Adventures of my FIL

My father-in-law has some wonderful adventures in his line of work. He has some serious smarts and has tried on numerous occasions to explain to me what he does, but I think the simple explanation is that he inspects nuclear power plants. Or something along those lines. So, since there aren't a lot of those in the US any more, he spends a lot of time working overseas. He has brought me back some beautiful scarves from the Phillipines and South Korea. I wore one Thursday night at the snazzy awards banquet in KC.

He sent some wonderful pictures this morning of a floral parade occurring outside his hotel. Here is a snippet of his travels update he sent today:

I flew out of Orlando on Delta at 1700 hrs Wed July 21st. Connected at JFK in New York. The plane was on the tarmac and we were loaded onto a sky way sort of bus and driven to the plane. The driver got lost, could not find the plane! When he did find it it wasn't cleaned or ready for us so we waited all crammed on the transport. Finally he pulled up to the plane and knocked on a door. That was hilarious!! We finally got loaded and after about a 45 minute wait took off for Heathrow airport in London. In London I switched to Malaysian Airlines. They could not get engine #3 started so we sat on board for over 2 hours while it was fixed. They actually topped of the fuel while we were on board. That is highly irregular. The pilot made up most of the lost time in flight so we arrived at Kuala Lumpor nearly on schedule. It was a 40 minute flight from KL to my new temporary home, Johor Bahru. I collected my bags and cleared immigration and customs without a hitch. My driver was waiting and I was off to the hotel for a much needed nap. Total time from Cocoa Beach to the Hyatt was about 40 hours. This is the first time I've travelled to Asia heading East. I'll book my own flight next time and fly into Singapore, it's a short taxi ride across the causeway to JB. I have the weekend off. I saw some signs for a Floral Bazaar this weekend and the opening festivities kicked off with a parade only 2 blocks from the hotel. I grabbed the camera and took a few pics of the event. It was quite fascinating! All of the floats were made of flowers. I was surprised to see the parade was so similar to those in the West. I had stationed myself next to the judges stand which held the Sultan of Johor and his court. Overall my first impression of Malaysia is that the people are extremely friendly and helpful. This is a multi ethnic culture with the the Malays making up about 2/3 of the population. Chinese and East Indians comprise most of the rest. The food is diverse and wonderful. At only 4 degrees above the equator it is warm but not intolerable. It's the dry season now and still it rains most days.

I love to get his updates. I learn much about the world through his travels. Much more exotic than my trip to Kansas City, I must say.