Kuala Lumpur - Day 1 - Arrival

I reached Kuala Lumpur at 3:30 pm after a sleepless night in Karachi. I had been at the airport at 4am after last minute passport retrieval from the Cargo service. Before then, I had been hanging out with Foaad, Zahra and Shehzad at a rock concert at the Art Council followed by dinner at Karachi Bar BQ and a chill out at Shehzads place.

Immigration was exceptionally smooth but not so was the baggage retrieval which took well over 15 minutes. Once i was out of the airport and saw some of the Malaysian landscape it really was an exceptionally enthralling experience. It was so starkly evident how Malaysia has progressed into a relatively well developed nation. There are well organized structured systems in place, people are happy doing their tasks, business seems to be doing well. There is plenty of multiculturalism, several ethnicities living together. There may be one of the 55% of the 24 million population muslims sitting next to you or an orthodox Christian, Hindu or Buddhist and it just will not matter. There is no apparent segregation or rift between them at all.

Food Street - Bintang

Enjoying some local delicacies with Chen and Rebecca (not in picture)

The weather is a bit warm as I find my way to the YMCA which has highly affordable yet very decent rooms. There is a Laundromat, hair saloon, an internet café, electronics store and a grocery store within a minute walk of the place. In the evening headed over to Bukit Bintang to chill out with Chen Chow and Rebecca we walked around the place. Some the Star Hill shopping mall, which is ultra cool and expensive! We ate some roadside Malaysian food in a place like the food street with various vendors selling different types of food. It was an awesome start to the trip.

Kuala Lumpur - Day 2 - Hang out

Most of the delegates for the HPAIR conference had not yet arrived in KL. So took the time to learn more about the MM2H program and spent most of the afternoon meeting government authorized local representatives and using the very efficient train system which reminded me a lot of the T in Boston. In the early evening, Ghazi, my cousin, came over from his college town and we hung out for a bit before heading out to a get together for HPAIR people all set up by Chen.

Scintillating Malay dances

We had a nice group of people including Chen the Malaysian guide, Xiao Ming from Hong Kong, Darby from Canada (her brother goes to ISU!!!), Mohit from a village in Punjab, India, Daniel, a beer loving dude from China/Canada, Hidemi from Japan who will work for Morgan Stanley M&A team when she graduates, Ming a, quiet, local Malaysian, Van and Kirsty from Vietnam and Liza who has her own consulting business in the Phillipines, Ghazi, myself and a few other whom I did not get acquainted to. Most of these guys had travelled to 5-8 countries already which was astounding. Had a pretty wholesome buffet which had a variety of stuff from prawns, shrimp and buttered vegetables to fruit in a spicy sauce and roasted chicken. We witnessed some pretty decent dances from Malaysian, Chinese and Indian backgrounds before we went on stage ourselves and had a great time doing the bamboo dance, some cha-cha type dance and other local dances. It was truly great and well worth the RM 70 that we paid for it all.

Went on stage to do the bamboo dance

The night wasn’t quite over. Those mentioned above excluding Ghazi head out to a bar called the Luna Bar which has some pretty awe inspiring views. The place had a pool instead of a dance floor and was on the 36th floor of some building with an excellent view of the KLCC. Very much recommended spot for anyone travelling there and we had a lovely evening out there. Came home at about 2 am with no real plans for the next day but the way plans are made out here, do not know what might come up next.

Friends at the Luna Bar

Kuala Lumpur - Day 3 – Conference initiated

I switched hotels and came to the JW Marriott which is where the conference was to be held. It is located in an area called Binkut Bintang or more generally the triangle, which is an awesome place with lots happening all around.

The pool on the 6th floor

More relaxing in the afternoon

Did initial registration for the conference, chatted up with some new people there were plenty to choose from as we had over 300 delegates participating, and heard some boring speakers before about 12-15 of us went and had dinner at a place in the Pavilion called Michelangelo’s followed by a pre-party at Xiao Ming’s place attended by about 20 of us. I think the 20 of us were from 17 different countries and 5 continents.

The fancy dinner

It was incredibly good gelling experience, so much so, that instead of going to a club for partying we ended up staying there for the evening. Afterwards a few of us gathered at Sams place for more partying before finally sleeping at about 3 which was very early for the upcoming days standards.

Kuala Lumpur - Day 4 - Conference and Networking

It was a day full of events at the business conference. It started with an introductory session on globalization which was quite interesting. Despite the fact that I was extremely tired after the previous nights extravaganza and that I missed more of the speech I asked a question to the speaker from GE regarding the role of government policy in curbing the fast pace of globalization to safeguard local companies. Afterwards we had a case discussion on GE’s Eco friendly hybrid engine for rail transport which was really exciting as a high profile employee of GE was present to answer questions and oversee the case discussion. More of the same events in the evening, finally got done at about 4.

Some heavy pre-partying

Networking from around the globe

Dancing away

Then we chilled out the remainder of the evening. Had some seafood dinner at the Pavilion food court followed up by some solid pre-partying at XM’s place and then we were off to the Asian Heritage Drive where there were a row of clubs to choose from. Pretty neat experience, I am not even sure which club we went to but it turned out pretty nice. There was a group of about 20 of us so we pretty much took over the place somewhat. We had the usual 3-4 am pool party followed by some post-partying at Sam’s place. Then we finally called it a night around 6 or so.

Our little group

Kuala Lumpur - Day 5 - Conference and more networking

I woke up a little groggy at 10 after about 3 hours of sleep. It was already too late for the plenary session and the first round of sessions. Not that I regretted that, as I was to later find out they were quite boring. Had a nice breakfast by the pool at the Marriot to detoxicate and rehydrate myself before attending a session Feng Shui – The art of good living. That also turned out to be very boring so I left that early and headed of to the Sauna which was just mind-blowingly relaxing. 5 star hotels rock…or I think that what the Marriott was.

Breakfast by the pool :)
The Sauna....relaxing!!!

In the evening we had dinner at the food court across the street in the Pavillion. Later on in the evening there was a delegate party at Planet Hollywood. That was pretty cool. We partied with many of the newly made friends at the conference from literally all over the world. It was indeed an incredible evening. Some left for the Poppy Lounge, a pretty hip-hop club but Planet Hollywood had a good crowd going. So it was aight!

Typical dinner - Exciting seafood

Planet Hollywood - Good times.

Came back to the Marriott for our regimented pool party routine, did some fun pool stunts which were more fun to do because it was past 2 am. We had a post party in my room. And Yosuke was kind enough to let us do what we wanted despite the fact he was sleeping. Later on we chilled at Sam’s place for a little while before having breakfast at 7 and heading to bed soon after.

Kuala Lumpur - Day 7 - Goodbyes

Woke up at about 11 am and headed back to the Marriott to hang out with Darby, Sam and XM. Alice had already left, missed out on saying goodbye to her. The four of us went out and got one of those fancy massages at a pretty neat little place. I would highly recommend the massage, coming in at just 44 RM for an hours massage; it was a steal and extremely soothing for the body. Then we had lunch at a roadside eatery which was pretty cool except it wasn’t too great for the tummy. We said goodbye to Xiao Ming, who was heading back home to return to school which had started already. Came back to the Marriott and got a hold of my phone, thanks a lot to Tammy who had been extremely helpful the whole time. More goodbyes as Darby was headed back home as well and so were many others.

The Conference was over and so was my stay in Binkut Bintang. Went back to the YMCA in KL Central and checked in there. Had a bit of a fever going due to fatigue mainly so slept for a couple of hours before coming back for dinner at La Botega in the Pavillion with Tammy, Nadine and Sam. It was nice to have a relaxed more simple tasting meal after lots of exotic food over the past week. After that it was time for goodbyes, Nadine was heading off for more partying in Singapore, Sam had to prepare for the Academic Conference, Hidemi was heading back home to Japan, Tammy was heading back soon and Chen the local was to stay in Malaysia of course. So met with all these guys, said our heartfelt goodbye and then I roamed the streets of Kuala Lumpur one last time before coming back to a much more regular sleeping time of 1-2 am at the YMCA.