Monday, March 27, 2006
Sau Bin reports that “the malay word for foreigner is pendatang & businessman is pendagang. diff of the t and g on the 6th letter. datang means come, dagang means trade. not sure if they share the same origins though. to come is to trade?”
Not a whole lot to report, except that I’m having an interesting time visiting the other side of the spectrum (eating fancy dinners, staying in one of KL’s nicest hotels, getting shuttled around in Mercedes vans) with a group that includes nine Fulbright and about the same number of journalists who have come in from Hong Kong, Pakistan, London, and Thailand. Yesterday we went about halfway up the Petronas Towers for a pep talk about Petronas (the national oil company), which was informative (although I was slightly disappointed to learn that they are all about “harnessing energy” they aren’t much interested in developing solar power etc.). The Prime Minister, as I pretty much expected, was too busy to see us (maybe later in the week), so we had the afternoon off so Amy, Alea, and I went to Bangsar to visit the organic market (not so different from the health food store at home, actually) before meeting Stella’s bus on Taman Seputeh. The only work related stuff I did involved writing out the specs for the eBook for Khong, so I can get one of the FCM’s ISBN for the project. By the end of the day I was quite tired and felt strange to have a Monday without working but enjoyed many fascinating conversations and learned quite a bit, so let’s call that a different type of work. We ate dinner on top of the KL Tower at a revolving restaurant. I’d never been in a revolving restaurant (or building) as far as I know, which at a certain point became very disorienting, as I wasn’t quick to realize that the whole platform wasn’t spinning, just the ring around the circumference where the tables were was. Very strange to get confused and lost in such a small space; perhaps some kind of metaphor there…
Not a whole lot to report, except that I’m having an interesting time visiting the other side of the spectrum (eating fancy dinners, staying in one of KL’s nicest hotels, getting shuttled around in Mercedes vans) with a group that includes nine Fulbright and about the same number of journalists who have come in from Hong Kong, Pakistan, London, and Thailand. Yesterday we went about halfway up the Petronas Towers for a pep talk about Petronas (the national oil company), which was informative (although I was slightly disappointed to learn that they are all about “harnessing energy” they aren’t much interested in developing solar power etc.). The Prime Minister, as I pretty much expected, was too busy to see us (maybe later in the week), so we had the afternoon off so Amy, Alea, and I went to Bangsar to visit the organic market (not so different from the health food store at home, actually) before meeting Stella’s bus on Taman Seputeh. The only work related stuff I did involved writing out the specs for the eBook for Khong, so I can get one of the FCM’s ISBN for the project. By the end of the day I was quite tired and felt strange to have a Monday without working but enjoyed many fascinating conversations and learned quite a bit, so let’s call that a different type of work. We ate dinner on top of the KL Tower at a revolving restaurant. I’d never been in a revolving restaurant (or building) as far as I know, which at a certain point became very disorienting, as I wasn’t quick to realize that the whole platform wasn’t spinning, just the ring around the circumference where the tables were was. Very strange to get confused and lost in such a small space; perhaps some kind of metaphor there…
# posted by chris funkhouser @ 2:45 PM 
