As sure as I knew that it was an anomaly for me to be feeling perfectly fine and reasonably energetic at the Traders buffet, I knew that a monumental crash was on the way, it’s the standard financial boom-bust cycle transposed onto my physiognomy, and also accompanied by my own internal knowledge that I know at times like these I get a little soft. Looking around the ‘Camp 2010’ crew of Traders diners, everyone looked particularly fresh, kind of like that they’d decided to call the night quits at 8pm last decade or something. I had however stood my ground fervently, had witnessed every second of every minute of every hour that this decade had offered thus far. Had made my way through the streets of Kuala Lumpur long enough for my shirt and trousers to dry completely from an early morning swim, and now here, in this place where food is the great equaliser, the ‘reasonable’ , the ‘conservative’, the ‘soft’ and the internally ‘weak’ were eyeing me off like I was the one missing out!? Well my friends, I’m glad you went to bed earlier in order to be up at this time to help me polish off that bacon, it must have been a worthwhile trade-off!
With my stomach lined and my mind swimming in a sea of turbidity, I took a ride up to our floor, walked into our room and contemplated my situation for a few moments. The Maxis scoreboard was calling me out at something close to 8am which in turn was roughly the equivalent time that I’d taken the photo of Petronas in my previous write up, 24hrs earlier. Unfortunately my heart and mind gave out at that point, the bed looked way, way too comfortable for me to be playing New Years Day chicken with it and I caved. I knew right then that when I woke again the Elisher I’d checked out with would not be the same indestructible Elisher that would awake later in the day.
Somewhere after midday the groans and echoes of groans were heard in our room. This was reality, as pure as it gets. Frichot had tapped out about 90 mins before me and the collective result of our mornings' activities had certainly caught up with him. I was personally feeling like bat shit! Having not ever seen bat shit or even Googled it, I could only imagine that it’s the worst kind of shit that you could ever encounter, well, perhaps somewhere after bull shit, cow shit and maybe horse shit, but yeah, it’s definitely in the top 5. Petronas was also glowing through our wondow like the freakin’ daylight smartarse towers of smugness that you knew stood there just to make fun of your pain and agony. What’s worse, Frichot and I both realised that we’d beaten the clock on 'requested' checkout time, which I remember as being 12pm and we needed to ask for an extension. No problems from the Traders staff, they provided us with an extra hour of torture and pain for us to be able to somehow shower, pack and checkout. Good luck I say!
About 1:30pm we called in a few porters to assist in making our way down to reception and finally checked out. We were weak and weary, the will to walk anywhere too far from right here was not within our undertaking, in fact, it’s not something that we could have even comprehended at that point. We made a joint decision to head to the Traders business centre and took up a position at a couple of terminals, surfed a little, ordered up some mega doses of caffeine and tried our best to make sense of it all. I don’t know how the hell we managed it but somehow we ended up sitting on these seats, surfing the net, contemplating our life and loves for somewhere verging on 3.5hours!
Eventually finding the gumption and the internal fortitude to remove ourselves from the Traders NYE purgatory room of redemption, we walked on over to the mall at Petronas Towers, not so much with any purpose but rather with the idea that some movement was going to be better than nothing at all. We walked around, checked things out, got a late lunch that really doubled as an early dinner and essentially tried to play ‘beat the clock’ on our decade busting hangovers.
This shot is all sorts of wrong...and I think Bert & Ernie are thinking along those same lines
Petronas Towers - Kuala Lumpur
Considering that our flight out of KL was until midnight we still had a few hours to burn before having to take the ride out to the terminal in order to make our Asia X flight to Melbourne. Frichot nominated a movie to carve out a few relaxed hours and seeing as though Avatar in 3D was ready and available, we made an easy decision. What however was not easy was trying to make a ticket purchase to catch the movie. I don’t know what time of sadistic system these Malaysians had going but standing in queue to try and land a spot lasted somewhere close to the movie duration. Knowing that Avatar is an epic 3+ hours then that’s no mean feat!
Sure, given the right situation, why the hell not!?
Malaysians giving a big shout out to 'ya mother bot's' - Word
Petronas Towers - Kuala Lumpur
In any case we did get to see Avatar and it almost perfectly aligned with our KL escape plan. Walking back across KLCC park to the Traders hotel we picked up our luggage out of storage and were quickly whisked away by taxi for the hour ride to the airport. Other than that, arriving, check in, customs and the whole departure standard was as per normal. We were on our midnight flight out of KL bound for sunny Melbourne and a final night of who knew what before heading home.
