It's raining again. Not just the temporary rain of July -- which, as speculated, was a bit of a flash in a fairly long, hot pan, but big rains, which bring clearer air, cooler temperatures, and awesome sound-and-light displays (which are actually not so awesome when they wake you up in the night...)

These days you need a wrap to be comfortable in your overly cooled office, and you long for sweet, hot puddings and drinks -- pulut hitam (black rice) or gandum (wheat) swirled through with coconut cream, or hot soya milk concealing green pandan balls and longans, or air mata kucing, which I have never encountered anywhere else, and whose unique flavour is derived (I think) from longans, winter melon, and gula melaka.

Most of the Ramadan decorations have now gone, although the camels are still toughing it out at the Pyramid. Independence Day and Malaysia Day saw buildings and streets festooned with flags. The mid-autumn festival brought displays of moon-cakes and lanterns.

This is the last teaching week at Monash, for those who teach. Exams will start soon.

And my route to work has been substantially modified, thanks to the opening of the extended walkway. Rather than going through the canteen, past the Yummy Yummy Duck and friends, and across three roads, I now walk airily above it all on a converted bit of old monorail track.

I get intimate views of the big hole from which a new bit of Sunway University will one day rise (previously concealed from view by a big fence, slightly prone to subsidence, like much of that stretch of road), and I catch wonderful sunrises. I don't have to tangle with traffic, I don't get splashed by cars rocketing through puddles, and I don't get rained on (well, only a bit when the rain blows sideways).

There's a bit of a design flaw where the two walkways connect through a building that is sometimes locked. To avoid frustration (and the slippiest floor in the entire world -- like, really, it's a total ice-rink), it is best to descend from the old walkway, go past the offending building, and climb the stairs back onto the new walkway.

Also, the canalized walkway seems to have made me even more conspicuous to the giggly tribe of headscarfed girls who think it's side-splittingly funny that the old foreigner walks so fast.

But it's good. All pedestrian traffic should be thus separated from its motorized equivalent. Much better for us all.

Notably, the year has not yet rolled round into an election. The polls have been just around the corner since we arrived, and they're just around the corner still...