Malay over in Malaysia

Malay, the language of Malaysia and Malaysians, is, I’ve decided after careful scrutiny, a lot like scrambled Spanish without any accents, or maybe Italian. In my opinion, which took at least several minutes to form, it’s a very flat language with an off-putting lack of phonetic opportunity. For example, Taxi is spelled “Taksi,” even though, as far as I’m aware, the letter “x” does exist in their alphabet. Other interesting observations: it’s very hard to find a word in which the letter “a” doesn’t appear at least once, the word for “and” is “dan,” and I’m pretty sure the word for “water” is “air,” unless it means “drinking” instead.

So that’s where my thoughts rest at this juncture, somewhere around hour 3 of my 7-hour layover in Kuala Lumpur. As we descended over the city I was able to catch a peek of the Petronas Twin Towers, which means in the last day I’ve seen the two tallest buildings in the world. The tallest being the 101 Tower (101 because 100 is perfect and it’s better than perfect) in Taipei, Taiwan, of which I actually got to ascend (and descend) in the fastest elevator in the world—which apparently should add substantial wow to the already wow experience of ascending the tallest building in the world. My observation is that tall buildings as far more impressive from the ground than the sky, but impressive either way. The 101 Tower has a 65-ton ball which hangs about eighty-five floors up to decrease vacillation, so that’s impressive.

Back to here and now. This airport has special lounges for each airline, all located on a special second floor for lounges. These lounges have entryways that resemble those of 5-star hotels, and I imagine spas and massages and alcohol behind the smiling concierges but am still too unfamiliar, and let’s face it, stingy, to actually proceed beyond window shopping. There are also “movie lounges” in the middle of the concourses: four TVs all facing outward, and, from what I’ve seen, all playing the movie “airheads.” There are free internet hubs and free WIFI, motion-sensing escalators, and women in headscarves reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “Tipping Point.”

So far I’ve toured the premises, changed my Taiwanese Dollars into Indian Rupees, which was surprisingly satisfying and may become a pastime for me, changing currencies, it felt oddly like getting paid, especially if you don’t think about things like exchange rates or conversion fees, and been accosted by scavenging cologne salespeople. My future plans include reading and probably eating at Sbarro pizza—a week of Asian food has created a craving for something with no assembly required. Just so you know, “pizza” in Malay is “peetsa”…I wouldn’t doubt it in any case.