KL. Quite a city.
Or so I’m told by Sec. Condi Rice.
(before anything else, considering the photo above is unretouched, taken with my crappy cellphone, at night, and from the inside of a fast moving vehicle, I think it’s the most fracking awesome picture in the history of earth)
Backgrounder: this is MY FIRST big multilateral event, and there’s an Olympic-like feel to the place (not that I’ve ever been to an Olympics, I just watch a lot of TV). Flags, international delegates, opening ceremonies, tight security. Everything but the overwhelming corporate sponsorship (just imagine: “ASEAN! Brought to you by … KFC!”)
I already know even before leaving for KL that our schedule will be tight, but think “it’s a five-day conference, surely I’ll have time to get me some of that ‘Malaysia Truly Asia’ action I’ve heard so much about”.
Big, big, BIG ROOKIE MISTAKE.
From the moment we arrive at the airport (and go on another high-speed motorcade, but I think I’m getting used to it) ‘til the moment we leave, our program is so packed that I literally set foot on only a 100-square meter area of Malaysian soil, and 98% of that is either at the hotel or at the convention center. No visit to the Petronas Towers, no Aquaria (which is just under the convention hall!), no nothing. The only reason I get to see any of the city at all is because the one-way street system makes a 50-foot Point-A-to-Point B walk into an around-the-block-a-couple-of-times 10 minute car ride.
Meanwhile, the convention center is made up of huge glass windows, so everyday I see this beautiful park and huge mall just TAUNTING me to come over (at one point, I literally have my nose and paws pressed up against the glass like a puppy at the pet store [btw, sorry about those nose smudges, KLCC; my bad]). Plus, I have marching orders from the LLDDL to hunt down a pair of VNC/Vincci shoes, or not bother coming back.
Thing is, I find out too late that events like these are like law school: for every hour of in-room activity, you need something like three hours preparation time. So if conference sessions are from 8:30 to 5:00, and we have to prepare early morning and night, that means I have…um…eight and a half…multiply by three…carry the one…ZERO free time!!!
Of course, I wasn’t sent here to have free time. Most of my days are taken up by successive sideline bilateral meetings, or as I like to call it, Diplomatic Speed Dating. Seriously, it’s just like a high school singles scene, complete with note passing and frantic phone calls to ask for a date, chaperones, first impressions, small talk, body language, promises to do this again sometime, I’ll-call-yous (and, at the end of everything, I don’t score here either). We went through something like a dozen bilaterals in 5 days, discussing almost every complex world issue along the way (just like on my high school dates; did I mention I never scored?)
Anyway, Sec. Condi doesn’t arrive until the penultimate day of the conference and after a scheduled meeting has already started. When she walks in the meeting, I mutter “All Rice!” and laugh at my sophisticated wit and sense of humor. No one else does.
So she sits, and when it’s her turn to speak, tells her hosts “You have quite a city, I noticed as we were driving over here”.
I’ll have to take Madam Secretary’s word for it.
PLACE KINDA REMINDS ME OF: you mean the little half-acre corner-of-the-sky part of KL that I saw through the convention center glass? Actually, if you shrunk it down, it looks almost exactly like the park between Glorietta, 6750 and Shangri-La.
HAPPY EPILOGUE: I actually managed to get the LLDDL’s shoes, but it took Mission: Impossible-like complexity and timing, and involved the unknowing passive participation of a Head of Government, three Ministers, two spouses, an Ambassador, and someone I hope I outrank.
Foreign Minister Photo-op
Hottie-off-the-press
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