So... The first KL diary since December...

In one way it seems as though we've been gone for a really long time.

We'd forgotten how bad the traffic is (either that, or it has got worse), and we hadn't realized how comparatively difficult it is here to do your daily 10,000 steps (this factor, combined with pressure of time, has driven up our gym attendance).

A few more shops have shut at Quill. New bike tracks have appeared near Bandaraya station (although they would work better if there weren't buses parked all over them...)

Even more digging is going on near Chinatown; the view from the lift lobby of our hotel features miles of building site; and the tower at the Tun Razak Exchange has noticeably put on floors. The River of Life scheme in the centre of town has made a little more progress.

And Mr Najib's photo no longer adorns the lobby at my university...





Yet in another way, everything is extraordinarily familiar. I've been out to Semenyih, and over to our city premises. All is as was. The academic year rolls round, and there's been another graduation.

The monorail is still functioning with two-car units only. All that's changed there is some of the advertising.

We've been back to Cafe 5 @ Pudu for more of their still awesome waffles. We've been back to the Wagon for margaritas (truth be told, not quite so amazing as they used to be), to Artelier for fine cake and genmaicha, to the Common Grind for good coffee, and to Acme at Pavilion for salad, baba ghanoush, and a glass or two of wine.

We've discovered that Lima Pulo now does a fabulous lontong sayur lodeh (pressed rice, tofu, tempeh, vegetables, and a spicy broth). And we remembered, very happily, that Sopoong (my favourite Korean restaurant, whose Quill branch sadly closed before we left) has an outlet not far from us in the Berjaya Times Square mall. Even better, this branch does way more sweet stuff than ours used to, so I'm now a big fan of hotteok, or Korean sweet pancakes, which are not only texturally awesome but also very satisfying. (As an added bonus, you can watch goofy Korean TV. I don't know where they dug up the dozy Westerners who were invited to try gimbap for the first time, but honestly, people like this ought to be locked up, rather than paraded on TV.)







Still in Korean mode, we're back into K-drama, in the adorable shape of Flower boy next door. We bought and recorded this before leaving, but hadn't found an opportunity to watch it. Now is so definitely the time.... When you've wrestled with your writing all day, there's nothing better than a bit of K-drama.

We're staying in Pudu, a down-to-earth area that offers a bit of an antidote to the week's rather decadent walk down memory lane. It's an area full of print shops and simple food courts, plants in tyres and birds framed by barbed wire.











So, all a bit odd really.

It was home, and will be home. At the moment we're just passing through, and that's always a somewhat peculiar feeling.