Traveling Man

Now packing ahead of a journey tomorrow to check on Maison KL. Unfortunately it seems the dreaded haze, reportedly from fires in Kalimantan, Sumatra and Sarawak, is back in its full toxic, smoky heaviness where we are going. I remember taking John, Jeanette and Kate into the centre of KL back in 2005 with visibility down to about thirty yards all around. and hope it's not going to be as bad. At least being on a hill we generally escape the worst of it.

It's ironic that at flag-raising this morning we were subjected to a particularly self-congratulatory 'message' from some chap in Asean. I muttered something about democracy in Myanmar at the end of it, but actually I'd settle for the generals behaving in a vaguely civilised manner. In the meantime they continue to rub shoulders with the great and good of the region with, seemingly, no sign of rebuke. Perhaps I'm missing something here. It now occurs to me that I might well have muttered something about the inability of that lauded association to do anything about a major problem caused by one (possibly more) of its members on a now annual basis which quite clearly threatens the health and well-being of a fair number of the citizens of those nations who make it up.