Thinking Allowed: Living in Malls

Kuala Lumpur has taken awhile to grow on us. We immediately could see all the strong points the city offers. This is a metropolis that has every amenity a person might need while still being affordable. It is very multicultural with a strong base of Malay, Indian and Chinese with many additional international expatriates. This background means comes with a high level of tolerance and acceptance for differences. In Malaysia citizens are granted public holidays for Christian, Muslim, Hindu Malay and Chinese holidays. The few people I discussed religion with divulged that though they identify with a certain religion they celebrate all the holidays. Similarly, they eat all the food. The city is rife with eateries that are both of local and international flavours. Tova joked that grocery stores in KL are so great because they stock the junk food from so many different countries. Even though Malay is the official language of the country school is also provided in Mandarin and Tamil and of course English. Because of the British history of the country English is spoken everywhere making life quite easy for expats and visitors. Still, there is another side of the city that took some getting used to.

Kuala Lumpur is a city made for cars. We like to walk and make every effort to walk wherever we can but this is an instance where making walking work has been tricky. The city is not set up for walkers and there are frequent busy roads and highways with no crosswalks. Walking from point A to B involves long arduous detours to navigate across and around busy roads. Often pedestrians are forced to J walk as the sidewalks on offer are isolated concrete loop islands. I am an avid J-walker but still it is daunting J-walking an 8 lane road with children.If you download app programs to really understand the KL roads and potential crosswalks at the end of the day it still just isn't that nice walking on the side of the loud busy roads. Even taking public transportation is often a futile exercise as the pinwheel shape of the transport is ideal for commuters heading into the centre of town and less ideal for urban explorers. And so we have acquiesced to this life style of taking taxis. The taxis are prevalent and affordable and efficient, and yet, I still prefer the longer slower life walking places. Turns out walkability of a place rates extremely high in my personal livability index.

Kuala Lumpur is a city dominated by malls. Life is conducted in the malls. The mall are where you would go for dinner, meet friends, go for a haircut, workout, buy groceries, celebrate a festival, take music classes, seek legal advice, got to a theme park, visit a doctor, buy clothes, go for a climb, furnish your house, do your banking, buy a hammer, and on and on. Even many schools are in malls. In some ways this is an efficient and nicely air conditioned system. But it does all get a little awkward if you are a person who just can't seem to love malls; The lighting too bright, the ambient noise incessant, the crowds of people milling around aimlessly daunting. We have developed some coping mechanisms. We have learned which mall entrances are closest to the point we want to get to to minimise the journey through the mall. We try to frequent the businesses that operate outside malls. We have identified malls that are smaller and easier to navigate. We are slowly developing a mall life even if our love is malls is taking longer to develop. It is interesting for us to live a different kind of life. Mall life in some ways is an easy and convenient life, and yet, we are not yet convinced we require so much convenience.