So we're back in KL. The entirety of which someone seems to have decided to dig up, which is beyond annoying.

We've moved into a new studio apartment. It's in quite a posh building, with in-house shops, cafes, and other services. So it's all quite novel, as we work out what we like, and what's nearby, and how we get to it. Our studio also faces directly onto a building site, but the noise is not too intrusive (yet), and the day-to-day progress is surprisingly fascinating.

We've done our usual thing: rushed round buying the things we think we absolutely can't forego (a drying rack, a chair for Nigel to use for work, a fan, etc). If past performance is a guide, though, we have a couple more days to take advantage of this window of opportunity. After which, energy will flag, and we will make do, or do without.





We've celebrated being back by doing some traditional things, like strolling the Masjid Jamek area, going to church at St Mary's, and having breakfast at Kader (new was the Madras coffee).

And we're near Bukit Nanas, so we've done our first exhausting walk up the pineapple.







As always September is a culturally rich period in KL.

We went, as part of the DiverseCity arts festival, to I Am Ravana, a dance/drama performance staged at the Temple of Fine Arts. As well as being visually very beautiful, with a number of different styles of dance, it was also very thought-provoking, inviting us to take a more nuanced view of the Ravana figure.

The piece opens with his killing. But his spirit challenges the audience: "Why do you rejoice in my death? Am I not just like you?"

Yes, just like us, it seems. Ravana is a mixture of good and evil. He's devout and scholarly, yet is easily tricked by his sister, and easily seduced by one fatal desire.

So, according to the storyteller, the Ramayana is the collective story of the whole of humanity. Good and bad, cause and effect, the eternal cycle. "Light, darkness, love, illusion, Ravana, Rama... A continually existing oneness..."



Happening as well at the moment is the Japanese Film Festival. First up, for us, was Born Bone Born. The Japanese title, Senkotsu, refers to the Okinawan custom of washing the bones of the dead. Bodies are stored for four years in a temporary container in a cliff-side funeral chamber. Once washed, the bones are transferred to an urn.

The family carrying out this ritual are all suffering: Dad has not accepted the reality of his wife's death, and is drinking heavily; the son has just got divorced, and is bitter towards everyone; the daughter is heavily pregnant; the baby's father, a hippie-like character with 1970s pants, comes to find her, but struggles to gain acceptance from the family.

The death pictures are memorable, it has to be said. We start the movie with this lovely, serene, dead face in the temporary coffin. A little later we realize that the body's knees are raised, and the coffin is quite short. Towards the end of the movie, the coffin is opened. In place of the face, there is a skull, still with bits of hair and other matter attached, which must be cleaned away. The pile of other bones has to undergo the same hands-on washing process. It's sobering. The baby chooses this time to arrive, of course, on the beach, outside the tomb. The final shot is of the newborn face gazing at the skull to whom he is being introduced.



Our second Japanese movie was Ramen Heads, a fascinating documentary about the lives of Japan's ramen-makers, foremost among them Osama Tomita.

Tomita cooks ramen six days a week, drives his apprentices hard, tours ramen shops on his days off, and when invited by the documentary-maker to bring his family along for lunch, takes everyone off to eat ramen...

There are a multitude of different styles of ramen, employing different broths, different noodles, and different ingredients. But ramen is an idea as much as an actual food, it seems. It conjures up the energy-giving sustenance that people needed after World War II to rebuild the country; it speaks of warmth and comfort in a time of sadness and darkness.

And these dedicated ramen-makers have much to say about persistence and craft. "You have to do it day in day out," Tomita tells a slightly discouraged young ramen entrepreneur. "This is how you learn." Hmmm... Did I ever really apply that principle, I wonder...?

At lunchtime, by way of preparation, we had a very tasty bowl of Bari-Uma ramen. Tender pork, seaweed, and a rich tonkatsu broth.

On a less exalted (and non-Japanese) note, we finally got to see the famous Crazy Rich Asians. Controversies about who exactly this movie "represents" have abounded, and I can understand why many Singaporeans feel that it gives a very one-dimensional view of their nation.

But for me -- and I'm looking through white eyes, of course -- the movie was primarily about family, and only secondarily about class or ethnicity. (By that I mean that the same story could have been transposed to a very different social context, and still have worked in the same way.) And I have to say I enjoyed it. In general, the rich are mocked, rather than idolized. But the bit I really winced at was the stereotypical portrayal of the "scary" Indian guards. (The trope reminded me of Bukit Brown.)





And in this week's retro bucket (in a bid to try out the computer cable with our new TV), we watched Exit Through the Gift Shop. Again, this had a "what's real" and "what's not?" conundrum at its heart, as we follow the career (or the invented career) of a guy with a videoing obsession who manages to convince a paying audience that he's an artist. (The fact that people continue to discuss what's real and what's not is quite a tribute, regardless of what the answer is.)

As this discussant puts it: "All reality is just motion suspended in space at the moment at which we observe it."

I'm sure Ravana would agree.