Corporate Adventures

Kuala Lumpur sounds like the name of some kind of skin disease doesn't it? I'm imagining furry cysts -- are you?

This city is almost exactly what I expected. It's gone through startling rapid cosmeticpolitan restructuring in the last 10 years or so and everything smells like it just came out of the styrofoam. Since the Formula 1 Grand Prix is beginning tomorrow, the boutique malls are having BMW showcases, a Ferrari is parked in front of a mall called Lot 10 (which the writer Zia Sardar said sounds like the name of a gravesite), and TAG Heuer is screaming about their limited edition Monaco watches. Like TAG, the city finds its glory in the successful accumulation of the best parts and elements from around the world while being, itself, not much more than an assembly plant: fancy, decorative, but without soul.

Still, there's something I like about the place, which is that it is the perfect city for corporate tourism. It's with some unhealthy pleasure that I enjoy sitting at the LaVazza coffee stand and watching the businessmen banter with eachother, each vying to be the center of attention and nobody really listening to one another. Or watching the destitute older Englishman with his sleave cuffs rolled up to the forearm, running a hand through his hair and staring wide eyed into the distance, ten feet past the end of his rope with the workaholic's variety of delerium tremens. At the skybridge between the Petronas Towers -- tallest twin towers in the world -- I spent most of my time looking at a guy on the fifty-second floor talking on his cell phone and paid little attention to the hazy half-city / half-jungle scape. How do they live this life of business? What do they think of us from the outside world?

Do your people use Wi-Fi?

My first day here I accidentally ate half a chicken. It showed up in a big bowl, much bigger than I had anticipated for the price, probably meant for a small community or the break fast for a couple of hunger strikers. As passerbys looked at my plate and then up at me: "that's right," I said, "I'm going to eat all of this." And I did.

This is also a Muslim country, Malaysia, which makes me a bit self-conscious about being Jewish AND American. I thought I was busted today when I guy stopped me in a mall and started staring at my face, floating his head around like he was peering at me from behind a boulder. He later told me he was an astrologist, numerologist, and face reader and that I was a very lucky man. "I see it in your face" he said drawing circles around his own nose, "right here." I guess my luck is as plain as the nose on my face, like my ethnicity. But he didn't mention it. He just told me that my luck was going to end and did I want to talk about it.

No. I don't want to talk about it.

Tonight, my new friend Hunch, who works at the visitor center at the Petronas towers is going to take me to a happening night club so I can see a traditional ceremony of the corporate people. It's also ladies night -- if I can find a burkha maybe I can get my free margarita.

Tomorrow it's off to the Formula 1 track to see cars go fast. I hope I'm dumb enough to appreciate it.