Paul Merrill
One thing I love about travel is that it forces you to see that other people think differently than where you come from.
Since Malaysia is predominately a Muslim country, their sympathies lie on the Palestinian side of the conflicts in Israel. In America, it’s the other way around.
It was healthy for me to reflect on how Malaysians are concerned for families whose lives have been upset or ruined by conflicts in Israel. And to share some of their concern.
I didn’t try the ice cream toast. However, I did try the white coffee. Superb.
Old Town White Coffee is a restaurant chain in Malaysia. The atmosphere is retro – and yet polished. For those of you in North America, it might fall into what I call fast-slow food (more expensive and tasty than fast food – but cheaper – think Chipotle or Qdoba).
Old Town is successful enough that there are 171 outlets across Malaysia and Singapore. Starbucks doesn’t have that many – though in Malaysia’s largest city, Kuala Lumpur, it seems like there is one in every mall.
And just to quench your curiosity, Ice Cream Toast (Single) converts to about US $1. For that little, I should have tried it.
Some occasional late nights find me surfing a few style sites that feature images like I’ve shown here. Every one of the images shows something that originated before 1975. Some may be updated (as in the watch bands), but their roots go way back.
So what’s old is cool again.
This can be a good thing. Some designs are worthy of repeating. (Some are not.) Some old designs function well and others do not…
(Tomorrow – back to the regularly scheduled programming – more observations from my Asia trip.)
People like to be the best. The biggest. To have the most.
That tendency extends to nations as well.
Malaysia had the tallest building(s) in the world for a while – the Petronas Towers (shown). Now government leaders there are talking about building a taller skyscraper. Curiously, it won’t be the tallest in the world. I guess they decided that would be too expensive.
More from my trip…
On the way back, we had a brief stop in Hong Kong. Yes, there was an umbrella vending machine at the ferry station. I was amazed at that. But it wasn’t till I got home and looked closer at the photo that I discovered the machine had a TV screen, showing a video that featured those umbrellas’ benefits.
I loved these signs. The top one looks like a pregnant lady’s tummy is radiating heat. (Real meaning – give your seat up for pregnant ladies.) The bottom sign looks like if you push the button, fire will come out at you. (Real meaning – fire alarm.)
Ever been a minority on a crowd? I don’t mean, “I like that kind of music and no one else does”. I mean minority in the racial sense.
Since I was born with white skin and euro-features, I am part of the majority in the USA. This is swiftly changing, as other racial groups are having more babies than euro-types.
I never knew what it was like to stand out in a crowd until we moved to Africa. It’s a strange feeling to have people look at you and think, “He’s different.”
I just returned from about a week in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – a big modern city of about 7.2 million people (including the surrounding areas). The Malay are the majority, with about 60% of the population. Chinese are roughly 30%. East Indians come in at approximately 10%. And caucasians are maybe 1% or less.
I found it healthy to experience a little prejudice – in small doses. It helped me realize that I’m small.
A local bakery / restaurant from a well known chain throws out four huge trash bags of perfectly good bread and pastries every night at closing time. Some nights, very kind people pick up the excess and bring it to homeless shelters or similar. Most nights, it goes into the nearby dumpster.
This chain has ten stores in the Denver area alone. That amount of waste is mind-boggling.
I do not fault them.
Who is at fault for this kind of waste? The American consumer. The manager of the store told my friend who makes those charity bread runs, “If we didn’t have every single item in stock, we’d get complaints from customers who missed being able to buy their favorite item at the end of the day. Then we’d lose them as customers. They would go to another shop.”
We are guilty as a country.
Solution? The years I lived in England, stores would regularly finish their stock near the end of the day. Customers would just buy a different item – or go to a different store. No one would get upset. I would propose that we simply lower our darn picky standards – at least in this case. How would this happen? I don’t have any idea. Do you?
When you think about how the American (and world) economy is in bad shape, here’s a small note of cheer…
The US Government’s postal service is losing money – but they still can afford to make big and beautiful stamps.
(For scale, I’ve shown coins from America, England and Kenya.)
Dear friends recently left us to return to Malaysia. They gave us some Boh Lemon Myrtle tea as a parting gift.
It’s nice – not a flavor (or flavour) you will easily find on the shelves of your local supermarket in North America or Europe.
So first, myrtle is a tree, I think. That might hurt their marketing efforts, should they try to launch in the States. Second, we rarely put single quote marks around the title of any product.
For those of you who are into Facebook, as of an update to this post, Boh Tea is liked by 17,019 people.
