KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – Just my luck. I was all excited about how I have a 27-minute ride on the KLIA Express train from downtown KL to the airport before boarding my flight to Osaka, Japan, and that I could use the KLIA Express train’s wifi in order to write and post this final post from Malaysia. The wifi on the train is just fabulous and never ever let me down. Until now. Suddenly, for the first time on this trip, and possibly on any trip for me to KL, the internet wifi connection is not working on the KLIA Express. I might as well have taken a taxi! Wait, no, not that! That takes me full circle back to “Just my luck!”
I’m writing this in a Word file that I will post at the airport – either KLIA or Osaka, which ever delivers wifi first – and my reference to “just my luck,” has to do with the taxi drivers of KL. As I arrived about 45 minutes late last night for my evening at Lorong BlackBox, the new food and music emporium of my friend Atraz Ismail, and I complained to him about the horrendous taxi ride I had to his place in Shah Alam, which is located about 45 minutes from downtown KL but took me around 1 hour 25 minutes to get there, he reminded me that I have a long history of terrible experiences with taxis in KL!!
Syahidil Aizat at Lorong BlackBox in Shah Alam Kuala Lumpur Malaysia
It is true. They ask if I have GPS because they don’t. They ask if I know where I’m going, because they don’t. They stop to buy GPS refills on their phones, since without it we end up in Thailand. They then fail to understand how to follow the blue line of the GPS on the road and end up taking the same 10-minute stoplight twice because they made a wrong turn…. Don’t get me started.
Another Syahidil Aizat at Lorong BlackBox in Shah Alam Kuala Lumpur Malaysia
Suffice it to say that as often as I have been let down by taxis in KL, I have been blessed with fabulous evenings at Atraz’s ventures. That started five years ago at his place called Senyap – which means silence in Malay – and it continued this weekend with his new food joint – that I mention a couple days ago – called Lorong BlackBox.
Atraz at Lorong BlackBox in Shah Alam Kuala Lumpur Malaysia
Located in the small back room of a bigger food emporium in a commercial area in Shah Alam, where you have offices, restaurants, markets, and other commercial entities, Atraz not only serves wicked local spicy dishes from his truck kitchen (and the outdoor barbecue-like wok-like kitchen – but he also continues his passion for music, especially young and upcoming talent.
He only opened this place around three weeks ago, and he plans to put on an open mic, maybe a festival or other concerts, and generally liven up the back alley in which the BlackBox is located. Last night, he invited me to do a mini gig and jam, and he played some tunes too – first time I ever heard his music! – and he had a special guest in the fabulously talented and original singer songwriter Syahidil Aizat, who is also a member of a band, the CD of which I was given and will be giving a listen to as soon as I have a CD player. But if it sounds anything like the originality and sensitivity of Syahidil, it’s sure to be a treat.
I’ll write about it in a future edition of my morning exercise listening. For the moment, suffice it to say that I learned my lesson once and for all about taxis in KL. Atraz and his friends ordered me up an Uber, and despite the driver having to stop to figure out how to use his program on his phone to set the charging in motion, we spent half as much time and a third as much money getting back to my hotel as with the taxi on the way there.
It was a revelation in more ways than one, then, last night at the Lorong BlackBox.
Now off to Nagoya, where I never take any taxis – oh, except from the circuit to the train station in Shiroko. But that’s another story.
PS, So, I managed to find an internet connection at the airport, after nearly one hour of trying – first at the airport free system, which was out of reach for the restaurant where I am eating, called the Dome, and then in the Dome system, which is too slow and did not allow WordPress to work, and then in the Starbucks next-door, which took all of my personal information as it baited me into a connection before it then said that I had to ask for a wifi code at the counter!!!!!