Cannot be Bo(a)rdered

The first floor of the Urbanscape House had an interesting offering. A whole floor of art exhibit. And all with skateboards. Neat.

The art side of things was fascinating enough and add to that some political nuance, I must say that it was very well curated.

There were a couple of pieces which caught my eyes.

Rather neat ....Rebels ....Let's sit down ....The first one was a burger. A wooden burger, paying homage to the plain old Ramly Burger. It was well carved.

The second one was a set of nine boards attached to a wall, each with portrait of current and past political leaders, all against the current regime. Themed "Dulu Lain, Sekarang Lain" - which basically meant the wind of change - it depict how connected there were now in the current political climate.

From the offCloser .....And we have a winner ....More room ....What's next?We are all connected ....Subtle but obvious.

Most of the exhibitors had had their work featured gone and abroad before. You can tell from their polished work. Definitely worth a stop.

Mari Ber-Sama-Sama

I learned recently that this year's edition of Urbanscapes would be held in town and one of the main venue would be Medan Pasar. Interesting as it would be central, just behind Central Market and within walking distance from Petaling Street. Public transport would also be straight forward. And from there on, there would be plenty to do - CM, Petaling Street, Dataran Merdeka, Masjid Jamek and Masjid India would be within 10 minutes.

But the drawback was the area had been transformed lately into Mini Kathmandu, with plenty of our foreign guests congregating at the area during weekends meeting their friends when they were off work. Not really a pleasant place to venture at.

As a trial run, I went there last weekend after learning that a bazaar - called Sama-Sama Food Fair - was held there. The sun was blazing and yea, there was a mixture of local and the foreign visitors as well as foreign workers. The bazaar featured local alternative musics as well as local and ASEAN food fair.

I was there quite rather late as I had a long clinic on the Saturday morning. Most of the food was gone, although the music was still playing and it would go on until around 8. The crowd would then go over to KLCC and other venues to celebrate Earth Hour that night. Great timing.

Nice tables actually. Setting the mood, but rather hot and exposed ...Nice hat!Time to enjoy the ABC!The event was organised by Lab DNA and from the information I received they had been doing great work with plenty of viral event, something the Millennials would be in tune with. I was there in time to catch the Venopian Solitude who had been making headlines in the local underground scene. Great music and great vibe.

I didn't have much time to spare, and I was off after 30 minutes in time to have some ABC!

Foodgasm Fest 2015

The weather proved to be both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, the rain washed away what was left of the haze which had been blighted us lately. The sun was shining and the sunblock were off the cupboard for the first time in weeks - not for me of course! It was a feel good weather. Even a small ray of sunshine could lift the mood, coupled with it the promise of garden party with food galore in the middle of town, it seemed perfect! It sounded so good that it seemed like the whole of KL congregated at Dataran Petaling Jaya, opposite AmCorp Mall last Sunday for Foodgasm Fest 2015.

And with that, came the traffic horror story of almost epic proportion. With the traffic warden turning up well past their due in time to issue summons. It was gridlocked, but more on that later.

The rain also proved to be the architect for trouble at this festival. The grass field was filled with mud and one couldn't avoid them since the queue was so long and the terraces of food stalls sat right in the middle of the quagmire! It was slowly turning into a mudfest.

Back to the traffic! We should have turned back the moment we saw the line of cars stretching a couple of kilometers along the Federal Highway leading into Jalan Timur. We persevered and was rewarded with a one hour crawl. And even then we didn't manage to get a parking spot. People were parking their cars at their fancy and before long the whole of Jalan Timur turned into one giant parking lot! And there were no traffic warden in sight.

Anita and I decided to escape via Jalan Gasing, back towards our apartment and took the LRT for a couple of stops landing right next to Dataran PJ.

Looking at the length of the queue, we decided to have a quick bite at the A&W restaurant nearby. No such joy. The queue there stretched right out of the joint. We soldiered on onto the field. The wait for each stall was at least 30 minutes and some of them had run out of items and having problem replenishing them as their supply car were caught in the jam!

We circled around and the only place without a queue were the vape tents. They were the craze at the moment! There were mud everywhere and Anita scrapped the idea of opening her picnic mat. Journey ended!

Back to the LRT station, onto the car and onwards to the nearest restaurant for lunch. It was past 2pm by then ....

So, it was a missed opportunity firstly from the traffic point of view, and secondly the state of the field.

There were plenty of area at the edge of the field which were covered, but you still have to get your feet dirty to get to the food stalls. And to add to that, there was no guarantee that you would get what you wanted due to sheer number of people turning up! It was a great idea but the organiser should have encouraged the punters to use the LRT and have the traffic wardens on hand to prevent congestion.

Hopefully no more muddy field in next year's chapter because I would definitely be coming again - on an LRT that time of course! And preferably early in the morning. Great idea, but suspect execution!

Pandamonium

The 1600 Panda project was doing its round across Malaysia and for the final two weeks, them cute pandas would be stationed in Publika. It was a WWF project to raise awareness on the decline of the species and the 1600 pandas represent the 1600 pandas still left in the wild. Or at least when I was told.

I took the boys to visit today, and it was havoc. Publika was chock full of people. Parking was a nightmare and to make matters worse, we arrived during lunch hour and could not get any seat to eat. It was a struggle although we finally got one. Ben'd even had a 45 minutes waiting time. We went elsewhere instead.

The queue to get in to touch the pandasAfter we were fed, it was time to get into some panda action. The queue to enter the cordoned area to have a close-up of photos was just too ridiculously long. So, only a few selfies and snaps were done before we muscle our way out.

Best to come either late morning or maybe later on in the afternoon. Sunday lunchtime was definitely a bad idea in anyone's book.

The pandas were cute though. Smaller than I thought. Definitely worth getting the snaps ..... Shame that Publika would their final local stop. Not sure when they would return ...