aisyalam

Doing a lot of things I never would have done otherwise, which must be good. Today we headed down to Bangi, for a visit to the Malaysian Palm Oil Board. I see the signs for Bangi all the time but have never been there. MPOB has a large campus, where they do much of their research and development. After arriving we were led to a big auditorium, where we saw the groups PR video, then had a Q & A session with Dr. Chan Kook Weng, who is seriously committed to promoting palm oil on a global level—a true believer. He was intent on proving the crop’s value, and dispelling some of the negative press the industry has gotten from reports that have said they are destroying jungles to build plantations. We then walked through their museum, which further reviewed the process of making and all the products made from palm oil. What I was most impressed by is that all of the plant is used for something; there is no waste. We ate a simple lunch in the MPOB cafeteria (I ate with Eric Jones and Jerrod Shobe and talked about computer music and other unrelated topics). We had a bunch of time to kill before our next session, which was at the MSC (Multimedia Supercorridor) Innovation Center (in our hometown, Cyberjaya), so we took the scenic route around and through Putrajaya, the high point of which was ascending the hill up to the convention center, a view I’d never seen before. The visit to the MSCIC was good—I drive by this building everyday and had never been in it. We arrived early and waited in the center for progressive health where there were a lot of terminals in a stylish space although nothing was on so we could have been anywhere! Our host at the Innovation Center was Suhaimi Nordin of the Multimedia Development Corp. (http://www.mdc.com.my), who introduced the initiatives of the project, showed us a video history and took our questions, most of which had to do with “e-government.” This project is about to enter its second of three major phases, and seems to have had some success, I think some of my colleagues were skeptical about Malaysia pulling off their goal of attracting international companies to the MSC, but I’m still a believer (I better be, as I’m planning to give a lecture at MDC in the near future). We each rec’d a nice coffee-table book (Metamorphosis: A Day in the Evolutionary Life of Malaysians) and a wooden pen, then we had a little tea party there during a thunderstorm and then headed back to the hotel. Though not as taxing as yesterday, the sum of these days thus far has been a lot of output, a lot of running around and talking—which is pretty exhausting. I’m glad to be doing it, although I miss my normal routine a bit (& remind myself I’ll be back to it soon enough).