So far one month and a half in Kuching and loving it madly …

I’ll start with what I expected and what I heard about Kuching, I heard it was a small city not much to do, cheap food and accommodation, friendly people and lovely scenery, well all of it is true expect the “not much to do“part which although it’s a small city I can occupy most of my time in useful things besides sleeping and eating.

There is a Really diverse choice of food in Kuching , from the main Indian, Chinese and Malay food which obviously the most common here, one can still find a good western breakfast, a good Lebanese meal with a not-so-bad sheesha afterwards, and good coffee ( not very common ).

As for events here are a few events I have been to in the past month and a short description about each one of them:

The Food Festival: a lot and I mean a lot of food and drinks everywhere, I have to say I believe I tried everything giving that its doesn’t contain pork, from chicken satay to that weird tasty drink with little Jelly balls at the bottom, now here is what I found a bit strange in the food festival they actually had a KFC stall … how weird is that?, I guess the explanation was that Malaysians love the KFC chicken so much that it has become part of the Malaysian Culture.

Madam Cindy’s House Visit: a local’s house visit which was both very well designed and placed under a lovely cloudy mountain, far away from the city, the moment I saw that breathtaking view my imagination just wondered and started to imagine my life 40 years later, living in a similar house sipping a cup of coffee with my wife my 5 sons and daughters and 2 grandchildren, then we had a house cooked meal which was terrific and absolutely delicious, I even helped out a bit in cooking.

The Sarawak Cultural Village: which had different tribes and how they lived and different longhouses, I shoot some hunting darts, smoked the local smoke, danced the local dance and enjoyed a conversation with a dart maker telling all about hunting in the all days .

The Opening of the Swinburne New Campus: which I gladly participated by Singing Both Malaysian and the Australian Anthem, and I loved it.

Local Wedding: which I also gladly Ushered and had really good time and food, now the funny thing was most the song performed in wedding were western country music … go figure.

Live Band Show in Bing café: we knew about it from a local friend Choulyin (hope I got the spelling right) and it was my first live band show, it was pretty interesting listening to all these local talents, but there was a 14 year old girl and a 17 year old guy which really stood out from the crowd, they gave a really amazing performance, after the bands preformed there was an open mic session, and everyone started shouting “Mahmoud !!!, Mahmoud !!” all of a sudden, so me being me stood up, now for those of you who don’t me I don’t have any English song memorized what so ever, so after sitting there for a while I told the crowd that I sang the Jordanian Anthem and then I got all the Aussies to stand up and we sang the Australian National anthem , and I finished it with the following words “Well I have in Malaysian for almost a month now and it is one the most beautiful countries I have ever been to, it’s so beautiful tht I even took the effort to memorize its national anthem so to finish off I’d like everyone to sing the Malaysian Anthem “ and everyone stood up and sang the Malaysian National Anthem, that was an awesome day .