Nothing exciting happens when you are sick

I’m happy to have time today to write. It seems like our two last weekends were spent shopping, building furniture, fighting with our credit cards to work in Malaysia, and disposing of cardboard. Somehow I picked up another bug and have spent the week with coughing and chills, body aches and congestion. Made an appointment to see a doctor, which turned out not to be an actual appointment, it was first-come first-serve between the hours of 9-12. The hospital/clinic area was filled with people, who all brought family members for the appointments. You drop off your paperwork in a box on the doctor’s door, and then wait for them to call you in.  

After getting labs and a chest X-ray I finally saw the doctor and she was lovely and gave me all sorts of meds to manage my reactive airway issues. I will go back to see her in two weeks for a lung function test to see if my asthma needs to be regularly treated again.  At least as of today I can say that I’m starting to improve. I’ve spent both days this weekend getting 6 additional hours of naps in and I can tell that has made a big difference.

Enough of the health issues! I’m ready to start exploring again. Since I haven’t left the house much this week, I am going to sprinkle in a bunch of random pictures taken over the last 7 weeks…and hopefully next week I’ll have something interesting to write about.

The view from our home is stunning - here is a sunrise pic taken our third day here. They are building a park area along the waterfront that should be completed within the next 6-9 months. You can see all the construction occurring at the bottom of this picture, and they do seem to work pretty quickly.

I seem to take a lot of pictures of squid. Some are wearing Christmas hats (IKEA), others are served as food or waiting to be picked for dinner.

I do enjoy calamari, but probably because they are fried and sometimes have a yummy aioli sauce to dip…Erik ate both of these squid tapas because it was a little too realistic looking for me.

My candidate for As Seen On A Scooter this week is unfortunately lacking a picture. The scooter was understandably driving very slowly and we couldn’t lag far enough behind by the time I had my camera ready. You know those pallets of eggs that you can buy with about 30 eggs in them? This person had two of those pallets on the back of their scooter, about 4-5 levels high…about this many eggs:

Watching them go over speed bumps was comical. Would have made for a great pic if I had been prepared. Next time.

Modern Coffin Trading - who knew this was a commodity to trade? The Malaysia Casket Company probably doesn’t do much in futures trading.

I do love some gummy candies, like the gummy peaches, but this was mostly just creepy. Reminded me of the wax lips that we had as kids (although I remember only getting them once and thinking that they weren’t as great as I expected).

I bought a few puzzles here online, and didn’t realize until this one arrived that something was off with the name. I did develop a hankering for pastries while working on this puzzle…but had my Dounts about how good any of these would taste.

There is a shopping center that caters to expats here, called Straits Quay. They have a grocery store there and the section for pets was larger than the section for personal care items. This pic was taken in September, you should see it now that they have Halloween costumes in.

Also at Straits Quay this creature: 

And a restaurant that we ate at that specializes in Taiwanese Chicken - they cook it in a giant urn and bring it out attached to a rack. Then someone has the great honor of donning two pairs of gloves and deboning the chicken. Erik’s employee took us out to eat there, so he insisted that Erik be honored:

Lastly, for my nephew Henry: a snack machine full of his favorite things: Matchbox Cars

I’ve actually seen two of these in Malaysia so far, one at the airport and this one was in the Ikea mall.

This is Why We Don’t Swim in the Ocean

Had a big rainstorm a few days ago, and during it, I happened to glance out the window and saw a mushroom cloud in the ocean. I went to the other window and took this video. The black water is all the runoff from the streets plus three dubious looking culverts that just dump onto the sand, and flow into the ocean. Seeing that has made it easy to not go into the water now. We have found some amazing shells while walking on the beach, but will happily wait to go snorkeling and swimming somewhere else.

In better news, we finally closed on a deal with the landlord and will get to move into our permanent housing on Sunday Oct 15. We’ve been in this lovely beach front place (the 22nd floor) for a month now, and I am ready to live someplace where we will have a King-size bed so Erik doesn’t have to sleep diagonally to fit and I can finally stretch my legs out. Also to have a real desk with real internet! That’s been a significant issue since the internet cuts out about every 90 seconds some days, and I can’t seem to get anything done.

We’ve booked our first off island trip - to a little Thai island called Koh Lipe that is billed as a snorkelers paradise! Booking our travel was tricky, since we take a 40 min flight to Langkawi Island (which is a vacation spot on its own) then take a ferry out to the island, which also involves a boat transfer since the island’s dock is too shallow for the ferry? Maybe something is lost in translation but I’m excited to see how it all works out.

We had a fun hike through the Penang Botanical Gardens yesterday. It was the first weekend that I have actually had enough energy to go exploring, so it was fun to be out of the house. There was such a variety of plants and flowers that I had never seen and it was beautiful in a jungle-type of way. Whoever started the Botanical Garden had a very expansive scope, and I’m not sure whether they didn’t anticipate the amount of upkeep such a huge park would entail or whether funding dried up, as many parts of it are overgrown. There was even a desert area where they had built a roof to keep the water off of the cacti and agave plants (some of which were definitely thriving).

Monkeys are common in this part of Penang, and there are two types…the naughty monkeys (macaques) are generally considered a nuisance, and can actually be aggressive in their attempts to steal food and shiny things. These are the brown ones and we’ve been cautioned not to make eye contact. We saw one yesterday climb down from the roof where we were drinking coconut shakes, look around for people, climb up onto the seat of a scooter, keep checking for people, then steal a bag of food and race onto the roof. He promptly dropped the plastic bag the food was in, then climbed back down to sit on the scooter again and rifle around in the basket to see if there was anything else it liked, before the scooter driver came back and shooed the monkey away. Another one kept waiting for the guy who was making coconut drinks (by hacking on the top of a coconut and putting in a straw) to deliver them, and he would jump in and take any coconut pieces that had been left or that were in the bin where the tops of the coconuts went. My video isn’t awesome, but it will give you the idea.

The black monkeys generally avoid people and spent most of their time up in the trees or climbing on wires…they are black and are Dusky Leaf monkeys. We saw several in a very high tree in the park that had no branches until half way up. To get down from the tree, one monkey slid down, like you would on a fire pole, another monkey leapt from the tree to another, ala Tarzan, and a third one kind of combined those two tricks and leapt half off to swing from a not very thick branch. 

We discovered a little path off the main trail that went up into the woods, so we decided to explore a little. There were sets of stairs, and we’d go around a corner, and there would be another set and another. It started being comical. I started taking pictures of each new set. At a certain point, we realized that we wouldn’t make our lunch appt with some of Erik’s coworkers without turning around. I took some video of the sounds of the insects and birds on the hike.

I’m going to start a new feature I’m going to call “Seen on a Scooter This Week” where I hopefully get a picture to post of the sometimes bizarre, unsafe, and unique ways people transport items or other people.

Our winner this week is a kid we called Power Ranger when we saw him from behind. He’s holding onto his dad who is driving, presumably to or from karate. As we get up close and eventually pass the scooter, we see not only the kid in the back (which is not unusual) but discover a smaller child up front (also in karate attire) with his arms draped over the handlebars, watching a video on a phone. Unfortunately, we were going to fast to get a picture of the boy with his phone, but you’ll get an idea from his seating position:

Oh, and Erik’s blog is awesome, and he’s taken some pictures I haven’t - check it out - and have a great week!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you are bored, and a glutton for punishment, you can read about the disheartening experiences I’ve had this week too. It’s just generally depressing, but as I want to keep it honest, I’m keeping it in the blog. I can laugh about it now, but it was a fairly traumatic day.

This is my third attempt at writing my blog in the last 2 weeks. Each time I’ve been stymied by a combination of factors: screen fatigue primarily, but also overwhelm, exhaustion (haven’t been sleeping great) and mental blahs. I’m still fighting remnants of the virus Erik shared with me the week before we moved and Penang’s air quality hasn’t helped. Apparently Indonesia burns its forests this time of the year to prepare for planting so we get a lot of their smoke. I went to the doctor (all by myself, took a Grab (taxi)) and she prescribed and provided (no separate trip to the pharmacy) antihistamines, prescription cough suppressant, a mucinex-type medicine and refilled my thyroid meds for a grand total of $40.92.

It’s been over a week and I can tell that I’m getting better, but I still have some days that my lungs feel tight. I needed refills on my depression meds as well, but learned that Malaysia doesn’t have the same meds, so she recommended I go to a psychiatrist to figure out the right meds to replace what I’ve been on. 

There are three private hospitals in Penang, which our international insurance recommends over the public hospitals, so I picked the one that will be closest to our permanent condo (its called Gleneagles). For each trip out by myself, I’ve preplanned excessively - getting everything out that I need to bring with me, scheduling time on the calendar to call the Grab with enough time to get down to the lobby and adjust for traffic and the wait time for the Grab to arrive.

The email confirmation from the hospital noted that the doctor’s office was in Block B, so I typed in Gleneagles Block B. I couldn’t find an established location for Block B, just the Main entrance. Thinking that the hospital could be the size of St Vincents or Portland Providence and that if I ended up at the wrong drop off location I could spend a lot of time walking around trying to find the right spot. After more searches, I saw hospital and Blok B and chose that one. The drive was beautiful as we drove through a super ritzy neighborhood which jived with the private hospital vibe I was expecting. I was so proud of myself for doing another hard thing on my own.

The first thing I noticed is that there was no air conditioning, and it was an open air campus, kind of like the Kona or Lihue airport, and all the signs were in Bahasa . I finally found an elevator, but was extremely puzzled to see that there were only two buttons: G and 1.  There had been signs to Blok A and C, so I wondered if I maybe had been walking into the wrong wing. The place was like a maze, and I soon started seeing patients in beds in the breezeways, and old equipment or furniture laying in stairwells. I even saw a hand made sign that said “Keep out: SPORES” on one door. 

Note the words ECG are spelled out on the wall using electrical tape

I kept asking people where the doctor’s office might be, showing them the confirmation email I received, and being told to ask at a desk up ahead, or someone else. Then its 3:30, my appointment time, and I finally spot a sign for Dept Psikiatri. I go up to the window and ask the guard about the address (again showing the confirmation email), and tell him that I had an appt but I can’t find the dr’s room. He stares at it for a long time, then points to the hospital name Gleneagles and says “this is Penang General Hospital, not Gleneagles.” I was late and at the wrong hospital, and sweating from all my walking. It was 3:45 and I didn’t know what to do, so I decided to see if maybe the doctor would still see me. I called another Grab, and he drove super fast, and I made it to Gleneagles within 5 minutes. 

This hospital has A/C and signs in English and I race up to the second floor and find my doctors office and burst in, expecting to have  another window where I showed my insurance card and a waiting area. Instead, it's just the doctor sitting at his desk in his office that is also an exam room. He is startled by my appearance, and I explain quickly that I was late and had a 3:30 appointment. He asks me if I’ve been to registration already, that I should have a white sheet of paper.

I go back downstairs, find the registration desk where a very patient woman helps me get registered. There was a whole thing about me not having my passport, and not being able to find the picture on my phone and not being able to remember how to attach it in all my discombobulation. It was excruciating and I won’t make you read it. Finally, she makes me a file and sends me upstairs with it. I knock this time, embarrassed by just bursting in earlier. I learned that the common practice here is to wait in the general waiting area outside the doctor’s offices and that registration will send the doctor a message, and then when they are ready they will open their door and call your name.

The doctor is very kind, very soft-spoken and I have to change gears completely and start talking about when I was diagnosed with depression, how I’ve felt since I’ve been in Penang, what the family history of mental illness is, etc. I learn that, in fact, this hospital was just barely approved to prescribe Wellbutrin (one of two places on the entire island), and another one of my meds (Trazodone) isn’t available in Malaysia. It’s unclear to me whether its not allowed due to government regulation or just not easily accessible, but “we just don’t have it” so we have to talk through some replacement options.

After a 45 min appointment where I mostly talked and he mostly listened, he sends me to the in-hospital pharmacy/cashier where I watch a video board with numbers on it to see when my prescriptions will be ready or when I can take my turn to pay. It looks a little like Bingo, but you end up giving the prize money to the cashier instead of getting any yourself. I get called up to the pharmacy once for them to tell me that they don’t have the same dosage pill that I was taking, so I’ll need to take four of theirs to make the right dosage. I will need 335 pills total for my 3 month supply. They don’t have that many in stock, and am I okay with taking the equivalent of a rain check and picking up the rest when they receive their new stock?

I was #2078…it took a long time for them to count out all my pills

Finally I finish and pay (not cheap this time - my medications are still expensive even over here). I go outside to call a Grab and click Gleneagles hospital as my pick up location.  The app tells me to walk to the pick up point, which seems extraordinarily far from where my blue dot shows on the map. I walk across the entire length of the hospital parking lot, and my dot still hasn’t changed. Thinking that I’ve entered the wrong location again, I cancel that Grab, and try to schedule a new one using the  “Use my location as the pickup point.”  I’m watching the grab driver on the screen and he isn’t coming close to my spot, and then it says that he’s arrived, and I’m looking everywhere and not seeing his car or his license plate, and calls me and asks where I am, and when I tell him he starts yelling at me because I’ve chosen the wrong pick up location and need to learn how to use the app. I hang up and start crying and text Erik that its not working and I’m never going to be able to get home. He calls and tries to offer words of encouragement, but he still has no idea about my other fiasco trying to get to the right hospital. I call a third grab, and in a miracle, when I select use my location, the pick up point and my blue dot match. In fact, the Grab had just pulled up to drop someone off, and I was in the car about 2 minutes after I made the request.

I think the driver had seen that I had been crying as he picked me up, so he put on some soothing piano music and I felt so much better by the end of the ride. I am glad that I was being watched over, because I generally felt like I was lost and never going to be found…the Mother’s Day Massacre Part II. If you don’t know that story, just ask when you have 15 minutes to hear about how I got separated from my family on Mothers Day in Tiananmen Square. 

Till next week!

Misunderstandings, Mishaps & Moisture

 

I grew up not drinking soda except rarely, and do not enjoy colas - not Coke or Pepsi or RC (which was a big thing when I was a kid). I like root beer, my grandfather used to make it for us, but it wasn't ever anything that I really craved. To be very clear, I know how terrible soda is for the human body; we used a can of coke once to unclog a toilet in college. But once I tried Dr. Pepper, I found it delicious. Plus, it was terrible for my body, so it felt like a rebellion of sorts...a vice. Plus, most restaurants don't seem to have it on tap, which made it more elusive and if possible, more special. It wasn't ever something I'd drink daily, but once a week on a Friday or Saturday.

Over the years, as our grocery budget expanded beyond student-level bare necessities and I was able to purchase the soda myself I determined that the full-calorie versions tasted extra sweet, so I switched to the diet version. Also, as I was trying to lose baby weight, I never wanted to drink my calories, I wanted to save them all for ice cream, so diet dr. pepper became my special drink...until I discovered cherry diet dr. pepper, and now cherry dr. pepper zero. 

Dr. Pepper (not diet, zero, cherry or otherwise) is not a thing in Malaysia. It's not to be found in the expat grocery stores (we've checked 4 different ones), and definitely not at restaurants. It was also difficult to find online (without a local bank account, I can only shop at one online site called Lazada). I finally found some that I could order, imported from Poland. The pictures online all showed several cans lined up, and of course, as a non-scientific American, when it said that the order was for 330 milliliters that seemed like a lot. Yes, I'm terribly embarrassed. 

When my order finally arrived (in the reused Konjac Jelly box) with one can only, I was pretty sad. I don't crave it as much as I wanted something to remind me of home on the days when everything was unfamiliar and uncertain. I haven't opened it up yet...I'm waiting for a day when I really need a pick-me-up.

Food ordered through Grab (which is like DoorDash and Lyft  rolled into one) is delivered in these delightful little packets of butcher paper with very little labeling. In our temp housing, they have a basket out front for food deliveries, and once I received a text that my food had arrived, I popped down to the lobby and grabbed the plastic blue sack that I was expecting to have my nasi ayam goreng (chicken fried rice normal). 

When I opened the sack in my apartment, I discovered multiple packets and unwrapped one to discover that there was no chicken fried rice, but something that was 100% unfamiliar to me. Luckily, the lobby called then to let me know that someone had taken my order, and I had hers.

The food comes served on banana leaves which is traditional - the leaves act as a great insulator to keep the food warm and moist. Although honestly, its hard to imagine any type of food drying out here. 

I include the naan picture because this is what happened when I tried to reheat it in the microwave the next day for lunch:

I've never been a great judge about how much time it takes to heat something up, but it's skewed much farther here, since their microwaves seem to work a little bit differently.

Grocery shopping continues to be an adventure. Remember the Crispy Fish Free Fingers picture from last week? They were sampling them at the store, and I didn't really understand what the store employee was saying (her accent was thick) so I tried one. The fact that it was 100% plant-based should have been more comforting to me, but the sort-of fish flavor was decidedly unpleasant.

We found Tillamook ice cream! It is actually cheaper here than it was in Central Oregon (35.99 RM is about $8) We didn't buy any, because we took a Grab to the store and didn't know how long we'd have to wait outside for it to arrive, but its nice knowing its there. Also, pictures of weird vegetables that need some improved branding, and other dubious sea creatures (cuttlefish, eels and tiger-looking crabs)  and meats out in the open:

Erik is making the face of the red fish, who isn't feeling very lucky.

The rainy season has started, and as a result the view out our windows is of a gray sky and gray ocean. I love it when we have storms, but the grayness is still not my friend...and I have to keep focusing on all the positive things, like how much cooler it is when it is raining or the fact that the clouds don't tend to hang out all day long. We do get some spectacular sunsets as a result, and once we get to move to our permanent place I will miss getting to see them in such a dramatic fashion (we won't have the same ocean view as we do now).

no filters!

the sunset is reflected in the windows of the high rise to our right

Had our first church activity last night (family games + dinner). We started off with a game of all ages musical chairs, but they forgot for the first three rounds to take away any chairs. Which is good since our congregation here (called a branch) has a significant number of 80+ year olds, and I was really afraid someone would break a hip. We played other games too, pick the tiny red beans out of the tiny green lentils with chopsticks, throw plastic eggs into egg cartons by bouncing off a table, and then from far away, and using a garbage bag to "snap" balls into a bucket. Then the little kids made Chinese lanterns using actual burning candles (something not allowed on any US church property) - this pic is of an expat family from Hillsboro. 

The people here are warm and friendly and so happy to meet new people. The branch is incredibly diverse, a lot of Chinese, Indians, Malays, and Americans. It was so fun today when they announced that we had transferred our records in the branch (officially moved our church membership from Oregon to Penang) I felt genuine happiness from so many people. Looking forward to more adventures - the next branch activity is learning line dancing...can't wait to see Erik put on a happy face for that!

Saya Suka Makan!

 

I like eating! A friend here told me that she is learning Indonesian since it is very similar to Malay, and that has helped her to recognize words, so I decided to try the same thing. 

After 8 days here, the one thing that I can say with certainty is that the food is a delight! The flavors are amazing (and unique), it's the right amount of spicy, and it is soooo cheap! I'm experiencing a reverse sticker shock. 

This first week has been an overwhelming mixture of sights, sounds, smells and adjustments. The longest leg of our flight (16 hours) was decent, and I got 7 hours of sleep (only periodically interrupted by turbulence).  

We could follow the progress of our flight across the world on the TVs on the back of the seats.

See our yummy snack of Mushroom Potato Puffs!

The humidity will take some getting used to, but AC is everywhere, and if you stay out of the direct sun, it's manageable. 

I want to be honest about my experience here, and even though it's embarrassing, I have determined that I am not a good traveler. I didn't realize how overwhelmed I would be or how exhausting it would feel to not know what I was going to be eating (or when). 

On our third day here, we toured most of the eastern island with our relocation assistant. We climbed in and out of a van for the better part of 7 hours, learning what the "naughty" monkeys look like and how to avoid having them steal our food or anything shiny, which temples we could visit (and what attire was appropriate for each), driving through chaotic traffic on the narrow roads, stopping in a random part of Georgetown to watch the pop-up Chinese opera for Ghost month (see Erik's post), then walking around the gigantic mall to get our new phone plan set up. 

I had a blood sugar crash in the phone store and had to walk over to a bookstore several shops down with Christine, our relo agent, to buy some type of soda, Lays potato chips and strawberry flavored Pocky (though it has a different name here). I didn't know how to pay, even though I had some ringgit (Malaysia's currency), and Christine quickly stepped in to take care of it. We walked back to the phone store, where Erik was still working on getting the plan going, and I sat at a table with sweat dripping down my back (even though the mall was a very comfortable temperature) and ate potato chips and pocky and wondered whether I could ever adjust. It didn't help that I was still fighting the virus that Erik shared with me the week before we moved, but that felt like a low point to me. 

I realize how much I curate my daily activity around food, schedules and routines and how much comfort that brings me. This foray into so much unknown is very challenging, but I'm excited to see how brave I can be. The great news is that I am trying lots of new foods and was able to go to a grocery store to pick up snacks to help keep my blood sugar more regulated. 

This made me laugh hysterically

 these are some sort of chestnut thingie

not sure what these are actually made of

 Not sure if it's a double swallow because it takes twice to get it down?

I didn't try this at all...

On Saturday, we drove to Erik's employee's birthday party (it was 90 min away, across the bridge in Kulim). We arrived at this Muslim family's home right as the torrential rain stopped and the sun came out, creating a wave of humidity unparalleled to anything I've experienced before. The lamb was roasting on the spit

and the caterers were still putting out food on tables set up in the carport (most houses here have a covered space in the front of their home for parking their cars). I felt so discombobulated, but Azrul and his wife Amira ushered us into their home and quickly made us feel welcome. The women all had long-sleeved multiple layers of dresses and headscarves (not a bead of sweat was visible) and were smiling and friendly. Amira continued to bring us food to try, and I'm proud to say that I tried nearly everything (I elected to avoid the fish balls on a stick). The tuna fish soup wasn't my favorite (I just took one bite of that), but the spicy peanut sauce on white triangles of some kind of starch was pretty delicious. 

One of the things that I loved about being there was that no one stared at me; they were just accepting and friendly, even though I was dressed very differently and obviously wasn't from there. The drive home took us through a huge date palm plantation with jungle views, and it was just crazy to think that I was 8,643 miles from my home. Oh, and Amira sent us home with four bags of food for each family (another expat family drove there with us), and I had to hold it all together so that the sauces wouldn't spill while Erik was driving on narrow, winding roads. 

I was so exhausted when we walked in the door at 6 pm that I actually turned down an invitation to go get ice cream with another expat family that we met. This ice cream is supposed to be amazing: bingsu. It will probably get its own post. 

This is significantly longer than I planned on writing, but regardless of anyone reading it, it is a great way to document this experience, as I know that the memories will fade. I'm still falling into bed exhausted most nights and can't seem to shake a lingering heaviness in my lungs, but I'm proud of myself for trying so many new things.