The taxi driver

A bus stop is the worst place to ponder on the purpose of life and existence. In fact it's the worst place for any thought at all. Lengthy ones are usually interrupted by the arrival of the bus and short ones only make the wait increasingly unbearable. It is best to simply exist, as if …

The value of fifty cents

Earlier this afternoon, I sat on the RapidKL bus from the city back to Ampang. As I was walking back to my car, parked quite a distance away from the bus stand, I bumped into three schoolboys. They must have been brothers, with the eldest maybe 9 or 10 years old and the youngest maybe …

Sin Seng Nam: The end of a very long chapter

On the 28th of February 2013, the one coffeeshop I've always loved visiting in Kuala Lumpur, Sin Seng Nam, goes into retirement after 85 years of operation. I arrived relatively late, 8.30am to be exact, to find most of the seats already filled with the regulars. I found an empty table upstairs and made camp …

Homeless in Kuala Lumpur

“Itu orang semua sudah lari. Semua sudah kosong." Ah Heng lives in the 2nd room on the 1st floor of the 4th block of the Tuanku Abdul Rahman Flats, or more famously known as the abandoned Pekeliling Flats. Built in 1967, it was one of the earliest housing development projects in the city, home to …