Kuching is a beautiful place, relaxed, welcoming, colourful, and food-filled. Indeed, Sarawak as a whole is a very fine slice of the earth, full of natural and cultural treasures.

But there are times when you wonder if it's all going in the right direction. The other week I linked to this bit of pushback, from a Sarawakian who voices some of the concerns we've been feeling for a while.

And then we read about plans for this monster. At 32 storeys it's set to be the tallest apartment building in Kuching (because these things really matter, right?). Aside from aesthetics (I think it looks frankly ugly, but these judgments are notoriously subjective), my main beef is that it's going to be right next to Jubilee Park (pictured above), whose green and tranquil spaces are currently enjoyed by a wide range of Kuching residents.

I'm aware that I'm wide open to charges of hypocrisy here. I live in an apartment block. It's a very modest one, with just seven floors, but even so, it undoubtedly made a big impact on its low-rise neighbourhood, even before the advent of the colossus next door. Many of my friends similarly live in high-rise buildings. People like apartments. Who can blame them?

Nor am I knee-jerk anti-development. For a start, it's really not my business. What matters, on every issue and every project, is what the local community thinks. What pleases me may not please the vast majority of locals, and vice versa, and what matters is what they want, not what outsiders like me want.

But my specific issues are two-fold. Firstly, it's the location of this planned new block. This thing is going to be a behemoth; it will stick out like a sore thumb; and it's right next to a public asset, which will be impacted first by its construction and then by its constant looming presence.


Secondly, from what I can gather from talking to other apartment-block dwellers, ours seems to be the only building in Kuching that is fully occupied... Most people seem to live in echoing isolation. And you can tell, just by looking, that many of the new apartment buildings are very sparsely inhabited. Given this reality, and the fact that a large number of other blocks are currently going up, you wonder why we need yet another enormous new one...

Ah, but people like to invest in property, you'll tell me. They don't want to live in these places; they just want to diversify their portfolios. And, of course, developers will readily respond to that urge to find different baskets to put precious eggs in. But you can see where this leads. The entire character of a city can potentially be changed for the worse, it seems, so that people can own real estate that they don't want to (or can't) live in or rent out. Ah yes, the property market makes so much sense...

Meanwhile, we keep meeting people who are struggling with MM2H uncertainty (that's Malaysia My Second Home, the long-stay visa scheme under whose auspices many of us migrants are here). We've met or heard of people who applied under the new scheme, and have been waiting more than a year; people who applied under the old scheme, and are now facing drastic new requirements under the new arranagements (this open letter details some of the problems of this group); and people who are due to complete the half-way procedures (this group includes us), and have no idea whatsoever what they have to do, or when they have to do it.

Now, I don't know whether local Sarawakians have ever been canvassed as to the number of foreign residents they want to see around. Maybe they have never been consulted (which makes our presence here a tad undemocratic, to say the least). In our conversations with locals, I have to say, we've never encountered the faintest shred of hostility (I'm all too good at spotting such things), and I think people recognize that our most-of-the-year presence brings with it a reasonable spending power that supplements revenue from tourism. Still, I can understand that locals won't want to see too many potentially market-distorting foreigners around the place, and government should take note of that.

It's only fair, however, to honour commitments already made. And that process does seem to be creaking a bit at present.


And to complete my litany of woes (or worms), the ghastly smoke pollution euphemistically know as "the haze" is back.



When we woke up this morning, Kuching smelled like a bonfire. We abandoned plans for an early walk.


Fortunately, there's still a lot of apple to enjoy here. But it does all make you think.