Hello KL

A couple of months ago, I joined the Association of British Women in Malaysia (ABWM).  They are a fun group of women who get together at different venues throughout Kuala Lumpur for coffees, Mahjong, dinner socials, charity events, running clubs, book clubs, photo clubs, and more. 

This past month, I was lucky enough to take part in a 4 week (once per week) introductory tour around KL with two lovely British guides from the ABWM-Mandy and Pauline. Our group consisted of seven expats from Australia, America, Scotland, and England. Together, we traveled around different parts of the city including Chinatown, Central Market (Pasar Seni), the light rail, the Taman Tun Dr. Ishmael (TTDI) wet market, a traditional Malay house, the Bangsar neighborhood, and a variety of stores and shops that a new expat might find useful. A good time was had by all.

first day of Hello KL tour

popular expat store for home decorations

our lunch at the Malay house

Jalan Alor area

gorgeous mahjong set at Ambiance

LRT at Bangsar station

stopping for a drink at an old salon-hotel

Central Market

not quite my idea of Christmas trees, but very colorful!

fish balls cooking?

TTDI wet market

the baking store at TTDI

TTDI veggie stands

more veggie stands at TTDI

fish stand at TTDI

florist at TTDI

poultry area at TTDI

the spice lady at TTDI

beautiful displays at Allison's

loved this acupuncture family (at Ambiance)!

some of our group in Bangsar neighborhood

more in Bangsar neighborhood

our group in front of Jalan Conlay Malay house

Petronas towers peeking out behind the Malay house

inside the Malay house

inside the Malay house

our 2 muslim guides in the Malay house

traditional Malay kitchen

Jalan Alor

Bukit Bintang 

Lucky Meats proprietress

street scene KL

elephants at gift shop 

tea time with the group

my dragon fruit smoothy at lunch one day

light rail at Bangsar station

inside Bangsar station

central market

scarf shop

our group in Chinatown

can you find me?

view from near Merdeka Square

the famous Peter Hoe's

Christmas cheer in Chinatown

inside Peter Hoe's

Photography

I enjoy taking pictures and try to photograph what I am looking at in an artistic way. Sometimes photos just jump out at me until I stop and try to capture that moment in time. 

Moving to Malaysia for a year seemed like a good reason to buy a nice camera. So I decided to buy my first digital SLR camera before we left home. After doing some online and in store research as well as getting personal recommendations, I purchased a Canon Rebel T-3. I like it’s moderate size and ease of use, but I still don’t know very much about it. As I take pictures this year, I am trying to experiment using different settings on the camera. And with the help of my daughter, I am also learning more about photoshopping. Additionally, I have started taking photo classes at the British Women’s Association in Kuala Lumpur and am loving it. In our first two classes, we covered some aspects of photo composition and evaluated professional photographer's works as well as some of our own. In the new year, I will be taking classes on movement, portraiture, street photography, aperture and macro, and Light Room (a cataloging and editing program). I am excited. Below, I have included several of my favorite shots. Hope you enjoy ; ).

Christmas in Malaysia

Hmmm...celebrating Christmas in a Muslim country... Despite Christmas decorations and music in the malls, Christmas just doesn’t seem the same here. Could it be the warm weather? The lack of Christmas carolers, Christmas trees, and the fragrant smell of pine? I think it is that and more. I am missing our annual Christmas traditions that lead up to Christmas: the lighting of our city tree, the special gatherings of friends, seeing eggnog at the grocery store and eggnog lattes at Starbucks. And most certainly, it is having the day off for Christmas!

On the positive side of things, lots of grocery stores and hotels are selling take out turkey dinners accompanied by a few side dishes for pretty reasonable prices. I haven’t yet decided if I will go that route, but it seems excessive to cook so many dishes for just the 4 of us. Perhaps I should just break out of tradition entirely and do something different this year for dinner. What do you think?

What have I done to bring in the Christmas season, you ask??? 

Several weeks ago on a walk, I found a lovely large tree branch without leaves on it that I am using as our Charlie Brown Christmas tree. I have begun to decorate it with homemade and store bought items. So far, my decorations consist of toilet paper rolls I decorated with colorful designs, stars, bows, strands of crepe paper, and a Petronas towers ornament. I also found a strand of lights that I plan on hanging on the tree if it is strong enough.

We also attended a church service at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Bukit Bintang where there were Christmas carols being sung and the origination stories of the carols were told. I enjoyed the stories though the singing left much to be desired. The musical compositions weren’t much to my liking and the voices were sadly uninspiring.

The crafting part of my Christmas season has consisted of folding Waldorf stars (http://arwenart.com/tutorials/windowstars/). For a few weeks now whenever I get the chance and find some cool paper, I fold more stars. Our entry wall now has stars of all different sizes and colors. Because I couldn’t find the recommended kite paper for the stars, I have used whatever paper I could find including colorful sticky note paper, magazines, advertisements, wrapping paper, local money, and even the waxy paper covering some flowers I purchased...I love my star wall ; ).

St. Andrew's Church

Malaysian Ringgit star

star wall

our Charlie Brown Christmas tree

mall Christmas decorations

Ambiance store Xmas decorations

MKIS Symphonic band Christmas performance (w/Gabe)

our own mini mall in Mont' Kiara

1 Mont' Kiara

Today was the last day of school for the kids for 3 weeks-YAY and tomorrow we are off to Bali and Thailand. Merry Christmas to all and to all a Happy New Year!

Toilets/Tandas (don't read if you are easily disgusted)

Doesn’t it always seem like you don’t notice something until things get bad or become uncomfortable? 

You wouldn’t think there was all that much to talk about involving toilets.  Well, that is just not true as I first learned traveling in Asia 25 years ago. Sad to say, it’s not much better nowadays in Malaysia. If you are aren’t comfortable with eastern (pit style) toilets, don’t travel to Asia. If you are sensitive to smells, you might not want to visit either. If you thought that the women’s bathroom lines in America took a long time to get through, stay at a 5 star hotel because the regular lines in Malaysia take forever to get through. Is it the long sarongs? the bidet’s? or what??? Despite the heat, flip flops are questionable shoe gear in the bathrooms as puddles are often the norm. If you can’t pee standing up, just forget it, because if you are lucky enough to get a western toilet where you are supposed to be able to sit down, more often than not, the seats are covered with wet shoe prints!!! And don’t forget to bring your own toilet paper as most bathrooms don’t even have toilet paper dispensers. And never go anywhere without change or you may be out of luck going to the bathroom as even dirty bathrooms can cost to enter (even without toilet paper)! On the positive side, there are lots of Starbucks around Malaysia with very clean, free, western toilets.

Even if the Malaysians aren’t doing much about the toilet problems, at least they have acknowledged that it is a problem:

http://malaysiansmustknowthetruth.blogspot.com/2010/11/malaysian-toilets-fail-cleanliness-test.html

clean Malaysian toilet

clean Malaysian pit toilet

 (clean) Malaysian bathroom

Finding my passions....guitar?

I’ve wanted to learn how to play guitar for many years. So this year, in my search to discover my passion/s, I decided that I had better try guitar now before my hands and fingers are too stiff to move in the new ways guitar playing requires. Not knowing whether or not I would enjoy playing guitar, I looked for a guitar I could borrow temporarily. I ended up borrowing my brother’s huge steel string guitar and then took one session of classical guitar lessons at our local art center in Davis. I was hooked. 

When we moved to Malaysia 4 months ago, one of my first tasks was to purchase a guitar. While out walking with the family our first week in KL, we came across the Guitar Store. There, I found a variety of guitars for sale-electric and acoustic, nylon and steel string. I chose a Farida steel string acoustic guitar. Not the cheapest nor the most expensive, but adequate for my needs. I was also able to sign up for guitar lessons there.

Although my fingers began learning about steel string soreness when I first began taking lessons in Davis, I didn’t have a full appreciation of it until I began playing chords and pressing multiple fingers into those steel strings repeatedly. In a way, it is like the soreness your muscles feel after exercising in a new way or exercising after having been inactive for a while. The difference is that exercise related muscle soreness goes away after a few days but finger soreness continues after months of playing. Callouses are forming on the ends of my fingertips but each day my fingers feel like they have been through the mill. Still, I continue. There is something intrinsically rewarding about making music with your own hands (even if it wouldn’t win any awards :/).

Steph with her new guitar

guitars to choose from

Madeline helping me choose...

Mahjong

I’m not much of a games person, but since I’m doing lots of new things this year, I thought I would just say YES to Mahjong! Plus, I thought it might be a fun game for the family to learn since we are in Asia which is where the game originated. And it should be an especially good game for Gabriel to learn as he is taking Mandarin this year at school. I found a few expat groups that teach and play Mahjong locally. So I joined the British group since the teacher is a woman in my condominium building, the lessons are free and convenient. I had heard that Mahjong was a complicated game and I was a bit nervous to find out whether or not my aging brain was up to the task. But thankfully, it has not proven too much for me and I seem to be understanding the initial lessons just fine and having fun ; ). Don’t worry, I’m not gambling yet...

Mahjong originated in China over 2000 years ago. It spread to many countries including England and Australia, but not to the US until the 1920’s when it became a decade long fad. Although it is not a widely played game in the US, there are national tournaments held each year (www.mahjongg.org).

Mahjong is most commonly played with 4 individuals and is a game of skill and strategy with some chance involved. There are both Chinese and English versions of Mahjong-the Chinese versions being more complex. It is said to be similar to the card game, Gin rummy. It is played with small rectangular tiles similar to dominoes and the tiles have Chinese writing, pictures, or both on the top surface of the tiles. Dice are thrown at the beginning of the game to determine the leader and then 13 tiles per person are chosen from the more than 100 tiles on the table. With each turn, tiles are picked up and discarded to build one’s hand. The first one to complete his or her hand has gotten Mahjong. Here is a short video giving the highlights of Mahjong. www.youtube.com/watch? v=vw2tjRGMwlg

Below are a few pictures of our Mahjong table and tiles and me getting my first Mahjong!

Mahjong at Sue's (on the far right)

my first Mahjong!

Bahasa Malaysia

I started taking a Malaysian language class a few weeks ago in my neighborhood. It‘s a 10 week course and I can continue through level 6 if I wish to. My teacher is a Malaysian man named Azmi. So we call him Cikgu Azmi for teacher Azmi. His full name is Azmi bin Yaakub which means Azmi, son of Yaakub. Our class is not what I expected for a beginning language class, however it is interesting, I am meeting new people, and I am learning fascinating cultural facts and new vocabulary words and phrases. Here are a few words that I have learned so far...Can you put some of these words together to make some sentences?

mee = noodles

nasi = rice

cili = chili

goreng = fried & spicy

pedas = spicy hot

panas = temperature hot

Tolong = please (when you are asking for help)

saya suka = I like

saya tidak suka = I don’t like

saya mahu = I want

saya tidak mahu = I don’t want

saya boleh = I can

saya tidak boleh = I cannot

belum =none

satu = one

dua =two

tiga = three

empat = four

orang = person/people

orang utan = forest people

anak = child/ren

saya = I/me/my

ada = has/to have

mempunyai = to have (something big)

sama sama = no problem/ no worries

selamat pagi = good morning (until 11am)

selamat tenga hari = good day (11a-2p)

selamat datang = welcome

selamat petang = good afternoon (2pm-sunset)

selamat malam = good night (sunset to bedtime, also said at bedtime)

bola = ball

sepak = kick

ya = yes

tidak = no

kuching = cat

ikan = fish

anjing = dog

ayam = chicken