Thursday evening musings over coffee in Kuala Lumpur

With Chad Alonzo, Ariel Vanguardia and Ezer Lim at a Chinese resto in KL.

Thursday evening musings over coffee in Kuala Lumpur

by rick olivares

I had some tea at Old Town White Coffee at Berjaya Times Square with KL Dragons head coach Ariel Vanguardia (his team is at 4-2 and tied for first place in the Malaysian National Basketball League) watching the world pass us by. We talked about hoops in Malaysia, hoops back home, the Azkals, and tourism here in Malaysia and the Philippines.

Maybe we’re in the middle of Times Square, which is a huge tourist area, but find me a place in Manila that’s crawling with tourists and not people on a sex tour of Asia and I’ll recant my misgivings.

Much has been said about Manila’s antiquated NAIA and old Domestic (the old as a prefix/adjective is way an understatement) airports so the only thing I’ll say is I wish the airports are situated outside the city similar to Chek Lak Kop and Changi to name a few. Instead it’s next to a suburban area with a bunch of shanties and other eyesores nearby. There’s a security checkpoint just outside the terminal? The danger isn’t from the vehicles that enter the airport premises but from the surrounding areas where some enterprising terrorist with an RPG can fire one on a descending or ascending plan from some rooftop and speed away without anyone the wiser.

I have always said that the urban planning for Manila is horrible. Buildings and establishments are put up with no rhyme or reason. Case in point: bus terminals. They have one in Araneta Commercial Center. Fronting a mall and a grocery no less! How big a screw up is that? Not only do you put big buses in a small area but in an area with narrow streets! I can name a whole bunch of countries where provincial buses stop in terminals outside the city where passengers transfer to city buses or trains.

How can you attract tourists when the public transportation system is the pits? Riding the MRT is a freaking adventure and exercise in maximum tolerance. Cabs – you have smelly and dilapidated taxis with tampered meters and thieving drivers and street urchin. Well, cab drivers here in Malaysia are just as garapal as Pinoy cabbies but still. When planning your day in Manila, you have to take into account that no one is rushing during rush hour. Being late to meetings is not a frigging excuse because traffic is a fact of life in the big city and days when the flow on the city streets is fast and smooth it’s considered an aberration.

The biggest concentration of tourists in the Philippines are the beaches and usually they bypass Manila.

When you think about it? What is there to see in Malaysia other than the Petronas Towers? Even in Singapore? There’s much more to see in the Philippines. Except our neighbors have done a better job of creating tourist spots (Singapore does this so well) while filling their calendar with events from cultural shows to rock and pop acts to international symposia. I wonder sometimes if the national landmark in the Philippines is a SM Mall.

Let’s talk about Liverpool in KL. Heck, two other English clubs in the span of a week -- Arsenal and Chelsea – are in town as well. Malaysian football fans never had it so good.

The other day, the Malaysian National Team played Arsenal at the Bukit Jalil Stadium. Maybe the Gunners’ big names were not in uniform but the applause was polite with the crowd evenly rooting for both the home side and the visitors. They even have full page ads calling for the support of the Tigers against the English squads (the new Malaysia jersey is pretty eye catching with its Tiger stripes). That was a far cry from the Kobe Bryant event at the Araneta Coliseum where people were booing Smart Gilas as they went up against the Kobe-powered UAAP All-Stars. I could care less if Barack Obama was reinforcing the collegians but booing the national team? WTF! After the match, a bunch of sportswriters and photogs gathered in the media room and we talked about it. Incredible isn’t it?

During the recent FIBA Asia Champions Challenge Cup held in Manila, I was surprised that some fans in the upper areas of the Philsports Arena were engaging the Iranian supporters by putting them down. How many Iranians were there? Fifty? And they outcheered the home crowd. Even in the first days of the tournament, there were only less than two dozen of them yet they made a huge impact on the game. Oh, they never stopped cheering. They went on all match long.

You might say that we got a rude welcome at the Bung Karno in Jakarta and maybe that’s payback. I’ll paraphrase Martin Luther King here, “the old ways of an eye for an eye unfortunately leaves everyone blind.”

Yesterday, I got into a conversation with some Malaysians about the Philippine Men’s Football National Team. Talk was centered on the upcoming match with Kuwait. And it seems that they too have been following with earnest the growth of the game in the Philippines. From our chatter, it was obvious that these guys were into the technical aspects of the game. A refreshing change of pace instead of the non-essentials. They talked about how the Azkals play a more compact game today as opposed to last year and why the defensive midfielder position is still suspect. They made comparisons even with other countries formations from Singapore and Vietnam. One of them even drew formations on his notepad. Interesting that they follow us too.

And oh, they love Marian Rivera over here. Totally.

Back to the tourists. I’m one here in Kuala Lumpur and while in conversation with one local, he said that we (the Philippines) has some of the prettiest girls on God’s green earth. Now if we just managed things better, they wouldn’t mind moving over.

Food for thought on a hot July evening. Over wheatgrass tea and after a chicken rice dinner.