The DVD haul, Hokker food, the Blr trained cabbie and the Immigration Incident

The trip was tiring but productive. The demo went off quite well; the project lead has given his endorsement. Didn't get too much time to shop in Penang, but I did manage to get a few dvds: Easy Rider, Last Tango in Paris, Stand By Me, Princess Mononoke, The Lion King and Kill Bill Vol 2 (for ). The store had the cover case of True Romance, but couldn't locate the actual disc for me. Maybe next time. Most of the other dvds available were the blockbuster variety, which I wasn't really interested in.

The sales folks I was helping out wanted to know what kind of food I wanted. I told them I was game for anything except Indian food and wanted to know the speciality of Penang. They spoke highly of what I heard as 'Hokker Food', so I signed up for that for a post-dinner snack, dinner being already booked at a Thai seafood restaurant. The dinner was quite good: I feasted on tiger prawns, chicken and fish, but I did leave some space for the promised Hokker stuff. Sure enough, my hosts took me to a place that looked a lot like Medical College Jn in Trivandrum, or Juhu beach in Mumbai. There were loads of vendors with carts and vans, selling fried rice, noodles, ice cream and what have you. Apparently, this is the speciality of Penang: Hawker Food. It wasn't all that bad, though.

I had changed my schedule a bit, so got into KL only by 4:30pm on Friday. My return flight to Blr was at 10:00pm, so I had a few hours to kill. I took an express train from the airport to the city, which covered about 75km in 28 minutes flat. Much impressed, I got off at the Sentral Station (no, not a typo) and hailed a cab to KLCC, which houses the famous Twin Towers of KL, the tallest building(s) in the world. The cab driver picked me up as well as another passenger and promised to drop us both at our respective destinations. Traffic was as its peak, reminded me of Bangalore/Mumbai rush hour. The cab driver, who had probably done his schooling in Bangalore, promptly drove on the wrong side, on the sidewalk and elbowed his way through. I could spot the towers in the distance when he pulled over, smiled at me and said "Only one dollar, sir. Please take the train from here". I didn't know any Malay swear words so I smiled back at him, de-cabbed and legged it to the said railway station. I wasn't sure whether the cabbie meant $1 or RM 1, but it turned out to be slightly more than a Ringgit and just two stops away. The train reminded me of Bombay too, just that it was cleaner and there weren't any bhajan singing folks around. The mall at KLCC is huge, pretty, choc-a-bloc with brands and expensive to boot. I wandered around for a while and then took a train to Sentral and the Express from there back to the airport.

The return flight was uneventful apart from the Immigration Incident. The immigration person, who usually exists only to wear out the official stamp, took one look at me, another at my passport and immediately called a lackey over. Whispered to the lackey. Both looked at me out of the corner of their eyes. I put on my best namma bangaluru face and grinned. Lackey smiled back and hauled me over to his boss, a tall, dark ogre who was eyeing other passengers. Ogre looked me up and down and asked a few questions about my company and my work, cleverly mixing English with Kannada. I replied keeping my sunny smile intact. He let me go after a while and I got my immigration papers stamped. I still don't know what that was all about.

Didn't take too many pics - didn't get time, frankly. Overall impression - Penang is a lovely, laid back city. Has a lot of islands nearby, which look like prime targets for a holiday. KL is very Mumbai, very New York. Lots of buildings, lots of cars, lots of people. Need to explore it more next time.

Last, I'd like to know who this Irving Savio Sequeira from Scandent Group is. He sent me a mail before I left, with the subject 'LJ' and content 'Heard you are in the region'. As far as I know, none of you good folks have the name Irving and my last LJ post was friends-only. Hmm. What gives?