Week 7: Setia V

While I'm slightly disappointed, I'm not going to dwell on the situation that I broke my streak with no week 6 posting. There weren't a lot of blog-worthy pics taken while our focus was getting the new place outfitted with the furniture and life-stuff to live. 

Instead I'll share a few particulars of our casa for the next 3 years..

Our condo tower on Gurney Drive is called Setia V. We're on the 39th floor above the luminous lobster.

Not a great shot for showing the building, but there's a lot to love about that sign. Here's another shot in the daytime - ours is the dark rectangular one coming up behind the green house. 

 Here's some interior shots. We've got furniture and housewares, still working on the character / artwork for those big white concrete walls.

Apartments here include a division between the wet and dry kitchen, the wet kitchen being where the main cooking is done (below), walled off from the dry kitchen where there's just basic prep (above). The idea behind this is that the prevailing cooking methods here use a lot of oil, spices, and mess - something to keep segregated from the rest of the house. 

Also beyond the wet kitchen is a maid's quarters - includes the world's tiniest excuse for a bedroom as well as a bathroom where you could literally take a shower while sitting on the toilet. Not a great life for a maid...we'll be using this space as storage

The weather / elevation of this place make for some cool views off the balcony - across the water is the port town of Butterworth - this was sunrise this morning

    Here's the same shot after yesterday's cloudburst

Behind the place is a cool hodgepodge of neighborhoods, temples of various faiths, polo grounds, and shops. We've done a little exploring but haven't even scratched the surface - this is the view out of the back bedrooms

And I'm feeling good about my attempts so far at getting back into lap swim - I've had this fancy-man pool to myself this week - way more posh than I deserve -makes me feel like a younger, better looking Jeff Bezos 

Exploring the neighborhood has revealed some great food - one of our new favorite spots is a collection of vendors on the beach. Although in the shot below a rainstorm blew thru and we had to head under cover. Nothing washes down the squid better than 32oz of fresh squeezed watermelon juice

There's a lot of options to explore - I observed these guys in their tank when we arrived

And here they are again, a little later - to be honest, a little less delicious than I had hoped for

Years ago, before we had kids, Joanna took a 4-month assignment in Nashville for a project. Part of the arrangement with her company was that they would fly her home to OR or fly me out every other week. It was great, I was working a schedule that had a 4-day weekend every other week, so we took advantage of the chance to explore the south on my long weekends. Which was the first time I had frog. 

There's a frog-specific vendor at the same beachside food court where I tried the mantis shrimp. The legs were meaty, about how I remembered in chicken-like flavor and texture

What I did not expect was to be served the rest of the frog too. We all remember from high school biology that besides the legs, there's not much left unless you're eating the innards. Frogs are like 0% body fat.

I decided to forgo the frog body. 

I'm not trying to imply we're on a fear-factor menu binge, we mostly eat normal stuff...but a plate of noodles with chicken doesn't really make for an interesting picture.

Finally - explored a Thai temple in the neighborhood yesterday. Super cool to have stuff like this just down the street - cut glass dragons, morose elephants, and a giant reclining buddha.

I did a little googling to try and understand this last deities significance in this version of Buddhism  - best I could find was it was a part of the zodiac creatures. I leave you with - roosterman!

Week 5: Moving day

I’m committed to maintaining my weekly streak of journaling, but I’m giving myself a bit of a pass this time because it was a pretty intense weekend of trips back and forth from the temp apartment to the new place and a protracted deathmarch through IKEA gathering endless housewares and basic setup stuff. 

As consolation I offer the following video - I did a factory line walk in the Kulim facility on Monday - this little robot did a stellar job of making my lunch

Next week we should be mostly settled in the new place and I’ll share some pics here

Week Four: Adaptation

Sometimes life deals us experiences with a common connecting thread. This week, when looking at the handful of pics I wanted to share it felt like maybe something was there. We'll see by the end of this post if I'm able to connect the dots without stretching too hard.

Speaking of stretching - started this week with my first Thai massage. Initially planned to be a Jo+Erik couples massage, she wasn't feeling 100% at go time, so I went it alone. The place is only about a mile away, it was a nice evening so I decided to walk. Schedule was a little tight but I figured I could get there if I hustled. 

Unfortunately discovered that my favorite little shortcut bridge over the effluent ditch was blocked off. So now I'm moving at sweaty speed, and tromping thru some overgrown weeds. But I made it, just a couple of minutes late. And discovered that there was very little english spoken or understood at the place. I'll spare you the misunderstandings we had to work through (one of them was the word underwear...) but things got going with a footbath. Which should have been great. Except as I sat in the chair with my feet in the bowl full of rocks, the massage therapist and I simultaneously discovered to our horror that my leg hair from the knees down was covered in what I thought were bugs. Turned out they were the little velcro-like seed burrs that get stuck in dog's hair. And apparently man hair. So the footbath turned into a "what the heck is wrong with this guy" calf and shin bath.

Things got better from there - relaxing new-agey music, a tiny woman's elbows grinding into the sore parts of my shoulders, everything I look for in a massage. What I did not see coming was the contortion portion of the program. Hands over my head, knee in my back, twisting me in directions that I hadn't previously imagined. Definitely a repeat. Minus the offroad sprint thru the brush.

On my way to the massage (and several other times this week when we went walking) I passed this guy. Thursday I asked if I could take his picture

He's set up his noodle stand underneath a pedestrian walkway bridge over the busy road in front of our place. Street food is available everywhere here, mostly in booths or hawker markets. Extra creativity points for him by taking advantage of the urban infrastructure - no booth required

Exhibit B of improvisation is awarded to our lunch taxi driver. Fridays are the day for in-person prayers at the mosques. Muslim or not, everyone's work schedule adjusts to include a 2-hr lunch that day. It's a little easier to explore new eateries outside of the work cafeteria with the extra time. 

The drivers all have a device we call the flyswatter. That's just what it looks like, except on the business end is a holder for your card that gives you access to open the security gates to pick up your customers. Our guy this day had fashioned one out of the bright green wire that gave him extra reach

To appreciate you'll probably have to zoom in and pan around the pic, but he's done amazing things throughout the interior with green wire. Securing his phone, his watch, the interior light, his water bottle all in strategic locations. I asked him if he'd join the engineering team...he just laughed

Saturday we explored the botanical gardens here on the island. More than a few plants and creatures we'd never seen in person before

And saw this guy on the drive home - a white-breasted kingfisher - not sure you can get a sense of scale - he was bigger than a large crow. With a beak for miles.

Whether its velcro-ish seeds, green wire, a fish-catching beak, or giant leaves to crowd out the competing jungle undergrowth, I found myself appreciating adaptation in many forms this week. On a personal level, normal things are starting to feel like normal life here. 90% humidity doesn't feel nearly as suffocating as it did when we arrived. Basics of like food acquisition, driving, getting up at 5:15 to avoid traffic are becoming routine. It's nice.

Also, we went for a walk on the beach last night. The variety and quantity of shells continues to amaze. Didn't really even have to hunt for these. There's some form of adaptation at work here I'm sure. No idea what it might be

Speaking of beautiful things on the beach, check her out. I'm the luckiest ever.

Week 3: A little exploration

This isn't the most scenic pic I could have led with for this post. Nevertheless I really dug the artwork for this logo, so much so that I've asked my family to refer to me by this new title, effective immediately. While it might not really fit now, based on my current ratio of noodle intake to exercise I'm well on my way.

I came across the fat cat on my walk through historic Georgetown this week. It was a national holiday Thursday for the prophet Mohamad's birthday, I had the day off, Jo had other commitments, so I took a Grab (Malaysian Uber) to the old British colonial section to check things out. 

I'm a history nerd so the starting point was the old English Fort Cornwallis. One of my favorite historical places of all time in Fort McHenry in Baltimore - the construction of this place reminded me of that - the same star-shaped footprint that was common in the colonial era. 

Of special interest was the resident magic cannon. I'll paraphrase the explanatory plaque found in the fort for the Sri Rambai Cannon:

Cannon was forged by the Dutch East India company and was stamped with the company logo as well as its born-on date of 1613. Fast-forward to 1871, a British boat carrying the cannon (not Dutch) was attacked by pirates and sunk.

Here's where it gets interesting - According to history, in 1880 the cannon was cursed by a prince who tied a thread on his finger and ordered the cannon float up from the briny depths. It was unclear what role the thread or the finger actually played in this miracle, but the cannon obeyed. Once the cannon made it's way to the fort, it became a hit with local women having trouble getting pregnant, who believed that placing flowers in the cannon barrel would aid in conception. Seems reasonable that if a cannon can float, there's probably still some magic left in it for other things too.

There's a lot too see in Georgetown - including a bunch of street art and cool alleyways

And some super campy museums. I resisted the temptation to visit these until I had someone to share them with. If Abbi elects to visit in December this will probably be our first stop together - she once planned an entire trip from Portland to Provo around Atlas Obscura weirdo stuff to see along the way - these will be right up her alley

Also, cool architecture. Fancy mansions built by Chinese merchants that moved to Penang in the early 1900s - took a tour of the Peranakan green mansion

Exterior reminded me of the Victorian row houses in San Francisco - interior was pretty amazing

Not sure about this chair thing - seems like a seating arrangement for two people that want to be close enough to talk but can't stand to look at each other

There was a ton of artwork, but none that made me laugh except this one. Not sure what this poor guy is holding in his hand, but his face seems to say "riding this super bumpy deer was a terrible idea"

Georgetown also has amazing food. Earlier in the week Jo and I went with our new friends Rochelle and Dale to an amazing Thai place. Here's a selfie from out front. Everytime I take a selfie of the two of us it results in a phenomena I like to call "big head - little head". I think it would be better if Jo held out her phone for the pic instead but her arm doesn't quite have the same range

Besides the Thai I found an awesome French bakery on my walkabout. Not just a banging croissant. One filled with pistachio white chocolate creme. Unreal.

 Finally, a couple of beach pics from the balcony/outside our apartment. Bold sunset last night, I gave it a whirl with the time lapse.

Also, there's a ton of shells on the beach just beneath our balcony, and a huge variety. Takes the fun out of walking barefoot when they get really dense.

Finally, our little beach has its own little shrine. Its cool to be walking along on a Sunday morning and catch a whiff of incense, take about 10 steps into the mangroves at the edge of the sand and find this

Finally finally, we learned this weekend that after much back and forth with the landlord, our offer on our permanent place here was accepted - more to come later on that, but plan now is that our time at this beachy high-rise will come to an end Oct 15th. 

Finally^3 - Joanna has a blog as well. She's as witty as she is smart and beautiful, check it out if you want to know what a real author can do 

https://joannawilbur.blogspot.com