Please Do Not Step On The Bowl

At one point in my life, I spent a fair bit of time working in Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur was my home for most of one summer. It was the summer before the Petronas Towers were complete.

Actually, it may not have been summer but winter. It is hard to tell because there are no seasons, but it did rain more than usual. In fact, I remember being more wet than I ever remember being during that time in KL. At that time, I worked for Bank Bumiputra. The bank was sometimes benevolent. They would send a car to my hotel to pickup and transport me to my consulting gig at the bank. It was great. Air-conditioned luxury.

But sometimes they would forget. Maybe is was the penta-regular prayer breaks or maybe sometimes it was punishment for “standing on the bowl” as the sign-from-inside-the-bathroom-stall forbid. But either way, sometimes the car didn’t come.

One day, after a long day, punctuated by five prayer breaks and two power outages (in a 35-story building in downtown KL), the car didn’t come. After sweating in my suits for two weeks, I had two days before, purchased an Armani suit from the downstairs lobby. It was a nice hotel.

On that day, the car didn’t show. I started to walk. It was a very interesting walk with all the end-of-the-day goings on in KL. Plush, hot and very busy. About midway in the couple-mile walk, it started to rain. Rains aren’t the same on the equator, none of this “London Fog”. It poured.

At first I tried to hide under buildings and big trees. That plan worked for about a minute or 1/120 of my trip. Another half mile of fervently trying to hail a commodity cab. And then I just got drenched.

I was so wet. Leather shoes and belt, shirt with cuff links, my New Armani Suit and lots of water. Till the end of it’s days, that suit was tainted. It never made it to another Important Meeting.