An Ode to the Muddy Estuary

So I'm currently in Malaysia. We had 3 days off at work for the Tomb Sweeping Festival (Monday-Wednesday of this week), and I figured I'd take off Thursday/Friday and just have a whole week off. Didn't go over remarkably well at the office, but eh, what can you do. I decided to go visit my friend Sabutai in KL again, as I was able to use my United Miles and fly there for essentially free (business class on Singapore Airlines, no less!) And as unnecessary as this trip may have been, I feel like to some extent I needed a vacation, as the Chinese custom regarding days off is that, because we had off Monday-Wednesday, we had to work the old 7-day work week prior. That is, we worked from Monday-Friday, then Saturday and Sunday. This 7-day work week totaled about 75 hours. So yeah, I figured a vacation was in order. Kuala Lumpur, or as it's universally known throughout Asia, KL, is a city I've now been to three times. Each time that I've visited this teeming metropolis known as "Muddy Estuary" in Malay, one thing has always been very apparent--this is, without question, one of the most diverse cities on earth.

Now to qualify this statement--I lived in Hong Kong for 5 months of my life, and I thought that it was a remarkably diverse city. You'd go to someplace like Tsim Sha Tsui and see people from everywhere. Indians, Pakistanis, Ghanians, Middle Easterners, Ivorians, and loads of backpackers from all over the western world. I've always told people that Chungking Mansions, a building block in TST, Hong Kong, is a sociologist's dream, that is, there are people from dozens (maybe 100+) countries in that building at any given time. It's staggering. However, when you compare Hong Kong as a whole to a place like Kuala Lumpur, it's not even close. Hong Kong, as diverse as it may be, is still about 90+% Chinese. Yeah, the ~10% that aren't Chinese come from everywhere, but make absolutely no mistake about it--Hong Kong is a Chinese city (yes, it has a very western feel to it, but really, the city's demographics are strongly, strongly Chinese).

Kuala Lumpur, on the other hand, is not. In short, KL is about 40% ethnic Malay, 40% ethnic Chinese, 10% Indian, and then 10% EVERYTHING (thus far I've met Burmese, Chinese, Mauritian, Malay, Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi, Singaporean, and probably several others that I don't even know). And even those two 40% groups have, it seems, a pretty decent amount of intermarrying--you'll see loads of Chinese people with hints of Malay to them, Malays with bits of Chinese, etc. And it's not just the people you see, it's the food, the signage, the architecture, everything is basically thrown into this giant melting pot that is one of Southeast Asia's most truly unique cities. This ethnic hodge-podge is most evident in areas of town like Central. I found myself there today walking from Little India to Chinatown. There was absolutely no indication that these two parts of town were separated, basically I just noticed that the percentage of signs in Hindi/Bengali/etc. was decreasing, while the percentage of signs in Chinese was increasing, and eventually I found that the street stalls filled with chicken tikka, samosas, and mango lassi were replaced by street stalls serving duck, egg tarts, and bubble tea. Really remarkable.

Now for a brief bit of history on Kuala Lumpur. In a move fairly similar to my current hometown of Shenzhen, Kuala Lumpur did not exist 150 years ago, and today the whole metro area is about ~7.5 million. Very fast-growing city, for sure. Situated in the Klang Valley in the southern part of the Malay Peninsula, it is home to, among other things, former tallest buildings in the world the Petronas Twin Towers, the KL Tower, a vibrant Chinatown, and a host of other fairly interesting things. Actually, that's really not true about the host of other interesting things--as nice as KL is, it lacks a lot to actually do (similar to Shenzhen, as it were). However, it does (again, similarly to Shenzhen) have a reputation as a shopper's paradise. Hell, the activity of shopping in KL has its very own Wikipedia page. KL also happens to have one of the most insane airports I've ever been to.

Another fairly interesting thing I found out about Malaysia since I've been here this time around--apparently their legal system stipulates that if you are a Muslim and you commit a crime, you are punished for that crime based on Sharia (Islamic) Law. For those who are non-Muslim, if you commit a crime, you are charged with Common Law, with their Common Law legal system being heavily influenced by their former colonizers, the British. Furthermore, despite the fact that the state religion is officially Islam, you are guaranteed absolute religious freedom. I read a really, really interesting National Geographic article about 2 years ago, written about the more moderate brand of Islam being practiced currently in Indonesia. Having been to both Indonesia and Malaysia, and having had a decent bit of exposure to the mindset of both places, it definitely seems like Malaysia's Islamic fervor is quite a bit less than that of Indonesia. But anyway, interesting stuff.

I had a fairly bizarre experience today--I was in Suria KLCC, a huge shopping complex in central KL, and needed to use the bathroom. There was a 2 ringgitt (about $0.66) "VIP bathroom" that was nearest to me, so I figured, eh, and paid the 2 ringgitt to use it. Remarkable. As I went to wash my hands, the bathroom attendant took my hands, put them under the soap dispenser, pushed the soap dispense button, put my hands under the tap, as I was washing my hands he got some towels, dried my hands, removed my glasses (this was getting slightly awkward), cleaned them for me, and while doing so, gave me a damp cloth to press against my face. He also started chatting with me in pretty near-perfect English, "so how are you boss? enjoying your time here in KL?", etc. Oh, and to top it all off, he sprayed me with some cologne as I was about to walk out! I felt like the 3 ringgitt ($1) tip I gave him was immensely insufficient, but he seemed appreciative enough about it. Anyway!

Other stories from Kuala Lumpur--my friend Sabutai from exchange in Hong Kong is currently living here, so I'm staying at his flat near International Medical University, where he is going to med school. As it turns out, KL has a disproportionately large population of Mauritians--those from the island of Mauritius, a small country of ~1.3 million off the coast of east Africa. Consequently, many of Sabutai's friends from university are Mauritians, and I must say, their language, Mauritian Creole (similarish to French) is one of the more remarkably cool-sounding languages I've ever heard. Not entirely sure why, but just very pleasing to the ear.

As it turns out, the high-speed train from KL Int'l Airport into the city has free wifi throughout the entire train. This is a technology that I know does not exist in Hong Kong on their Airport Express train, does not exist in Shanghai on their Maglev, does not exist in SZ on the metro from the airport, and yet here, in good old Kuala Lumpur, we have free wifi on the train from the airport. Remarkable.

Similar to what I experienced 2 years ago in Singapore, the rain here goes from zero--torrential downpour in about 3 seconds. That is, I was walking around today, felt a few drops of rain on my head, and by the time I'd felt a few more, the sky had opened up and it was as though I'd stepped into a shower. Staggering amounts of water, and apparently this is not yet monsoon season....

Last night we went to an Arabic restaurant. For a meal, 2 lemon teas, and my share of the shisha (a Middle-Eastern water pipe with flavored tobacco), it cost about $5US. What a country.

So that's about it for the time being from KL. Below is a really cliché photo that I took yesterday of the KL Towers, consider that the photo of the day (even though I took about a month off from the whole photo of the day thing...let's just assume I was far too busy). For those who have read to this point, if you have any further questions about KL, let me know, having been here 3 times, I'm practically a local now (though not really...)

Back in South China on Saturday evening, Guangzhou for the Canton Fair in like a week, then Vegas in about 3 weeks. More updates to come (hopefully more consistently) as they develop, cheers for reading this far.

Chinese New Year, and Updates from the Special Economic Zone

So last week was Chinese New Year. Most companies give their employees 1+ weeks off for the holiday, here at Shinerich we got a full week off, but were required to work the Saturday before and the Sunday after, which meant really, we were only getting 3 days off. Fair enough, but still kind of a bummer.

Interesting point on perspective--unsurprisingly, I observed the following in regard to having 2 6-day work weeks surrounding the Chinese New Year holiday: the week before New Year felt like the longest and most devastating work week ever, because we had to work that Saturday. However, I am currently (almost) halfway through this 6-day work week, and I must say, it's not nearly as bad. Now obviously that could have to do with the fact that I've just returned from holiday, and therefore should be "rejuvenated" or whatever word you want to use, but I think it's more likely to be because of working Sunday, i.e. the day before the week, as opposed to Saturday. In this sense, it's quite nice knowing that this week, at the end of Monday, my work week was 33% over (2 days worked out of 6), whereas the week before last, it was only 16.67% (1 day out of 6). Obviously, this continues today (50% done, as opposed to only 33% done week before break after Tuesday, etc.), and will continue throughout the week. Fairly interesting, the effect that perspective can have on things which are essentially completely equal.

Anyway, so Chinese New Year. Originally the plan was to just sort of bum around Shenzhen for a week and relax. Anyone that knows me at all will realize what a foolish and unrealistic plan that is for me. Consequently, I woke up Sunday (the first day of holiday) and was already quite bored by like 2:00pm. John was going to be in HK a fair bit throughout the week, so I decided to just look around at airfare throughout the afternoon, seeing if I could snag reasonably priced airfare to anywhere decent. The options were:

Manila: $247 R/T

Taipei: $260 R/T

Singapore: $350 R/T

And a few others. But those were the 3 that I was really considering. Now in a vacuum with all else equal, Taipei would probably win out that fight pretty easily. I've been to the Philippines and Singapore, and really would enjoy going to Taiwan, as I've heard it's very interesting. However, that afternoon, by sheer happenstance, I had a very pleasant trip down memory lane through a group Skype session with friends from all over the world with Lexx (Gold Coast, AU), Elliott (Brisbane, AU), AlanKey (Adelaide, AU), and Sabutai (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia). While speaking with these 4 heroes, I was told by Sabutai that he's currently also on Chinese New Year holiday in KL, and that I should come over there. As I said, I'd flown into Singapore once before, and that time I'd taken a bus up to KL from there (about 4 hours). After a bit of thought, I decided what the hell, and booked the airfare. At 5:15pm. In my apartment in Shenzhen. For a flight that was leaving at 9:20pm. From Hong Kong. Anyone with any familiarity with South China will say, well, that's a bit of a trip, Shenzhen to HK Airport. Fortunately, I live very, very nearby the border (10 minute walk), but still cutting it quite close, even given my enormous tolerance for all things ambiguous.

So I was off. Booked airfare at 5:15pm, threw some clothes into a backpack, and raced off to HKIA. Ended up getting there with a bit of time to spare before hopping onto a Tiger Airways flight to Singapore. Spent the night in Singapore Changi Airport (not for the first or last time), before heading to KL on the first bus the next morning.

Had an excellent few days with Sabutai, I met a decent number of his friends, many of whom are from the small island nation of Mauritius, noteworthy for being the most developed "Sub-Saharan African" country (I put SSA in quotes because geographically it's really not Sub-Saharan Africa, it's an island in the Indian Ocean, but eh). Having already been to KL and seen a good bit of the touristy stuff, this time around had a more local feel to it, with Sabutai showing me some of the localish restaurants/bars/etc. around the university there. Was very interesting stuff.

I headed back to Shenzhen on Friday late afternoon (via another overnight in Singapore Changi Airport) and had about a day and a half before the end of Chinese New Year holiday, which was spent basically just doing laundry and catching up on things. Overall, a very solid holiday.

At this point, I'm back in the office, though a decent percentage of the employees are either 1) still on holiday, or 2) have quit because of the New Year. Interesting to note--apparently in China, they take new year's resolutions quite seriously. That is, rarely do they just say "Oh I'm going to give up soda" or "try to lose weight", they really do resolve to improve their lives in a number of ways in each coming year. Consequently, many people quit their jobs at the New Year to try to, I guess, "start over" for the New Year (for any Chinese reading this, if I've stated that completely incorrectly, and am consequently being a cultural Philistine, I apologize. Feel free to set me straight via email, comment, or burning my house down. Either way).

But anyway! So yes, back at work, it's been slow so far this week. It seems that I'll be heading back stateside at the end of February for a trade show in Atlanta, sort of yet-to-be-seen how long I'm there for (probably about 7-10 days). After that, things will get busy here around late March/early April for the Canton Fair. The Canton Fair. The biggest convention ever. Basically, in the US, companies like True Value, Ace Hardware, and I'm sure bigger companies like Wal-Mart and Home Depot have conventions where their store owners come buy products at promotional prices. The two of these shows that I worked with my dad this past fall were both some of the bigger shows of their kind in the US, with a few thousand booths at each. The Canton Fair had nearly 57,000 booths last year. Fifty. Seven. THOUSAND?!? Completely incomprehensible (though I will comprehend it come April when I'm there, I suppose).

In other news, the company had a New Year's gala sort of thing a couple of weeks ago. They were giving away door prizes which, on the low-end, constituted home appliances such as toasters, blenders, and other assorted crap. On the high-end, 2 people won 6,000RMB (~$1,000US) each. Big range, there. Incidentally, I ended up on the very, very high end, winning a brand-new laptop. It's a good thing I didn't buy a brand new laptop like 3 months ago, otherwise this other new one would be completely useless! Also a good thing that the Windows 7 on there isn't in Chinese....also might render it somewhat less than useful. So long story short, I'm trying to sell it on a couple of different HK/SZ websites. Will hopefully keep all 3 of you readers informed on that one.

Apart from that, things continue to move along as per usual in Shenzhen. Weather has been very nice, with temperatures not dropping below 60 (but for the 5 days that I was in KL, at which time it dropped to about 45 degrees. Mind you, it was 90 in KL :-D ) At the moment the whole work visa situation still seems a bit iffy, though we'll see how that progresses as the weeks go on. Frankly, at this point I don't really care, the way I view the whole situation is as follows--either the company I'm working for is able to get me a work visa. If so, great. I will work for them for awhile. If they're so incompetent so as to not be able to arrange a work visa for me, then odds are they're simply not worth working for, due to said incompetence. So basically, I will either get a work visa and work for a company that knows what they're doing, or I don't get a work visa, and can't work for a company that I otherwise would not want to work for anyway. I think the logic is correct, so we'll see.

Some other assorted thoughts--

I recently read that the largest known star in the universe, VY Canis Majoris, has a circumference that is approximately the orbit of Saturn. To put that in perspective, it takes light about 8.5 hours to travel across this star, whereas it takes light 8 minutes to reach Earth from our sun. Mind-boggling.

I was very enamored with Singapore and (to a lesser extent in this context) Kuala Lumpur due to their diversity. To clarify--I love Hong Kong because it's diverse. But really, it's diverse to a certain point; about 90% or so of the population is Chinese, and the other 10% is EVERYTHING. However, in Singapore, it seemed about 40% Chinese, 40% Malay, 10% Indian, and 10% everything else. So rather than being dominated by one ethnicity and having a very diverse subset of their population, the entire population is quite a bit more diverse. Really cool to see, and something that I'd really failed somewhat to notice my last time there.

A sign that my lifestyle in Shenzhen is starting to become somewhat problematic in terms of mine and Scutt's tendency to shop every day: in KL, one of the noteworthy sights that Sabutai went to go look at was the Uni Qlo store in KL. In short, Uni Qlo is a Japanese department store that has a few locations in SZ, and is one of the few stores in the city that makes clothes in western sizes. Consequently, about 40% of Scutt's wardrobe, and about 25% of mine, are made up of Uni Qlo products, because we simply go there like 2-3 days a week and shop around (not always buying something, of course, but when a city is basically one big shopping mall, you're going to do a lot of shopping). Bit sad, really.

Watched a phenomenally interesting speech by Robert Sapolsky about human nature the other day (incidentally, I had one of his books as required reading for Psychology 110 my freshman year at University). Would highly recommend, the man is a brilliant scholar and an equally brilliant speaker.

Other than that, no real further musings. More to come in the next few weeks, particularly regarding the whole visa situation...that's quite important!

Singapore/Malaysia

So this past week we were given another week off, called "Reading Week", which was for the purpose of reading up on materials before midterms. However, given that the only midterm that I had was in the in-between week, I didn't have anything to read, so initially the plan was to just hang around Hong Kong with Elliott, Ben, and the few others who weren't going to Thailand. However, the first morning of reading week I woke up at 10:30am and by noon I was bored, so I decided there was no way I could stay here for a week with very very few exchange students here. I called up Ben and Divyan to see if they'd be up for doing something, and we went through several options, including train to Shanghai, bus to Vietnam, or flying to Singapore. After going through these options, we decided to fly to Singapore on Tiger Airways (an Asian budget airline) for about $115US Monday evening. Elliott was debating whether to come along, but he decided to head to Taiwan instead, as he'd found some very cheap airfare there. So it was then decided that we'd fly into Singapore Monday night and return to Hong Kong Saturday night, with no plans in between. Some of the highlights of the trip include:

1) Taking a Mercedes cab from the airport while listening to soothing opera music and driving through a beautiful boulevard that had trees and greenery all over the place
2) Seeing the spot where Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles landed to found Singapore, where there is a large statue today
3) Seeing the world's largest fountain, the Fountain of Wealth
4) Having a Singapore Sling and a chicken curry at the Raffles Hotel
5) Having the best Indian food of my life at the Banana Leaf Apolo
6) Going to the top of the KL Tower in Kuala Lumpur,a huge observation tower which gave great views of the city
7) Seeing the Petronas Towers, the buildings that overtook the Sears Tower as the world's tallest building in 1998
8) Seeing monkeys in the middle of a city of nearly 2 million people, out in the wild
9) Going on a night safari in Singapore, which included seeing lions, hyenas, leopards, etc., in the wild
10) Seeing the colonial city of Melaka, which was (and still is) a strategic port on the Strait of Melaka
11) Staying in one of the most outstanding backpacker hostels I've ever seen (The Inn Crowd, Little India, Singapore. If you're ever in the area, definitely check it out, dorm beds for about $14US)

Other than that, I'm now back in HK. Last night I got back to Lee Hysan at about 10:25pm, and was told that the floor bike ride around HK was starting at 10:30, so I literally set down my bag and went outside with the rest of the floor. We biked from about 11:00pm until about 5:00am, all around Hong Kong Island. We went out to the eastern part of the island, and in all biked maybe 25-30km. It started raining around 3:00am, but it wasn't too bad. It's definitely a great way to see a city, as you see a totally different part of it late at night, and bikes allow you to go slow enough to observe properly but fast enough to cover a good bit of ground. This week should be a pretty slow one, with no major tests or assignments due. No plans at the moment but we'll see how that progresses.

Interesting fact of the day: Everything in Singapore results in a $1,000SN (about $700US) fine. This includes bike riding in restricted areas, spitting, littering, etc. Additionally drug trafficking is mandatory death penalty