Malaysia

Mr. "R" (not his real name) and his sister

Malaysia

Hello Gentle readers,

Editor’s note: There is still time for you to gouge your eyes out to avoid reading this.

Yes, it is time again for another fact-less, farfetched, and fictitious report from your Intrepid Traveler. As usual, be prepared to be intrigued by tales of wit, wisdom, and ..…(insert in some other word that starts with W, please to complete the alliteration. (why do I have to do all the work?)

Today’s story is about my current trip to the country of Malaysia. I am here to help my agent, Mr. “R”, sell my equipment into the oil and gas market here. It is a busy time and Malaysia is going to spend a lot of Ringits (their currency) in the next 5 years on offshore drilling and production. Mr. R and I want to help them spend it. Malaysia is bustling with activity, but it is such a quiet, laid back, country that I don’t have anything unusual, or silly to report. I will have to use my own creativity instead. Damn, I hate that. We all know how badly that will turn out.

This is my second trip to this small nation. In fact, Malaysia is so small, it can’t reach the light fixture to change the bulb. It is celebrating 50 years of nationhood this year. (If I am older than the country I am in, shouldn’t that make me KING, or something?) It was 50 years ago that Malaysia gained independence from Great Britain. And the country seems to be thriving despite the Brits forcing them to drive on the wrong side of the road. It seems to be a polite country. They actually use their brakes and turn signals while driving. What a concept. (Are you listening, India?)

The population is about 60 % Muslim, 30% Christian, and 100% petite. Since I am 6’2”, I tower over these people like Gulliver in Lilliput. Mr. R fits that description. He is a jolly little fellow, who looks a lot like Budda, but thankfully, he wears a shirt. He is so short, that the top of his head only reaches my armpit. Why anyone would want to reach my armpit in this warm and humid climate is not something I care to speculate on.

I first flew from Houston to Kuala Lumpur, (KL), which is the capital of Malaysia. This is a very modern city with a lovely sounding name but it means “bay mud”. I know this because, I am an expert on local dialects, and because Mr. R told me what it meant. Apparently Kuala Lumpur has a drainage problem.

The very next day I flew to the city of Miri, which I mistakenly thought was in the country of Brunei. It is not, but my family back home got a chuckle out of me not even knowing what country I was going to. In my defense, Brunei is a really tiny nation, about the size of a mobile home. It was carved out of a sliver of Malaysia, and on a map, it is not clear where one nation ends and the other begins.

We stayed one day in Miri, then we flew to KK, or Kota Kinabalu, which is on the eastern side of Brunei from Miri. Wasn’t Kota Kinabulu the central character in the movie “Roots”, or was that Kunta Kinte? Or am I thinking of the odd growth removed from the backside of Ross Geller, in the TV show “Friends”, or was that a “Koondis”? Anyway, I digress. There is a lot of offshore oil and gas development occurring here so my agent will be setting up a warehouse in this city.

There are some islands just offshore from KK which are world renowned for snorkeling. I had planned to book a boat trip to do some diving, but Mr. R changed the schedule at the last minute and we flew back to KL that day. I wish he had told me sooner. I probably looked rather silly at the airport wearing my snorkel, mask and fins.

Mr. R and I have crisscrossed the country once already. I am five days into a 10 day trip. Since Malaysia is divided in half by the South China Sea, the only way to get from one part of the country to the other is by boat or plane. On this trip, if the plans continue as they are now, I will have taken 12 different planes and connections. I have gone through so many security x-ray machines that it has affected my DNA. I think I am growing gill slits and webbing between my toes. I am de-evolving! My wife always said that would happen if I was out of her care for any length of time.

The country of Malaysia shows very good sense in one small way, which I will explain. Those of you who are avid readers of my Intrepid Traveler stories, will undoubtedly recall, if you are not too heavily medicated, my reportage from Indonesia. This story was written a few years ago about the fruit called Durian.

The locals in the small town in Indonesia I was passing thru had built a statue in honor of Durian. The fruit of the Durian is about the size of a pineapple, with dull spikes on the outside and putrid smelling flesh on the inside. This is really horrible stuff. I was brave and tasted it while in Jakarta, and it was perhaps the worst thing I have ever had in my mouth. The awful smell is overpowering, and the taste, as I recall from my repressed memories, was like dead skunk. Of course, I have not actually tasted dead skunk, but I did eat at the campus cafeteria in my college days, so there is a similar culinary history.

So back to the small town in Indonesia; they built a statue honoring this horrible fruit! They are proud of it? Are they insane? Have they been reading this Intrepid Traveler blog too long? Where is some U.S. Government defoliant when you need it? Anyone spraying Agent Orange would be a super-hero in my book if doing so would eradicate this pestilence from the earth. Anyway, in Malaysia they grow and sell this same fruit on the street corners. But at least the hotels and airlines have the sense to FORBID Durian from being brought inside any buildings or on a plane. Thank goodness.

So, not much else to report to you, Gentle Readers.. I sit in my agent’s office at this moment with no giant insects crawling up my leg, no threat of Tsunamis, and no one thinks I am Bin Laden (as they did in Columbia, South America). And there are no political hotspots to worry about in Malaysia. It is quite boring in fact. But that can be good. Not for you, the reader, but for this writer, his family, and the actuaries that wrote that big life insurance policy for me last year. So I will end this message, and I will go consult a map to find out where I am. I may also do some research to find what permits I need to import Agent Orange in to Malaysia.

Your Intrepid Traveler.

HAVE YOU STOPPED BEATING YOUR WIFE?

11 Angry Men and one who is just mildly annoyed.

Have you stopped beating your wife?

Greetings Gentle Readers. Today’s writing effort does not have anything to do with traveling. So, if you cannot stand to drift off subject for even one exciting installment of the Intrepid Traveler, I suggest you stop reading this right now. Of course, I have been suggesting you stop reading this blog for years but some of you must be deranged. I hope that the remaining readers… OK, reader (thanks Mom) of this blog will bear with me as I discuss and review an event that I have been preparing for now for many months. Without giving away any industrial secrets or legal positions, I thought I would tell you about my first experiences with the legal profession.

I am learning that Lawyers and their minions live in a completely different world than I do. Their world is a world of black and white, yes or no, where I live in the world of grayscale. I don’t see things as having yes or no answers. Life is too complicated for me to boil it down to yes no / black white. I am a simple man, with simple wants and needs. I want to start my day with a hot cup of coffee. I want a clean, orderly house, and I want the power of Invisibility. I am still hoping for the clean house. But, as usual, I digress.

This legal matter I mentioned is a law suit between a giant multibillion dollar corporation and the small company that I work for. There was an incident and damages, but thankfully no injuries. I was selected as the Corporate Representative for this case since my knowledge of the situation exceeded that of our janitor. I have spent months reviewing documents, reading emails and watching Perry Mason re-runs to prepare for my deposition. I have been given thousands of pages of notes by our team of attorneys so that I could master the subject. I got very good at carrying those massive files around under my arms while walking around the office. This sorta reminded me of being back in college, when I’d go to the library, gather a giant pile of important looking textbooks on my table, then take a nap.

Anyway, the day came for my deposition. The meeting was in a very imposing skyscraper in the heart of the city. I was ushered in to a large conference room. I sat at the very end of the long table. At the other end of the table was a camera man and video equipment. My lawyers had prepared me for this and told me to wear a coat and tie to look “professional” for the camera. They did not, however, instruct me to wear pants. Oops. Soon the room was swarming with attorneys, the corporate reps of the other companies involved, and a few street performers. (it did not take long for the Mime to get annoying. The Mime was standing in the back of the room silently depicting me, with a noose around my neck) My stomach was in knots. My heart rate was off the chart. My spleen was having a world class jousting match with my gall bladder. But on the outside I was cool as a cucumber. I was sure my uncontrollable drooling would stop before the camera started rolling. I picked a bad day to stop smoking.

Each team of opposing lawyers had a lead person designated to ask me questions. Keep in mind that this incident happened over six years ago, and I cannot remember how to find my garage, so you can imagine how difficult it has been to prepare to respond to their queries. When one lawyer exhausted his list of questions, the next lawyer at the table took over. This hand off of inquisitors happened four times. I was picturing in my mind a pistol revolver aimed at me and each attorney was a potentially deadly bullet in one of those chambers. When the last lawyer was finished, they started the cycle again! The first guy now had a whole new set of questions based on what my previous responses had been.

But surprisingly I am feeling like Errol Flynn sword fighting with the King’s guards. I am thrusting and parrying and deftly avoiding their razor sharp questions. If only there was a candelabra on the table to whack the top off. But after several hours of this it was getting fatiguing. The round-robin questioning just never seemed to end. For those of you who are familiar with the movie “Airplane!”, there was a scene where a hysterical woman was slapped in the face by her companion in order to calm her down. Another passenger on the plane steps up and slaps her too. The camera pans away from the scene and you see a long line of passengers waiting for their turn to slap the woman. Some holding baseball bats and Billie clubs. Well today, in this conference room, I was like that woman. I picked a bad day to give up heroin.

Late in the day, after endless testimony, they wanted to get on the official record of my lack of technical expertise. “Sir, are you a Corrosion Engineer? I couldn’t stand playing it straight and proper any longer and said “No..., but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night”. There was a long moment of silence. It was deathly quiet in the room. I could hear the steel beams in the building creaking. Then the room exploded with laughter. I could see in their faces a look of dumbfounded confusion. No one in the room could believe that I would insert an answer in my sworn testimony referring to a hotel commercial. From that moment on, I felt even stronger. More empowered. Suddenly I was the champion of the Little Guy, taking on these fancy hired legal guns armed solely with my wit and charm. At least that is what it seemed like in my fried brain.

The session finally ended around 6pm that night. I was ecstatic that it was over. I had survived! I still felt strong until they told me they needed me back for another deposition. This one would be for my personal knowledge and involvement in this case, not as the Corporate Representative. Damn. I should not have used up all my wit and charm. I guess this means I have to pay for another room at the Holiday Inn Express. Oh, and to answer the question posed at the beginning of this piece: Have I stopped beating my wife? Answer: “No, I did not know there was a time limit”.