At the Low Cost Carrier Terminal

My trip is starting out with a 10-hour vacation inside the LCCT in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. After what for no good reason at all has felt like a mildly emotionally tumultuous few weeks, this feels like a sort of cleanse to start my new adventure.

I had an onion paratha. Two bottles of soy milk. Read a book and subsequently was inspired to have a long, thoughtful conversation with myself about death.

Originally I was a bit anxious about the prospect of spending a night alone at the airport...and not even the nice one. This is where the poor people go, as my Malaysian friend reminded me many times during the past two days since I first booked these tickets. And "it's where...you know (in a whisper)...like a lot of people immigrate in from."

While I still have five hours to go (still ample time for abduction!), I'm actually really enjoying the experience. The solitude amongst a crowd of strangers. There's a kind of quiet sadness to the veiled women hunched over in uncomfortable slumber over their luggage and the consistent whirling by of janitorial carts, manned by attendants veiled not with burkas but with a sort of desperate, sleepy fog. Maybe it's my exhaustion or the fact that I just spent hours starting and finishing a book in the gift shop about learning to live through learning to die, but I think there's something kind of beautiful about this experience.

I look around and see people from all over the world, and...

...oh! we just got kicked out because they need to conduct pest control in the airport for the next three hours. I did, however, just landed myself a cozy spot between three Indonesians, who gave me an apple and took my photo, as well as a white guy, who looks a few moves away from finishing his rubik's cube.

Anyway, it's pretty amazing having all these very different people out here...heading to very different places...in very different life moments, but we're all huddled together outside this airport in Kuala Lumpur for this one night for the same reason -- just waiting for the next life moment on the other side of this next plane ride.

And, of course, because we're all too cheap to get a hotel for the night.