A collection of digital wonders and some other stuff.
What a great day. I started work today and I really like it. Before I left, I was told that it would take at least an hour and 15 minutes to commute to Sunway. As it turns out the bus ride this morning took exactly 45 minutes. Needless to say I’m pretty happy about the extra 60 minutes that adds to my day.
I did however get to work a little early which gave me a chance to grab some french toast for breakfast and take a couple of pictures around the area.
Here I am by Malaysia’s own twin towers. Here is another photo of the towers by themselves.
It’s the start of my third day in Malaysia. I’ve been sick with a cold, and that coupled with my jet-lag has made sleeping an arduous task. Actually falling asleep is not the problem. The problem is staying up past 6:00pm and sleeping past 2:00am.
My plan for the day is to check out my workplace. I start there tomorrow and want to have some experience getting there before the actual day I need to show up for work. The deal is, I have to take the train for about an hour to the end of the line. From there I need to take either the bus or a taxi. Apparently the taxi takes about 15 minutes and the bus is anyone’s guess because public transportation doesn’t seem to be the most reliable here, not to mention buses are not as good at manoeuvring through heavy traffic.
I’m still not used to the food, though most of it is quite tasty, it’s very greasy and I can feel my arteries clogging as I chomp through the deep-fried everything.
There is some kind of small bug climbing down the chair beside me. I guess that that will pretty much bring this post to an end.
After a long night of not really sleeping, I decided at 5:30 to go and explore. The humid scent of incense and garbage was still very much the atmosphere even in the early hours of the day. I met a couple of backpackers from the States and chatted with them for a few hours until the restaurant opened.
I was looking for a “western style” breakfast, but with all the travelling I’ve done you’d have think that I would already know that finding something I’d like would be difficult.
I ordered the “big dragon breakfast”: fried eggs, hash browns, sausage, orange juice, and tea. What I got was half cooked sunny side up eggs, a tiny hash brown pattie (like you would expect to get from McDonald’s) and some chopped up hot dogs lathered in grease and fried with onions, green peppers, and mushrooms. Well I’m being fairly critical I guess my biggest complaint was all the grease.
I met up with some of the other University of Lethbridge students and together we’re all geeking out at an Internet Cafe. I think I’m the winner for the biggest geek… checking out Flickr.com, Blogger.com, and Gmail vs. everyone else and their Hotmail accounts. :) Well that’s it for me for now. I think the plan for today is to scout out the worlds biggest mall, and you all thought that was either the West Ed, or Mall of America. There are a lot of enormous malls here.
After skipping a day (Sunday’s are usually so boring anyway) and travelling half way around the world I’ve found myself an Internet cafe here in Malaysia. It’s just down the block from where we are staying. It’s pretty strange here and I’m feeling the culture shock. I’m also very tired and stuffed up with a cold. I haven’t eaten supper yet but to be honest I’m a little leary of the places to eat around here. I better get over that soon or I’ll end up starving! :)
I’m walking around with a guy from Edmonton named Dave Woods. He tells me I’m somewhat lucky to be stuffed up because the smells here are really something else.
I’ll spare you too many of the details, but needless to say it’s been a long trip. I’ve been ping-ponging in the zone somewhere between sleeping and consciousness for like the last 36 hours and though we arrived at our hotel almost five hours ago, I’ve been sleeping and just barely got up and started exploring these crazy markets.
I saw a rat scurry across the street and into a sewer grate, as well about 10 or so cockroaches running around on the sidewalk. It made me glad that I didn’t wear my sandals.
There are many street side restaurants / food vendors with aggressive hosts in the streets calling out and showing you their menus. There are CD’s, DVD’s, and VCD’s a plenty, not to mention the assortment of watches, shoes, and colognes for sale along this street. This Internet cafe is a nice sanctuary from the bustle outside.
Being so tired and sick it’s hard to give a true impression of the place but I’ll let you know (if you can keep a secret) seven weeks seems like it’s going to be an awful long time.
Just under eight hours until my flight leaves for Malaysia. I have such mixed emotions about going on this trip. On the one hand I’ve never been to Southeast Asia, and it will create memories that last a lifetime, but on the other hand I’ve never been to Southeast Asia and what if the memories are not good ones!? Actually I’m just kidding. I’m really excited to get out and see the world. Also working at Gxmstudio will be great. I am totally a very lucky person.
I’ve got the pre-travel jitters. As I’m packing stuff up I just know I’m going to forget something. Tomorrow I leave for Vancouver where I have a job working for a video game company for the week (I believe my official title is “Actor Wrangler”) and then after that I leave straight out of Vancouver for Malaysia. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ll be working for GXM Studio for six weeks, and then I’ll have another two weeks to do pretty much whatever I want. I really want to do some snorkeling as well check out some rain forests. I plan on taking lots of pictures and posting them here, so come back over the next 9 weeks for Vancouver / Malaysia updates.
When I visited New York with my dad in 1997, we were amazed at the magnitude of the World Trade Center. The towers were just so much bigger than all of the other gigantic buildings, it was just so amazing to see even one of them, but then to turn around and see two of these unnaturally humongous buildings was unreal.
We had been down in the subway / basement area of one of the towers and wondered why it was filled with scaffolding for support instead of heavily reinforced concrete pillars like you would expect. Well we figured out that they put in the scaffolding as reinforcement after a terrorist bomb went off in the early 90’s – a terrorist attempt to collapse the building.
When we were outside looking up at the buildings I asked my dad what he thought would happen if a terrorist used an airplane to crash into them. It seemed like a pretty obvious thing to wonder, just because they were so high in the air and had been the target of previous attacks. Also I remembered hearing about a John Grisham novel that featured terrorists flying a highjacked commercial airliner into the Capital Building.
My dad had heard that a low-flying airplane had crashed into the Empire State Building many years ago and extrapolated from that story, that if a plane did hit one of the towers, likely a similar thing would happen: the plane would crash and smoke would come out. In the end I said I hoped we would never find out for sure.
As it turns out the Empire State Building was hit in 1945 by a B-25 bomber. Thirteen people died, and many were hurt. Interesting details here.
The reason I tell this story is because I find it hard to believe that nobody in their government, could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale. (Somebody did, as the article explains). Heck, all you had to do was look at those buildings and think that’s the easiest target in New York way up in the sky where they don’t belong. Anyway I’m not saying I think they were stupid for being unprepared or for thinking they wouldn’t fall, just that I think it’s stupid to think nobody thought that it might happen, because I for one thought about it.
So here is the quick recap of what I’ve been up to in the last week or two. I left Lethbridge on Monday morning at around 6:00am. I was happy about how the American border seemed to be in quite a good mood. He even smiled when I said I was going to Disneyland and wished me a nice trip. I arrived in Sandy, Utah at about 5:00 pm so I made good time. Traveling with the dog was no trouble at all and we were both happy when we finally saw Anna! I stayed with the Holman’s for a week and then Anna and I took off for sunny California. Sunday was our first day in Disneyland — but it turned out to be more rainy than sunny. Monday and Tuesday were both nice weather wise, but I have been getting sick with a mild cold. That of course hasn’t stopped me from going to Disneyland. Today we are going to take in the parks as usual but at 2:45 this afternoon we are going to watch The Lord of the Rings — The Return of the King. I must say we are both pretty excited. Tomorrow will be our last day in the magic kingdom… at least for awhile.
I just finished writing up my last paper of the semester. Now the only thing in my way to the greatest Christmas vacation ever is the 12 to 14 hour drive to Utah. It’s 3:30AM and I am considering just leaving right now. Anna sure would be surprised if I got there a few hours in advance, and it would be nice to not just have to go straight to bed when I get there. That’s it, I’m packing right now and I’m on my way. Utah and California — here I come!