Normally I don’t blog about business stuff, but this was an interesting experience.

Today I went through the process of signing up as a Director of a Malaysian company.

It required driving to a circumspect-looking shopping area in Kuala Lumpur where I had to walk by live rodents, reptiles, and insects being sold for lunch to find a narrow, poorly-lit stairway that led into darkness. It was extremely muggy, and it occurred to me that I prefer my outdoor experiences to be approximately the same temperature as my hotel room.

Upon finding my way up the distressed metal stairs and touching the wall by accident, only to have asbestos-laden substance coat my arm, I made it to the top to find a pock-marked metallic door ajar bearing the name of the lofty-titled Malaysian occupant inside. Upon entering, I could not help but notice it was the size of a double-wide phone booth cramped with papers, bad Indian radio, stickers from 70’s rock bands that were never popular in the states, and a dodgy-looking 60-year old Malay whose toupee was nearly half his age but did not make him look so.

The process of signing the papers involved a myriad of stamps, signatures, staple-reomovers, re-stapling, re-staple-removing, stamping-to-the-beat of Indian music, and his proud motioning to a crooked and faded photograph on the wall of him shaking hands with another government functionary, also clad in garish garments and an organ-grinder monkey cap, at a hotel conference room with bad wallpaper. He babbled inconceivable noises to me as his head bobbled like a Sikh in a sandstorm, the staccato rhythm to which I found myself nodding in absent agreement, so as to expedite the process and allow me to make a hasty egress as a new director of the company.