It's been a very forward-looking week.

For a start, it was graduation week. This new crop of Bachelor's graduates started their degrees when I joined Nottingham. It's been a good cohort. It's people like this who make me optimistic about Malaysia's future -- despite the political shenanigans afoot at the moment.





This week also saw the opening of the second half of the Sungai Buloh to Kajang MRT line.

We rode the Maluri to Kajang section on Saturday so that I could get to graduation. All Rapid KL transport is half-price at the moment, and lots of people are obviously enjoying checking out KL's new toy. There was quite a festive atmosphere on the train, with pensioners rejoicing over their now-quarter-price tickets, people piling off to indulge in Kajang's apparently famous sate, and guys jostling for good places in the "driving position". Most of the track is elevated, so you get good views out over KL and PJ to the surrounding hills.

On Sunday we got up early, took the KTM to Sungai Buloh, and filled in the rest of the route to Maluri.







There was a bit of innovation on the food front, too. Over the months since it opened, I've gradually been eating my way through Wild Honey's salad menu. They have an interesting new take (above) on the old Caesar salad, featuring curly kale, white anchovies, dried cranberries, and sweet potato ribbons as well as the classic poached egg, parmesan, and croutons.

I also came across oyaki pan this week. Oyaki were originally, it seems, savoury buckwheat dumplings from Nagano, but Southeast Asia seems to have perfected a variety of sweet versions. Mine had a cream cheese and cranberry filling, and was delicious.

But there were a couple of retro elements to the week, too. We caught up with the third Despicable Me (best accompanied by the childhood-evoking Smarties that you bought with your spare dollars at Male airport).

Tommy le Baker's chocolate croissant (above -- actually more like a chocolate brioche) takes you straight back to France.

And, equipped with a couple of bottles of beer, a bag of banana chips, and a large box of tissues, we watched the end of Winter Sonata, that early-2000s pioneer of the international Hallyu wave. Let's hope the final sunset meeting heralds a bright future for that much-tried pair, who have surely suffered enough at the hands of irresponsible parents, jealous lovers, and their own reticence and ideas of nobility...

As always, these dramas offer wonderful little cameos of Korean life, where the new and the old constantly intersect.