Second trip - Day 6

Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2007 6:24 PM

Subject: Asia 2007 - Day 6

Asian hotel rooms have some unique features.  All I have stayed in have a receptacle in the wall near the door into which you insert your room key card when you enter.  This activates all of the electrical appliances, including the lights and the air conditioner.  When you remove your key and leave the room, everything shuts off after a few seconds.  This must save a lot of energy.  It creates a couple of problems for me.  Every time I go to leave my room I start looking for the key card, forgetting about the slot.  A bigger problem for me in Malaysia is that the air conditioner stops running when you are out.  Hence, every time I return to my room it is hot, muggy and smells musty.  There must be a lot of mold because I wake up every day with a sinus headache and a lot of congestion.

I woke up around 4:30 this morning and could not get back to sleep.  I did some e-mails and went over my presentation again. 

The presentation went well I thought.  I felt a bit nervous at the start, not sure why, but I started to relax after a few minutes.  I spoke for about 2 hours including questions and answers.  For anyone interested, I was explaining the principles of air, liquid, and coalescing filtration to people from all over Asia who sell filters to users of compressed air.  All of them speak some English, some better than others.  At the end, they presented myself and another rep who was discussing lubricants with engraved pewter mugs which have different scenes from Malaysia in relief on the outside, a very nice gift.  I am far from being an expert on these subjects, but I think I did an adequate job.  At any rate, they want me to come to Bangkok next year to do this again. 

After the meetings, presentations and group photos were complete, we had about an hour to kill before going to dinner.  Tonight we are going to the KL Tower (the one I went up on day 3) to a revolving restaurant at the top, one floor above the observation deck.  We got a good taste of KL traffic on the way.  The bus left the hotel at 6:00 and had to go around a half mile down the road to a roundabout and return past the hotel in the opposite direction.  This took 30 minutes.  After that traffic improved. And the whole trip took just over an hour.  I got a better view of the city from the bus than I could get from the taxi on Saturday.  I did not want to lug my big camera around (I should really get a small one for traveling someday).  I saw a lot more of the poorer areas of the city this time as we avoided the underground route. 

The dinner was interesting.  The food was buffet style from two serving areas on opposite sides of the revolving restaurant.  One side served local food, the other was continental.  I stuck to the local stuff.  The sales manager from my customer in China, Robert, sat next to me and we talked quite a long time. He and another from China were expecting me to react to the hot food.  I explained to them that I prefer spicy foods and cook a lot myself.  They had me try a small piece of a local chili, about the size of a pea.  I chewed it and swallowed, it was really hot, but I kept my game face on and avoided sweating or tearing.  I said it was quite good.  Robert told me “You are unusual American”.  It was meant as a compliment I think.



View from the KL Tower



We boarded the bus to return around 9:30.  Traffic had cleared and we moved along around 70 MPH.  There are as many motorcycles here as there are cars.  They are much smaller that American bikes, almost the size of scooters.  They seem to be mostly driven by young men who sometimes drive very aggressively and take terrible risks, weaving in and out of traffic at high speeds.  On this trip to the hotel, I heard a muffled metallic “bang” from the opposite side of the bus.  According to someone on that side, one group of these cycles went to pass our bus on the right (the fast lane here).  The one in back of the group veered too far right and could not recover.  He hit the guard rail at about 70 MPH, the bike stopped instantly and he flew off, losing his helmet.  According to those who saw it, he must have died.

Back to bed at the hotel.  Tomorrow morning we travel to China.