Roadtrip brog! Crying at sunsets, crying at Sigur Ros

Hello, you. Hello from a quiet little hotel in Kuantan. Hello from the East Coast – monsoon country this time of year, and just unfamiliar country to me generally.

My car tells us we’ve travelled about 2000 kilometers so far. I wish that number made more sense to me. I’m sure it will in time. Everything seems to be travelling at different speeds – the blog and my life, my body and my head. One of them arrives first (usually my faithful, serviceable body) and has to shout at the rest: will you hurry the fuck up?

Ok, now. Right now. It’s raining, of course. Zedeck’s beside me, working on story no. 81. Sometimes I suspect we went on this roadtrip just so he could write and I could blog from different rooms with different views.

There’s so much I have to tell you. How to measure the journey?

Well, there’s been alot of junkfood. The road has been paved with nuts, Cheezels, cigarettes, chips, prawn crackers (my weakness and poison), bubble tea, all manner of fried and crispy food; sudden blasts of SUGARY SWEET! and then…SALTY! It’s all starting to make me feel run down and… squishy. I’m lugging around more belly than I’m used to. This is ok.

There’s been GOOD food too. Malaysians? We fucking ROCK at food. It’s like we’ve reserved all our passion, creativity, sensitivity, attention to detail, sexiness, joy and unabashed embracing of the new and strange, and squeezed it into soups and little luscious morsels and deep complex curries and sauces and weird-ass things like rojak and and and…

At a kopitiam in Ipoh: this perfectly silky, french-chef-worthy, creme caramel pudding. I may never forget it. Blessed (or cursed) never to visit Ipoh again without thinking about it.

Just like whenever I go to Penang, I need to go to this beach in Balik Pulau. I know there are a thousand prettier places in the world, but this one’s mine. When I’m on this patch of earth, I’m complete. I mean, ‘complete’ like on a fucking cellular level. It’s like being with an old, old, old friend.

This time, we got there in evening. The sun was going down and the light was on the water. I stared out at the open sea and suddenly I started crying. When Zedeck wandered over and asked what was up, all I could say in a half-embarrassed sniffle-whisper was: ‘It’s just so beautiful’.

I felt like Double-Rainbow Guy, the sad Asian knock-off version.

Zedeck gets this, he gets me. I love him for it.

Also on the list of Things That Made Sharon Cry for Happy-Unexplainable-But-Really-Good reasons: seeing Sigur Ros play at Urbanscapes. I’m not even that huge a fan, but the music got to me.