Stew

We're now on the last leg of what has been a great week in a truly amazing city. This past week, while in Kuala Lumpur, Selena and I spent time with people, animals, foods, and cultures that are very far removed from what we know. We met people from some 25 different countries, people who are Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and all different shades of belief in between. Every night, we ate the food of a different country, various mixtures of herbs and spices telling the stories of ancient heritage. Some foods made our eyes water, and other foods shocked us with super-blandness. We drank masala chai one day at an indian deli, members of Malaysia's impoverished Indian working class all around us, and the next, we were in a starbucks in the shopping district, watching Chinese descendants of the countries founding merchants walking by in their business suits. One day, we shared a cramped elevator with Japanese tourists hailing 'chokrit bangas a Aloha gwill faw dinna' in one corner, a muslin couple discussing who-knows-what in the other, and a hindu man smiling broadly in the center. I met a South African couple with thick accents who wanted to get the skinny on everyone they met, talking relentlessly about how they loved Thailand, and how they hated Dubai, and their relief at not bringing 'the kids'. I sat with them one morning as they tried to pry a conversation from a friendly, quiet physicist from Germany who was visiting in Route to a conference. We didn't see but 1 American all week, but met many Australians in the streets and stores. As opposed to other places we've been in the past couple years, the people were really, really nice. Not one cab driver tried to scam us, and every doorman would greet with a large grin, and raise his right hand to his heart, a Malaysian greeting. Maybe this says something about the Philippines, about a culture there that is not quite as warm, but I would rather believe that the warm spirit is a product of relative prosperity that Malaysia enjoys, and the fact that money and basic necessities are not as immediate concerns for the people here, as they are for the people that we work with in the Philippines. I really have no idea. I just know that Kuala Lumpur is a gorgeous city in a seemingly gorgeous country. It's a place where you can find all the amenities of a western, U.S. life, but with Islamic and Malaysian heritage intact. Instead of the melting pot we like to boast in the U.S., I see this place as more of a stew, where the different ingredients still stick out, where you can still make out the sharp edges of carrots, the vibrant colors of peas and corn, but where they all still can come together to create a flavor that could not be achieved in any other way on their individual merits.