you are here

yes i am here, in kuala lumpur, that is... although the picture at left is from the shanghai airport where my coworker and i had a 5+ hour layover before hopping on the last of our three flights which arrived in malaysia at the lovely hour of 3 a.m. today, Tuesday (or 2 p.m., Monday for those of you on EST). i've been awake since then: first i took the essential shower (after 30 hours of traveling it was about time), then put finishing touches on my part of the presentation that we were giving to malaysian public works people at 9 a.m. now that the presentation is over, i'm just regrouping... it looks like i'll be visiting the Petronas towers this evening with some locals if i can stay awake until dinner time. if you look closely you might succeed in vaguely making one of them out in this picture, looking out from my 15th floor hotel room. the sky is surprisingly clear, since it's monsoon season and usually rains all of the time.
when we were being driven from the airport to the hotel in the wee hours of this morning, i couldn't see much, but in the dark, the city reminded me of Florida because of the building shapes and the types of vegetation. in the daylight mountains appear as a backdrop to the cityscape (definitely *not* Florida) and from the limited view my hotel room window offers, it looks like a moderately sized, relatively modern city. the burnt orange colored roofs of the residential scale construction that appears scattered among the big buildings remind me of mediterranean france or italy. i can see five tower cranes from this vantage point, but i bet that if i were closer to the center city (i believe i'm about 8-10 km southwest) i'd see more. more cultural ruminations after i take a nap, or perhaps tomorrow... think i should probably rest considering 30 seconds ago i was literally falling asleep on the keyboard.