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Steph's Asia Trip
Had a good nights sleep in my cool room!
Went round Chinatown, Little India (I think it's amazing that all the big towns have these segregated areas for the Chinese and Indians - they don't seem to integrate! You think they would have after all this time!) and saw some more historical sites, including a reconstruction of the Sultan's Palace (made totally from wood, not using any nails) and a very interesting Baba Nayonya mansion which is owned by a wealthy family where the chinese man came over during Melaka's industrial growth and married a Malay woman (they call those families Baba Nayonya). Tried to do the river trip but there weren't enough people so they didn't run it.
Also met an interesting person today. He is an engineer from Australia and was a project manager in a steel forging plant!! Was very exciting - spent a lot of time asking him all about the various forging operations they performed!! I'm such a loser! Don't think he knew what to make of me! And the funny thing is that he's not a metallurgist (which you would think was a key requirement for someone who works in a forging plant and is responsible for correct heat treatments etc!) He said he felt a bit out of his depth when it came to the technical stuff.
It's strange because i've met a awful lot of engineers out here whilst traveling. I shared a dorm with a nice French guy (Pascal - french name!! Ha Ha!) in Taman Negara and he was an electrical engineer - who worked in Reading suprisingly!! And i've also met a few mechanical engineers. No Aero engineers sadly, and definitely no- one who does materials! But the worrying thing they all have in common is that they all loved their jobs for the first 3 or 4 years and then got so sick of them that they quit and came traveling! I hope that's not prophetic and what it's going to be like for me!
That reminds me actually - Pascal had his camera stolen whilst on Ko Samui on the beach. He was really upset - mainly because he'd lost the photos (and also the camera). But really bizarrely, the following day a Thai man asked him to take a picture of him - so Pascal agreed, and it was his camera!! The stupid theif hadn't even deleted the old photos!! What an idiot! But I guess if he had a brain and any shred of initiative he'd probably have a proper job rather than being a theif! So Pascal demanded that he give the camera back and after a bit of arguing etc (if you're really interested e-mail me and I'll fill in this bit) and got his camera back with all the photos still on it! How fortunate is that!!??!
Going back to KL tomorrow - and think i'll buy my new camera in the afternoon - going to get a Pentax Optio S6 I think (it's the new version of the one I dropped, which means I don't need to read a new camera manual because it works pretty much the same as the old one)
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