It's A Small World After All

Today was a relaxing Malaysian day. I know, it's Thursday, but that is Malaysia for you. Kim and I went to work. Nothing was due today and all of my major projects are in between milestones. So, we got some things done, but overall it was pretty relaxed.


After work, we drove the 26 kilometers home in a downpour, which was exciting. Once we got back to our little apartment, we opened up the front door, the back door, turned the fan on and enjoyed watching the rain pour down. Living here is kind of like being in a ride at Disney World all of the time with the fantastic plant life, the dramatic storms and the sounds of the rain forest.

Deepavali

This last week was full of blog worthy experiences!  First of all, our anniversary was very relaxing and thank you to everyone who wished us well.  Trip wrote such a nice blog post and he really went out of his way to make sure it was a good day for me.  I am so lucky to be married to such a sweet man.


Over the weekend we had the opportunity to experience an Indian (Hindu) holiday that is similar to Christmas for Christians.  It is called Diwali in India, Deepavali in Malaysia, but it all means the same thing: The Festival of Lights.  They believe that Deepavali is a time of renewal, a time to let light in and push darkness out.  It is symbolic of how good triumphs over evil and it is a time to get together with family, eat food and enjoy each other's company.  We were lucky enough to get invited to join in celebrating with a coworker.  It was really fun to go to their house and learn about their traditions, and the food was excellent.  The people here are very social and they made sure that everybody had someone to talk to.  There was one couple sitting alone and Trip, Shanti (the woman we were talking to at the time) and I were asked by the hostess to please sit with them so they would be included.  I was so impressed by that!  If only we all thought that way a little bit more...just think how enriched our lives would be.

This is made out of colored sand and it is Buddhist Monk art...so pretty!

Trip helping the ladies in his office create their own 'Buddhist Monk art' for Deepavali.

Anyway, it was a great experience and I learned a lot.  The rest of the weekend was dedicated to cleaning the apartment, swimming in our awesome pool and catching up on some much needed R&R.  We are settling in and adjusting to our surroundings, and I must say that we are enjoying our simple little life out here.  It hasn't all been easy, but it has certainly been a good experience and we are looking forward to the rest of it.

Two Down, Infinity to Go

Today is our Two Year Anniversary! Yay us!

It is hard to believe that we have been married for only two years. I was telling Kimberlee that our time together has been paradoxical. On one hand it seems like such a long time ago that we weren't together, but on the other hand it seems like yesterday when we got married. Weird how that works.

Either way, I have really enjoyed the past two years of marriage and am looking forward to many, many more. As far as our plans for the day, it looks like we will be going out to dinner and enjoying a quiet evening at home after that. To me just being with Kim is the best gift possible.

I love you Kimberlee Baker!

Pictures from our fantastic anniversary dinner...

 

 

Our Move and Interesting Observations

Well, we are not doing very well at posting lately.  It seems like every week night it is hard to be motivated to blog (plus we don't have the internet at our new place), but blogging at work is nearly impossible, and the past couple of weekends have been so busy.  We spent one whole weekend moving into our new place and making necessary purchases and then this last weekend was General Conference for us.  The new place is only temporary and we will have to find somewhere new by January, but for now it is ours and we are loving the area.  I will post pictures as soon as I take some.


So, we are now living in a city called Seremban and it is a smaller city than Kuala Lumpur and the traffic is much better, which we appreciate!  It's also cool because our Branch President also lives in Seremban so we already have friends to get together with.  We have decided to do joint FHE and play games every Monday.  It has been fun so far.  The only downside is that we do not have the internet at our place yet.


Anyway, there are several things that stood out to me when we first got here and I decided I better post them before I forget or get used to them.

1. When eating, people don't use knives to cut their food.  Instead they use spoons.
2. Pedestrians have no right of way...at all.
3. Napkins are never provided, nor are hand towels in public bathrooms.
4. Sometimes toilet paper isn't provided either.  (Solution: always carry pocket tissues!)
5. Drivers are crazy and motorbikes are even crazier!  (Trip has a post about this insanity, so I won't elaborate)
6. There are holidays every month celebrating different religions.
7. Some things are ridiculously cheap in US dollars, and some things are twice as expensive...like electronics.
8. Every morning when we drive to work we pass cows, goats, and chickens that are loose on the street.  One cow actually moo'ed at us this morning!  There is also a random camel in a pen on the side of the road.

So there are some things that stood out to us when we first got here that is becoming more and more normal.  I will have to add to the list as I find more stuff.  I love the randomness here!

Please Keep Your Hands And Arms Inside The Ride And Hang On To Your Purse!

So, I was going to write a message and I noticed that we have about 5 unpublished posts!  These are stories/comments that we have started writing but have not had time to finish but they need to be shared.  So instead of writing something new right now, I am going to post something a little less new.  This happened a couple of weeks ago and I am happy to report that nothing else like this has occured since then. 


This experience occurred when Trip and I went to dinner.  We went to this place that Dad had taken us to on our first day.  It is in a shopping mall that is massive, it has a theater and two food courts and is 5 to 6 levels high.  Like I said, massive.  So, we are sitting alone at a table eating our food and I had my purse with my camera sitting on the chair next to me between me and the wall, which seemed safe enough.  Well, we are just eating and talking when out of the corner of my eye I see my purse move, so I look over and I could have sworn I saw fingers pulling it.  So I cry out "Hey!" and turn around.  At the same time the hand releases my purse and returns to the table behind us where a man and woman are sitting.  Before Trip and I can fully register what just almost happened they get up and leave, looking very worried and I check my purse.  "Good", I think "nothing's missing".  About thirty seconds later it hits me, holy cow, I just almost got pick pocketed!  That guy is lucky it took me a minute to be sure I saw him grabbing my purse because when I confirmed this to Trip, he was mad!  So, we talked through the scam this couple is most likely pulling and have come to the conclusion that the purse must always be either on the table, in my lap, or left at home in the future.  I have to admit, I am super lucky I noticed him because he could have easily slid it off the chair, given it to the woman and left without either of us even noticing they were there.  Neither of us have lived in a country where you have to pay such close attention and we didn't really realize that was the way it would be here.  Luckily, we have learned that lesson the somewhat easy way and we haven't had any trouble since then.

Sprinkles The Cobra

"Do you want to watch me feed Sprinkles?"

"Heck yeah I do." I reply as I walk out my Branch President's front door to meet the baby King Cobra he caught in his front yard a few days ago. It's a cute little serpent of death, named Sprinkles. Sprinkles the Cobra. I'll pause to let that sink in.

We get out onto the front porch of his house, which apparently, is where you keep live baby cobras, and I am confronted with an old aqurium with a screen lid and a brick holding it in place. "This is going to be interesting," I think to myself.

"Ok. Now I'll grab the brick and the lid. You keep a flashlight on him as I toss in his dinner," which is a gecko that one of his boys just caught for him. Every Animal Planet snake show I have seen flicks across my consciousness. This is going to be awesome.

He tosses in the gecko and quickly replaces the lid and the brick. I have the flash light trained on Sprinkles like an FBI agent about to take down Hannibal Lecter. "So I just learned from my neighbor that apparently baby cobras are even more poisonous than a mature King Cobra," he pauses for a second as Sprinkles stirs. "Yeah, since they haven't learned to control the flow of their venom when they sink their tiny little fangs into their victim, they kind of over do it." Cute, right? Sprinkles slithers around a little bit, but shows no interest in his dinner. I track his movements with my flashlight with laser precision.

"We probably won't see him eat. I haven't yet." Pres. Renner says. "Let's see if we can't get his attention." He raps on the glass. Sprinkles does not like this. He smacks the aquarium again and out comes the hood. "Cool" I croon. I tap on the glass and Sprinkles is striking so fast that it is as if he knew that I was going to do it. In a flash I am jumping back, retracting my finger from the glass, and screaming like a girl "WHOA!" Even though there is a pane of glass between me and my poisonous little friend, it is funny how deep the instinct for self preservation is.

I want to clarify something real quick. President Renner is an awesome dude. He was SF in the Army and has done some work in private security so he has the kind of stories that you can write movies about. This is probably why he is so chillaxed about his new pet. I, on the other hand, have a huge phobia of snakes, especially the poisonous ones. That didn't stop me from asking Kim on the way home that night if I could have a pet cobra some day. The answer of course was, "not a chance."

I'm Ok, I'm Ok... I'm Ok, Right?

So as some of you may have heard in the news, there was an earthquake in our part of the world. Indonesia suffered some pretty bad damage and casualties. However, here in Malaysia, we only felt a few aftershocks. Kim and I didn't even realize that there had been an earthquake, because we were driving at the time the aftershocks occurred and even most people standing on firm ground didn't feel them.

Sorry that we didn't post about this sooner, but to us the event was about as big a deal as the California fires were while we were living in Utah. Tragic, but no effect on our daily lives.

We just wanted to put all of our friends and family at ease that the Adventures of Trip and Kim will continue, unabated. Thanks for everyone's concern.