Georgetown, Penang. January 2011
First glimpse of my future
The place I am sitting means a lot to me because it was the first place I looked out onto any part of the Indian Ocean and it was my first landing spot in Southeast Asia. The photo above is from "TFR's Excellent Adventure in Southeast Asia", but the location... that goes back far earlier for me.
As I have mentioned in other posts, I find life to be just "too coincidental" at times. At Georgetown, I worked in the SLL Dean's Office with John Moore. John went off to Japan for his Junior Year Abroad and there became friends with none other than Brian. John and Brian went on a longish vacation to Southeast Asia together and although they apparently squabbled over money a lot (Brian quipped, "At one point I said to John, 'you realize we are arguing over 25 cents?'"), they had an excellent time. For them, the highlight of the trip was Koh Samui, Thailand, which at the time was a hard-to-get-to, backpackers' paradise. They travelled in those heady days when Tony Wheeler of "Shoestring Guides" and "Lonely Planet" fame was first doing his research.
Later, on a trip to Tokyo from Sendai, I met John at an all-you-can-eat yakiniku place (where I am sure the owners mourned just how much meat two young American males could eat) and he told me all about the trip. He said, simply put, "you HAVE TO GO". I had just been in Hong Kong with my old friend Bill Crawford for Christmas/New Year, so I definitely had caught the travel bug. I was ready for some REAL adventure, but I was not quite ready for solo travel. I coaxed and cajoled Masaaki Itabashi, one of my Sendai days Japanese besties (we worked together at the YMCA) into joining me. He (and his parents) agreed and I found us cheap tickets.
After arriving in Georgetown, Penang, we wandered the old streets and had drinks at the E&O Hotel (see: Eastern and Oriental Hotel). The above park though, near Fort Cornwallis, was the first place I looked out over that blue sea and realized I was not just on a tropical island, I was in a whole damn tropical COUNTRY. The exoticness of it all had a huge impact on me even though at the time I was still processing the "otherness" of Japan. There was something about Penang and looking out over the Straits of Malacca that affected me.
Fast forward. Brian finished law school and because of said trip with John Moore, he had his heart set on working in Indonesia. He even chose his first law firm, White & Case, based on the fact they had a huge Jakarta practice and he had hopes of being sent there. Brian doggedly kept after the head office in New York about it for over a year. He contacted the Jakarta office relentlessly as well. He was an ideal candidate. He had studied Indonesian language at Columbia. Finally, a position opened and he was transferred. As though travelling in someone's wake, I was sucked along and found myself living in Indonesia. I was back in Tropical Asia.
We were in Indonesia five years and then Singapore for two. During that time I went back to Penang many times as it held (and holds) a dear place in my heart. Penang was where I discovered Southeast Asia only because a friend had visited and recommended it. That friend's friend and I later became linked at the hip. Only because HE remembered that trip, Brian ended up working in Southeast Asia with me in tow. How very odd that two people who never met had visited the very same places. How odder still that these same two people would impact each others lives because of holidays they took in those places.
Our last trip to Penang was with TFR. I think Brian and I hoped that by taking him to some places we loved in Southeast Asia it might blow him out of a life-funk that he was trapped in. The photo above is from that trip. As with any travel, I am sure his trip had high points and low points, but in a most ironic after effect, TFR ended up becoming a lawyer like Brian and eventually ended up working abroad. How wonderful, yet.... strange?
That seawall in Georgetown, Penang... I am telling you, it is a place where just beyond the row of cargo ships headed for Butterworth, you might actually see the future.
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