Take care. Send our best to the mrs. Who knows maybe you can
vacation here someday. JHS is always welcome to our home too.
Cheers - VV

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

A typical day begins at 630AM. After extracting one of the cats off my feet (we have 3 = 2 Malaysian and
One Nebraskan stray who came home with me, and no not as carry on ) its shower, shave and… time.
I drop the mrs at work in a suburb and then proceed to go into the city center where I work.

I drive a Jeep Wrangler soft-top, with the mandatory SYF Dead Sticker, so that comes in handy "navigating"
thru the rush hour hell. Traffic is pretty bad but not as bad as say Jakarta or Bangkok where they passed
rush hour hell and are a couple of levels below and descending. In KL we're talking traffic congestion due
to "development" in other words road-works. It takes me about 45 minutes for what should be a 7 minute drive.

Current CD in Car - Dosin' at the Knick, The Grateful Dead. Did the dead show trek 30 times while living in
the States, miss Jerry big time. Work starts at 830AM and ends at 530PM. I work for a large Malaysian
Telecom company as a Product Manager for VSATs (Satellites) and ISDN. At 900AM every morning a
tea-lady wheels a trolley around and provides a caffeinated beverage. This is traditional with large local
Malaysian companies and is a nice perk. They take care of us well here at TIME Communications
(not to be mistaken for Time-Warner). A great place to work. The day consists of meetings, replying emails
and more meetings. It's very international and a typical week would see me interacting with Americans, Brits,
Italians, Hong Kongers, Philipinos etc.

A little bit of info on Malaysia as a whole: We have about 25,000,000 citizens. Malaysia is a parliamentary
democracy similar to England except for the House of Lords/Commons bit. Nobody needs that. We have a
King who is mostly symbolic these days. Most Malaysians are Malay Muslims  (60%) but they practice a more
progressive form of Islam and are considered as a template for other Muslim nations. If all the Muslims were
like our Malaysian Muslims there would be no terrorism. Our government really frowns upon extremists since
we have a multi-cultural multi-religious population (30% Chinese and 6% Indian). We mix pretty well.

Malaysians are also spoilt for choice when it comes to food. Ours is a fusion of Western, Indian, Chinese
and Malay food. Most tourists absolutely go gaga over the food choices. For the franchised eatery addicts
we also have the obligatory McDonald's/Burger King/KFC/Hard Rock/Planet Hollywood of course.

Malaysia is one of those rare countries where the East meets the West, modern meets olden. We have the
world's tallest buildings (also a pair of towers, Petronas Towers) and quaint  fishing villages on one of the
world's most beautiful islands off the coast (Tioman), existing together in the country without conflict.
Hopefully it stays that way. Lot's of info on the Net about Malaysia generally since we are pretty advanced
in terms of Net adoption. So anyway, work ends at 530 though I usually stay later finishing up the real work
since I've spent the day in meetings. ;). Once again battling traffic I pick up the mrs. and we spend an
inordinate amount of time deciding what to eat for dinner due to the aforementioned choices available.
We usually get take-out and head for home. I've got satellite TV at home, 50 channels and nothing good on.
Just kidding. We get CNN, HBO, MTV, Discovery and local multilingual channels etc. In addition we also
get BBC World and the now famous Al-Jazeera (dubbed). Its funny comparing CNN with the Beeb (BBC).

Same pictures but very different commentary especially when it comes to the Israeli situation.
Hopefully there’s a football game on and our beloved Arsenal ( GO GUNNERS! ) is playing. Check them out
if you’re into soccer, you’ll like. Okay need to get a bit heavy now, if I may get up on the ol soapbox for a sec;
I've been campaigning for people I know here to focus their displeasure on governments and not the people,
for example be anti American government not anti Americans. Don't generalize. If nothing else, my 10 years
in the US learned ;) me never to generalize,except maybe for Republickans (sic). People around the world
have a tendency to say things like the Americans are bullies, The Americans are ruining the environment etc.
Americans this or that. Wrong answer!

I want to add the word government behind the word American. The American Government is ruining the
environment etc. This works for Israel too. Some smart ass once came back with a comment alluding to
"....Government for the people by the people". I quickly pointed out (in Begalaesque style) not the last time around.
Maybe the next time......

Heck for sure next time!

Peace - V-V.

Thanks, VV, I thought that was cool.

If you are reading this and live in a faraway, exotic place (Rincon, Georgia doesn't count)
send me an e-mail with your story.  Like the one you just read, I'm interested in hearing
about your transportation (Norwegians take a boat to work, right?) your food, your TV,
your government and local customs and all that kind of stuff.

Entertain us.
Educate us stupid Americans who think everything revolves around us.

Send me your stories 

Let me know if you want your e-mail address printed.
You'll probably hear from a variety of people from all over, but also my stalkers.
That's all they live for.  That's why they get out of bed.
That's why they take that first breath in the morning, knowing they can read  bartcop.com
and then contact innocent people and make red-assed fools of themselves

They get up every day and read  bartcop.com  with one hand and then try to
contact people who write in and get rude with them and send them goofy cartoons.
They're harmless, especially if you're far away, but they're rude ditto-monkeys
and it's the price you'd pay for meeting a bunch of new pen pals.

Heck, we could set up a pen pal network,
and you could pick up new friends from all over the world.