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Thanks Wahlau <wahlau@aeon.com.my> for converting everything into HTML for me... Dang, I'm lazy. Visit Wahlau at his website, where there are pics of Germany at wahlau.org.
NOTE: Monday, January 14th 2002 - Azuan is no longer working up there. Ram is back in the US. I'm in Australia. We don't have any plans of making a trip up there again, anytime soon I assure you - they may think we're feeding terrorists! Any comments, etc... direct them to ccha32@silas.cc.monash.edu.au.
Some adventure... by S. Ram (unedited!) - edited 14/01/2002 by Colin Charles
It has been more than half a week, shows what a lazy fellow I am. Time for
my Outing Report. I don't intend to be objective all, this is completely my
view of what happened.
I mess up and lose my Touch and Go card and forget to make arrangements to
get myself to the LRT station, so I grab my shoes and leave the house at
11:30am. I'm expecting to reach there late. It will take half an hour to
walk to the LRT station and it is hot enough that I'll prolly turn back
after 5 mins. I walk past a feeder bus stop and decide to at least check the
schedule, there might be a bus coming soon. Phone (yes, a five) [a Nokia 5130. Hehe.] says 1136,
schedule says next bus is at 1137. Sit around pondering the probability of
the bus coming on time, and the meaning of life, and the bus comes around
the corner in forty seconds.
Shaken up by the punctuality of the bus, I realise I have no fifty sen coin.
I would normally use the card, right? So the bus driver holds on to my 1
ringgit note and hands me change at the next stop after the next lady who
got on paid. Get to the station, and find that the ticket machines don't
accept ten ringgit bills, my smallest change. Damnit I miss my touch-and-go
card. Waited in line and paid RM3.40 for a two-way to KLCC.
Got to the KLCC station and into the Suria place without incident. Got there
at 12:20, amazing. Spend a while walking back and forth (spl?) trying to
figure out what Center Court was (no Wimbeldon jokes pls). Found it, and
walked through in front of Tops and realised I was right between KFC and BK.
Exactly where Azuan wanted me to be. Phone said 1230, exactly.
I last saw Azuan and Colin in the BU McD's gathering, which I think was over
Christmas or some time in the middle of last year, so I should have a good
idea how they looked. I turn around abit hoping to see somebody, and Azuan
walks in. His hair is changed, to a style that is more er.... mainstream.
First thing he says is "Don't recognize me?", though I did recognize him.
Colin, is of cource, late, and we crack jokes about it. We call him and he
is in the train passing the Kg Baru station.
We walk out to the tunnel to the station and find him, and we discuss others
who are supposed to show up. Colin said SerenDPT might show up. We also
discussed Mr Ling Hong Wen. We decide to go find food to eat if either of
them call, we'll direct them to wherever we're eating. We sum up food needs
and wants and choices, and our options work out to be the Suria food court,
and the buddhist temple near TRI. Half a minute later we walk by Chinoz and
we decide to go there instead. [SerenDPT or Mr Ling Hong Wen didn't turn up for the meet.]
We got this lovely table in the smoking section (Colin's sling bag could fit
a hash pipe), away from the other tables. We were fairly quick to
order....lamb for Mr Porkless, pizza for Mr Meatless, and salmon for Mr
Grrlfriendless. [Azuan is Mr Porkless, Ram Mr Meatless, and Colin Mr Grrlfriendless - gah! What a name Ram.]
Photographs were taken.
After eating and chatting and chatting and chatting and chatting we decided
it was time to go. Azuan's office is in Tower2, and it would be a great
opportunity to see the Twin Towers from the inside. I had never been up
before. [Thats what you get for only staying in the USA for too long! I've been up to the sky bridge, which incidentally, was closed the day we went up!] We get sign in as visitors and get our pass tags in exchange for my
drivers licence and Colin's IC. We have to take a elevator from the
mezzanine(where does this word come from?) floor to the 42nd floor, and from
there change elevators to get to the 49th floor where Azuan's place is.
We go to his place and check out the stuffed toys and dolls on one desk, the
conference room, and the other conference room, and say hello to the gals
working there. We take photos of the skyline, the park, the towers, of each
other. We check out Azuan's desk. We check out Azuan's attractive matsalleh
boss. [This lady was way past Ram's age limit!] We leave through this secret looking door next to Azuan's desk out
into the corridor. We say goodbye and make plans to go CS'ing.
CS is Counterstrike, a shoot-em up game people play across a LAN. Since
we're not into LAN parties, we'd go to a cybercafe. I suck at CS, but I
enjoy playing and I enjoy losing. Azuan is enthusiastic about it and makes
no mention of his skills, so it can be assumed he kicks ass. Colin hasn't
played CS, the poor kid, so here's our chance to deflower him. We're to
play, tentatively, sometime the following week.
Colin and I ride the elevator down to the 42nd floor. After abit of
confusion, we find the elevator that will take us up (i mean up baby) to the
83rd floor. Up up we go. We get out and there's an office chained shut (?)
with a sign there saying it is closed and restricted. Photo taken. Photo
taken of 83rd floor plaque. We think this is as good as it gets untill the
idiot among us (me) hits the button to call the elevator... but the bank of
elevators opposite of those that we came on.
We get in and we get three choices: 83, 85, 86. Rockin'! We ride up to the
86th floor, and it appears incompletely built. The place has that awesome
You're Not Supposed To Be Here aura, so we're happy as can be. The room is
just a single room, taking up the entire floor. Yes, that means we can see
all around from that room. (well, accept for the elevator shaft blocking the
view). The ceiling is like 20ft up and has all sorts of wiring and control
systems exposed. No pictures taken of the ceiling. [Which was the big mistake here really. If we did take pictures, we could have sold it to foreign terrorists for loads of cash. Ahaha... In that case, it'll be like Entrapment the movie :P]
This view is better than anything you'd see on that skybridge thingy. Why
not, we're twice as high as them :) Photographs taken liberally. I've got
this sweet pic of Tower1, right at the top, with the pointy thing and all. I
can see that new highway that runs from Semarak all the way to Ampang and
into the hills... it is so pretty! And empty, too.
Photos photos photos.
We hear voices. Busted! These two guys in pale green with "Security Patrol"
(?!?) badges on them are stunned to see us, standing there like tourists.
They pull out their handphones (walky talkies don't work from there?) and
after 5mins of trying to get a signal, they call the security desk to send
people up.[Incidentally, you'll get full signal coverage for the mobile phone, but you can't make calls! Its because we were so high up, we're into contact with many cells (BTS'es), that the phone can't put a lock onto one easily. Gah, watch your cell phone battery drop like hell this way!] We wait and wait and wait and look around and feel hot (no
aircond up there) and finally this guy dressed all up as a policeman (it
might be a safe assumption that he is a policeman) and he escorts us down to
the skybridge. I expected him to throw us out, and we'll go get our ID back
and we'll go home. Nooo he wants us to explain things to his boss, so this
secret looking door (they're everwhere in that place) opens out of the wall
and we enter the security office, with all their monitoring equipment and
all. Complete with a bigger (literally) policeman. Explained our story, and
had our escort explain things too. Our escort was a real nice guy,
explaining our situation as "tersesat" as opposed to the security patrol
guys to refered to us as "merayau". They decided to verify that we really
were there to visit Azuan, but he was at some meeting, presumably with an
attractive matsalleh woman.
So they decide to photocopy our IC/DL and they write up an incident report.
I guess if their control systems screw up they'll come hunt us down. This
guy in a dark green blazer warns us that it will be quite probable that
we'll be barred from entering the towers from now on. (he shows us a bank of
photocopied IC's on the sign-in officers' desks of barred people) [Empty threats if you ask me. I'm sure we'd get to back up again :)]
Oh, and the green blazered dude asked "ambil gambar, kah?". We both say no,
feeling the bulge of our cameras in our pocket. Greenblazer then says
"tapi... safety patrol kata you abil gambar". So we both look real dumb and
say "oh saya ambil gambar dia" refering to each other. I decided much
earlier in the adventure that it would be much much better to act like a
stupid jakun tourist than as smart-alec'd kids.
Colin had the urge to go to the toilet, to relieve himself of his CF/MMC
card from his camera, to save his precious pix. I wasn't so concerned. [My pics are precious! Look at the pictures. They're all so good, but the resolution is heavily chopped so no one steals them and decides to make prints of them. All hi-res pics reside on my hard disk, tucked safely away!]
It takes soooooooooooooooooo long for them to write each thing up and get
approval from somebody else on the next step to take with us and it was
about 45mins of custody untill we were realeased.
We went of to cool down and pamper ourselves at Dome, where I considered
running off and photographing the waiters who look at our empty table at
horror. [Ram likes guys. You see, he needs to photograph waiters when normally, we'd photograph the females...]Colin was busy drooling at this young lady in a sheer top, and yes,
a photograph was taken. We gave Azuan a ring to tell him what happened and
the names of the security guys involved.
We head to the LRT to go home, and halfway though Azuan calls us and tells
us he checked with the security people, and they seem to have been just
worried about the safety issue (we could get hurt or fly off or something
like that on the unfinished floor. err whatever) and they wont make a big
thing about it. [In all logical thinking, no, we couldn't have decided to fly off. We were enclosed in glass remember? If we moseyed over to the 87th floor, which isn't even a floor, maybe then, we'd have had lift off!]Azuan also said he had a change in plans and could leave
work now, and he'd pick us up at the LRT station near my neighbourhood and
we'd go CS at a cybercafe down my road.
But Colin pussied out and 'needed to go home, my daddy needs me'. I got home
about 4something in the afternoon, and left Colin riding the train.
Photos I took are on my HD, I'll put them up somewhere later today. If I
just am too lazy, will put them up next weekend :P Colin's photo's are um..
with him I guess.
It was great fun, and I hope we have another outing again soon.
Ram.
(first draft lah..... memang got spelling and grammatical errors)
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