Day 10: Of tunnels and rock bottoms

SMART

A double visit today: the SMART tunnel followed by the MAGIC startup hosting facility. Neither of which meant more to me than they will to you when you first read this, but bear with me and I'll explain.
The SMART tunnel is a smart solution to a problem that is pretty unique to KL. The city is located in the Klang valley; the Klang is a rain river. This means that during the wet season it is liable to flood the streets and cause appreciable damage and inconvenience. To compound matters, there's a second river flowing into the Klang (the Ampang) which behaves likewise. A third river, the Kerayong, shares the same basic properties but, flowing west of the city where the area is not so densely settled, has sufficient space for overflow and water storage. Half of the smartness comes from digging a tunnel that lets the superfluidity of eastern river water cross the city underground and drain into the western river, whence it can continue safely on its way.

The second half of the smartness has to do with traffic congestion. Though not quite as bad as Jakarta, where we were told people actually died in their cars during a 24 hour total gridlock not too long ago (which in itself will certainly not have helped in the resolution of that congestion), KL still suffers from major clogging of the arteries. Realising that the same connection that would drain the water east-west a number of times a year could also drain some of the traffic, in an unprecedented spirit of creativity and (I think) level of risk-taking, the KL government decided that two problems could be solved at one stroke: one and the same tunnel could be used for both water (when necessary) and traffic (when not)!

Maquette of tunnel and town

Hence SMART: Stormwater Management And Road Tunnel. (The acronym in itself deserves a prize.) It can be either closed for water and open for traffic, or open for both (the traffic goes via two lanes above one another in the top half, the water flows below), or open for water only (through the traffic lanes as well). There is also a "completely closed" mode for two days after mode 3, at which point they clean the traffic lanes: although every effort is made to sift debris from the water before it enters the tunnel, and the incline is designed to be such that the flow rate ensures the water carries most of the fine silt with it, we were treated to an introductory film showing both the flooding itself and the cleaning process: this is water bearing a surprising resemblance to the white coffee they serve here.

Someone put a lot of loving work into this...

The whole thing is a superb feat of engineering, in operation for a decade now. It has been co-financed by the government and a private company; the latter had born the extra cost of the road system and is now running that operation, earning their money back through tolls. They were the ones actually receiving us. Mode 2 (both water and traffic) has been used about 200 times during that period, mode 3 (water only) about 7 times - the last of which was in 2012. But of course our group was primarily interested in the computer science aspects of SMART; and after yesterday's emphasis on security, also that side of it. In the Netherlands this has been a bit of a sore point for the last 5 years or more: several new tunnels have suffered severe delays in opening because their automation was not up to par, and there have been a number of temporary bridge closures for the same reason. These infrastructural projects are all about concrete; the fact that softwarel has become a major factor these days has not yet sunk in properly.

Tada! The control center

It was a very neat trick that after the promotional films and a nice complementary presentation by a very competent speaker, the curtains behind the screen opened and we looked directly down into the control center itself, with a huge walls of CCTV screens with live feeds of the traffic in various tunnel sections, a schema depicting the whole system and indicating potential problems and congestion, and a number of operators behind screens with the job of watching it all. This engendered more questions about the computer-related aspects of the system. The main claim to (cyber)security is that the whole system is not connected to the internet, and that the safety-critical subsystems are connected by a wired netwerk. No Internet of Things for SMART! I wonder if the same would be true if they would design the system now rather than over a decade ago.

QA time

I also was interested to learn that the speaker, when asked about this, had no doubt that the absence of mode 3 floods since 2012 was a consequence of climate change: in fact, he explained that the whole storm pattern had shifted to later in the year and less severe here; on the other hand, there have been recent typhoons in Korea and Japan.

MaGIC entrance

The second visit of the day was to MAGIC, another clever acronym that stands for MAlaysian Global Innovation & Creativity Centre. What they do is help startups by offering them office space, giving them advice on marketing, bringing them in touch with investors, offering courses on how to run a business, and suchlike. After the by now well-rehearsed lunch routine we were received in a brand new, spacious building in Cyberjaya, a modern industrial area that has sprung up to the south of KL, next to Putrajaya. The order of business was the reverse from all previous visits, possibly because the main speaker was not yet there: we were first shown around the quarters. This might have worked well had our guide not been much too soft-spoken to make herself heard to the entire group, and had there not been people seriously trying to get some work done in the offices. What we did see, and prepared us for what we were afterwards told by the main speaker, was that all of it was shared space and that sharing experience and other forms of community effort were positively expected of the startups taking part in the program.

Jowynne

The speaker, Jowynne Khor, a charming, very serious young woman, explained that the Malaysian prime minister had been inspired by the success of Silicon Valley (who hasn't?) and  wanted to create a Malaysian version of that. Every year a certain number of applicants were accepted in their program, were expected to work together and (again) share their experiences. Every year, a subset of them were invited for a trip to the real Silicon Valley to learn how things were done there. She also explained about the "core values" of magic, which included some unexpected phrases not directly reminiscent of how the Americans do things, such as "celebrate diversity", "create happiness" and, the most beautiful, "be humble". When I asked her about this afterwards, she stated that, yes, this was an intentional, culture-inspired diversion from the American practice (which of course preaches just the opposite), the Asian culture being more of a "serving nature" (her words).

Public board showing startup status

We then heard brief presentations from representatives of three startups currently supported by the MaGIC program:

• A web site for selling your old car to a dealer through a bidding system. The presenter seemed to know what he was doing and what the selling point of his system was. Fun fact: a car here costs as much as it would in the Netherlands, whereas other costs (obviously food but also fuel prices) seem to be a fraction. You wouldn't say that after having taken a look at the traffic in KL. At SMART this morning we learned that a toll of 3 RM (about 70 cents) is reason enough for many to avoid the tunnel; that suggests that actually owning a car should be out of reach as well.
• A would-be consultant for Blockchain. Rather unexpectedly, this was a German living in Malaysia, who certainly gave the impression of being technically very competent, but also rather bluntly said, when asked, that he wasn't looking for more than a one-man operation. That may have been wise on his part, as he certainly didn't impress me as a person with whom it would be easy to cooperate. He did have confidence for two though.
• A graphical domain-specific language with tool support for hooking up Internet-connected devices quickly and painlessly. This was presented by a rather shy guy who had brought a demo installation as well as his ten-year-old son (might have been even younger) to run the demo for him. It was kind of sweet, but he had a lot to learn about presenting his ideas. I would have liked to talk to the pair afterwards, but they were not to be found. I think that here was the clearest case of someone technically competent with close to zero entrepeneurial skills.

MaGIC rules

At the University of Twente we have the Kennispark, an incubator for startups with which the university cooperates quite closely. Clearly they have chosen a different model here, but through we learned something about the differences and the reasons behind them, it is almost impossible to grasp how things work here or are supposed to work, without living and working here for a while. It is possible that they are still groping around in the dark, but equally possible that they are sitting on a goldmine.

The afternoon was concluded with the words "it was a good sharing", entirely in the spirit of everything we had heard. Come to think of it, at UniMY we had also be thanked for "the sharing" rather than for "the visit" or "the presentations". Fascinating.

Obama Oval

On the way out, we were told that the grass field in front of the bulding, which we had seen a solitary person meticulously and very slowly mowing all afternoon using a hand mower, even though it looked neat enough to start with, was called the "Obama Oval" as the building had been officially opened by the American president on a visit to Malaysia. They had pictures to prove it and a sign to commemorate it. I can certainly understand that they are proud of this!

Khadijah's

The evening was shown as "free time" on the official study tour program, but an initiative had been developed since then to book a pub crawl. Hilarious in a way, since pubs and clubs have been crawled every single night by our enterprising tour participants; I would have said there is little crawl space left. In any case, I had already made a dinner arrangement with Imran Nordin, friend of Chris Poskitt, so I missed the chance to go crawling with them on this last full night of my stretch of the tour. Possibly just as well.

At 18:00 I was picked up by Imran; that is, true to form he was held up by traffic for 15 minutes, after which I realised (having learned my lesson yesterday evening) that my casual attire might be too casual for some places and went back to my room to change into something more universally acceptable; so a culturally appropriate 25 late we drove to the Malaysian dining place Imran had picked for us, a bit outside the center. During the ride I expained the purpose of our tour and told about the visits we had paid; Imran, who works at the National University of Malaysia, expressed surprise at our choice of UniMY as destination. I received the strong impression that we would also have been quite welcome at his institute.

Khadijah's

We had a wonderful selection of Malaysian dishes at Khadijah's, a restaurant owned by a famous Malaysian lady singer, Khadijah Ibrahim. Besides rice with a choice of chicken, beef and fish curries, this included "stinky beans" or petai by way of a salad. Green stuff has not been a regular ingredient of our meals, but though the petai does not really stink and is more interesting than the horse bean which it otherwise resembles, I will not place it very high on my list of favourite foodstuffs.

Park and fountain

Petronas Twin Towers

Imran then proposed to get a drink downtown, at a skybar on top of Tower 3, with a great view of the iconic KL twin towers. While driving there he expanded the name to Petronas Tower 3, which rung a bell: something had been said earlier about MISC visiting a bar in the Petronas tower tomorrow night. The number 3 derives from the fact that the twin towers are fully named Petronas Twin Towers and so account for numbers 1 and 2. Petronas is the Malaysian national oil and gas company. Well, they probably wouldn't blame me for doing a little preparatory investigation, so up we went to floor 57.

I would not have gotten far in shorts here! Bellhops opened doors and pointed the way to the next elevator; it took three of those to reach the correct height. There we were met with loud music, great views (as promised) and the most expensive drinks menu I have yet seen. I think that every floor must have added about 20 sen to the price of an arbitrary item, with the end effect that 1 beer could get you back and forth through the SMART tunnel for about a week. Imran told me that most of it is taxes. There is one duty-free island off the coast of Malaysia where scenes can be found comparable to those on Scandinavian ferries. As an ethnic Malaysian he is by law a muslim and hence not allowed to partake; as a graduate of the University of York he is not averse to a pint; it makes for a double life which did not sound comfortable to me.

Mexican Head Hunter

After a couple of rounds culminating in a Mexican Head Hunter, served in a fascinating contraption with three smouldering incense sticks that could not fail to almost enter your nose upon taking a sip, I called it a night. Only to be persuaded, without too much of a struggle, that this last full night in KL should be exploited more fully. As Fate (or some other deity) we found a Mexican place without a 57 floor surcharge in a street where clearly much of the KL night life occurred. This was confirmed when an inspection of the group app revealed that the pub crawl had progressed to a bar exactly next to ours!

Rock Bottom

With so much fate in the air, obviously we could not not join them. After a short intermission where Imran explained the working of the foodstall across the street, the equivalent of the Dutch "muur" (take a stick of anything for 1,50 RM and boil it) we moved over to the Rock Bottom, where we were made welcome by the 10 or so students who had survived the pub crawl up until this point. I was glad to see that one of them, Luc Jansen, fell into a conversation with Imran: with different blood groups you can never be sure how well they mix. Later, when the music gradually got too loud for talking, we did quite a bit of dancing. Imran demonstrated that he was the best dancer of us all. A glorious way to start my last full day of study tour!