Wash U at the College Fair

Last Sunday, Katie and I helped our alma mater by staffing the Wash U table at a college fair downtown. Luckily, at the last minute the admissions office noticed that there was a high expected turnout and sent down a member of their office to help us out. Good thing! For three hours straight all three of us fielded questions nonstop! We spoke with over 200 students. Seems like the Wash U. secret is out. Lots of students interested in pre-med and pre-law, but also journalism and communications, architecture, all of the engineering disciplines, music and international studies. Of course, for the parents, it was the same timeless set of questions: scholarships and financial aid.

The experience definitely makes me appreciate my time at Wash U. and the quality of the education and social experience there. We had a great time and are looking forward to helping out Wash U. again. We've already been contacted about another upcoming fair at a local high school.

Dana Visits Alabama

Fran's sister Dana visited us last weekend and we had a great time. Dana got in plenty of relaxation time on the back deck, and we had fun showing her around town and eating lots of good food! She even washed our cars, which she insisted on doing because she actually enjoys it! How's that for a quality houseguest?? The bar has been raised for everyone else! ;-)

Malaysian Feast

Our Malaysian feast went off without a hitch! Unfortunately, we were so "in the moment" that we forgot to take pictures. However, everything was so tasty we are sure to do it again. The beef rendang was extremely fragrant and tender. Everyone really liked the stir fried water spinach and -insert name of unknown asian vegetable that was recommended to us here-, so much so that people took seconds and my sister took the recipe home. The pineapple rice was a sweet complement to the spices of the dinner and was also a popular part of the feast. Kway teow and cucumber-pineapple salad rounded out the dinner, with homemade pistachio cheesecake from Robin to provide a return trip to western food at the end of the night. :-)

The beef rendang required some shredded coconut - we now have an entirely new appreciation for the coconut shredding machines we saw in Malaysia. Those suckers are tough to work with! Extracting the coconut flesh involved a drill, a hammer, a screwdriver, safety goggles, spectators needing to stand a safe distance away, many knives, a food processor and a blender. :-) But we finally did it!

Back to the Routine

Now that the hurricane has passed and life in Birmingham has mostly returned to normal (not counting the news or gas prices or the refugees from the coast that are relocating into the area...), we're also getting back to our usual routines. For us, that means home improvement projects! One of the projects we started today was staining the stairs down to the creek. Here's a shot that shows the before and after, quite a difference. The "before" here is actually better than it was, it's already been bleached clean in this shot.



We plan to spend the rest of the long holiday weekend completing this and other projects, to get the house in tip top shape for our next visitor, my sister Dana. She arrives this Thursday for her first-ever visit to Alabama!

Katrina has passed

Thankfully, we survived the storm with no damage to us or our house. The winds picked up about 6PM and were stronger than Ivan. We lost power around 9PM and it still isn't on yet. When we woke up and surveyed the damage, we saw that all of our beloved trees were undamaged. We again we quite lucky, as there are many trees down in our neighborhood. It will probably be a while until our power is restored, since the power lines in the neighborhood have been knocked down by felled trees.

Things at UAB are up and running. Classes for the morning were cancelled, but everything at the hospital is the same. So, Fran and I are in at work now- no sense in sitting at home with no power!

Katrina On Her Way

Birmingham is a good 250 miles from the coast and even more than that from New Orleans, but when a storm the size of Katrina comes knocking, there's a good chance we could see some serious effects here. When Ivan came through last September, we were without power for 4 days due to the many trees that were blown down in our neighborhood, taking power lines with them. Katrina has hurricane force winds 100 miles out from the center and tropical storm force winds 200 miles out, so while it is probably unlikely that we'll see hurricane force winds here, we might see tropical storm force winds around 50-60 mph, similar to Ivan. That was plenty to knock down dozens of trees within a few blocks of here.

We'll be watching the news closely and tracking Katrina as she comes ashore tomorrow. Let's hope it misses New Orleans - if it takes a direct hit, they are talking utter destruction of the city under 15-20 feet of water, and casualties in the thousands. Definitely a scary storm!

Laying Low

We're still here! But after all the fun we've had this summer in Malaysia and Portland, it's proving to be a busy few weeks back at home and work catching up on all the things that were delayed, like yard work and new projects at the office. Our 30 year old house has provided its normal share of aches and pains that need to be patched up, such as the restaining project we've got going on out back on the steps to the creek and the "Garage Door Opener Resuccitation Project". (Hey, not every adventure in home ownership can be fun and exciting! :-)

Meanwhile at work, several new initiatives need to be wrapped up by the end of the fiscal year next month, which has me busy on the phone and web ordering equipment from vendors. Combine that with the start of a new fall semester, and you've got a recipe for a very busy week, which last week proved to be.

Katie has been using the domestic time to rediscover her crafty tendencies, and she's recently refinished the pot rack (which will soon have more layers of paint than the Underpass at Wash U due to our indecisiveness! :-) and her homemade ottomans are looking decidedly professional!

So, we should have some fun pics to post once all of these projects come to completion. In the meantime, we hope everyone is enjoying their summer. We're looking forward to welcoming fall and sweatshirt weather again! That's still a few months off for us, but tantalizingly close for some of you guys. :-)

Portland - My Kind of Town

I've spent two weeks now in Portland over the past year and it is quickly coming to be one of my favorite cities anywhere. It has a combination of liberal attitude, small town accessibility, funky eateries, historic architecture, pervasive technology and mild weather that I find to be very attractive. Here's a typical street scene of a downtown MAX station.



Portland definitely has its own style and just walking the streets you come across all of these unique spaces and shops. Here's a shot of my hotel lobby.



Since my trips here have been for business, I've only had a limited amount of time to explore. I'd like to come back with Katie for a vacation trip sometime soon, and I would recommend it to anyone!

This afternoon I'm catching a flight down to the bay area to visit our friends Matt and Caroline. There, I'll get to visit another one of my favorite places, Berkeley and the Cheeseboard Collective. Yumm!

Fran's in Portland, Oregon

I'm attending the Open Source Conference this week in Portland, OR. This is a conference I've attended several times and I will be presenting a talk on data backup on Wednesday. Portland is one of my favorite cities - it's very walkable, and the city is full of awesome local coffee shops and cafes. In addition, the Willamette River cuts right through downtown and there's a nice park and several cool bridges over the river. In fact, this morning I walked across one of them on the way from my hotel to the convention center. I'll try to post some pics of the city later in the week when I get time to get outside and be a shutterbug!

Last Day In Malaysia Post

Just a quick note to let our "regulars" know that we've posted about our last day in Malaysia. However, we changed the date on it to put it in the right chronological order. Just scroll down a bit to the "Merdeka Square and Putrajaya" post.

We're Home!

Katie, Fran and all of their luggage arrived home safe and sound! No problems with any of the flights, everything on time, no lost luggage, no long immigration lines. Came home to some ready-to-pick veggies in the garden and an Alabama heat wave - temps here are a couple degrees hotter than they were in KL and the heat index is expected to approach 115 tomorrow!

We're both pretty zonked as it is 6am on our internal clocks and we had only sporadic naps on the planes. Time to crash out for the rest of the weekend and just relax and enjoy all the stuff we brought back!

When we're a bit more recovered, we'll blog the last bits of fun we had in Malaysia before we left. Now that we've recovered, we've blogged our activities of our last day in Malaysia. We've altered the date on the post so it appears in the right chronological order.

Hello from Osaka!

Katie and I are in Osaka relaxing before our flight to Detroit. Katie just enjoyed a session in a massage chair while I took advantage of a personal shower rental - ahhhh, much better on both counts! I wish US airports had more of these amenities and relaxation rooms. Just wanted to let everyone know our first flight was fine! We're off to board our flight to Detroit now! We'll be back in the states in about 14 hours or so!

Merdeka Square and Putrajaya

Friday was our last day in Malaysia. Having already completed everything on our list that we wanted to do, we had some bonus time to see some of the other sites in Kuala Lumpur. We headed out into the city in the morning, despite the hottest weather of the trip. This is one of my favorite photos of the trip. Here, Katie and I are standing just across the river from Masjid Jamek, or Friday Mosque. I think that this picture nicely captures the "exoticness" of Malaysia, with both Islamic and tropical symbolism.


Just past the Masjid Jamek is Dataran Merdeka (Merdeka Square), the site of the original British colony and in 1957, the formal declaration of Malaysian independence and the founding of the country. This building is the Sultan Abdul Samad Building, which was the British administrative building.

A view back across Merdeka Square to the Sultan Abdul Samad Building and to modern KL beyond. The Square used to be the cricket field for the Selangor Club, whose clubhouse is still in operation on the Square.


After touring, we took shelter from the heat with a lunch at the Be My Friend cafe in the Central Market. Here's a good snapshot of Katie and her brother Ben at lunch.


While they were finishing up their lunch, Ellie and I did a little exploring. She was fascinated with the giant fan that was cooling off the patio seating. Love the glamour shot!


After lunch and shopping for gifts at the Central Market, it was time to head out of KL and towards the airport. We decided to rent a van and driver for the afternoon and evening to take us to Putrajaya, which is the new federal capital of Malaysia. The interesting thing about Putrajaya is that it did not exist prior to 1995. In fact, most of the buildings did not exist even in 2002. Putrajaya was built from the ground up on palm tree plantations in what is billed as Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor. The MSC was conceived by the past prime minister as a way to modernize Malaysia by relocating the administrative center from Kuala Lumpur and building two "intelligent cities", Putrajaya and Cyberjaya (a Malaysian Silicon Valley). Putrajaya is styled as an intelligent garden city of the future. It is situated around a manmade lake which will eventually be spanned by nine bridges. The past prime minister was apparently quite a bridge fan!

Here's a shot of a shopping promenade along the lakefront.


Here is the Putra Mosque, shot from its courtyard. Non-muslims are no longer allowed inside the main prayer hall, but there were several interesting views from the courtyard.


Here's a view of the prime minister's office from the Mosque.


After touring the Mosque's courtyard, we took a tour of the lake in a traditional Malaysian boat.


A view of the Mosque from the lake.


After our boat tour, it was time for one final dinner in Malaysia, at the Shangri-La resort in Putrajaya. Then, sadly, it was time to head to the airport for our flight home. While waiting for our flight, I snapped one last photo, of the futuristic terminal at KLIA.


And so an amazing trip came to an end. Katie and I are so grateful to have had this one-of-a-kind opportunity to explore a far-off corner of the world with our family. We had a wonderful time and take home many happy memories of a place full of friendly people and interesting sites. Hopefully, we'll get another chance to visit!

Friday and the Trip Home

Tomorrow is our last day in Malaysia. We've intentionally left the morning open in case there are any last minute things we want to see or shopping we want to do. In the afternoon, we've planned to rent a van to take us to Putrajaya, which is the new national capital that was built from scratch in recent years. There, we will take a boat tour, visit a mosque, and have dinner before heading to the airport to begin the long journey home. Our trip will take us first to Osaka, then on to Detroit, and finally to Birmingham. Unlike the trip here, we will not have an overnight stay in Japan, which means that we will have (hopefully only) 33 hours straight of airport and airplane time before arriving home Saturday late afternoon (B'ham time)! However, it will have been well worth it for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Since we probably won't find time to blog tomorrow, this might be the last blog from Malaysia. However, we'll blog the final day of the trip either from some airport en route or shortly after we get home, and I'm sure both Katie and myself will have some closing comments to make about the trip. So, we may be quiet for a couple of days, but there will be more coming!

Kampung Baru and Chinatown

Thursday morning started out with a walking tour of a unique Malay neighborhood called Kampung Baru. Kampung Baru is a traditional Malay village located right in the middle of downtown KL. When the Chinese first came to Malaysia and settled in KL, the local Malays moved away from the city so that they could continue their traditional lifestyle. The Sultan was unhappy about this, and offered Malays land in Kampung Baru for free in exchange for meeting three conditions: 1. They must build a traditional Malay house on the land. 2. They must cultivate the land with trees or crops, and 3. They must never sell the land. Because of these unique conditions, a traditional Malay village still exists on land that would otherwise be prime land for high rise commercial development today. Despite all of the development pressures and repeated attempts to redevelop the land, the village still stands for the moment. You can see great examples of Malay architecture and eat many traditional foods from the hawkers in this neighborhood. Our tour was led by Angie Ng, an expert guide who has provided many other tours and travel services to Ben and Steph's visitors.

We started at the train station but quickly found ourselves in the midst of the village.



Along the way we passed many food vendors. Fran tried some unnamed fruit similar to the Jackfruit (as if that helps!) that smelled like gasoline. He tried it raw and fried (fried ok, raw not so good. No surprise there!). He also tried Chicken Curry Puffs (very tasty!) It is very common to see food presented this way, buffet style at curbside, no heatsource and in an open air patio restaurant. This takes some getting used to for Westerners but this is second nature to the Malays. It's not unusual to see 4 or 5 restaurants like this on each block in some parts of town.

The tour actually went through this house, where an elderly woman lived. It's an excellent example of traditional Malay house architecture, on stilts for airflow and protection from flood waters, as well as several other advantages. You can see how close Kampung Baru is to the ever expanding modern core of KL.

Another stop on the tour was the neighborhood mosque. All the women on the tour (which was everyone except Fran - touring apparently not so popular with the men!) donned head scarves to comply with Islamic law regarding entering mosques.

After the tour we stopped off at the KLCC for yet another visit to Bread Story, more crafts shopping, and some produce shopping. We wanted to make sure we tried more of the local fruit, so we picked up some rambutan (spiky red fruits from the picture in the earlier post), mangosteen (reddish, sort of pomegranite-like on the outside) and dragonfruit. So far we like the mangosteen the best.

In the evening we went to Chinatown for shopping and dinner. We made some major shopping finds at both the native arts dealer and Peter Hoe. The credit card took quite the dent there, but the ringget-to-dollar conversion softens the blow considerably! Here's a typical Chinatown street scene.

Ben and Steph took us to Old China Cafe for dinner. They are now regulars there and the staff all recognized them and fawned over Eleanor.

Just next door to the restaurant is this wonderful tea shop, where we finished off our evening with some impulse buys.

Katie and I were also interested in checking out the nightlife in KL, so we headed back out with Ben to the club district where we learned that sandals will prevent you from getting into many of the clubs. No worries, we found a nice outdoor bar to kick back with a few drinks and listen to the American remixed dance music and do some serious people watching before heading back in for the night.

Butterflies and Islamic Art

Wednesday started out at the Butterfly Park in the Lake Gardens district. This is supposedly the world's largest butterfly park so we were definitely interested in checking it out. I'm not sure if it's truly the largest, but it was big, and more importantly, it was very nice and have all sorts of exotic butterflies we'd never seen before.

Eleanor, who is a Butterfly Park veteran, was looking forward to feeding her friends the turtles again. Here, she is showing off the food that she is feeding to the guys in the lake there.

We saw many butterflies we had never seen before. Most of them proved difficult to photograph, as they were constantly moving, but we saw every color of the rainbow, and some of the butterflies had 7-8" wingspans. A few of them did pause long enough for a photo, here are a couple of examples.

This second one is Malaysia's national butterfly. It's hard to tell from the photo, but this guy has a 7" wingspan.

Katie and I posed for a quick snapshot while we were in the Park.

After the Butterfly Park, we headed to the Islamic Arts Museum. We chose this museum over the National Museum because we have been interested in the Islamic and Muslim aspects of Malaysia and wanted to learn more about it. We're glad we made that choice, the museum was fabulous and unique and helped us learn how Islam has contributed to Malaysia's unique blend of cultures and religions. No photos are allowed in the galleries, so I was only able to take this picture of the outside of the museum.

Inside, we learned about the origins of Islam and how it came to Southeast Asia. There was a great special exhibit tracing Mohammed's journey from Mecca to Medina where he founded the world's first mosque. In the architectural hall there were scale models of many of the world's important mosques, which was very interesting because mosques are completely different in various parts of the world. For instance, in China, you could easily mistake a mosque for a Buddhist temple, since the mosques there have no domes or minarets and instead utilize oriental-style pagodas. We also had lunch here, which consisted of some of the best middle eastern food I've ever eaten. From the upper levels you can get a great view of the National Mosque, which is just across the street. Finally, we visited the gift shop, where we located the perfect fabric to hang from our Sarawakian fabric hanger that we found at the Kuching bazaar.

Royal Selangor and KL Tower

On Tuesday morning we toured the Royal Selangor Pewter Factory. A Chinese man moved from rural China to Malaysia over 100 years ago to try to use his skills with pewter to capitalize on the tin that was being mined in the area. Four generations later, Royal Selangor is the world's premeire maker of pewter products. We were able to see the production floor up close, including this woman's demonstration of pouring the molten pewter into the mold.

Our tour was comical. The first time through, we were whisked through so fast that Katie had to run to keep up! When we got to the end, we asked if we could see more, and she brought us through again, only slightly slower. We think the idea is to get you through the tour and into the store as quickly as possible (we also theorize that this is fine with most of the tourists, who pull up in a huge bus and have 20 minutes to see the tour and buy something before the next stop). Finally, after shopping a bit, we asked if we could see the full tour (since we could see that there were interesting galleries to be seen if only we had the time!) and they were happy to oblidge us.

After the tour, we headed to Suria KLCC for a quick bite to eat. Fran visited his favorite KL store, Bread Story, and Katie photographed the interesting fruits at the nearby produce store. We had never seen any of these fruits before coming to Malaysia.

In the evening we went to the KL Tower, the city's telecommunications tower that also has an observation deck and restaurant at the top. They offer an excellent audio tour that oriented us with all the major sites of KL. Here's a photo of Katie at the top, with the Petronas Towers in the back reflecting the evening sun.

And here is Fran's attempt at artistic photo composition from the base of the KL Tower.

Although the Petronas Towers are taller, their observation deck is only halfway up, and situated on a bridge between the two towers, so that you can only see in certain directions. The KL Tower has the highest observation deck in the city and offers a 360 degree view of the city.

The tour pointed out many of the important sites from the British colonial era, including Merdeka Square, site of the original British colony and also of the declaration of Malaysian independence (which was a peaceful process). We were also able to see the Parliament building, Supreme Court, King's Residence (the king is mainly ceremonial, like in England), the Lake Gardens district with its bird, butterfly and orchid gardens, the Golden Triangle (where the chic boutiques and clubs are, along with the ritziest shopping) and the National Mosque and National Theatre. There's a LOT to see here in KL and we won't possibly have time to see it all on this trip. Oh well, we'll just have to come back!

Land of Superlatives

We've discovered that Malaysia loves their superlatives. Some of the ones we've come across on various signs around the country...

• Southeast Asia's Fastest Train
• World's 4th Tallest Telecom Tower
• World's Largest Borders Bookstore
• Malaysia's Longest Pua (a local textile)
• 2nd Oldest Rainforest
• Southeast Asia's Largest Mall
• World's Tallest Flagpole
• World's Largest Butterfly Park
• Malaysia's Tallest Christmas Tree
• World's Largest Covered Bird Park
• Malaysia's Largest Labu (clay water vessel)
• World's Largest Food Court (half the shops were closed)
• Malaysia's First Mall (a dilapitated strip mall)

Here's a photo of Fran next to the World's Largest Tankard at the royal Selangor Pewter Factory in Kuala Lumpur, which we visited on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, we just watched a man blow the Most Concentric Bubbles on the Guinness World Records show on TV, and saw a display of One of the World's Two Most Beautiful Sets of Butterflies (I can't make this stuff up, folks) at the Butterfly Park. Malaysia loves superlatives!

Back in KL

Fran was really interested in going to a local wet market, where you get your meats and seafood. Ben took us to the local wet market, which had aisles and aisles of meats, seafood, produce and other stuff for sale. Some of the vendors were particularly eager to have themselves and their products photoed - this guy called me from across the market!

One of the big differences between Malaysia and the US is the approach to food purchasing, preparation and serving. In Malaysia, you're much closer to the processing of the food. You often see the whole animal right before its cooked or sold to you. As a result, the wet market experience can take some getting used to (and it's best not to look down or into the drainage channels too closely!) For instance, here's Katie trying to look brave next to a huge pile of chickens, feet going in all directions!

In the afternoon on Monday we headed out on the town again. Here's a typical city scene around KL. The Petronas Towers are in the background. They were the world's tallest buildings until a year ago when the Taipei 101 building opened in Taiwan. But, the Petronas Towers look a lot cooler! The palm tree reminds us that KL is in the midst of an equatorial rainforest.


We made our way to Times Square, a HUGE shopping mall. It has 10 levels, here's a shot of one of the many atriums in the mall. The main attraction is the theme park inside the mall. We rode the rides for several hours! The rides there are not like the ones at Mall of America - these are huge rides, coasters with loops and lots of other things that will turn you upside down. There's also a large kids section that Ellie enjoyed exploring.

All that theme park fun tired us out so we headed back to Kampung Warisan to eat in the Putri Warisan Cafe, which is right there in their apartment complex. Then we hung out on the couch until bedtime.

More Sarawak Pics at KLDad

Ben and Steph have posted lots of their pics from the Sarawak trip, at their blog, KLDad. We'll be posting our pics from our days in KL soon, but in the meantime, head over to KLDad and check out the Sarawak trip from their perspective.