The spiky little menace is still impacting our lives way more than we would have hoped by this stage. National deaths, as of yesterday, stood at 24,681 (last week we were on 22,355, so there's been another nasty increase).

Malaysia's overall case numbers seem to be trending down, but I don't know how many of the other states are following Sarawak's practice of not testing (and therefore not counting) contacts without symptoms, so I'm not sure exactly what this decrease means.

Sarawak's covid news is definitely not good, however. On Wednesday 22 we were hearing warnings that hospitals are likely to soon be overwhelmed. Today I see from the government's covid website that the positivity rate emerging from our testing is 29.5%. This obviously reflects the change in policy, but even so, this is not a number that bodes well for the next little while.

Despite this less than reassuring news, dine-in (for the fully vaccinated) was back in the OK category as of Monday...

Having got the ghastly bit over with first, as has become our practice, let's turn to nicer news.

Mid-Autumn Festival this week! As well as enjoying mooncakes (of course), we ordered in another classic seasonal food:


The moon was blanketed in cloud on the evening of the 21st, but the following morning gave us some pretty views:


And in honour of the season, here's a fascinating article about mid-Autumn practices just over the border in West Kalimantan. Ahh, Singkawang, so near and yet so far...

Another mural has appeared in the Old Bazaar area, in a little lane just off Upper China Street. Entitled Coolie Keng and Big Well, this is another from the brush of super-talented Leonard Siaw Quan Cheng, whose wall art I have featured many times before.




Noodle of the week was curry mee, delivered from Choon Thian, whose menu we particularly appreciate because it also offers nice veggie dishes:



Our other little food extravagance this week was rojak and roti pol. Rojak is a wonderful savoury mixture of flavours and textures, and I don't think I've had one since we were in Taiping... Roti pol -- thick chunks of coconut bread, which you use to mop up a tasty sauce -- was new to us, and although it was delicious, it had too much impact on Nigel's blood sugar to feature regularly on the Tern menu:


I'll close with the rest of the week's gallery: