A Week of Volunteering...Mostly...

After our weekend of play I was ready to start the week!  I was rejuvenated and felt good about the things that were coming up.  My week was going to be spent volunteering my time to AAM.  I was going to be with my new friends (Pauline, Sharon and Vicky) most of the week doing things either for orphanages or for one of the retiree homes.  This meant a lot of trips into KLCC but I've got the train figured out!

First I had to get through Monday and Tuesday.  They were my nothing planned days.  I looked at it like I was volunteering my time to the house; but this definitely was not a charity!  I didn't mind since I knew most of my time would be away from the house for the rest of the week.  I took advantage of the time and finished my laundry (really boring) and did a few other small things around the house.  In all honesty, I spent a good portion of the days watching TV waiting for the laundry to finish.  I did actually pull out the ironing board and ironed a lot of clothes since our combo machine tends to leave wrinkles no matter how quickly you pull the clothes out.  I really hate ironing!  I'm thinking it might be worth it to find someone to do that for me...hmm...

Finally Wednesday came!  I got up at the same time I used to get up to go to work...that really sucked!  I'm just not used to that anymore!  I took the train in to KLCC and met up with my friends.  That is when I found out that our plan of attack was to go to China Town...woo hoo!!!  It was only going to be Pauline and Sharon going with me since Vicky wasn't feeling that well.  Our mission was to find Christmas gift bags.  Now you would think this would not be that much of a problem, right?  We needed A LOT of them.  They were for gifts for children at two different orphanages so Pauline (the leader of this expedition and the Director of the charities committee at AAM) wanted some bags that were nice but fairly inexpensive.  Hence the trip to China Town.  I took a couple of pictures while I was there...

These are a couple of temples that are right in the middle of China Town.  The top one had much more to it but there was no way I could fit it all in the frame.

Pauline and Sharon showed me some of the really cool shops and I was also shown where Central Market is.  I had no idea it was in China Town!  Since we were on a mission we didn't spend time shopping but I've been looking for an excuse to go back...  =)

Before we left there we had lunch.  The name of the restaurant was Swiss Inn (or something like that) but it had all kinds of food.  I had the chicken satay, which is a local dish, and stir fried vegetables.  The vegetables came as more of a soup which caught me off guard but whatever...they were still good.  The satay was very good...

The sauce in the small square bowl is peanut sauce.  I've been told that it can be very spicy so I'm always cautious when I try it.  It was good on this day.  The serving came with eight skewers...I was so hungry that had two before I remembered to take the picture.  In the long rectangular dish there are cucumbers, chunks of sticky rice and onions.  I left the onions alone!  This was a really good meal!

When we left China Town we went back to Pauline's to make up small bags of personal hygiene products to be part of the gifts for the teenagers at the orphanages.  Many of the products we used in the bags were donated...really cool!  I left there that day feeling really good about the day's work.  I was also excited about the next day...

I got up at an ungodly hour yet again Thursday so I could head into KLCC.  This day it would be just Pauline and I heading out to our destination.  We were going to the Sisters of the Poor to play bingo with the elderly people.  We met up with three other ladies from AAM so there were five of us total there volunteering.  There were at least 20+ elderly people that were residents that came to play bingo and most of them knew the other ladies I was with so I knew they were regulars to the game.  The game only lasted an hour but they loved it!  AAM supplied small prizes for them to choose from when they won and they enjoyed being able to pick out their prizes.  I'm not usually a fan of homes like that but I could see myself going back to play bingo again.

After this we met a few other AAM members for lunch.  There is much going on this time of year at AAM so I have been learning.  The annual Christmas Bazaar would be happening in a week and plans were starting to kick off for the annual ball in February.  This meant that there were meetings going on at the AAM Villa so we headed back there after lunch to attend a planning meeting for the ball.  I'm starting to learn a lot of behind the scenes stuff...

After that we headed back to Pauline's and I headed home, once again with a good feeling inside knowing that the day was a success.  And again, looking forward to the next day...

Pauline's place and found out when I got there that the original plans for the day had been changed.  We were going to go to the hotel where the Christmas Bazaar was being held to finalize some decisions and start discussions about the May Sale (whatever that is...).  Instead, Pauline and I wound up going shopping to start filling the wish list requests for the children at the orphanages.  We shopped for close to three hours at one of the hypermarkets here, Carrefour, and completed the full list for one of the orphanages.

We headed back to Pauline's where we were met by Sharon and Vicky.  We then spent a couple of hours filling the Christmas bags with the gifts and getting them ready.  I know all of this seems a little early but Pauline is traveling back and forth to Vietnam right now because her husband is doing a job there.  Since she is essentially in charge of this, she wanted to make sure that everything was done early.  The parties to hand out the gifts are usually done in the beginning of December.  This way, she can rest assured that it is all handled.

Another day down and what a fitting close to the week!  Another weekend is upon us and there is nothing necessary going on.  Perhaps Patric and I get to explore some more...

See you next post!!

Monkey update:  They aren't known for their giving nature...as a matter of fact you are told to watch your belongings very closely when you do come into contact with them.  They are cute little thieves so not seeing them at volunteer opportunities was not a surprise!  =)

Our First Weekend of Exploration

Yes!  A free weekend!  Well, mostly free...

Saturday started out with a little business that had to be taken care of.  We have been renting a car for about a month and it is time for it to be returned.  Our real estate agent, Shanny, had offered to take us car shopping when we were ready...we were ready.  I contacted her while I was doing my domestic duties and got us in her schedule for Saturday afternoon.

We originally thought we were going to go with a used car or one that was built locally.  The used car idea quickly left the agenda.  We looked at the Perodua Myvi (local car) and really liked it.  The draw backs were that it is unreliable and does not have a good resale value.  Then we looked at all of the new import car dealerships.  You would be amazed at how much the cars we love so dearly in the US cost over here!  Import tariffs are CRAZY!!!!

Anyway, we decided on a Suzuki Swift.  It's all about the small car over here!

And yes, it will be blue.  =)

After we finished car shopping we spent the rest of the afternoon at The Curve.  That's the mall that is within walking distance of our house and has Ikea in it - but we didn't go anywhere near Ikea.  We didn't even have a purpose for this mall trip.  We were just there to be there.  This was the first time that we had the chance to just explore this mall...it was nice to just spend time hanging out.

Sunday was even better.  We got up and watched our first UFC fight since we have been here...WOO HOO!!!  It was really nice to start the day with a good fight card!  After we got that out of the way we headed into KLCC for some real exploration.  Here is a picture on the way in...

There is a mall called Suria that is basically attached to the Petronas towers.  This mall is HUGE and absolutely beautiful!  By the time we got there it was lunch time so we headed to what equates to the food court.  We each had what is called a rice clay pot.  Mine had chicken, vegetables (I'm not sure what kind other than it was green) and egg.

It doesn't look too bad, huh?  Looks are deceiving.  The chicken was full of bones.  They literally cut the whole chicken up and used every part of it as is.  CRAZY!!!  Plus, the rice is cooked in the clay pot so most of it was burned and stuck to the bottom.  Well, that's one experience down (and this was before the email from my brother).  We found out later from one of the ladies in Patric's group at work that you shouldn't eat at the food courts in malls...hmmm...

After lunch we headed out to go to the towers.  Our goal was to head up to the skywalk.  Then we found this...

So as a consolation I took a picture of Patric in front of one of the sculptures at one of the entrances.

Here are some shots of the towers and a picture of the main building between the towers.

These are some buildings that are near the towers that I thought were cool.

From the towers we weren't that far from Hard Rock Cafe so we decided to walk to it. 

We used Google Maps to get us there and by the time we arrived we were dying of thirst and hungry since the "lunch" we had at Suria wasn't what we had hoped for.  Plus we were looking forward to a familiar meal.  The most hilarious thing happened when we arrived at Hard Rock Cafe.  The restaurant had been rented out for a pre-teen birthday party.  The place was crawling with American pre-teens.  It looked like the theme of the party had something to do with famous people since they were all dressed like people from gossip magazines and there were adults dressed in all black with Paparazzi on the back of their shirts taking pictures at the entrance.  There were other adults dressed the same with Crew printed on the back of their shirts.  The only area that was available for us to sit and eat was the bar...so we sat there and ate and watched the entertainment provided by the kids.  While we were at Hard Rock I took advantage of the opportunity to add to my shot glass collection!

They are waiting for their brothers and sisters to arrive!!!  =)

After we finished eating and when we had about all we could stand of the "entertainment" we headed back to Suria so we could find our car and head home.  All parking garages require payment in order to get out of them and all malls have parking garages.  So on our way out of Suria we stopped at the auto pay machine to pay our parking ticket.  The problem was that the machine wouldn't read our ticket.  We got to have our first experience at tracking down the garage management office.

The office was on a different floor from where we parked but it was all part of the day's adventure.  The people in the office were really nice.  We have learned, unfortunately the hard way, to write the location of our car on our parking ticket.  When they had to keep our original ticket they saw that we had written the location on it and made sure to remind us of where our car was.  That was really cool!  So we made it back to our car without incident and headed home.  Of course, the journey home had a few extra turns even with GPS...all part of the adventure!



See you next post!!

Monkey update:  KLCC is entirely too busy for monkeys so I really didn't expect to see any...but I haven't given up hope!  =)

Coffee Morning...Round Two

So I forgot to tell you about a really cool coffee morning!

The day after the Little India walking tour I had my first meeting with the Schlumberger Spousal Association (SSA).  I had been looking forward to meeting with them since before I left home.  Some of the ladies in Patric's office in College Station had told me that the SSA had a KL branch and Patric had even gone so far as to send me some links to their website.  I was really excited when I got here and finally got an email from the SSA welcoming me to KL!  I also received a newsletter letting me know about upcoming events.  The first one that really caught my eye was the coffee morning...

It was being held the day after an AAM activity so it fit right in to my schedule AND it was at The Coffee Bean.  It was like the fates wanted me to be at this!  So who was I to deny them?

I went to the Coffee Bean, which was located in Mont Kiara (bonus!), and as I got there it hit me...I had no idea who I was looking for!  All I knew was that I needed to go in, place my order and have it put on the SSA tab.  Seemed a little strange to me but ok.  As I walked in to place my order I saw a woman wearing a Schlumberger lanyard...yay for small miracles!  So I asked the dumbest most obvious question...are you with the Schlumberger Spousal Association?  Duh!  But she was really nice when she answered.  She just smiled really big and said yes as she introduced herself.

I met a lot of ladies that day and had a lot of fun.  The thing I really found out though was that most of them have children so their lives are in a much different place than mine.  Their schedules are dominated by school and family events.  I did meet a few ladies that I may be able to develop some relationships with so we will see what comes from that.  We all laughed a lot and had a lot of fun!  It will be nice to see them when we can get together.

The SSA has activities that they host and I look forward being able to attend them.  I'm sure I will meet more people as I get out an about, which is my ultimate goal!

So for real, for real now...the rest of the week was spent doing my domestic duties.  =)

Next post will be our weekend excursions.

See you next post!!

Monkey update:  They haven't moved into Mont Kiara since we moved out...  =)

Learning to Become a Domestic Engineer

After my exciting day in Little India I didn't have much to look forward to the rest of the week.  I had nothing planned outside of the house.  All of my plans were taking place at home and they all fell under the job description of my new position.

I spent the entire rest of the week doing laundry, balancing accounts and - the most fun of all - calling to follow up on the installation of our internet and trying to get our cable boxes corrected.  Like I've posted earlier...customer service is a little lacking here.

After many phone calls and lots of minutes on hold with one of the biggest internet companies in town, I found out that fiber optic internet is not available in our gated area.  The really bad part about this is that we were told two weeks prior by a sales man that this would be the week that we would have internet from the exact company that I was calling.  Sadly, this internet company didn't even have me listed in their database which tells me he didn't even turn in my order.  If he had he would have known then that our area didn't have internet.  We have since been put on a list to request it and be notified when it is available.  We are also watching on their website to see what kind of progress they are making and it looks like they are in our in our gated community...just not to our street.  I can't wait to get off the mobile broadband!!!

I'm happy to say that our cable box issue is fixed!  We can now record downstairs which is what we always wanted and we can finally watch TV upstairs.  TV life is good!  =)

I think I might get the hang of this new job!  I've never held this position before but I have some pretty tough jobs in life.  I feel pretty confident that they have maybe, possibly, most likely prepared me for this newest job in my life.  Wish me luck!!

The weekend is coming...we aren't shopping...what will we do???

See you next post!!

Little India - A Walking Tour

Monday came and a new excitement was washing through me.  With my membership to AAM I get the opportunity to participate in different activities and workshops.  This day I was fortunate enough to be able to take advantage of one of the activities offered by AAM.

Our group was to meet at the tallest flag pole in Independence Square...yeah, those were the instructions given.  But don't worry.  The pole was definitely easy to find.  This was the tallest flag pole I think I have ever seen.  I wanted to take a picture to show you but I couldn't get one that would do it justice.  Instead, here is a picture of a fountain next to the flag pole...  =)

And so you know I actually went on this tour, here I am in front of this fountain...

I got there really early so I was sitting on the steps near the flag pole.  I took this picture out across Independence Square.

Independence Square looks like a big park.  While I was sitting there several people showed up and and walked through it or jogged around it.  There is also a huge TV that sits off to the left side of the picture.  This seems like the type of place where festivals would be held.

As the time went by more people showed up.  It was nice to have the time to meet them and get to know a little about them before the tour started.  But it was nice to finally have the tour get underway, too.  I do have to say, I wish the  tour would have given more information about historic buildings in the area.  Here are some of the buildings we did get to see...

This building is across the street from Independence Square and stretches the full length of it.  The domes on top of the columns are made of bronze (if I'm remembering correctly) and were donated by Australia.

This building is a hotel now but used to be a post office way back in the day.

I don't remember what this building is...I may have thought it was just really cool.  =)

This stone marks the exact center of KL.  The face doesn't mean anything.  Our tour guide said that someone thought it would be funny to paint it on there.

These two pictures are of sections of the long building building across from Independence Square.  The stone that marks the center of KL is also in that building.

This is one of a Mosque.  I just thought it was a cool shot...

This building was built in the 1920's.  It used to be a men's only club.  It has gone through many changes and women are allowed now but not in the bar area.  That is still reserved for men only.  The reason being because when men drink they have a tendency to get foul mouthed and not necessarily good company for ladies.  This building actually looks out on the lawn of Independence Square.

There is absolutely nothing significant about this building...but look at it.  It is just the facing.  It's like the rest of it just fell away and they left the front standing.  This was on the road as we were walking.

This is just another building I thought was cool.

This is art that is on the floor of one of the shops we went into.  It is made out of colored rocks.

As part of the tour we had a sari wearing demonstration.  This is one of the ladies that was on the tour with us that volunteered to be the model.  It looked relatively easy to wrap a sari but I most likely would not be able to do it myself.  They are very beautiful, though!

On the walk back to the meeting place I saw this really cool photo opp.  This is a banana tree, with bananas, right next to a traffic light.  How many places do you know of that have this?

So there is a small sampling of my Little India walking tour.  I hope you enjoyed it.

See you next post!!

Monkey update:  Definitely none in Little India!!  =)

A Weekend Doing What???

After spending a full day Thursday meeting people and hanging out in town I had a down day Friday.  This was good because laundry needed to be done along with a few things around the house.  No shopping...yay!  Patric and I didn't even go out for dinner that night...could this be the calm before the storm???

We knew that we still needed some things for the house so that meant weekend shopping.  Blah!  We discussed this and came up with a plan...Ikea.  Double blah!  So the alarm was set for Saturday morning in hopes that we could get ahead of most of the mess.  We were still trying to make life easy for our older Lab, Josie.  This meant that we were still hunting rugs for the floors upstairs.  We also needed a few other household items that we knew we could get there - a light for the vanity area in the master bedroom and a few other small things.

The alarm, as nasty as they are on Saturday mornings, did help a little.  But I guess when you are dealing with the only Ikea in all of Malaysia you have to expect mass confusion no matter what time you get there.  Luckily, we didn't have a lot to get so we didn't have to be there long.  As soon as we were finished with our Ikea shopping we headed home to our next task-at-hand...

The rest of our weekend was spent at our house doing nothing!  How amazing is that?  Honestly, part of the reason is because Patric wasn't feeling all that great but I'll take what I can get.  We watched movies from the hard drives that we brought over that have our movies on them.  It was nice to have down time.  What was even better about the weekend was that we were done with the bulk of the shopping!!!

Monday brings my first tour of a part of the city.  I'm really looking forward to that!

See you next post!

Monkey update:  Still none in Ikea...  =)

Stupid Little Brothers... =)

If you have a little brother you will relate with this post!

When you are young they follow you around everywhere!  They are tattle-tales and you get in trouble for everything...whether you did it or not.  I hate to admit this but mine even inflicted his own brand of punishment on occasion.

Then they grow up and they have amazing adventures in life that give them amazing insight to life.  They are no longer the little punk that made you miserable by tagging along and reporting all of your comings and goings to the parents.  Now he makes you miserable because he imparts words of wisdom that ring through your head...even though you haven't seen him for a very long time...

Such is the case with my little brother and myself.  I haven't seen him for many years but we had a really cool email conversation not too long ago (I know I owe you a reply...it's coming).  There were a couple of really cool things I found out:  1.  he is reading (and enjoying) this blog, 2.  he told me "Stop eating the same shit u can eat here though. Experiment woman. Eat some street vendor food!".  Well, #2 may not have been so cool...that is the thing that has been ringing in my head since I have read it.

It's really kind of funny...now I find myself wondering if my little brother will approve of what I'm eating.  Crazy, huh?  I can tell you that most of the time he wouldn't.  I'm still playing it safe which is why I haven't posted many food pictures lately.  But, I have two years so I'm sure it will get better.  Have faith in me little brother...it will come!

Patric and I found Outback Steakhouse today and enjoyed a fantastic steak!!!  And I have to admit...I'm not the least bit upset by that...  =)

See you next post!!