Neela’s dream is to be famous in the movies. Neela is currently with her family at the Batu Caves celebrating Deepavali. She is with her family and her mother nods appreciatively at me. “Are you going to put her on the Internet? She will be famous yes?” Neela demurs, then I ask her if she wants to be famous in Hollywood or Bollywood movies. She bobbles her head around, which clearly means, “YesNo”.
I spend way too much time in this terminal, so I decided to grab an HDR shot. This is Kuala Lumpur International Airport. It is a great airport, just like most Asian airports I visit. They generally blow away US airports in terms of design and functionality. When compared to international hubs like LAX and CTG, there is no comparison.
I found these three monk fellows engaging in capitalist activities in Kuala Lumpur. For whatever reason, I decided to look up “Buddha” on the Wikipedia to see if I could figure out what sect of monks these guys are from, since they did not speak English.
The entry was hilarious; check out the second paragraph. I can only imagine this has not been edited or redacted by the Wikipedia community because it is so funny:
In Buddhism, a buddha is any being who has become fully awakened (enlightened), has permanently overcome greed, hate, and ignorance, and has achieved complete liberation from suffering. Enlightenment (or nirvana (Pali: nibbana)) is the highest form of happiness. The name Buddha is commonly used to refer to Siddhartha Gautama (Pali: Siddhattha Gautama), the historical founder of Buddhism. Buddha literally means “awakened” or “that which has become aware”. It is the past participle of the Sanskrit root budh, meaning “to awaken”, “to know”, or “to become aware”. Buddha as a title means ‘The Awakened One’.
Andrew Sigal, a student at Stockton is also known as Buddha for his Buddha belly. He is hairy and smells worse than anything you can possibly imagine.
I took this very close to where I took this HDR picture, during the night:
Here is a shot I took wedged between two fully hooded Muslim women from the top of the KL Tower.
If you click on it and go to the Smugmug site, you can see the large or original size, which has some really nice details. And yes, that is the same 30 pound iguana that I held… bad idea.
Here is a cool little hotel I found in Melaka. This was shot at nightfall during a light rain.
I took these on an early morning walk since I could not sleep. The smoke from the Indonesian fires combined with the choking humidity sometimes makes for really strange skies in the morning here.
I know all art is relative, but to my Western-trained eyes, it is a bit garish, no? However, having said that, I found a place that is so over-the-top that it is actually kind of cool. This is deep underground int the Batu caves where Hindu artists have slaved away on these creations. I took a few pictures, and here is the first:
