Our home is rainy at the moment, which makes for very atmospheric light effects at times:



Not only does the pluvial season seem to have started early, but it also seems to be doing more precipitating than usual. It's extraordinarily cool.

So a nice bowl of fried fish porridge is a warm and homely thing at the moment. The one at the top came from Kluang Station in Quill City Mall.

We've kind of adopted Born and Bread as our local up-and-coming, trying-to-be-a-bit-more-sophisticated, home-from-home eatery. After lunch the other week, we've checked out their afternoon tarts and their weekend breakfast offerings. It's starting to be the place where we plan travels.

This week we also paid our second visit to Wild Honey. My choice was "chicken chop chop", a salad containing grilled chicken breast, Napa cabbage, Asian pear, spicy cashews, crispy wanton strips, and curry vinaigrette. I think there was a touch of mango in there too. Very tasty. And not at all gloppy (gloppy being my horror when it comes to salads). My drink was pink flamingo tea (green tea with crimson hibiscus blossom). Very pretty, and very soothing. I think we might adopt this place, too -- a home-from-work eatery.



When we were at home in the UK, or New Zealand, or Australia, one of our favourite celebration breakfasts was smoked salmon. Well, now we live in Malaysia, and we don't cook. We don't even toast bagels. So it's good to know you can get a very nice smoked salmon sandwich at Harrods, or salmon and scrambled egg quesadillas at The Loaf.



A very poignant take on the home theme came in the shape of Leaving on the 15th Spring. This figured in the occasional series of Japanese movies put on by the Japan Foundation at the Pitching Centre.

It's about a little island way out from Okinawa (which is way out from Japan). Children have to leave for the big island once they turn 15, and this is the story of Yuna, one young girl who faces this change.

It's all made even more difficult for her by the fact that her family is falling apart. Mum lives in Naha, ostensibly because she was looking after her son and daughter. But they've grown up and moved away, and Mum's found herself a boyfriend (although the relationship doesn't last). Big sister is struggling with her relationship, too, and for a while is back with Yuna and Dad on the little island.

Distance strains relationships. And small islands -- I know it -- strain patience. Much as you love them, you can't stay on them for ever -- or most of us can't.

It's not an epoch that favours small islands. The inhabitants of this one grow sugar cane, and worry about the TPP... The lad who was briefly Yuna's boyfriend has to give up ideas of school to help out in the family fishing business. He feels trapped.

Yuna has to go, although her departure means leaving Dad on his own. You don't want her to stay. And you don't want Dad to leave his island. He likes it there. Farewells have to happen. We know that.

But there's something about seeing that wide-backed boat swaying its way across the waves that brought a lump to my throat. Life is a series of separations. They have to happen. But they're no less painful for that.

The latest exhibition at the Galeri Petronas has the theme "SEMANGAT X: Visual Expressions of Southeast Asian Identity". It's a series of different views of the region by people who call it home. Home as myth. Home as the juxtaposition of the ordinary. Home as a work-in-progress. Homelessness. Home as colonial history, or underlying mobility. All interesting.











I don't, of course, share a Southeast Asian identity. But this region is so very much a part of my existence that my own identity would absolutely not be complete without it. I am incredibly lucky to feel so at home here.