Back to Being a Weekend Tourist

Local fast food, grab a plate, put stuff on it, they tell you an amount to pay.





Nice reef scene from the aquarium







My photo-op with some locals


Howdy friends and family. Things are getting somewhat back to normal. I’m still overly dependent on my hotel, as they are my single source of funds right now. My new Diners Club card should be here any day, and that’ll help some. In a week or so, a new pin number will arrive at home then I’ll be able to get cash advances directly against the card, instead of against my hotel bill. My new passport should be here within 10 working days from this past Friday. Whenever I get it won’t be soon enough.

Today was a good day, back to good tourist-ish behaviour. I went to the local aquarium, The Aquaria at KLCC (Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre). I got quiet a few good pictures, which I will share, though my internet connection at the hotel really is terrible. I might have to blog the narrative now and add the pictures Monday evening, from the local Cerner office. The pictures were somewhat difficult, as no flash was allowed in the aquarium. Most of the aquarium was normal small-scale pretty, but not exciting, exhibits. What they did have that was really cool was a 90 meter long glass tunnel going true their ‘living reef’ exhibit. You walked right thru the middle of the water, with fishes all around you, sharks too. Very cool. Not much else to say about the aquarium, except there were a gazillion school kids there, in big groups.

That took all of 45 minutes to an hour to go thru. Not as captivating as I had hoped, especially when priced at RM38 (quite a bit for here, though that translates to about $11).



Mississippi Paddle Fish







Cool glass tunnel thru the 'Living Reef'




Some very intense looking sharks, from the glass tunnel





View of the tunnel, from the tunnel (it curved around and was visible from the other side)



More 'Living Reef'

The rest of my afternoon was at the Petronas Towers. On the top level of the shopping complex there are 2 Petronas-owned science attractions, Petrosains (petroleum science, geology, Malaysia technology) and Speed (Formula One racing technology, race driver skills, aerodynamics, etc. Both of them are the very interactive hands-on environment. They had lots of people around to help you figure out the separate exhibits, and in spite of a huge crowd of people, there were plenty of interesting things to look at and do. I had one of those headset tour things (RM2 to rent). Every little thing had a number on it you could type into the brick around your neck, which would then play a short narrative for you, very short.

Inspiration for the 'Speed' science centre. Malaysia is almost as nuts about Formula One as it is about soccer (football). Football is definitely number one though.


Most of the content was reading, or really more watching and touching and taking part in. Throw a baseball to see how fast it would go, stand on ski’s to see how fast you can make them go down a virtual ski slope. My favorite, which I didn’t do very well at, was a table that 2 people sat at, with each person putting on a headband that measured your alpha waves and theta waves, or something like that. There was a slot in the table, with a ball in it. The ball started in the middle when you pressed the ‘go’ button. The more relaxed (zen-like, yoda-like) you got, the more of the juju-waves your brain put off and the ball would move toward your opponent. You won when the ball reached the far side of the slot. The gotcha is that is you focus on the ball, you aren’t relaxed and you lose. You cannot think about the ball. I observed that the Indian competitors seemed to do the best, and some kids in the 5 to 10 age range were the best. Little kids couldn’t get the relaxation thing. I was terrible.
There were a lot of exhibits like this, where you see and touch. The one was showing the effect of acceleration and gravity on speed and race times. All 3 balls start and finish at the same relative height, and therefore the same finish speed. The ball with the steep initial incline accelerated more and slowed right at the end, easily winning the race.

I got some really good pics of people looking their cultural best, a couple posing with me. It was pretty fun. The funniest thing happened. A Muslim lady (I could tell by her scarf-ish headdress, whatever they’re called) came up to me, with her camera and some of her friends/family. I thought she was asking me to take her picture. Wrong. She wanted to take a picture of me with the other people. Not sure why, except maybe she’d never seen a big white guy before, I don’t know. I had her take a picture with my camera also. I got a pretty good picture of a couple in more traditional Muslim dress (she was in an Iran or Saudi looking full covered black outfit, what some of the locals here call ‘full ninja’). The guy doesn’t look too happy in the picture, but at the time he indicated that he was quite happy to pose.

I was at the Petronas Towers area for about 5 ½ hours total. Pretty full day.

I found a cantina for supper. It, like other non-Asian food here, was OK, but not wonderful. The tequila was just fine. Funny thing about taking taxi’s and trains everywhere you go, is you never have to drive after you drink, or even give it a 2nd thought. Kinda nice for a change.

I may have more blog content from Sunday, though I have no plans, other than finishing this blog entry, doing my expense report and status report for last week, going for a swim, hanging at the hotel. Sounds good to me.

See ya

Here's some random pics from my Saturday




Native noise makers




Just some people at the science centre


Lots of science-techincal displays. If you were geeky enough you could be there for days.


They had some pretty good mock-ups of prehistoric (laying down the ingredients for oil) days.



This was cool. You sit on this park bench and then press buttons for 'high', 'medium' or 'low' earthquakes. Shake the crap out of you.


Inside the offshore oil rig, that we took a helicopter simulator ride to get to.

A Muslim prayer room, on the oil rig simulator

Just more locals. Since everything has a special and sacred name and meaning, it seems, I asked them what the name for their head coverings were. They looked at each other, then me, then said, 'we call them scarves'.


More local fast food


More local fast food












and Finally - some beautiful local fruit. All that I've tried has been good, though I don't know what any of it is called.