There was a general election in Malaysia at the weekend. At the moment, nobody's won... We have a hung parliament, and vigorous horse-trading is under way as various coalitions seek to form a ruling uber-coalition.

Still, it has put an end to the armies of flags, which really reached epic proportions during the latter days of the campaign:


What's not over yet is the run-up to Christmas... We tried out Blendsmiths just before our road trip. Only 7 November, and full-on Chrimbo:


Meanwhile, rambutan season continues. It seems to me as though it's a good one, with the trees just pumping out fruit. They're on sale on the pavements of Kuching now, and we discovered on Sunday that they come in yellow as well as red varieties. (When we replenished our supply of red ones, the vendor gave us some yellow ones for free.) At first, I thought the yellow ones were immature, and would ripen up into red ones, so I stuck them in a paper bag out in the back area. But a friend told me, no, yellow is how they are, and they're ready to go right now. So, I fetched the poor things in, with humblest apologies, and sure enough -- if anything, they're even sweeter than the red ones, though perhaps even more wacky-looking:


In other food news, we tried out Bombay Selera (no photos, but the chicken tikka, chettinad mushrooms, and spinach paneer were all really good). And I found yet another contender in my own personal "best mee sua" competition. This latest entry is from the Sung Heng Cafe (where we'd previously gone for laksa):


And so to the rest of the week's gallery. The park by the library first:



And, of course, there's always something to point your camera at down by the river: