Kembalilah ke jalan yang benar

Adik-adik dan abang-abang

yang ada terlibat dalam kegiatan-kegiatan

tidak bermoral 

kembalilah

ke jalan yang benar.

Mu pilihlah mana-mana jalan yang u suka

Sekian,

UGLY MALAYSIA

Happy Chinese new year

Happy Cina New Year to readers of UGLY MALAYSIANA. 

I have not forgotten about you, or your ways. 

If you dun feel like recycling your Tiger beer cans or ‘XO’ coniak bottles after CNY gambling and chore-dai-di or the chore of giving reasons to so-and-so relatives about why you’re STILL NOT married, lemember to be ECO CONSCIOUS n green in udder ways… throw your ‘kam’ peelings in your compost bin together-gether with your prosperous newly-groomed shit-tzu’s droppings, they will heat up together and form nutrient rich food for your bonsai trees, the beautiful trees that just totally blend in with the ancient (Loman or Greek era) looking columns of your mansion in Taman Midah, Cheras.

Lemember to also recycle your ANG PAO packages after you take out the RM10 inside… spare change to pay toll go back kampung of coz, the kampung you visit once a year, filled with people you love or loath, people in red red red like your hopefully-recycled angpao, golden edged threading for extra HUAT HUAT HUAT… I don’t understand hokkien but it means something good, no?… 

On TV you may witness prepubescent girls in magenta silky spaghetti straps machine-embroidered with MANY GOLDEN HORSES AND NOT UNICORNS, singing about money making money when they grow up.

AREA FOCUS: Damansara Perdana

Welcome to Damansara Perdana, developed by a certain "Datuk MK".

Datuk MK lives on top of a hill situated on the ex-orang asli village compound... (look on Google Maps to see his place of residence surrounded by green with a little private road winding up to it). His mansion with a pool overlooks the gargantuan new condo/office developments, with some half-decade-old shoplots and office buildings running businesses very smoothly. The author of UGLY MALAYSIANA specifically enjoys a restaurant there called SOON SOON, featuring the best bittergourd and fish paste noodles in Selangor.   

A selection of pictorial references could be found below, taken by UGLY MALAYSIANA one bright evening across a little stretch of street from a parking spot to a mixed rice restaurant near Jaya Grocers.

Warily, they border on the obnoxious, as if the reader is approached by very adamant Ah Longs, marking their presence, hypnotising you with random pattern making via money-lending stickers, until you cannot take it anymore and wish the whole town could be drowned with a flash coat of off-white paint, a fresh canvas to start a new life here in this risingly expensive township...

At least the landscaping on the road leading into this mess is pretty... 

Prevalent 'massage' centres with lots of curvy 'wrought iron' floral flourishes on their grilles (obviously to match the flourishes on their Orang Puteh signage!)...

Nobody bothers reading these parking regulations, therefore jom cover it with Ah Long Art. Cars are double, triple parked during lunch hours. When MPPJ appears like feared uniformed black and white parasites everyone just moves their vehicle further away or scrambles to pay for a ticket on these machines that might or might not take your 20sen coin in time of emergency. 

Who'd bother taking public transport to work here anyway! RapidKL cannot live up to their name... InconsistentKL boleh?

More Ah Long collage-work...

Rubbish dump in the middle of the stamped-concrete walkway. Unappealingly bad feng shui!

These Ah Long Sticker Interns really hate the MPPJ Parking Regulation Fine Print kot!

LOOK FORWARD TO MORE AREA FOCUSES SOON.

Never give up: drive-through museum

 Seen during a traffic jam in Subang Jaya (next to SJMC). Highway flyover columns that have been severely vandalised, painted over with a grey 'cement tone' cover-up one shade too dark, and revandalised again. 

Some people may find the persistence very inspiring. Others will be persistently frustrated at the unstoppable amount of aesthetic damage. And Cy Twombly fans will rejoice at the uncanny similarities...

At least ada konon-kononnya 'seni moden' pabila lalu trafik jam kan? ;) Macam museum pandu-lalu... (Drive-through museum).

TWO LESS-THAN-PERFECT BLOCKS

INDISTINGUISHABLE: 

Item 1: A block of shophouses in Subang Jaya with inconsistently sized, more-is-more rojak-style signages... stains and mold notwithstanding.

Item 2: A defaced parking ticket machine in Damansara Uptown that, 

in true Malaysiana form, did not work.

Not your average Monocle "Perfect City Block" lah...

(but at least we're not — Datin forbid — STERILE!!!?????)

(Illustrated by Gaku Nakagawa)

SUPPER

A typical hawker centre in Malaysia. Most of the stores above feature food made by very-low-paid immigrants from Myanmar (sometimes Indonesians too, even if the place is porky). Food hygiene is questionable. The grounds are wet with oily puddles, rats and cockroaches scurry along — nobody cares. Loan shark stickers stuck on every public surface imaginable, cool-white fluorescent tubes illuminate signs for Bak Kut Teh or Penang Char Kway Teow, the toilets could almost look like that one in Trainspotting. Everything utilitarian. Cheapest ingredients to maximise profits. Melamine in pastel colours, marked with indian ink to denote identity. Touch your coins, touch your satay stick. Thumbs in your bowl of Laksa. Greasy faces, tired from working 10 hours a day, washing bulk vegetables in the morning, washing dishes squatting next to the drain at night.

Extreme

 

What is it about this picture that makes you 'happy'? Is it the fact that there are so many 'default' PC fonts? Or the camouflaged street name — under scraped Ah Long advertising? Or how they didn't really bother removing the Ah Long stickers on the TM box on the right... or perhaps it's the high density apartment blocks in the horizon under grey skies... 

Guerilla marketing?

Spotted in Taman Tun Dr Ismail: Depressing flowers

MASKING TAPE SIGNAGE.

* * *

QUESTION: THESE ARE OBVIOUSLY POTTED STRUCTURES FOR PLANTS. WHY DO MALAYSIANS WANT TO EVEN THROW RUBBISH ON SOMETHING THAT IS OBVIOUSLY NOT A RUBBISH BIN. IT HAS FLOWERS LINING THE TOP.

DOUBLE THE TROUBLE: NOBODY BOTHERS READING IN MALAYSIA IS IT? 

IT IS ALREADY CLEAR THAT THIS IS NOT A RUBBISH BIN.

BUT PEOPLE CANNOT FOLLOW SIMPLE INSTRUCTIONS LIKE "DI LARANG MEMBUANG SAMPAH" WRITTEN LARGELY ON MARKER PEN IS IT?

OR ARE THEY DOING IT OUT OF SPITE? BECAUSE MALAYSIANS ARE SPITEFUL MISFITS AH? TAU PUN NAK BUAT JUGAK.

Depressing.

'Ugly'

ONE CAN REFER TO THE BELOW PRESENTATION

BY ESTEEMED MULTI DIMENSIONALE  MALAYSIAN ARTIST CHI TOO 

FOR A CLEARER BRIEFING ON 'UGLY'.  

Chi Too (PopIn:PopOut) from PopIN on Vimeo.

NEW LABEL: "LANSKAP URBAN"

Your friendly authors from UGLY MALAYSIANA decided it is time to debut the new label: LANSKAP URBAN

(Malaysian Malay for "Urban Landscape")

These posts will focus on seemingly mundane everyday elements that make up the city's visual fabric — in this case (above) a toll both payment panel/wall — that, when analysed briefly — has been tainted and defiled by disrespect, or a dubious design sense (e.g. new office blocks, cinapek home renovations, etc), or simply by a tidak apa attitude. 

Comment on the picture: 

1. DISRESPECT One should not just simply advertise their businesses this way... My advice for anyone who has done this: why not stick 5,000 of such stickers on your car instead? Your car, your property. This one, public property. The non-bribery-because-they-are-paid-well cops in Singapore will arrest you liao if you stick stick liddis in SG!

2. TIDAK APA These stickers should be removed by the management of the toll booth. The red wall should be repainted, or at least cleaned of the leftover gunk — HOW UNSIGHTLY THIS IS! How to be First World???

3. DUBIOUS The Kadar Toll info sheet should not be an A4 glossy sticker set in ARIAL/HELVETICA. (The PLUS highway punya toll is better in this sense). Is it lack of finances that make these things so 'chin chai' looking? Then mebbe you should not be korrupt lor.

- - - - -

The author of UGLY MALAYSIANA is reminded of a shocking 'design' encounter during his inaugural visit to KLCC Aquaria. To his dismay — all the information displays for the animals were bubble-jet printed ON NORMAL A4 PAPER FEATURING NONE OTHER THAN TIMES NEW ROMAN AND LOW-RES IMAGES, STUCK ON THE FANCY WALL/GLASS CLADDINGS WITH ONLY CELLOPHANE TAPE, NOT EVEN ENCLOSED IN ACRYLIC STANDS.

How very unprofessional 

for such a National Attraction!

SMALLPRINT:

THESE THINGS DO MAKE A CITY A BIT MORE INTERESTING SOMETIMES TOO. 

TIDAK STERIL SANGAT, KAN?