithfully restored during the 1990s. It helped galvanise interest in preserving the colonial heritage of Georgetown.
Friday we did a self-guided walking tour, which, along with the Blue Mansion is featured in my Malaysian photos at http://gallery.me.com/davidheyc#100147. Though the weather was mild during my trip, when the sun was out, it was hot. On two stops, we enjoyed refreshing drinks. In the early afternoon we were enthralled by the Blue Mansion house tour conducted by the hotel manager. In the late afternoon we enjoyed a delicious English high tea at the historic Eastern and Oriental Hotel.I did not expect that the country in which I have enjoyed two English high teas would be Malaysia – Georgetown and at the Carcosa Seri Negara Hotel, Kuala Lumpur last year!
The other places I have enjoyed it are with William at the Epcot Centre, Disneyworld, Orlando, Florida (1996); with my brother and Barbara at the Victoria Falls Hotel, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe (2006); and with Bonnie and Brian and Barbara at the Empress Hotel, Victoria, Vancouver Island, British Columbia (2008). Maybe some day I should try it in England!
Saturday Diana and I walked a couple of minutes from the hotel to the oldest European graveyard in Georgetown. We passed through the protestant section into the smaller Catholic section where two of Diana’s European relatives are buried. The graveyard has supposedly been restored but we could not find their grave. These people were the family into which Diana’s grandmother and mother were adopted. Then we drove around Penang Island, something that neither Simon nor Diana had done. They have been to Penang many times and Diana lived there during some of her childhood. There is no road fully around the coast. You can go so far and then have to cross over the hills to another part of the coast. The roads were winding due to the coastline and the hills. We visited a waterfall, had lunch of Assam laksa at Eric Kee’s weekend restaurant and inspected a nutmeg farm run by Chang Kun Mim. These events proved most enjoyable and worthwhile. We saw old style wooden homes with louver windows and Malay style fishing villages. This area of the island was referred to as the ‘backside of the island’ and was more interesting being away from the tourist resorts.
Sunday was a slower day. I went early to the airport with Diana and Simon, who were flying to a wedding elsewhere in Malaysia. I used the time to read – have read several really good books lately: Forgiving the Dead Man Walking, Stranger in the Forest and The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind plus two enjoyable spy story books. Sunday night was a great time at dinner with Ek Khuan (friend from 1970s Arthur Young days) at the Crowne Plaza, Changi Airport, Singapore. Monday I flew home on a day flight.
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