I was very fortunate to be in Malaysia this week. It was a long trip — 28 hours to get from my house to the J.W. Marriott in downtown Kuala Lumpur — but one which enabled me to make many new acquaintances and to learn much more about Asia. According to the Magellan SporTrakColor handheld GPS, the latitude is 2 degrees 50.526 minutes North and the longitude is 101 degrees 42.399 minutes East. That makes it 9,368 miles from home. The first leg of the flight went from JFK in New York to Frankfurt, Germany. It took about 6.5 hours in the air. The flight got in at 4:30 am EST which was then 10:30 am in Germany. After an hour or so layover for fuel and crew change we re-boarded the same Boeing 747 to head for Singapore.
The path was a southeastern arc heading across eastern Europe over Prague, various parts of what used to be the USSR and then across India, just below Delhi, and across the Bay of Bengal toward Bangkok, Thailand. The flight continued over Phuket, west of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, over much of Malaysia and into Singapore.
The layover in Singapore was about an hour and then a Singapore Air Boeing 777 made the forty minute flight to Malaysia. It was a forty-five minute drive to downtown. I have never seen so many palm trees as were along the highway, and that explains why palm oil and palm-related products, so I was told, are the largest export from the country. It was then quite a site to see the Petronas Twin Towers rising 88 stories (1,483 feet) above the city.
Until very recently, the Petronas Twin Towers were the tallest in the world. The buildings were completed in 1998. Two companies, from Japan and one from Korea, worked in parallel each on one of the two towers. The buildings comprise a total built-up area of 3.7 million square feet. At levels 41 and 42 there is a 192 foot double-decked "skybridge" which weighs 750 tons. (see photo gallery). The skybridge is supported by two-hinge arches with rotational pins (spherical bearings) which permit it to literally sway as much as 18 inches in any direction. The towers are clad in 700,000 square feet of stainless steel and include 830,000 square feet of glass. The design of the towers was inspired by the country’s cultural heritage, incorporating contemporary Malaysian motifs adapted from traditional handicrafts such as "songket" and timber carvings. The overall character of the building is certainly high-tech and international but distinctively Malaysian.
I was very fortunate to have a tour around Kuala Lumpur and surrounding area with IBMer Hasan Saidin and his wife. Malaysia seems to have vast amounts of land available and there are construction projects everywhere. A half hour from downtown KL is a development called Putrajaya where there are a large number of government buildings with quite impressive architectures. It was a rainy day and so the pictures in the gallery do not do justice to the remarkable set of buildings I saw. There were  large numbers of Muslims entering the beautiful Mosque for their afternoon prayers. I walked along the lake while Hasan and his wife took time for the third of their five daily times of prayer. I am very thankful that Hasan shared so many insights with me, not only about the country of Malaysia but also about Islam. I am anxious to get a book and learn more.
Nearby Putrajaya is  Cyberjaya which is intended to become a magnet for IT companies and IT training. The goal is to create a city where man, nature and technology live together in harmony through a unique blend of lush tropical eco-friendly environment with the latest technology in IT infrastructure and facilities. Spanning an area of 7,000 acres, the city is the nucleus of the country’s vision for the next millennium, the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC). Promising to be the city of the future, Cyberjaya will soon be the homeground for many IT & technology companies. Cyberjaya is well positioned, roughly a half hour from downtown Kuala Lumpur and a half hour from the airport.
The Flagship Zone of Cyberjaya is being developed as a self contained intelligent city, with three main areas: the Enterprise Zone, the Commercial Zone, and the Residential Zone. The rest of the Flagship Zone (at more than 50% of its total area) is designated for public facilities, green areas and zone for recreational purposes.
The plan is by the year 2011, Cyberjaya will be a city supporting a working population of approximately 50,000 and a living population of over 120,000. One of the underlying ideas of Cyberjaya is to create an ideal environment to test-bed new technologies and applications. The technology infrastructure will include an integrated City Command Center, an international & national fibre-optic backbone with multiple ISP’s, broadband connectivity to all buildings, WiFi hot-spots service at most public areas, equal availability of cheap dark-fibre fibre-optic connectivity to all ISPs, telcos and other service providers regardless of size, a local online e-commerce portal, smart homes and smart schools.
I could not resist visiting a few electronics stores. Both Singapore and Malaysia have a huge number of retail outlets for all things digital. I bought a 128MB Secure Digital memory card for the Handspring Treo 600. The cost was 250 Ringgits which is approximately $66. Later I found that they were even less expensive at Sim Lim in Singapore. After 38 hours of being up I was able to get some sleep — and I slept like a peaceful baby.
On Monday morning the Multimedia Development Corporation and the KDU Management Development Center and IBM sponsored my speech about "The Future Of The Internet". Afterwards I met with a half dozen reporters for questions. They had many questions about Linux. My message was that Linux is not about "free", it is about "freedom". I explained how the world could be more secure if the operating system software was more open — so that all could see how it works and be able to contribute to it.
The theme of my talk was Net Attitude and I suggested that Malaysia is very well positioned to take a leadership role in taking the potential of the Internet to the next level. As I described in the "e-government" story from a few days ago, it is now time to move from content to transactions and participation. Malaysia is in a very envious position because they have digital identities in place. Each of the twenty+ million people will soon have a smartcard (most already do) which contains their picture, digital fingerprints, emergency medical data, and a payment mechanism. The government operates two certificate authorities which can not only issue the identities but which can also be used to authenticate transactions. Trusted transactions is the ultimate goal and Malaysia has developed the beginnings of a model that can make this a reality.

• Singapore – Day 1: July 2003
• Return to Singapore: November 2003
• Photo Gallery pictures from Malaysia
• Photo Gallery pictures from Singapore (July 2003)
• Photo Gallery pictures from Singapore November 2003)