Malaysia: Oooo boy! I left Fiji on the 20th, and landed in Penang, Malaysia on the 21st. En route I stopped off in Sydney for a nice mid-day, 8-hour layover -- just enough time to jump into the city. Incredible the amount of people there crawling around with their country's colors draped on all parts of their bodies. I walked through Hyde Park and sat down to listen to a saxophone player for a few minutes and heard eight different languages being spoken inside five minutes. You want a cross-cultural experience try the Olympic games. Later on I sat in front of the Sydney Opera House with a lady from Nigeria. We watched a bunch of people dressed in various colors of lycra preform a dance in the court yard. "People are funny." Said the lady. Damn straight, I thought and smiled.

On my way back to catch my train to the airport I walked into a shop. I talked a bit with the worker behind the counter. She was going to the boxing and weight lifting venues that night. "Rooting for anyone in particular?" I asked. She shook her head and was off onto another subject. As I found out the woman had just been to India. "I can't believe how many different ways there are to live." She began. "When I was in India I saw some of the strangest things... In a taxi one day I watched a man paste up large cardboard adverts on a wall. A cow followed right behind him pulling each advert down and eating it as the man pasted. The thing was, the man saw the cow eating his work but kept on. It was like 'Hey, I've done my job.'" We laughed.

Now, here in Malaysia, I'm off yet again to see how things work in another place. I'm watching the Olympics on a large screen television. Like the Games they say Malaysia, Penang especially, is the cross roads of Asia, where, to name a few, Chinese, Thai, Indonesian, Indian, and European meet. I woke up early and sat on the porch of the place I'm staying, watched the sun rise. "Good morning Asia!" I said as I sipped my coffee. A lady on the porch next to me, whom I hadn't noticed, caught my greeting, shook her head and looked at if to say "People are funny" and went into her room.

A few days in Penang and then I headed down south. The small town of Melaka is known for several things. As I learned it was conquered by the Portuguese, then the British, Chinese, and British again. Tourist brochures state simply that Melaka "has nothing resourceful to offer." They depend on their beautiful little town and the tourists it attracts. I went poking around the city with a friend and we happened upon an old run-down building complex stuffed behind the huge brick walls of the town citadel. Art Gallery, the signs pointed and we walked through the entryway and up the stairs. The place looked like a colonial times prison: weeds and palms growing out of cracked cement, brick buildings with slats for windows, hard wood floors. There was indeed an art gallery there; we walked around through it without seeing another living soul. The art was fairly nice, a graduate school exhibition where texture was the obvious course of study. Aiming for the way out a little man, complaining of a hang-over, came out of a studio patio. They were turning the gallery into an art school. The large empty building on the other side, the old Melaka Court House, was going to be turned into classes and studios. The complex had been a school then the courts until a few years back when the gallery petitioned to enter the run-down place. We asked if we couldn't have a look around the empty building. The man waved his hand, "Of course, of course."

The place was the standard 1960s Court House you can find all through the world: funky wood siding on the walls and sharp, angular furniture here and there. It was pretty much empty except for a cat and the pictures of the King and Queen hanging high up on a ceiling. We were about to leave when we poked our heads into the old front office. On the floor were the remains of the desk clerks -- old affidavits from the colonial period when Malaysia gained its independence from Britain in 1938. We picked out a few of the files and browsed through them: a report for new registrar, a charge of felony, murder. Bruce picked up the folder, "Holy Sh..." It was a trial against a Chinese man for allegedly killing another Chinese man in 1936. The autopsy report, drastically vivid, told of how the man was basically decapitated and slit wrist to wrist. Flipping back to the cover though, we discovered that the man was deemed 'not guilty'. In a place where the Chinese are the wealthy minority, making up close to 20% of the population, our minds went wild with all the possibilities. Maybe the fellow was framed, maybe he was clever enough to get out of it. Maybe we could solve the case. It appealed to my romantic side: Bruce speaks Chinese and maybe we could track down the guy, his relatives. I could spend months in Malaysia combing through the evidence. We left the court house with the file under arm. How many stories like that are out there? I wondered, and looked around feeling a bit like Tom Clancy or some other mystery writer.

It was all going along just fine that day -- I was playing the part of detective quite well in my mind -- until we decided to visit a replica of an old Portuguese Man-O-War battle ship. Not going to be many clues here, I thought and quickly lost interest in the place in the humid Malaysian heat. The muddy river oozed by, black swirls of sludge mixing on the surface as a long river barge put-putted by. There must be clues buried deep in that muck. And thinking about how the accused man might have dropped some evidence into that same river over 60 years ago I completely forgot that I had been holding onto something when I had gone into the boat. "My wallet!" I gasped. "Crap." I ran from my friends and back on board in a futile attempt to blame the desk clerk for taking my goods. No good. I spent the rest of the day pondering my intelligence, a case i don't think I'll ever solve.

Besides reminding myself about my missing wallet I really wasn't thinking about anything in particular while I jogged along the sea this morning. Many people were out getting their exercise before the sun came up and heat slowed down the city. The tide was out and one lone fisherman tried to push his boat out through the mud. Mud Skippers flapped about skipping out of his way; crows turned a hungry eye. I watched Malaysians do tai-chi in rows to small speakers pulled out of car windows. Every third person or so I passed said morning to me.

It was a fairly reflective after-jog. Even though I was bummed about the loss of my wallet I couldn't help but think it wasn't a big problem on the scale of things. I've been on this trip for nine months now and I can remember when, months ago, I was thinking how will I ever be able to travel for an entire year. Now I can't fathom it ending. It's quite fun being able to pop in on people all over the world in the middle of their lives and say "Hey, how are you?" and see what they're up to.