I WAS caught completely offguard when trudging along a cemented path, outside some houses in Bangsar and towards the shopping centre at the top of the hill.

Young plants by the side, beautiful and ornamental yet hardly appropriate; the plants were all thorns. Morbid as I can get, I imagined tripping and being impaled on the thorn-tipped leaves.

But old isn't always gold and I know the new-ness of KL is well worth celebrating.

TWENTY-TWO years ago today, the government of Singapore began what it called Operation Spectrum. The name was apt as the security operation targeted a spectrum of social and cultural activists.

CONFESSION time. I have a love-hate relationship with Kuala Lumpur. The city has taken 14 years of my adult life but I am still torn, unsure if it has my undying loyalty. The tussle is between a deep impulse to run away and longing to finally put down roots. I came in the boom years of the mid-90s when KL and its denizens seemed puffed-up with material success.

In post-war history, one checkpoint even achieved the status of an icon. Checkpoint Charlie became a symbol, not only of a divided Berlin, but also of the world torn apart by the ideological and geo-political struggles of the Cold War.

I faintly remember the roadblocks of my Malaysian childhood.

And when I last did so it was with good reason.

I had to a pick up a well-known academician from his hotel in downtown Bukit Bintang and get him to Central Market.

It’s not a long walk from the hotel but the pavement isn’t good enough.

It’s bad for walking and even worse for having a conversation.