June 29, 2011: Malaysia Day 3 - meeting former students, Petronas Towers, KL Tower

June 29, 2011: Freddie and I drove downtown to meet four of my former students from 1970. At the time, they were in form 5 (grade 11 in the US and Hungary). As each came forward to greet me, I was given a huge bear hug. The wives of two of the students also came, as did a daughter of one. If you noticed a shortage of pixels in the air during the day while using your camera, it was probably because of all the cameras that were taking pictures of our happy reunion - at times there were five cameras all being clicked as we greeted each other.We started out by having coffee (Starbucks, what else?) and just sharing memories:

me and my students: Raymond, Albert, Ho, and Edmund

• Angie, Albert's wife told me that it took quite some time to train Albert how to check whether the spaghetti is cooked because he told her that I had taught him to throw a piece of it against the kitchen wall and if it stuck, it was done; if not it needed more time. I'd like to see their kitchen wall some time! 
• The "boys" (all in their late 50's now) also reminded me of a number of jokes that I had told them and I was surprised to hear what they were -- I guess that's a lesson for any teacher to remember that whatever they say in class or in the company of their students is remembered for some time.
• They relayed details of a trip that we had taken to Port Dickson back in the 70's (or was it in 1984?) where we slept on the beach of the Malacca Straits and had to run for cover when it started raining. 
• They also reminded me of the word "fudge", which I explained meant what they did when they would try a math problem on their homework, and when they couldn't get the correct answer, they would just copy the answer from the book as the last line of the problem thinking that I would only check to see if the answer is correct without looking at the process that led them to that conclusion. Of course they were wrong since I did look at the process and would mark off correspondingly to how much of the problem they got correct. Of course they would complain that they HAD the right answer and I would explain that "Yes, the answer is correct but the process is wrong." Eventually, I had a stamp made that I would use to print a big "FUDGE" on their papers in red if I caught them fudging. It turned out this was quite embarrassing to them and whenever one would get the "FUDGE" mark on his paper, he would be chided by his classmates as being a "Fudger".
• They confessed to my depletion of food in my refrigerator on Christmas Day, 1970. Background: As the school year progressed back in 1970, the nation celebrated the various holidays of each religion (Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist) according to the calendar of that religion (usually based on the lunar calendar). It so happens that in 1970, the holidays followed each other one after the other starting in the fall. For example, it may have started with Deepavali (Hindu candle festival) where visitors would go to their Hindu friends' homes to visit. This meant being served food and drink. Also, in Malaysia one need not be invited to someone's house to go there. However, being an American, I received all sorts of deliberate invitations from my Hindu friends inviting me to their homes. This usually meant I had something like five or more houses to go to each day for the Deepavali festival. And, no sooner would Deepavali end than Hari Raya Puasa (Muslim festival) would begin and I would have five or more houses to go to each day for that festival. Then, right after that it was Chinese New Year (Buddhist) and being in a school with predominantly Chinese students, you can believe that I had five or more houses to go to for the entire 15 day Chinese New Year period. And, in some cases, I would go to the wrong house only to be told "The house you want is next door, but please come in and celebrate the festival with us" which added even more stops! After the last of these holidays ended, I concluded that Malaysia really was a great place to live -- until all of these friends said "You know, Dick, Christmas is coming up and since you're a Christian, we will be coming to visit you on December 25th." So, I ordered two turkeys, a case of drinks, and other foods to serve any guest who would stop by. As it turned out, I received over 100 guests that day and ran out of food at 10:30 in the morning meaning that I had to go to the downstairs kedai to buy noodles to serve my guests. I had always wondered what happened to all the food I had bought and finally learned that Albert, Raymond, and Edmond all helped to consume it that day! Now I find out!

At any rate, we had a wonderful time relaying all of these stories and afterwards went nearby to take pictures of Petronas Twin Towers and neighboring buildings.

Petronas Twin Towers - one of the tallest buildings in the world

Petronas Twin Towers - one of the tallest buildings in the world

After a good look at the Petronas Twin Towers from below, Raymond, who is the senior general manager of one of the departments of the firm that built the towers, invited us to his office on the 39th floor of the neighboring building to see the towers from above.

View of Petronas Tower with bridge from one tower to the other

Raymond

After our tour of the Petronas Twin Towers, we went to the nearby shopping center which occupies many floors of the Petronas complex. Enormous:

Shopping complex in Petronas

We went to a fantastic Chinese restaurant that Raymond selected and had a ten course banquet for lunch -- shark fin's soup, chicken, vegetables, fish, fried rice, dessert, and other courses, plus a delicious red wine.

After lunch, we descended into the shopping center and they led me into the Selangor Pewter Store which sells spectacular pieces of decorative pewter. The variety and quality of their products had certainly improved over the years when I lived in Malaysia. Raymond, Edmond, and Albert instructed me to select a piece that they were going to give me, each telling me at some time or other in the day, how much my teaching meant to them and their careers. I was speechless to say the least and really didn't know what to select. I eventually selected a pewter broach that I thought Ruth might enjoy, but they would not hear of it, and ended up giving me a beautifully engraved tea leaf container with four different types of flowers on each of the four sides plus the broach for Ruth. You can be sure that the tea leaf container will not be used for holding Chinese tea but will be prominently displayed in our house when I return.


Later, Raymond returned to his job while Edmond, Albert, and Angie took me to the Menara Tower, the fourth tallest telecommunication tower in the world. (You can see this tower in the some of the pictures above).

Menara Tower

The view from the top of the tower gave 360 degree views of the city. It certainly in no way resembled the city that I knew back in the 70's.

Petronas Tower as seen from Menara Tower

We also wandered around the base of the tower and I got another nice city shot:

Petronas Tower

After that, we drove to see what became of the flat I lived in while in the Peace Corps:

My flat in the Peace Corps (2nd floor)

After that we went to Edmund's house to rest a bit before the others would meet us for going out to dinner. When I met Edmund's brothers who were at his house (Edmund and one of his brothers live in the house together), one of his brothers said "Why, Dick, I remember you from back in school days when you led our school in singing the national anthem three times a week in front of the school." What a memory. Here are some pictures of Edmund's house:

Edmund's house

Edmund's house

Edmund's house

We went upstairs to the third floor to see his hidden prayer room:

Edmund's house hidden prayer room

Eventually all the others arrived and we piled (seven of us) into Edmund's car to drive to a restaurant he wanted us to try out. The restaurant required us to drive quite a distance outside of KL and we finally arrived at a rather desolate looking dirt driveway that was only identified with a neon sign saying "Open". We drove in the driveway and at first thought it led to a dead end. Edmund checked with someone who was near the driveway entrance and learned that we needed to make a sharp right near where he thought the road ended. We did so, and it was a good thing that I was sitting in the front seat because I thought at first that we were going over a cliff, but instead it was a VERY steep road going down a hill. Fortunately Edmund's car is a four wheel drive and we were able to descend into a valley around a number of desolate bends before finally reaching a rather large parking lot with many cars parked. We found a parking space and walked into a compound of thatched huts that were all selling freshly made Thai food -- mostly fish because these huts surrounded a lake that contained fish to eat.

As Edmund said, the restaurant was "exotic and delicious". We started with a drink of coconut:

and proceeded to other delicious foods, mostly seafood, but there were some meats as well:

After this wonderful dinner, we drove further up the hill for another surprise of Edmund, a view of the city of KL at night. My camera doesn't do justice to what we saw, but you will get an idea of what it was like from this shot:

KL at night

And so ended another very memorable day in Malaysia. Wait until you hear about tomorrow...