Let's Go Clubbing!

Anyone who knows me (or has seen our wedding video) knows that I belong on a dance floor about as much as chocolate belongs on lettuce. I dislike dancing more than all other forms of exercise. It's bad enough to sweat profusely while working out - do I have to smile, keep rhythm and be social to strangers at the same time?! So when I was invited to go to a local nightclub with some friends, you'd think I'd be smart enough to say "Thank you but I have to iron all of my socks this weekend." Fortunately for you, I was not smart enough to say that and now I can bring you my (limited) experiences with the local "club scene" here in Penang.

It's worth noting that I've only been to 4 local clubs, but I have been told that these are the best clubs in all of Penang so I feel safe making some generalizations based on my experiences. Even if it's not safe, I'm going to do it anyway because I can assure you that I won't be going to any more clubs for a long while. I was a "bouncer" at a club at Purdue for about 4 weeks one summer, so I have that for a point of reference.

There's one very obvious similarity among the clubs I went to - they are freaking loud! The first place I went (called "Mambo") was so loud that the wait staff could not hear us trying to order drinks. And I'm not talking about complicated drinks like "almond flavored bay breeze with extra tomato juice" - all we wanted was beer. Finally, we had to pull out our cell phones and type it in as a text message. In fact, we ended up sitting on a couch in the club texting back and forth for the time we were there. This particular club is about 200 yards east and 20 floors below my apartment and I can still hear the music most of the night. It starts around 8pm and goes past 3am pretty much every day. You're asking yourself "Who goes to a club at 3am on a Tuesday night?"- trust me, they play the music that loud even if no one is there. In fact, when Al and I were there, we were 2 of maybe 20 people in a club that probably holds more than 100 when it's full and they weren't planning to turn the volume down even a bit. It's been almost a month and I still don't have full hearing back. It's extra funny when you see people in the club talking on their cell phones - who are they kidding?

The music they play is mostly familiar, probably about what they're playing in US clubs now with some Asian songs mixed in. The one thing that was odd was that songs that have long since become passe at home are still popular here. I thought it was interesting when they played the Madonna song "Who's that girl?" from like 1988, but I actually laughed out loud when they played "Ice Ice Baby" and the whole place went wild.


2 of the places I've gone ("ChillOut" and "Slippery Senoritas") had live bands instead of DJs. Each band had a full ensemble - guitar, bass, keyboard, and drums, as well as 2 female singers and 1 male singer all on stage at the same time. Oddly, they were cover bands for modern dance and hip hop music, much of which doesn't use a live band on the actual recording. On top of that, the singers didn't know the words to the many of the songs (something that could be easily looked up on the Internet). When you see a band full of skinny Malaysians attempting to slam dance to Limp Bizkit while mixing up the words "i know why you wanna hate me cause hate is all the world has even seen lately" - it's definitely entertaining in ways they don't intend. Then again, the DJs like to sing along to the music as well, and they often get it wrong without trying to dance around the stage and look cool, so what can you expect of the people doing the full performance?

Apparently, going to clubs requires you to have nothing to do the next day because these places are practically empty until after midnight. People have actually told me that the best time to go is after 2am! Seriously, what the heck are people doing until 2am that they can't get to the club at a reasonable hour? Surely they're napping, which they wouldn't have to do if they went to the club around 7 or 8 and then went home by like midnight. I know I'm not much of a club-goer, but there's no reason to stay out that late. Nothing good happens after 2am, in fact, I'm not sure anything good happens after about 11:30pm. It's one thing to stay up until 4am playing video games, but hopping around in a dance club is clearly different and much less useful. :) And this is not because I'm too old - some of the people in these clubs are well into their 40s and 50s.

In the clubs that don't have a band, they actually pay young women to stand on podiums in key areas of the club and dance in these psuedo-skimpy outfits. The clubs are usually very dark, so you can't really see them. In fact, in one club ("glo"), the podium dancers had a ring on each hand that they turned on like flashlights so you could at least see where they were standing, even tho you still couldn't see them dance. Besides, it's not a gentlemen's club - isn't the idea that the patrons are supposed to be the ones dancing? Why pay women to perform non-choreographed gyrating on top of the bar, further preventing me from getting my drink? At glo, I asked for a vodka and got a beer - the words don't even look the same if you lip-sync them!

Overall, it's the social aspects of "clubbing" that I don't understand. You pay about 50 bucks to get in (local currency, not 50USD) and get one drink free. The "dance floor" is only about 25% of the club space, so that fills up pretty quickly and the rest of the people sort of bob their heads near tables around the room. And the music is so loud, no one really can do any talking. People still try (just like they try to talk on their cell phones), but I'm not buying it. In some cases, people go out as large groups - 15+ people, and there's no way they are having any real conversation the whole night. Plus they'll all be tired when they get back to work on Monday anyway (and deaf too, for that matter). I just don't get the appeal. At least I know one thing - when I'm playing my video games at 2 in the morning on a friday or saturday night, I can lower the volume when my ears start to hurt.

I didn't bring a camera to these clubs, but here are some of the pictures they have posted on local websites. They're pretty small and poor quality, but at least there's something to look at other than my prose.

Observations of an expat

Now that I've been in Penang for a few months, I've adjusted to the routines of daily life. However, there are some things I've encountered that are so different from what I'm used to, they still seem odd to me. I haven't done any exciting travel this week, so here are some Penang observations.

As someone who loves his electronics, one of the first things that stood out to me was the lack of electrical outlets. In a newer house in the US, I'd estimate that there are about 2 outlets every 10 feet or so. By comparison, there's one wall in my apartment that's about 40 feet long with only 1 outlet (outlets here are "single" plugs, not double like at home). Opposite that wall is another 40 foot long wall with 1 outlet. Between the 2 of them, the short wall has only 1 outlet. So in almost 100 feet of wall space, that's only 3 plugs. In my whole kitchen, there are only 2 outlets, and one of them is used for the microwave.

Needless to say, power strips are a must. When I first got here, a friend told me that he had 17 devices plugged into one outlet and I was shocked - what a fire hazard! Now that I'm settled in, I'm almost as guilty. In the single plug near my desk, I have my computer, my monitor, my PC speakers, my cell phone, my laptop, my iPod speakers and a power converter attached to a US power strip which is powering my cordless phone, my wireless access point, and my Vonage router. So far I've knocked out the power in my apartment 4 times - one time I believe I took out the power in most of the building for 30 minutes! But all of that was at least a month ago - since then i haven't touched anything and haven't had any major problems. :)

The power here is 50hz, 220-240v. Some devices support this as well as the 60hz/110v in the US. For devices that don't support both, you need to use power converters. For the most part, my equipment has worked well, but I have seen some issues with my computer which i never had at home (system locking up or shutting down spontaneously and then refusing to restart unless i take it apart and change out the memory or the power supply). It looks like it may have been heat related - once I pulled the power supply outside the case, the issues seem to have stopped. I also had an issue where my USB hub and my printer were shocking me when I touched them - I think that was the cause of at least one of the power outages last month. :)

Another aspect of daily life that is hard to get used to is the hot water situation. This appears to be an issue only in private residence, because I did not notice it in any hotels I've stayed in the area. In the US, the house has a single hot water heater that keeps a large amount of hot water available for every room in the house at all times (most apartments have a similar setup). Here in Penang, each room has it's own water heater that needs to be turned on before you use it, including the kitchen. I've been told that the quality of the heating element is very poor and instructed to shut the heater off when I'm not using it. But this also means that in the morning, I have to remember to turn the heater on before getting in the shower - when I forget (at least once each week), it sure is a rude reminder to get in the shower half asleep when the water is still icy cold!

Perhaps most unexpected is the bedsheet situation. I'm used to a fitted sheet, then a flat sheet, then a blanket of some sort, then a comforter (maybe no blanket when it's warm). Here it appears that people do not use flat sheets (even in some nice hotels). My apartment came with several brand new "sheet sets" wrapped in plastic from the store - each of them contain only a fitted sheet and 2 pillow cases. So the only thing covering you when you sleep is the comforter. Under normal circumstances, this would probably be ok, but the washing machines here are considerably smaller than they are at home, so you can't just throw it in the wash - you have to take it to the dry cleaners. You better not sweat too much, or you'll be at the dry cleaner every other week.

Finally, being this close to the equator does interesting things to the daylight. The sun rises between 6:30 and 7:30 am - at 6:30am it is so dark that you need your headlights on when you're driving, at 7:30am, it is fully bright out. Similarly, the sun sets between 7pm and 8pm - by 8pm it is fully dark and you need lights on in your house to see. As far as i can tell, it's that way all year (no Daylight Savings Time in Malaysia). Compared to Portland which gets dark at 5pm in the winter and as late as 10pm in the summer, it feels pretty different - particularly with how fast it changes from light to dark. A few times I've been working in my apartment and i suddenly realize i can't see anything other than my computer screen. :) If you look at the bottom right of this link (opens a new window for Google Maps) you can see how close we are to the red equator line on the map (Singapore is practically right on the equator).

A few pictures from this week are posted on Picasaweb. I can't get the new Blogger version to upload any inline pictures - hopefully they'll have that fixed for next time.

Electronics and Water Heater

Aug 18, 2006 - 4 Photos

Summer in Shanghai

This week I took my first trip into China to visit the Intel Shanghai campus, meet some of the people there and get familiar with the site overall. My friend Al has been up there for several weeks and he was nice enough to show me the ropes.

The Intel site is very nice and the buildings are new. Intel uses several floors of a leased building and has built one of their own. They plan to start work on a second building later this year. There is a nice large cafeteria and even a convenience store in the cafeteria to buy general supplies (including some toiletries, underwear and stockings). There are a fair number of expats in Shanghai, so most people on campus are relatively comfortable speaking in English.

Unlike Malaysia, it can be difficult to find anyone who can speak English in Shanghai, so you need to be prepared at all times to communicate without spoken or written words. One example is that before you take a taxi anywhere, you need to get someone to write down the Chinese directions to any place you want to go, including back to your hotel. Al says that frequently the taxi driver will pass back a cell phone to have you call someone who can speak Chinese if they don't understand where you are asking to go. It may seem easy to tell a taxi driver to take you back to the Sheraton at the end of the day, but the Chinese word for "Sheraton" doesn't sound anything like the English word "Sheraton" (and there is probably more than 1 Sheraton), so that won't work unless you have an "address card" with you.

I was consistently impressed with the food while I was there. First, the restaurants and cafeteria are less conscious of food restrictions (altho those restaurants and meal selections are available for people who are interested), so I had a cheeseburger at Hooters, baby-back ribs at Tony Roma's, and even "Hong Kong" food at Bi Feng Tang (a restaurant chain in Shanghai). In fact, the only thing I didn't have was actual "Shanghai-ese food", but it was good to have beef and pork prepared in familiar ways, so I cheated a bit on this trip. Next time I go, local food only! :)














Driving around Shanghai was quite interesting. It's a huge city - it took about an hour to ride to the Intel campus from our hotel by bus or by taxi and that distance was less than half the size of the city. It was nice to see cars that were more familiar brands like Honda and Toyota, but particularly interesting was how many Volkswagens and GM cars there were. It turns out that VW was the first foreign company to manufacture cars in China so at one point all government cars and taxis were VWs. More recently, GM started making Buicks in China so many government cars are now Buicks, but most taxis are still VW. I expected to see many more cars by Asian vendors, but they were less common than VW & GM. It seems this is one example of the tension between China and Japan - it's almost unpatriotic for Chinese consumers to support Japanese brands (this last part is just my impression, no one directly confirmed this).

You can view some of the pictures I took by clicking the web album below, but there were 2 interesting things I observed that I didn't expect. First, all of the taxis separate the driver from the passengers with a cocoon type assembly. I guess this is like in bigger cities in the US where there is Plexiglas between the front and back seat, but it looks very odd if you haven't seen it before. I included one picture of that to give you an idea of how it looks.

The second thing I noticed is that many of the apartment residents in Shanghai have decided to "glass-in" their balconies. I'd estimate that some buildings have more than 70% of the balconies glassed in. I tried to take some pictures of this, but it may be hard to see. I asked why this was and I was told that people did it to reduce noise of the city, make their balcony more safe for family members and reduce the dust and pollution in the air in their apartment. I suspect it also gives them a bit more living space, as some of the balconies look like they could work as a small bedroom.


Overall, I enjoyed the unique building architecture around Shanghai and took several pictures to give you an idea of the diversity. There is not much to see of older architecture because the newer buildings are so tall, but you can see some of the older buildings in areas like "The Bund". I took some nighttime pictures of buildings in The Bund. You can read more about The Bund here. Sadly, my camera doesn't take very good pictures at night, so if you're curious to see The Bund in daylight, you can view some pictures here.

I was able to take one day to do some tourist type stuff while I was there. Al played tour guide in the morning and took me to Yu Yuan Garden. This is a several-hundred-year old rock and water garden in the middle of downtown Shanghai. It's nice to get inside and get away from all the noise and crowds of the city for a while. Shanghai is relatively hot this time of year, but the humidity is much less than Penang, so it felt about like a hot day in Portland. Rock gardens are very popular in Shanghai, in fact here's a picture of me standing in front of "one of the three greatest rocks in all of China" (so we were told). It's not my most flattering picture, so focus on the rock in the background. :)














In the afternoon, we took a guided tour offered by one of the hotels. We drove thru the Xin Tian Di area of Shanghai (you can read details of the area here) and then went to the People's Square. At the square, you are right between the Grand Theater and the Shanghai Museum and you can see lots of impressive buildings in the area.

Finally, we went to the Jade Buddha Temple, one of the few temples spared in the Cultural Revolution. They have 3 unique Buddha statues made of jade, as well as several other statues made of sandalwood and other material. Our tour guide gave us an overview of the Buddhist religious history which was very interesting as well, especially the parallels with some of the other world religions (3 images of Buddha in 1 Buddha, a female Buddha image that is also held in high regard, etc).

On a separate note, I only heard about the British airplane terrorist plot after I got back to Malaysia, but it's impressive that they were able to stop it. I will be interested in seeing how that affects my upcoming travel, as I'm planning to return to Portland at the end of the month.

I'm trying a new thing with my pictures this week, using Google's Picasa Web Folders instead of Shutterfly. If you have any feedback on which interface is better, let me know. To view many other pictures from my trip to Shanghai, please click the web album here:

Shanghai August 06

Aug 8, 2006 - 76 Photos

And..... We're back!

It's been about 3 weeks since I last posted. Susan Jane came to visit and we spent about a week and a half exploring Malaysia. Then it took me about a week and a half to catch back up on all the work I put off while we were away. I'm finally caught up, so I wanted to update you on the places we visited and share some pictures.

The first 2 days SJ was here, we stayed on the island of Penang. We went shopping at a local mall, super market, and an outdoor market on the first day. The goal was to keep SJ awake as long as possible to help her sleep thru her first night on local time. Turns out she didn't need much help, and she managed to sleep 14 straight hours - easily the longest I've ever heard of anyone sleeping on the first night after they arrived.

On the next day, we toured the Penang Botanical Garden. One of the most interesting parts of the Botanical Garden is how many free-roaming monkeys there are there. I only got a few pictures of them, but I took some pictures of the signs warning against them (and some videos too, altho I haven't figured out a good way to post them yet).

Then we went to Penang Hill and took a Funicular train up to the top. There were stops all along the way for people who lived up the hill, which was odd - there's no other way for them to get home but take this slow, crowded train up the hill! Once we got to the top, we saw a Mosque, a Hindu temple, and a hotel - I can't imagine how they got the materials up the hill to build it all.

After that, we went to Kek Lok Si Temple, a large Buddhist temple in Penang. We actually didn't take any pictures of it, but the Temple area is huge. By this time, we were exhausted so we went home to eat and pack for our trip the next day.

If you haven't already viewed them, pictures of our Penang site seeing are available here.
If you'd like to read about Kek Lok Si Temple, click here.

On the next morning, we drove down to the capital of Malaysia - Kuala Lumpur (KL). It's about a 4 hour drive. Most cars here don't have cruise control, so it can get a bit long. However one thing I wasn't prepared for was driving at high speeds in metric. At times I was driving 150kmph, which didn't feel that fast until I did the math and realized that was over 90mph in a car smaller than a Toyota Tercel. Fortunately, we made it there without any problems.

Once there, we checked into the JW Marriott - easily one of the nicest hotels we'd ever been to, and only $100/night. I am still a platinum member from all my traveling to San Diego last year, so they treated us pretty special with a full tour around the hotel, lots of introductions as VIP guests, special gifts in our room, etc. To top it all off, our 2 nights there were free because I used my Marriott rewards points. It was very nice, especially when trying to impress your wife so she thinks you're an important person!

The first afternoon, we walked around the city and took taxi's to some of the more obvious landmarks. There are an insane number of shopping malls in KL (I've been told this is true for most Asian cities) - at least 7 malls within walking distance of our hotel. And these aren't the standard 2 floor malls we have in the US - each of these is 5+ floors with very expensive brand name stores (Louis Vuitton, Rolex, etc). It's unclear who can afford these stores in Malaysia, but there are a lot of them.

That afternoon, we went to the 2nd largest building in the world - Petronas Towers (also known as KLCC). They only allow about 600 people each day up to the bridge between them, so we didn't get a chance to go, but as you can see from the pictures, it's only about 1/2 way up the tower.

Then we went to the Menara Communication tower - the 4th largest freestanding comms tower in the world. You actually get higher in that than you can in the Petronas Tower. We took some pictures and then walked around outside. Turns out there is one tree outside the tower which is so rare, they spent millions of dollars to move the tower away from it - certainly an odd planning decision in the center of a city.

The next day was our busiest day of the trip. In the morning we visited the Orchid Garden, the Butterfly Park, the Bird Park and a chocolate factory (YUM!). We took lots and lots of pictures there - I've posted the best ones on shutterfly (link below). Then we went back to the hotel, grabbed a quick bite for lunch and went back out on tour. This time we went drove down Ambassador's Row where most of the embassies are in KL, including the American embassy which, ironically, is next door to the Iraqi embassy. Then we went to the Royal Selangor Pewter factory where they demonstrated how they make Pewter and related products. They actually have the Worlds Largest beer stein there, which is certainly an unique achievement. Then we went to a Museum of Aborigine People of Malaysia - this was a surprisingly well kept Museum with all sorts of tools, musical instruments, and pictures from the approximately 18 different Aborigine tribes in Malaysia. Next we went to the Batu Caves, a 400 Million year old rock formation that has become a Hindu temple and a popular destination during a yearly Hindu holiday (they told us that more than 1.5million people go there in just 3 days). We wrapped this tour up with a visit to a Batik factory and a Leather factory. Finally, we headed back to the hotel - phew!

If you haven't already viewed them, pictures of our KL site seeing are available here.

The next day we packed up and headed to Perhentian Island. There is no direct way to get there, so we had to take a taxi 1 hour out of the city to the airport. Then we took a 1 hour plane ride to the east coast of Malaysia. Then a bus took to the port where the boat would pick us up (45 minute ride). Then we took a boat over to the island, which was another 45 minutes. By the time you add all the transfers in there, it was more than 6 hours from when we left the hotel to when we got to our next room on the island. If only there had been a train ride somewhere in there, I think we would have won a prize. :) Fortunately, we had 5 days to recover on the white beaches before we had to do it all over again. While there, we went snorkeling and saw a shark and a large sea turtle, as well as lots of coral and fish.

If you haven't already viewed them, pictures of our Perhentian Island site seeing are available here.

Finally, it was time to come home. We got back to Penang and went out to dinner with some of my coworkers and their wives, then SJ left the next morning.

After all that, I almost need another vacation to recover! This week I'm headed to China, so hopefully I'll have some more interesting stories to share next weekend.