This morning I finished packing up my stuff and returned my motorcycle. I bought one final shirt and jumped into a cab.

Thailand has a tax for people leaving the country. You have to pay 500 bath if your flight is international or they don’t let you leave. I had worked my money down to the cent but ended up having to get more money changed for my overly heavy bag fees and the aforementioned “leaving” tax. GRRRR.

I loved Thailand and was surprised at what a treat Malaysia was to return to. I met up with Jon at GXM Studio - he’s been so great to me - and he let me stay at his place.

I’m officially moved out of KL. I packed up my stuff this morning and headed for the KL International Airport.

I was a little disappointed to find out that my flight has been delayed for 3 hours, but at least I bumped into a nice girl from Regina that I had met a couple of nights ago and again last night. She gave me some good tips on how much she paid for DVD’s in Chinatown and so last night I maybe over did it, but I now have one of the biggest DVD collections of anyone I know.

Me at the KLIA BK

The internet kiosk at the airport is run through Burger King. The interesting thing about this particular Burger King (other than the fact that they overcharge for internet use) is that they are out of burgers.

They have fish burgers, and chicken burgers, but if you see their large sign from across the room that reads, “HOME OF THE WHOPPER” and walk over salivating for a tasty hamburger, you are going to be disappointed.

I got myself some lunch at Nando’s. It’s a Western style restaurant that serves mostly chicken dishes. I ordered the Chicken Burger with fries and a glass of ice water. The waitress informed me that they “weren’t allowed to serve ice water”. I told her that I’d had ice water the last time I was there but she just assured me, the managers wouldn’t allow it and the servers get into trouble if they do anyway. I wasn’t exactly in a good mood having gotten off of the phone with my ex-fiance whom I just told that she was crazy (that didn’t go over well but that’s another story) so I told the waitress that no water would be fine, and that if I started to choke I wouldn’t hold her accountable. She laughed and then brought me some ice water anyway. I’m glad she was able to over-rule her managers stupid no ice water policy.

Later I went for a haircut; quite possibly the world’s worst hair cut. I would have been better off just shaving it all off. Instead I took a more rational approach (pretty good considering how irrational I’ve felt lately) and went back to have it trimmed again. It’s much nicer now, although going back wasn’t completely rewarding, I did get a nasty bite from the electric razor. I could practically see blood as he showed me the updated trim in his hand held mirror.

It’s so hot outside and I’m not sure if this post conveys it or not but I’m not exactly in the best mood. Going for a swim would do me wonders. So I asked around if there is a pool and the consensus is that in fact there are no swimming pools in all of KL! WTF? I might have to break down and go to Sunway (45 minute bus ride) and rm 40 for a day pass. Seems a little steep considering all I want to do is about 40 lengths at a leisurely pace. It shouldn’t take much more than 20 minutes to get my fill and Sunway is not the place to swim lengths, the main body of water there is actually a wave pool.

I think today was the first Saturday since I’ve been here that I didn’t have something planned for me. So instead I hooked up with some friends that I met a week or two ago and we had lunch together at the Dome Cafe in KLCC. (KLCC is the location of the Petronas Twin Towers). I lugged along my backpack because I wanted to bring my water, camera, and ipod but it ended up being a waste because I never used any of them.

While at KLCC I picked up another book, “The Tipping Point”, by Malcolm Gladwell. I haven’t had time to read much of it yet, but I did check out the first couple chapters and so far it’s very interesting. It’s about how trends form and what makes one idea into a fad or epidemic while others die off.

I also booked my flight to Thailand today. I’ll be flying to Phucket (pronounced poo-ket) on Monday (tomorrow) and as luck would have it I’m meeting Dave Wood there. I was worried that I would be doing all of my last week traveling on my own. Dave is one of the other students from the U of L.

Today was my last day of work at GXM Studio. With only eight more days until my flight back to Canada, I’m both excited and sad that my time in Malaysia is coming to an end. I’ve decided to spend my last week in Thailand and will fly there on Monday.

I finished up the Kick-Ray game and Jon said he would put it online. I’ll link to it when it becomes available.

This evening Jon took me out to a friend of our’s place for a house warming party. I had a great time and I especially enjoyed the treat of western food (KFC chicken and Pizza Hut pizza). We had a good laugh watching the poor unfortunate contestants of Malaysian Idol butchering their favorite tunes. The interesting thing about TV in Malaysia is that often you have to know at least two or three different languages to know everything they are saying. They switch back and forth just as people in everyday conversation do here. It’s assumed that everyone can understand in whichever language they happen to be speaking. One thing is for sure, when it comes to singing it doesn’t matter what language they speak - if they can’t sing in Malaysian or English it’s still funny to see the judges responses.

On the way home from work I couldn’t believe my eyes. The bus was driving through a neighbourhood that I had never seen before. After having almost taken the wrong bus a few days ago, how could I have not noticed that this was not the number 10?

Without panicking too much, I asked the person behind me where this bus was going. She asked where I was going and I explained that I was on the wrong bus, but I was going to Kota Raya. She said that yes, this was the right bus but it was taking a different route because traffic was bad on the main road.

A bus that can just veer off the main route whenever it pleases - just to avoid traffic? It’s almost as good as a taxi!

Recording VO

Yesterday after work Jon took me to do some voice over work for the corporate video we shot last weekend. It ended up taking about 5 hours (including the time we spent eating dinner) but despite the fact that it took a long time I had a pretty good time doing it anyway.

We ended up having to redo the whole thing because of some background noise that was recorded. Afterwards I just crashed at Jon’s place because it was pretty late and he needed to get some work done at GXM. I’m amazed at how he is able to focus so much time and energy and so many long nights in order to make sure he gets everything done. I guess there’s a reason why GXM has such a good reputation.

In other news at GXM, I’m currently working on a flash based game that hopefully will be finished before my last day on Friday. Not much time so I’d better get back to it.

I almost took the wrong bus on my way to work today. I hopped on without even looking at the number. Then I noticed the guy that usually yells, “Sunway - Sunway - Sunway” was yelling something else. As the bus started to merge with traffic I thought, that’s funny he must think this bus isn’t going to Sunway.

Immediately I jumped out onto the sidewalk and as the ticket collector looked at me funny from the door I yelled back to him over the noisy traffic - “I was on the wrong bus!”

So in conclusion, having someone yell where the bus is going and keeping the doors open for those that would like to get on (or off) while the bus is in motion is very handy. Who knows where I would have ended up or how long it would have taken me to notice my mistake.

Driving Home to KL

I had a quick dip in the hotel pool before we had our buffet breakfast and started the long drive back to KL.

The landscape on the way back was beautiful. There were huge jungles on both sides of the road and step mountains covered in trees. The roads weren’t too busy so we made really good time, at least until we got into KL where their city motto is, the town with Traffic. ;) J/k.

But what a fantastic weekend! I am so lucky to be here!

Our Resort Was So Nice

This morning we drove to a nearby resort and checked in. After that it was a nice relaxing swim in the South China sea followed by lounging around pool-side eating ice-cream cones and another dip in the hotel pool. Not only was the weather great, but everything was great.

For supper we found a nice Malaysian style place and had (I’ll just describe it since I can’t remember what’s it’s called) egg covered fried rice with chicken, manta ray, and fish. I love the spices they use here and really loved the meal. The ray wasn’t nearly as scary as expected, in fact it wasn’t scary at all—it was extremely tasty.

What a great weekend!

We didn’t stay at the birthday party as late as I would have liked because we had to get up early the next day. I slept over at Jon’s place and after less than 6 hours of sleep we were heading to Quanton for a video shoot.

We went to a mall to pick up some clothes for me to where during the shoot—which, by the way, brought me to one of the worst bathrooms I’ve ever encountered. I’ll spare you the details but suffice it to say it was very wet, very dirty, and VERY smelly. I’ve been in some smelly bathrooms, but this one was by far the smelliest.

Making the Video

The shoot was for an up-and-coming IT Company that is opening a new retail store called “The IT Life Shop”. I got dressed and pretty soon we were shooting. As those in my acting fundamentals class can attest I have some serious stage fright issues. Not so much fright as a plain lack of ability to recite lines when the camera is rolling. On the times when I got the dialogue right, I would forgot to get my body movements right, and when I got the motions right, I would accidentally change the lines slightly. On the rare occasions when I nailed it, almost certainly someone or something outside would create a loud noise ruining the take. After more takes than any of us would care to remember we finally finished up the shoot.

Lock the Light Man

I had a good time being the host, but I felt bad for not being better at it. I have to say being an actor, even in something so simple as a corporate video is not nearly as easy as it looks.

That night we all went out for Chinese food and I had some of the best fish I’ve ever eaten in my life. I also really enjoyed the other dishes. Afterwards we went to a “really happening club” and danced to some pretty good live music. A little smoky and a little crowded for dancing, but I think every one of us had a good time.

I had a meeting at Channel V today. JC and I went down to discuss some new TV ids and some other projects on the go at GXM.

Singing Happy Birthday

Tonight we went out to the top of the Pan Global building to celebrate Jon’s friend Shawn’s birthday party. The Pan Global building is right next to the KL Tower and from the roof we could see both the Petronas Towers and where we were yesterday—the KL Tower.

KL Tower

Tonight I went to the KL Tower to see “Pixels and Wireframe”, Multimedia University’s forth year students’ final presentation.

The tower itself is quite something to see. Standing at 421 meters from base to antenna mast it is one of the tallest concrete towers in the world. It is also the fourth tallest telecommunications tower in the world. From the window where the private function was held, we could see the city for miles around and we also had a particularly nice view of the Petronas Towers (or KLCC as it’s sometimes referred as).

From Inside the Tower

After a brief introduction and a small snack served buffet style, we watched the top 20 final animations from MMU’s forth year students. There were some really great showings there. My favorite was about a group of seniors in a home that wanted to stay up late watching Mission Impossible. The nurse has other plans for them, and through their imagination the group goes through their own impossible mission as they try to get back into the TV room.

GXM Studio was a major sponsor of the event and as such was given a couple of copies of the nights presentations. Jon was nice enough to give me one of them.

The suspicious man from a few days ago approached me again today. This time he was alone, but again he asked me what time it was. I told him I thought it was weird that he kept asking me for the time and that he should stop asking, especially since he has a watch. I knew his watch worked, but it’s not polite to just accuse someone of outright lying, so I tried to catch a glimpse of what time he actually had.

He told me that he “forgot…” (was he implying he forgot how to read it? I’m not sure) which really isn’t the case because when I tried to look at his watch to see if he really had the wrong time he covered the watch’s face with his thumb and then finally he moved it enough for me to read his watch. He asked if it was quarter to nine. It was. I looked at him incredulously and then walked away.

The whole sequence of events struck me as very odd and so I thought about this guy and what he could possibly want. I ran the scenario through my head, “What time is it?” and then it struck me. 4:20. Answering 4:20 is code signifying that I want to buy some drugs.

That’s the only logical scenario I can come up with, but could it be? The penalty for selling drugs in Malaysia is death. Why would anyone put themselves at such risk?

I read about a girl from Australia the other day that got caught with four kilograms of pot in Indonesia (that’s 8.8 pounds). She was sentenced to 20 years in prison. She’s going to appeal but it doesn’t look promising. Why anyone would take that big of a risk is beyond me.

Sometimes things just don’t go the way you’d like them. This morning for breakfast I apparently failed at getting my order across. I wanted to get a plain roti with butter (just like a scone) some scrambled eggs, and a nice glass of cold water. Instead I got some half boiled eggs still in their brown shells and liquid inside, and some toast with some marmalade like jam. The toast was good anyway but there was no way I could possibly even crack the runny eggs. I thought it was funny that even the ice water that I ordered was hot and particularly sans ice. Apparently if you order water and they don’t hear the “ice” part, they think you want to use it to make tea.

This evening I finished reading my book, “Canadian History for Dummies“. Don’t worry I’m well aware of the irony in coming to Malaysia to learn about Canada. But wow, what a great look into Canada’s astounding past. Some of the things I remember hearing about in school, but most were new facts that I either wasn’t interested in, in school, or that the curriculum didn’t cover.

I found the roles Canada played in the first and second world wars very interesting, and particularly eye opening was the sequence of events involving the French and their huge part in Canadian history and their consequential feelings of being jilted by the rest of Canada. It made a lot more sense when you have the whole story and not just what I remember from the news during the Lyin’ Brian Mulroney years. The true story is a lot more complicated than this idea I got growing up in the west that “French Canadians are just hard to get along with” and “they refuse to be bilingual just on the principle of the matter.” I’d get into it more, but it’s a long story that involves broken promises, back stabbing, political maneuvering, and an attempt by the British to eliminate the French culture from Canada.

I highly recommend this book for anyone with a remote interest in the history of not only Canada but the whole continent of North America. There is a lot of shared history between Canada and the United States. It’s full of things that will make you laugh not to mention a lot of darker history that makes you want to cry. It’s all in there.

Today I had the chance to go to Channel V with Jon. As I’ve mentioned before Channel V is south-east Asia’s music channel. It would be like going to Much Music headquarters in Canada. We presented the latest changes that GXM has made for channel identification spots. It’s pretty cool stuff and it made me wonder how hard it would be to try and make some channel identification ads for Much Music. I’ll look into it when I get home.

On my way back to the residence I finished Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (audio version). I had heard that it wasn’t as good as Douglas Adams celebrated novel, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, but on the contrary I found it to be just as good and recommend it on the same level.