Langkawi, Chengdu & F1

Since returning from Chicago it's been another month of busy travel. I am very lucky that my friend Lauren was sent on a business trip to Malaysia! She stayed on for the weekend and we went to Langkawi an island in Malaysia . Langkawi was another destination that completely blew me away. It was actually what I had imagined Bali would be like, beautiful beaches, very quiet and very serene. The hotel we stayed was lovely but we were warned since we were in the jungle to beware of the cheeky monkies that are always looking for their next meal, even if it's in your hotel room! We had an amazing Thai dinner in the Jungle, basically having monkeys swinging around on the trees by the table; they did not join us for dinner, thank god! Lauren and I had a great time and it is always nice to have someone from home to share Asia with! I hope Groupon sends her back real soon!

Just a little rain storm:

Beauty:

Katy & Lauren in Langkawi! 

I stayed on after Lauren left for a business trip, oh there was so much to learn about doing business in Langkawi and Kuala Lumpur, I don't even know where to start. It’s an extremely religious driven society but in the work place everything seems a bit...corrupt. I know religion and corruption they totally don't go together, right.... After 4 days doing 'business' in Malaysia I went home mentally exhausted! I can't tell if it was from constantly trying to understand who hates who, who pays who under the table or the fact that we went to dinner every night and drank juice or tea until 1am b.c. the Muslim community cannot drink alcohol oh and after our juice dinners I was then woken up by the morning mosque prayer session every day before the sun came up...not cool. Perhaps I should write them a letter and ask if they can take it down a notch for the am sesh!?

I just very recently came back from China and hmmmmmmmm it was awful! The town was called Chengdu I would like to call it Cheng-don't! I won't rant forever, it was hot, the pollution was terrible and it was very difficult to communicate with everyone and after 5 days I had enough with people looking at me with blank stares. I don't expect everyone on the planet to speak English however, when I am sitting at a restaurant and have finished a meal and start drawing into the air and you have NO idea that I am asking for the check, that blows my mind! I told this to my co-worker and he told me he was not surprised, in the Philippines if you want the check you should draw a rectangle into the air with your index finger and thumb....of course! So drawing fake cursive in the air vs. a rectangle is very hard to decipher the difference, I totally get it! I felt like everyone in the town was on a heavy dose of Quaaludes, literally walking around like zombies in the middle of the rode, hanging out under bridges, walking in the middle of the highway...anything goes in Chengdu...it made Mexico seem like an organized place. China can be a sad place, not only because the pollution is so bad you can't see in front of your face but their communist ways, it's very common to see people well into their 80's doing heavy manual labor, which is sad. They also have no uniforms for anything, one day I saw a lady shoveling cement out of a bag wearing slacks and a cardigan?! Then I took 2 more steps and saw an old guy sitting in a chair playing with 6 turtles...like I said, anything goes. So I try never to complain about destinations, hotels, airlines on FB because they are essentially all clients, so after 5 'groundhog' days in Cheng-miz I boarded the plane. The boarding process went like this, 'stewardess yells something in Mandarin and everyone runs to the door'; total and complete shit show! I should also mention that no one obeys seat belt signs here, if you are within eye shot of the gate people just stand up, blows my mind every time! So anyways, I sat down on the plane and penned Jenny an email to tell her how awful Cheng-miz was and I added in a few adjectives to really showcase how upset I was and how excited I was to see the sun again in Singapore...not to worry I sent the email to the wrong person in my contact book that works at a hotel. Son of a biscuit!! I will leave you with this, I know there are beautiful and unpolluted places in China, Chengdu just wasn't one of them. I hope to visit those dreamy places one day, once I work up the energy to go back to the Chinese visa office...so it's going to be a while!
So the reason I went to Chengdu was for a conference, it was set up so that you meet with a different partner every 15 minutes from 9 am- 5:30 pm. I know it sounds amazing, right. I had appointments where the contacts would just give me their card and ask me to email them because they can't understand English very well and I think they feel embarrassed they can’t speak, but I feel just as bad that I only know about 4 words of Mandarin. I don’t know how to sell global advertising by saying: hello, goodbye, tea and your welcome. If you can help me piece that together to form a business sentence, I am all ears! I had a few meetings where the clients’ had translators which was nice but at one point I asked the girl to tell to the client something basic and she just looked at me, I was like ok can you tell him now, and she was like I will tell him now but then didn’t…Fussss-trating! (once I went to a meeting, in Chicago and this woman kept saying over and over  how fus-trated she was, I almost wanted to ask her if she knew it was frus and not fus, but it entertained me so much and as you can see, still does, that was about 8 years ago)

Every Day in Cheng-miz:

I forced myself on the final day to find something positive in this town, I found a nice lil spot:

I Heart Pandas! I think someone from town must have slipped him a Quaalude. (it's hard to tell but the Panda smiled for my selfie)

Baby Love! (Marce tells me these lil ladies were on GMA this week!)

F1, thank you for breathing life back into the week! Singapore was all dressed up and ready for visitors from all over the world! Although I didn't stand around and watch the race for hours it was very cool to see, the cars are so loud you can hear them all over town. They actually drive on the Singapore roads, they just block them off! After the race each night there are concerts, I went to the Killers concert and it was amazing!! They were so much better than I was expecting and right out of the gates played Mr. Brightside, it was like being slapped in the face with awesome! Rhianna played the next night and the Beebs  closed it down on Monday, I heard people were lining up at 10am for his show tonight...awful, I'd melt.

End bits:
-How you know you are an American=you are at a Killer's concert in Singapore and the Killers ask, ‘who know’s Tiffany'? Then they play 'I think we are alone now' and you find you are one of the only people in the entire crowd singing along! (used to play that single on my sister's fisher price record player, awwwww yeah!)

-When I got out of the airport in Chengdu and on the tour bus the girl giving the narrative on the city told us that it’s not uncommon to see people walking around very slowly, it’s their culture and what the town is sometimes known for…wow you should put that on a brochure people will flock here…except anyone with the last name Gallagher.
-my co worker told me the other day she would love to eat Chinese food out of a paper white box, like on American TV shows :) They don't have those take out containers here!
-Skype: since I chose my Skype name, on the fly, I went with a suggestion from the Skype team, katy.gallagher6. Well my friends in China tell me the 6 indicates I am the devil and no one will do business with me, thanks Skype team! Perhaps I will change it to Iheartpandas8, that seems pretty china friendly and unrelated to being possessed by the devil, right? Or maybe, idrinkgreentea4eva-- I could go on and on!

-These days, to me, Fall means having an apple scented candle and having LPAD on my nails, because it's still 90 degrees out! I kind of like knowing my pool will not be closing up for the season, that was always a sad day.

Photo End Bits: titled 'Chengdu, Anything Goes':

Internet check in line would give off the impression these people had actually checked in prior to arriving, right!? 45 minutes later....

 Puppets?, Who knows, this man did not like his gig.

Meat slicing contest and a man in a fake long beard, sure why not

Our bus driver handing with the bell boy while he air drums, no big deal. Please also note the outfit in the background: legging, jorts, and a full on sweater...it was 95 degrees out. I am sure she was just going to walk somewhere slowly so it's ok to wear that kind of stuff

I saved the best for last, sleeping on job, it was 3pm, just a lil siesta, no big deal here!