Helping the Malaysian Economy

While Christmas seems a bit distant the malls are decorated to the hilt. Christmas carols, including those that allude to the weather, provide the music. Still our mind has been more on making two essential purchases and one that may make my life easier.

Every time I come to KL it rains. The lady at the laundry told me that the Chinese associate water with wealth, and therefore I must be very rich. In celebration of my new found wealth and the ever present rain I cajoled Doug into buying an umbrella. Mine wasn’t meant for sharing – when we shared it we both were drenched. At a department store were first directed to a dry goods store, but I imagined that we would only find cheap umbrellas – guaranteed to last through no more than a month of storms. We eventually found the umbrella section in a department store. We asked a saleswoman if they had umbrellas similar to mine (there were none on display). Her answer – “It costs 99 ringgits.” We assured her that we knew the cost and that it was the umbrella we wanted. She got out a set of keys, knelt on the floor and unlocked a drawer at the bottom of a show case. I still am puzzled at a business plan that would hide away an umbrella and not even let customers know that it was available.

Our next effort to help the Malaysian economy was to buy a new mobile phone. I have been getting by with a nine year old phone. The battery was struggling to stay charged for a day, and I was hearing from people who called but never reached me. At our first stop the counter was crowded with young buyers. (Brendan asked us if Malaysian were buying. Clearly young Malaysians appetite for things electronics is still healthy.) So we gave up for the day. Our next attempt was more successful. So we now have a new phone. Doug has the old phone so we can keep in touch when we go our separate ways in KL. Of course, this assumes that his phone will operate reasonably well.

When we were in the rain forest we met two women who reported how much they liked their Asus computer. Today we went to a computer expo at KL Centre. The size of the crowd was impressive – similar to Times Square on a long weekend (although more orderly). We bought our Asus and Doug is busy getting acquainted with it, and I am looking forward to moving to a much lighter computer when I travel.