Dream of a lil' Luke Skywalker...

Look at the above picture. Can you see anything interesting?

Tell you what. Let me zoom in on the same picture. Can you see it now?

What happened was one morning, I went to Kuala Lumpur from Kajang. As I got closer to the city centre, there looms in the horizon the Telekom Tower at Bukit Nenas and the Petronas Twin Towers at Jalan Ampang with a major part of the buildings hidden under the clouds.

Now, it is not often you get to see the buildings this way. The previous day it has been raining cats and dogs the whole day and this could explain why the clouds appeared in such a manner the following morning.

What is interesting is how the top of the buildings look like it is on clouds. That sort of reminded me of the giant's castle in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk and the old Malay folklore of the kayangan, kingdoms up there on the clouds.

Hmm... suddenly I remembered mum telling the story in bed when I was about 2 years old or so. And everytime I would ask for the same story on Jack to be repeated. I learned about kayangan a bit later when I'm able to read. It is an oft repeated theme in many ancient folklores that I often wished one day I would get whisked away to the land above the clouds, maybe by riding one of the winged horses.

Here's a zoom in of the previous picture. For those who don't know, the Telekom Tower is at the centre and the Petronas Towers on the right, slightly hidden also by the blue signboard. Now I know the Telekom Tower stood at a height of 421 metres, the Petronas Towers at 452 metres. Both heights include slender telecommunications towers. Still both buildings appeared to be of the same height as the slightly shorter Telekom Tower actually stood on top of Bukit (hill of) Nenas which should add another 20-30 metres to its overall elevation.

OK, I understand that normally the lowest rain cloud should be at 1,000 metres above sea level. That should be way above the towers. But since the observation deck, the lowest part of the diamond-like section which could accomodate people (the rest of the tower are practically parts of a tall hollow column with elevator shafts) at the Telekom Tower stood at around 276 metres high, then this picture shows the clouds must be at most that high and at its lowest parts perhaps under 100 metres off the ground.

So this cloud might actualy be a fog on its way up. That could explain why it is so low from the sky. Then again how do you actually define a fog and differentiate in from a cloud? Up there in the sky you can call it a cloud but down there on the ground it is just a fog.

I remembered when the myth inside me regarding clouds was first broken when I was a small boy. Before that, I used to believe that the clouds are solid enough for humans to walk on it and that I got from reading many fairytales and watching cartoon shows. I remembered watching cartoons which show little clouds appearing in one's room before letting out rain along with thunderbolts of lightning. Thus I used to dream of two things - one, I would one day walk and play on the clouds and second, I would catch a small cloud to keep in my house, perhaps as some sort of 'pet'.

One day my parents brought me and the brothers up to the Cameron Highlands. At a height of over 6,000 feet, the top is often concealed by the clouds and as we started climbing by car up the winding road, I set up a plastic bag which I often used to catch bugs and grasshoppers. But as we neared the top, the clouds that I saw earlier have all disapperead. Instead I only saw patches of fogs and that's when I learned that, one... there's no such things as solid clouds, two... since there's no solid clouds, you could never catch a 'small' cloud as seen in the cartoon shows and three... fogs and clouds are practically the same... just a collection of small droplets of water hanging in the air.

Anyway, looking at the top of the Telekom Tower and Petronas Towers set up the fertile imagination back on fire. For one, it reminds me of an episode from the epic film series Star Wars where there was a city in the clouds. Second it made me think again about the origin of the name of the place Rembau in Negeri Sembilan.

You see, the story goes that the name Rembau came from the word Merbau, a type of local tree which could grow up to gigantic proportions. The story added that there used to exist a huge and high Merbau tree which reaches the clouds.

All this while I thought this was an exaggeration. But looking at the clouds covering the Kuala Lumpur skyline, I realised this is quite possible after all. It is no exaggeration that some local timber trees can rise up to a height of 100 metres. Since the clouds (or fog? depends on your perception really) in the picture do go down to that height, why must it be impossible for the Merbau tree to touch the clouds? That's all... :]