A very wet day. Apparently there is some sort of unprecedented rain thing going on across the nation. Oopsie.

Some very lovely sleep followed by wading through a mini flood outside the hotel. Not actually ever experienced proper flooding in Malaysia myself, so yep, if I needed any confirmation of global warming, this would help. I am currently living off Uber and tourist food. This evening’s meal was two little blobs of tofu and my god, what tasty tofu it was. People think I am Singaporean or Japanese or Chinese. It’s kinda great. Lunch – well, technically it was an early dinner. I broke all the rules and ate in a mall. WHAT!? Yeah, sorry. I was trying to kill several birds with one stone. I did NOT manage to get a local SIM card as my phone is on the blink, I can’t find anything I actually need to buy, but plenty I want to buy. The immense amounts of rain have scuppered my plans to walk around – what does one do when it’s raining? The answer is work. So I spent the day in the mall. Back at hotel and battling wifi STILL. Am going to do sociable things tomorrow and attend a book launch. Tonight I do more reading for the Jhalak Prize.

I realise I don’t know a few things

• what to do when it’s raining
• where to get my clothes clean
• how to get impartial advice in this country. When buying a phone, for example, each shop is selling a specific brand e.g. Nokia. So there is no Carphone Warehouse
• what to do when Wifi is slow and terrible

I have been talking to

• a very giggly Buddhist. Everything I said made him giggle
• a very quiet cigarette salesman

I have been noticing

• when I talk English here, some people nod and smile. They assume I am speaking a foreign language!