Entry Four And a Half; Entitled, I'm in a Coffee Bean and they keep playing La Bamba

UPDATE. I did something really silly. I won’t say what, but it gives me a little bit of time to continue this blog. Okay, so I last left off on the afternoon of May 26th, 2008. Alex and I headed to CIJ so that I could meet the team, and he could finish editing an interview he’d filmed the day before. We hoped on the monorail, and it started pouring. Like intense torrential downpour rain. So we took the train to Titiwangsa station, walked down the stairs and stood under the shelter of the monorail track for a few minutes , evaluating the situation. In short, the turned out to be no real alternative than getting really wet, as he showed me the way to the CIJ building. It turns out that it is located in an area away from downtown. It wouldn’t be right to say that it is on the outskirts of KL because KL, like Toronto encompasses a huge area made up of smaller…areas. So this part of town is dominated by ground floor family-ish businesses, some of which seem to sell a random assortment of stuff. Along the way we passed mostly restaurants, shops, and offices of sorts. CIJ is two floors above an auto-repair shop. There’s also a sketchy looking pet shop nearby. I might buy a pitty kitten in the near future. By the time we reached CIJ I was entirely soaked – the kind of soaked where you really just can’t get any wetter. So, Alex showed me how to open the cage, and I met most of the team. They all seem quite nice.
Uh oh, I’m feeling a brief digression. At Titiwangsa station there are a number of old apartment buildings that stand empty. They are white and blue and from the outside look to be full of very small apartments. It turns out that three of them have been condemned by the government, and as such stand as creepy playgrounds for well just general creepiness. What I found most interesting is that a larged number of residents in one of the buildings refuse to leave. So out of many windows you can see hanging clothes, satellite dishes and even BN flags. I suppose they still get power? Anyways, I realy want to
Just about as soon as we arrived, we went for lunch. This went down at Santa’s (pronounced Saunta) – a small, but apparently famous local place a few doors down. This is pretty much entirely Indian food – lots of chicken curry, spicy Vegetables, Roti Chanai and naan. Santa assured me that he’d take care of me. Was this the beginning of my adoption by Alex’ food family? Only time will tell. So we ate lunch – it was kind of a self serve deal, you just take what you want from the front, and sit down to order drinks and whatnot. Alex ordered me a lemon sugar water drink whose name escapes me. But it was good! Like all iced drinks here, I’m finding, this drink was heated up and then cooled with ice. Anyways, I took and ate way too much food – a factor that would soon only increase my jet-lag induced exhaustion. When we were done, I found out the delightful news that food is usually a set 6 ringget (2 dollars). Amazing.
We returned to CIJ, and I just kind of played around for awhile on my computer, not having anything to do yet. Eventually, Alex said his goodbyes to the teamand we headed back to the pad. By this time, I was pretty insanely tired, so I promptly passed out for a few hours. I had a strange dream about Helix Collaboration Commerce Accelerators.
I woke up at around 8:30, and Alex took me on a journey to explore the insides of the electronics mall. This was good for me, as I was quite curious about the prices of DSLR cameras here. I feel like it would be a solid investment early on in the trip. The mall was pretty mind blowing – think five floors with store upon store of electronics. I may just have to return there tonight to pick up an 8gig SD card for 25ish bucks. Umm the DSLR was a little disappointing, but it makes sense – there’s a big selection but they all of the major brands are the same price as back home. If I buy one here, I guess all that I really save is the tax. Oh well – I’m going to do a bit more research.
After the electronics mall, we took the monorail and LRT to the Chinese night market. Such an interesting place: basically a street lined with stalls, all selling counterfeit goods. Acutally “lined” doesn’t do it justice – more like jammed with stalls. Really it’s the place to get all of your fake Oakley, louis veton, and Rolex needs!
We picked up some MaPo bean curd and apple juice (ok this juice actually tastes like an apple. Have you ever had apple juice that tastes like that? Honestly I never had until I got to KL) on the street for like RM12


Okay, what the hell.
Weirdest thing just happened to me.
Honestly this is going to bug me forever.
So I’m sitting on a bench in front of the patronas towers in KL. Blogging away, surfing the internet (somehow I get wireless in the park behind the towers?)
When after about 45 minutes, two Malay guys – 30something come up to me, shyly and ask if I can take a picture. So I’m like okay for sure! When all of a sudden, one of the guys comes over to the bench and sits down next to me to pose.
So immediately I’m thinking that this is some scheme to distract me while someone steals my laptop or bag and I smile, and discreetly get a solid hold of my bag and computer. But, to my surprise, the guy smiles and his friend takes the photo of us – and mind you, I’m facing the towers, so there isn’t anything but park in the background. After that, they thank me and shake my hand (still I’m thinking “ok, their going to make their move….”) and leave happy. What?!
This is the second time that that’s happened to me.
Why?? Do I look like someone famous? I’m completely baffled. None of my stuff got stolen, and now I’m just confused. Note, I’ve since moved to a different part of the park, and I no longer get wireless.
If you’re interested, the first time that this happened to me, in 2006 – I ended up with this photo: