Where were you a year ago?

Me at dad's place, July 2011

Me in Penang, June 2010

 

I was going through pictures recently and came across some pictures that we took when my family came out to visit a year ago.  It is kind of crazy to think of how much has happened and changed in a year.  A year ago, Trip and I weren't ready to start having children yet.  A year ago, we were seriously thinking of extending our international experience for a couple of years.  Now, we feel like moving back to the States is the right thing for us, for now anyway :)  And we are definitely having children...ready or not!  Just funny to think of how much can happen in so little time.

Taxi

Yesterday we had our routine doctor's appointment.  Since our doctor is located at  one of the largest hospitals in Kuala Lumpur, we have never had a problem getting there via taxi.  At least, not before today.  Yesterday, we managed to get the one taxi driver that thought when we said "Prince Court Hospital", we really meant "Prince Hotel".  Not only that, but he also took us through downtown Kuala Lumpur during the lunch rush hour, which was awesome.  It wasn't until he pulled up to the hotel that we realized he had no clue where the hospital actually was.  Once we figured this out, we gave him directions and he finally figured out where he was going.  At this point we had driven in a huge loop.  


The real kicker was when he pulled into the hospital entrance and started going into paid parking before he realized that was not the drop off point.  I think we found the only taxi driver who has not heard of or been to this hospital before.  Our 5 minute ride ended up taking 30 minutes and I wouldn't have minded so much except that this particular visit to the doctor was also when we were finding out the gender of our baby.  Talk about feeling anxious!

Thanksgiving in Malaysia

This year we celebrated Thanksgiving on Sunday.  Since Malaysians don't celebrate Thanksgiving, we didn't get a nice long weekend like everyone back home.  But we made the most of our weekend and had a great time with a bunch of our friends.  The McKinley's were kind enough to host the celebration just like last year.  Trip and I volunteered to make the stuffing this time and it was awesome.  We made so much...we are still eating stuffing!

We also made some cookies.  Scott McKinley had been telling us about these cookies he had grown up with in Pennsylvania called "Gobs".  As it turns out, he was talking about my homemade oreo cookies that I had made for dinner!  I am going to call them Gobs from now on...it sounds much more interesting.

I made more of an effort to take pictures this year.  Unfortunately, I can't upload them right now, so I will have to do that later.

The food was delicious and the company was great!  Happy Thanksgiving!!

Thailand - Take 6 (Elephants)

Out of all the things we did in Chiang Mai, going to Baan Chang Elephant Park was by far the best.  Not only did we get to ride and wash the elephants, but we also learned about their lifestyles, how to care for them and many other educational tidbits of information.  Out of all the elephant experiences available, we were so glad that we chose this one!

Little baby elephant


We got picked up at 9am and went to buy fruit for the elephants.  At the fruit stalls we learned about what fruits are good and not so good for the elephants.  (Green bananas are bad, yellow bananas are good)  Then we were off to the park, where we had a brief orientation.

After that we got to feed the elephants. 

We were able to approach any elephant that we wanted and feed them as much as we wanted until all the food was gone.  Since there were only 14 people in our group, we had plenty of time and opportunity.
Next, we were instructed on how to mount an elephant and we all got to practice.

Then we got to practice steering the elephants while riding them.

 
After practicing, we got lunch and then we took a couple hour elephant ride on a mountain path.  The elephant that Trip and I were assigned to was named Dancing Queen.  She is the one we practiced on and she got her name because when she is standing still or gets bored she starts dancing. We don't have any pictures of our mountain trek or the bathing because we decided to leave the camera behind.  We didn't want anything to happen to it.
 

We had such a good experience; we would recommend this park to anyone!

Happy 4th of July!

Even though we aren't actually in the US, the independence we have as US citizens was still worth celebrating!  We got together with Scott and Tobi Sanders, my dad, and Carl Curtis for the day.  We had tons of food and games, so even though there were no fireworks or BBQ's, we still had a great time!

Thanks for hosting us you guys!

A Little Irony

Recently my blogging habits have been impeded by slow internet and the fact that for some inexplicable reason, the office IT department decided to make Blogger inaccessible.  (It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that it is a distraction, could it?)  Anyway, I will upload more Thailand pictures this weekend with all the spare time that I am sure to have between youth activities, Mother's Day phone calls with 2 moms and a brother on a mission, and belated birthday celebrations.  Yeah, there is a lot to catch up on.  For now, I have had something on my mind that I just couldn't resist writing about, and that something is toilet paper.  Yes, that is correct, I said toilet paper.

In January a new Postgraduate Center was opened up to students and staff on the campus where Trip is going to class.  I was given a desk there and worked from the newest, hottest office at INTI for 4 months.  The look and quality of the center is indescribably better than the rest of campus so I was pretty happy about sitting there.  Perhaps the biggest perk was the fact that we also got to use the newest, cleanest, and now nicest bathrooms on campus (we are talking nice 4-star hotel bathrooms vs yucky public bathrooms at a train station).  The only problem was that the toilet paper had not been installed yet, but that wasn't such a big deal, I thought, because they would install it soon.

Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months.  Still no toilet paper.  Surely, a mistake had been made.  I talked to my boss and he too was puzzled.  After asking some questions we discovered that there were some objections to putting toilet paper in the bathroom and thus it had not been done.  'What kind of objection could possibly make sense?', you may ask.  Well, let me enlighten you.  Apparently, certain INTI staff feel that we cannot afford to provide toilet paper because, and I quote "when we have put toilet paper in the bathrooms in the past, the students stole it".  Is it really that big of a commodity that students must resort to stealing it?!  Is toilet paper really that expensive that we can't afford to lose a few rolls?!

Well, after this was made known to some key people, the problem was rectified and we were able to find a solution that met everyone's expectations...toilet paper in the stalls in locked dispensers.  After nearly 4 months of waiting, hassling, and reminding, I finally got toilet paper in the stalls!  For one glorious week I got to enjoy using a bathroom with all the amenities.  Then I got transferred to the new corporate offices on the campus that dad works on.  I have been pretty lucky since each time I move offices I upgrade a little; I really like my new office and I now have a nearly private bathroom that I share with one other personal assistant.


The only thing is...there is no toilet paper in our new bathroom!


Now that's what you call ironic.

Good Bye Box 'O Rocks

Ever since Kim and I have moved into our latest apartment, we have been doomed to spend each night in a purgatory of minor discomfort and restlessness, followed all too quickly by mornings of aches, pains, and headaches due to our horrendous mattress that I like to affectionately call the "Box 'O Rocks."  

So, after our wonderful trip to Penang over the Chinese New Year, where we were given a brief respite on what seemed like a mattress from On High, I started to spiral very rapidly into fits of daydreams involving Box 'O Rocks, a road flare, and ample amounts of lighter fluid. The problem was that replacing good 'Ol Box wasn't just a matter of going to the mattress store and picking out his eventual successor. You see we are renting a fully furnished apartment here in Malaysia, and we pay a pretty sizable premium so that we did not have to incur the cost of shipping or buying and selling all of our furniture needs for this one year excursion to the Orient. 

After making a few phone calls to the landlords and leaving messages to the effect that "Rocks" doesn't rock, Kimberlee and I made the decision to not pay rent until we were sleeping on little clouds, surrounded by cherubs; or at least a mattress that did not have an army of gnomes waiting for me to fall asleep and wreak havoc on my shoulder blades. 

We had to wait for four days before our landlord finally called, "Paul did you forget that the rent is due." 

"Oh, about that. Kim and I have been trying to get a hold of you. Did you get my messages about the mattress?"

At this point we engaged in an overly long conversation about brands, conditions, etc.  I won't go into the mundane details.

The ultimate outcome was that our landlord did the right thing. Yesterday we got a new mattress that feels amazing. This morning was the first time since we moved in about eight weeks ago that I did not wake up sore. Of course, the first Saturday I have this glorious horizontal sleeping surface, I have to be at work by 8:00 am...

And the moral of this story is...

...if something is on fire, don't stand close enough to get burned!

Yesterday I was driving home after a rather long meeting.  I was anxious to get back to Nilai to pick up Trip so that we could get home.  I was trying to hurry but got stuck in the beginnings of rush hour traffic, so it took me 20 minutes to drive 2 blocks to get onto the highway.  When I finally got on the highway, I was feeling totally irritated at all the lame drivers who don't know how to merge properly and caused the jam in the first place.  Well, as I was thinking my negative thoughts I started to notice that a lot of people seemed to be broken down on the side of the road.  I passed a big truck pulled over with a repair man looking at the engine.  I also passed a minivan that had pulled over and just flagged down someone to help.

Then I noticed a column of smoke coming from traffic going in the opposite direction.  I managed to see a sedan with its engine engulfed in flames.  I have never seen so much fire coming from a car before.  The most interesting part was that, in the couple of seconds I had to see this before turning my attention back to the road in front of me, I saw a little crowd of people standing near the burning car.  They were clustered around it and standing much closer than I would have.  I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if the gas tank caught on fire and the car exploded with all those people standing right there...sometimes I have to question the intelligence of people.

Cockroaches...Ew

We had our first cockroach visit our apartment last week.  It had been raining a ton and the roach decided to look for shelter in our living room.  Unfortunately for it, we were also seeking shelter in the living room.  Unfortunately for us, the cockroach was huge!  We got it and I made Trip pose for a picture to show how big it was.

Singapore

We drove to Singapore a couple of weekends ago to ‘reset’ our visitor’s pass in Malaysia since we haven’t gotten our visas yet.  It was a fun little road trip that only took us about 3 and a half hours to complete.  We crossed the border with no difficulty and then we were in what seemed like a completely different country.  Even though Malaysia and Singapore had the same history until 50 years ago, Singapore is totally different.  The most noticeable difference was the road systems.  It didn’t take us very long at all to figure out the roadways (unlike in Malaysia where we still haven't figured it out), and people drove in a normal, sane manner (meaning they actually obeyed common driving rules).  It was rather reminiscent of the US.  We only got to spend one night there before coming back and since we didn’t get to the hotel until late, we didn’t really do much besides eat dinner and sleep.  We are definitely going to go back so that we can experience Singapore properly.

Anyway, we were laughing about how spoiled we got in the less than 24 hours that we spent there.  When we left Malaysia we were told we had to purchase a Touch & Go card (kind of like the Easy Pass on the east coast) where you put money on it and then tap it against a pad to pay tolls instead of using cash.  They told us it was 20 ringgit for the card, but they didn’t tell us that paying 20 ringgit only left us with 9.20 for the next toll and we didn’t find out until re-entering Malaysia because there were no toll booths after that.  So, we came up to the first toll booth back in Malaysia and we tap our card and find out we need 10.80, but we didn’t have enough.  We had to back up and go to a different lane (there wasn’t anyone at the booth we were at) so we could pay cash and move on.  Well, shortly after this we decided we wanted to put more money on the card and at the next toll we pulled up and asked the person if we could top up.  They told us to go to booth one, so we said we would do it at the next toll.  The next toll comes and we pull into booth one and say we want to top up and the person tells us we have to go to booth three…oh brother.  We just said never mind, we’ll pay cash ‘cause it’s easier.  So long uniform and easy to understand Singapore…hello random Malaysian ways!

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.