Below is the series of pictures from my trip to Malaysia - I wanted to mention that I came back from Malaysia in August of 2001 just before the September 11th bombings; that would have changed my experience I'm sure.  I originally went to Malaysia, Penang Island in particular, as part of a project to set up a production line to build Spectrum Analyzers for Agilent Technologies.  My job was to build all the test stations, train all Technicians and Engineers, and write the training and procedural documentation.  The whole project spanned 6 months in the US, and three months in Malaysia.  I originally went with a team of guys (see pic below), but they all left after three weeks, and I ended up managing the whole operation for the duration of the project - this was unexpected, but it worked out okay.  If you want to see pics of the production line, you will find them at the bottom. 

The first set of pics are from K.L (Kuala Lumpur), which is the capital of Malaysia and is the home to the worlds largest building - the Petronas Towers.  Although they are the tallest by means of their long radio towers on the top of the building, the Sears Tower (Chicago - my home town..:-) still has the most floors, and is the tallest structure minus the radio towers.  It is quite an amazing view from the "Sky Bridge" as they call it, which is a cat walk connecting the two buildings - this is as far up as they will let you go.  Notice the art in the way that they designed the roofs of the building below to look like some sort of circuit board, along with the fountain.  It is interesting, but when you are in Asian, people will come up to you and demand that you take a picture with them.  You will see this illustrated in the picture of me with the Chinese girls.  They also demanded that I send them 5 copies - one for each of them, which I did of course.  K.L. is a very fun, and modern city to visit.  The Malays there tend to be more on the liberal side if you will.

While in Malaysia, I was invited to two Muslim weddings which is a great honor.  You will notice that the two weddings are quite different - one is a more traditional style, and the other is a modern military type wedding.  I was invited by four beautiful women from my work - you will see a picture of them in their traditional style dress.  The clothes that the women wear in Malaysia is amazing.  Malaysia is made up of 55% Malays, 30% Chinese, and 15% Indian, so the array of clothes is very broad and beautiful.  I especially like the Punjabi style from India.  Unfortunately, there is also a class struggle in Malaysia, not to mention great sexism - you will see that the women do most of the lower-level assembly jobs.  The Malays (The Majority) control the government, the Chinese control the business side of things, and that leaves the Indians as a sort of second class citizen.  This was not more apparent than in the Agilent site there.  The Chinese made up the majority of the managerial positions, and senior Engineer and Technician levels.  The Malays made up some of the Managers, Engineers, Technicians, and assemblers.  The Indians on the other hand primarily cleaned the bathrooms and did the custodial jobs - kind of like the Mexicans here in the US.  Their were a few exceptions to this, but very few.  I took issue with management on a few occasions because I felt that they were promoting Chinese with lesser skills over Malays with superior skills.  I was able to do this in a diplomatic way since I was not Malaysian.  Besides, they wanted us to keep sending them jobs.  Consequently, a year and half after I came back from Malaysia, they laid off 100 people out of 140 from my production line.  After making it through five round of layoffs, I finally took the voluntary severance package.  That was the best thing I ever did - I took six months off to work on a new album, and had a much needed break form the Rat Race.

The last of the pictures are from some trips that I went on in Penang, or some of the islands off the west coast of Malaysia.  You'll see pictures of a marine park island - I bought a disposable underwater camera, and got some decent shots.  You will notice a picture of some Indonesia girls.  Again, they demanded that I take a picture with them; but in this case, they made me take a picture with each one individually - with their own cameras of course. Make sure to also check out the pictures of the Butterfly Farm, Bukit Bendera (Penang Hill, which sits high above the island), and the botanical gardens.  There are some great shots of the Monkeys.  They were cool with the pictures for awhile, but then a couple of them tried to attack me.  They were probably pissed off that I didn't give them some food for their troubles.  I had to use my martial arts to fend them off - I didn't think I would be using my skills for that.  I wasn't hurt, so I can have a good laugh about it now.  Some of them can be pretty vicious, so you have to be careful.  Anyway, enjoy the pics...