The good, the bad and the ugly.

2 posts in under a week! I'm really hoping to get this blog back on track for awhile. I've been pretty lousy at it lately, but we had a huge summer (literally, we both came back from a three-week trip to America significantly heavier than when we left) and then the start of the academic year was upon us and so it goes.

Anyway, as our time in Malaysia grows shorter (61 days!) I'm starting to see everything in two categories: what I will miss, and what I will not. Let's take a look:

Things I will miss:

The lovely, lovely weather. 90 degrees every day, guaranteed.

The food. In no particular order: yam basket, banana leaf curry, laksas of all sorts, hokkien mee, steamboat, Chinese pork ribs, salted chilies, the list goes on . . . .

Cheap stuff. Especially: food, haircuts, the vet, gasoline, (really nice) hotels, taxis, the cinema, massages.

Regional travel. So much to see and do, in three years we have covered: Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, India, Myanmar, Singapore, Indonesia x 2, Thailand x 4 and several good romps around Malaysia including a few trips to Borneo and some totally gorgeous islands.

Cheap regional airfare. Or how else would we have managed the above? AirAsia, I love you.

Under the sea. This part of the world has possibly made snorkeling my new favourite activity. Rays, octopus, starfish, clownfish, amazing corals. Can't get that just anywhere.

Wildlife. Orangutans, elephants, proboscis monkeys, hornbills, giant lizards, sea turtles. Even the little geckos.

Having a swimming pool. There is a very nice pool about 20 feet from my front door.

Thunderstorms. Totally epic, torrential, noisy, tropical thunderstorms.

Never ever being cold. You know what it's like to get out of bed at 7am in January in Illinois? I don't.

About a billion public holidays. When you observe Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu and national/state holidays that adds up to a lot.

The diversity. There's a lot of different people here. I like that.

*And this really goes without saying, but of course all of our amazing Malaysian and fellow expat friends who we've met along the way.

Things I will not miss:

Driving. Everything about it.

Trying to get stuff done. It's so hard to get the simplest things done here sometimes. Want to pay your internet bill? Must call them up and do it over the phone (Oh! The irony). Need a plumber? Take three consecutive days off work and pray he shows up by the third day. Want to deposit a cheque? Good luck finding the 'special' deposit machine for foreigners.

Calling strangers on their mobile. See above. Lots of businesses and tradesmen are not online, so you can't look them up online or book an appointment. Instead, you ask around, you get some guy's mobile number and hope for the best.

Bureaucracy. There is a form and a supplementary price for everything.

Negotiating. I hate haggling and negotiating, I don't want to be ripped off and I don't want to rip you off. Just tell me the real (fair) price.

Sugar. It's in everything.

Spitting, hawking, chewing, slurping. I know it's a cultural thing, but I don't like it.

Littering. Is there really no space in your car for that empty packet of crisps? Really?

Cockroaches. Really big ones.

Lack of personal space. The pushing, shoving, me-first battle of boarding a plane, train or just standing in what passes for queue here.

No means no. If I said I don't want to buy it, I really mean it. Also, don't follow me around the store.

Palm oil plantations. Please, please stop destroying your beautiful country.

Sopping wet toilets. With or without footprints on the seat, this really irritates me. If part of your bathroom ritual basically involves taking a shower, that's fine. Just please wipe up the mess.

And did I mention DRIVING?

24 hours in London

Having survived the 13 and a half hour flight from KL to London, my re-entry into the western world for the first time in 417 days went pretty smoothly.  Even Heathrow was kind to me and I was through immigration and had my bags in 30 minutes.

I hopped on the wildly overpriced ($30.70 for a one way-ticket) but super convenient Heathrow Express and 15 minutes later I was at Paddington Station.  A quick glance at the Tube map (Bakerloo to Victoria - how could I have forgotten?) and I was bound for Brixton - a trendy London borough which had a bit of reputation the last time I hauled out to South London (2003) that is known for it's Afro-Caribbean flavor. Gentrification has set in the last 9 years and now it's one of the trendiest, most diverse and almost affordable places to live in London.

Like other major cities around the world, Londoners are not particularly famed for their friendliness. But in the nearly two years since I was last in the UK, I had completely forgotten about that unfailing, unrelenting habit British people have of saying 'please' and 'thank you'.  (In Malaysia, you simply get 'can' or 'cannot' in response to virtually every question - or statement.) I had also completely forgotten about the British love of forming a queue.

My route to Brixton involved a change at Oxford Street - London's premier shopping district - at 6:00 on a Saturday with only three weeks until Christmas.  I was gobsmacked by the orderliness of it all.  Anywhere in Southeast Asia (Singapore excepted) this would have resulted in a massive free for all - pushing, shoving, elbowing, stomping on feet - but instead people waited patiently for passengers to exit (what a concept!) and then in an orderly fashion we crammed ourselves into the carriage, while others waited patiently on the platform for the following train that was just a minute or two behind.

It was bliss. I can't remember the last time I felt that relaxed on public transportation!

I arrived in Brixton and met up with my dear friend and hostess, Rachel, and we set off for a delightful little restaurant called Honest Burger in Brixton Village (If you like a good old-fashioned burger, a touch on the rare side with delicious toppings such as cranberry relish, fried camembert, watercress and poppy seeds - this is the place for you.)

Our walk to Brixton Village brought me face to face with a crosswalk (or to be a Brit about it, zebra crossing).  We approached the crosswalk and Rachel just strolled into the street.  I remained glued to the pavement, braced for Rachel's swift and sudden demise by a car careening down the street at approximately 200 miles an hour.  She got across, I looked up, noticed a car waiting patiently for me to cross and she said, 'what the hell are you doing?' It all came rushing back, and I thought to myself, 'I could play at the this zebra crossing all day.  It's amazing.'

My 24 hours in London went by all too quickly, and now I'm in Chicago - London's chief rival for my affection (London or Chicago, I can never settle on a favorite)..

Anyway, since my return I've been maintaining a list of wonderful things I've forgotten about and/or previously took completely for granted:

• toilet paper
• dry bathrooms (with no muddy footprints on the toilet seat)
• real napkins that are not made of tissue/toilet paper
• knives in restaurants
• large gaps between cars travelling at high speeds
• a strict adherence to red lights and other traffic signals
• a complete lack of illegal parking
• people who walk at an acceptable speed (no Malaysian shuffle here!)

In short, I don't mean for this to sound like some anti-Asia rant, it's just really, really good to be home. 

Oh and for the record, I am completely embracing the cold weather.  It's so refreshing.

Fair weather friend

There are certain times of the year when I take immense pleasure in reminding everyone back home that the weather here doesn't change.  This feeling peaks between mid/late November through March.

But two years in, I am slowly starting to feel the more subtle seasonal shifts that we get in this part of the world. I'm slowly starting to associate surprise downpours (we've had 6 or 7 today) as a characteristic of autumn and winter.  It storms year-round here, but there is a marked difference in the intensity and frequency of the storms.

Maybe it's because I'm coming home for Christmas this year, so I'm keeping a close eye on the calendar, but I also seem to be gaining an improved sense of what the weather is doing back home. The lack of seasons has been something that I've found a bit disorienting.

I haven't set foot outside the tropics for just over a year now, and there have been points in the last year when I've really had to stop and think about what season it was back home.  Months have even ceased to have their normal seasonal attachments here - as for work and planning holidays I often tend to think in terms of the Australian (ie Southern hemisphere) calendar (no trips to Bali when the Aussies are on holiday!)

As much as I love never, ever having to get out of bed on a cold dark morning and sprinting through cold air to a hot shower, I have, more than once looked longingly out the window at a deluge and wished it was just a wee bit cold outside.

All I'm saying is, Chicago, don't let me down.  I need snow on the ground by December 13th.

Super sweet-tooth

When people ask me what I like most about living in Malaysia,  I have two answers ready: the weather and the food.

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The weather bit is pretty self-explanatory, what's not to like about a year-round tropical climate where you only need a wardrobe for one season and can spend every weekend lounging poolside or go to the beach on a whim?

Now not everyone would enjoy the food as much as we do - particularly if you have an aversion to spicy food (or fried stuff).  The food in Malaysia is much like the people - diverse.  It's an amazing blend of Chinese, South Indian and Malay cuisines - everything from deep-fried yam baskets stuffed with chili chicken to banana leaf curries to rich, spicy coconut-based soups full of ginger and lemongrass.

My preferences for Malaysian food definitely reside with the spicy, savoury stuff - but Malaysians are quite famous for having a bit of a sweet tooth and their deserts range from the bizarre to the truly disgusting.

Let me start by saying these people love sugar.  Love. They put it - in vast quantities - in everything.  Breads, juice, coffee, tea, even batter for frying. The sugar craze is so out of control that there are actual public service announcements telling people to limit the amount of sugar they put in their tea.  I've even heard that there are restrictions on how much sugar one can buy in a single trip to the supermarket.

Just yesterday, we went for a Sunday stroll in the park which was brimming with all sorts of vendors selling cold drinks, chips, popsicles and in once instance, what was quite literally an ice cream sandwich - a hot dog bun filled with three scoops of ice cream.

It gets worse.  Another common dish is a tropical fruit salad that has a dressing comprised of sugar, peanuts, chili and  . . . . shrimp paste.

Creamed sweet corn and red beans are also frequently featured as a topping for desserts like cendol (chen-dole) which is essentially shaved ice with coconut milk and these slimy, green worm-like noodles made from rice flour and pandan.

A lot of what I find so off-putting about Asian deserts is that they lack the sweet/savory distinction that is so  prevalent in Western cuisine - there is also often an issue of texture, I think the photo says it all.

I'm not a remotely fussy eater - and frequently blindly put myself into the hands of my Malaysian friends and trust that they aren't going to feed me anything that will kill me - but I drawn the line at slimy desserts. 

There's plenty of scary savoury stuff out there too, I was chatting to a colleague from Spain the other day who said, 'I quit eating wildlife after some tribesmen fed me monitor lizard.'  We all have our tipping point.

Weather woes

So Facebook tells me that there is a bit of a heatwave in the Midwest.  Welcome to my world.

Coming from a place that truly has four seasons, it is the birthright of Midwesterners to complain about the weather. Winters are wiled away dreaming of swimming pools, fireflies and the scent freshly mown grass.  Come summer you yearn for that nip of crisp autumn air, hot chocolate and the first big snow.  Then there is March, everyone hates March.

I have now been 'seasonless' for 7 years.  After five years in the UK (four in Scotland and one in England) I can say with confidence that the tales about bad British weather - are not nearly dramatic enough.  It's awful.  I had been to the UK twice before I moved there, but only for a total of a few months time - not long enough to grasp how truly miserable it really is.

Don't get my wrong, I am an Anglophile through and through.  I love the UK.  In many ways it offers a much higher standard of living than the US (excellent healthcare, 39 weeks statutory maternity leave, and 28 days minimum paid vacation), the food is far better than its reputation allows, they have fine ales, the people are generally charming (hell, I married one of them) and it's full to bursting with history, culture and diversity.

But, there is the weather.

The Scottish tourism board says it rains 250 days a year (yeah right, more like 350).  On the rare occasion it's not raining there are the days where it so grey and/or so windy as to make no difference.  It never gets warm enough to wear shorts, the North Sea (on the east coast where I lived) remains dangerously cold year round and in the winter it is pitch black by 4:00pm.  On a nice day there is potentially nowhere nicer on the planet, Scotland is gorgeous, but you might only get 10 days like that in a year.

England is only marginally better.  It doesn't get dark quite so early and you might be able to justify breaking out a pair of shorts once or twice in a year, but the seasons don't really change - British weather is really one long extended spring followed by a long extended winter.  On the rare occasion the weather does change - panic and chaos ensue.

Two years ago at Christmas the UK had a cold snap.  My husband was in the air - en route to London from Malaysia when the snow started falling.  I lost him for two entire days.  Heathrow was closed, the other UK airports were either closed or didn't have runways big enough to cope with an A380 (the Airbus jumbo-jet that carries 500+ passengers).  They eventually landed in Paris, the airline tried to send him back to their base in Dubai.  After 5 hours of queuing he finally managed to get Eurostar tickets and a train to London.  After 56 hours of travel, he finally managed to call me in Chicago to let me know he was alive and that Don Quixote had nothing on him. Meanwhile, this is how Heathrow was dealing with the snow:

So when we decided to move to Malaysia the weather was potentially the single thing about which we were most excited.  Just a couple hundred miles from the equator, the weather here really does never change.  The amount of rain varies a bit throughout the year, but the temperature generally peaks at between 93-97 degrees everyday, it rarely dips below 80 even at night and the humidity is always high.

When we first got here the novelty of the hot weather was such that we spent every moment we could outside.  Now we've gone a bit native and generally agree that it's too hot to go outside.  Don't get me wrong, I love the weather here - and maintaining a wardrobe for just one season is brilliant - but it's amazing how quickly you take things for granted.  In no time my Midwest roots will get the better of me and I too will be yearning for cold and snow.

So, a bit of free advice - enjoy this heatwave while it lasts.