AJ Adams - Dark, Messed-Up Romance and Crime

Seeing we were talking about life in Malaysia, and how different it is from my home in Spain, Scotland and Holland (yes, my family is a bit mixed up) I thought you'd like to hear about my bee problem and a very remarkable man called Saiful. As I said last time, we live in Subang Jaya, a posh neighbourhood just outside of Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia. People here love living in condos. This is the view when I look up the street. Me, I like to be a bit more private, so we live in a house. That red car is mine, and the truck is Sam's our neighbour. As you can see, our home is very private, thanks to our tree. Many people here cut down their trees and cement over everything. They don't like 'mess'. Me, I love the tree because it's home to lots of wildlife. For example, we have tree shrews, called tupai in Malay. These little creatures act a lot like squirrels. They run around the tree, shoving each other off branches as the...

I've been in Malaysia for more than 20 years so I don't really think about how different life is here compared to the West. However, when Stu, a good friend of ours, died a few weeks ago, I realised that visualising those differences can be quite difficult.  So over the next few weeks I'll write a few posts about daily life in Subang Jaya, Selangor.  It's partly so that our friend's family back in Europe have a better idea of what he was seeing every day, and partly for those of you who say to me, "You live WHERE? Wow, so what's that like?" So here goes! I live in Subang Jaya, a suburban area just outside Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia. This is my street. My house is hidden under that massive tree. We are security obsessed.  You have to be vetted and approved at a guard house to get into our housing area. And if you live in a condo, you have an extra layer of security. This is the guard house at the cond...