Kuala Lumpur (cont.)

The workshop at least goes well. My two presentations on Tuesday are very well received, both by the audience and my coworkers, some of each go out of their way to tell me how much they liked them. That they particularly liked their balance of down-to-earth procedural aspects and the more abstract goals included is particularly welcome, as I’ve spent some time lately to adjust them that way.
So Tuesday passes relatively well. Late in the evening, internet problems notwithstanding, I manage to Skype both with my dad in Germany and my wife in DC. We decide on a new approach to get things sorted out at home, which helps my general well-being. And it turns out that my coworkers who asked me to come along to a supposedly famous bar that evening haven’t left until I’m done with all this, so I come along for a nightcap. I feel that I earned it (and there’s no alcohol to be had on the grounds, this being a state-owned facility in a Muslim country).
The place in question is closed. So is the alternative suggested by the taxi driver. But my coworkers (French, the lot of them) spy a “Deutsches Gasthaus” as we drive by and I drily remark that at least it likely has decent beer, which is enough to have us ending up there. So I’m having beer with a bunch of French people in a germanesque pub in Kuala Lumpur. It strikes me that when I had dinner with a bunch of international people in a Korean bar in Tokyo this seemed impossibly strange (and cool). Now I’m just happy to have a Warsteiner (though it seems to have spent a little too long in the bottle). I seem to be growing jaded frightfully quickly.

Wednesday there’s more of the workshop – I’m not really involved in this segment (which is why my flight leaves this evening), but want to see what the module organized by the Banque de France is all about. So I’ll quit after lunch. Should allow just enough time to pack my things and maybe for a second dip in the pool.
I want to come back here.
Kuala Lumpur, of which I’ve only seen glimpses through taxi windows, appeals to me. Sure, on first glance it’s just another big Asian city. And the advertisements everywhere for next week’s F1 race don’t intrigue me in the least. But even the slums are colourful, mostly the city is clean and it’s full of plants in riotous greens. Heat and humidity are not my best friends, and though they are sure to be one’s constant companions here, I think I’d like it here. And there’s supposed to be fantastic hiking here, not just Mount Kinabalu on Malaysian Northeast Borneo, but supposedly even quite close to Kuala Lumpur in peninsular Malaysia.
In short, having a longer workshop here, with a few extra days to spend in the end, would seem like a wonderful thing to do. I find myself pondering things like whether and how I could take my wife along, what to do with the kids in the meantime, etc. I don’t know. But KL isn’t going anywhere, so all sorts of chances may come up again. So I’m not regretful, though it seems that this trip had a lot of opportunities I felt the need to ignore. Well, one effect of cutting down on the ridiculous amounts of traveling I’m currently doing (I’m in the top quarter of this Fiscal Year’s travelers already, and only been with the unit for half of its length) should be that I might capitalize on one or two such opportunities during the year. And let me spend more time with my family – to which I shall now return. Another 30 hours, 22 of which in an airplane, but I’m looking forward to it.