The delights and dangers of durian--gas attack in Munich

Having about exhausted the packaged tours, I suggested one day to Nita that she be my tour guide to interesting places that might not be either on the map or in the guide books. I would pay for hiring a car and we could go wherever. She arranged it and included her boyfriend, giving the three of us some full day excursions that were really both great fun and learning experiences.

Since we had a driver, we were free to chat all the way and I asked the two of them endless questions about the culture, the place and the language. For example in my generation a boy who chased girls was termed a wolf. In the Bahasa world, he was a buah, a crocodile, and I was even later to find a book in a Singapore store that was a guide on how to become a successful buah!

We also stopped along the way to refresh ourselves with tea and durian fruit, which I have developed a passion for. Durian has the flavor of sweetened camembert cheese and can be slightly intoxicating. It also has an odor which some people fine offensive, hence it is generally forbidden to bring it into hotels.  A man with a durian tree can support his family by serving and selling the fruit and cups of tea in its shade.

Once very hard to find, durian is now relatively common in Asian groceries. This led me to buy one in a Chinese grocery in Munich during our SIETAR Congress there. I brought it to the lunch room, broke it open and shared it with my friends, on an, “Oh, go ahead, try it!” basis. Quite a few did and some were converted.

Suddenly an alarm went off, and we were told to evacuate the building immediately. So, several hundred of us were standing in the courtyard when the chief superintendant of the building showed up (it was his day off) and asked the staff what had happened. “There was a gas leak,” they explained, “We are looking for it now.” “Gas leak,” he shouted, “this is an all electric building!”