all shopped out

I'm hoping I'm all shopped out, but not before the bank phoned asking if my card had been stolen by a Ted Baker fanatic! You know you've shopped too much when you can't carry a single thing more.
Went grocery shopping - had no idea till now that there are Halal and non-Halal aisles at the supermarket. The microwave at work is Halal only too. Impending visitors (parents) are shaming me into putting something in the fridge besides beer and apples. There are now some persimmons and cans of soft drink as well. I still have no desire to cook.
Went hashing on the weekend. Tried to ignore lots of rustling in the undergrowth but towards the end a python popped out!!! Even the locals were scared Some people will never go out on a hash without a stick.
Had the best professional massage of my life for A$10 and can't wait to go back. Spent Sunday PM at the Tivoli Villas pool with friends who live there. All the taxi drivers know the place because it's where the famous alleged act of sodomy occurred (former deputy PM Anwar Ibrahim spent quite some time in jail after a fairly suspect court case in 1999) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_Ibrahim

We had a power failure at 11pm last night. I wasn't too worried because it was kinda time to switch off The Chaser anyway, but when the P.A. came on and they told me a couple of times not to panic ("The situation is ...under investigation..."), I started to wonder if I should panic. Distracted myself by busily sewing buttons onto a shirt with DENTAL FLOSS using my headtorch - can't wait for my boxes to get here! When the power came back on 10 minutes later, they felt the need to get back on the P.A. and announce that a couple of times (I thought the noisy air cons might have been a bit self-explanatory).

There was some sort of public holiday yesterday and the traffic went bonkers. It's times like that I am extra glad I live 10 mins walk from work. It took my new cubicle neighbour 1h35mins to drive 1km!

moving up...20 floors!

Had a terribly exciting day. I have been seconded to Client B and I start working in the Twin Towers on Monday. It's a dream come true - they might even have a good coffee machine and reliable lifts! (O hang on - I quit coffee 3 days ago. The low fat iced la latte I had today doesn't count because it was cold). Anyway...back to work stuff ...Importantly the new boss is very nice. Basically I'll working on a series of technical documents with some tight deadlines and reasonably important repercussions. The client is delightfully grateful to have found someone to help - I feel a bit like I should be wearing a Superwoman outfit. Since I have to start using my brain again on Monday to appear a Competent Consultant under the watchful eye of a Clued-Up Client, not to mention having to do this virtually at high altitude (level 60+), I'm going to try get lots of ZZZs this weekend, plus some time lounging around the pool...and try knock over that Christmas shopping as swiftly as possible without buying too many more Things for Claire.

Anything but creamer!

I've had a request for explanation of Nasi Lemak, unofficial national dish of Malaysia. The name literally means 'rice in fat'. There goes my waistline *sigh*. The rice is soaked in rich coconut cream and then the mixture steamed. Traditionally, this comes as a platter with cucumber slices, small dried anchovies, roasted peanuts, stir fried water convolvulus (?), hard boiled egg, pickled vegetables, and hot spicy sauce. Nasi lemak can also come with any other accompaniments such as chicken, cuttlefish, cockle, beef curry. See what I mean - tis a weird combo. Even weirder - Nasi lemak is traditionally a breakfast dish!!!!!

I've decided to give up on milk. And since I can't drink black coffee, this means giving up coffee as well (which I was trying to do in Perth anyway, on and off...). The receptionist here has been buying milk especially for me, but we keep having power blackouts overnight and she has to chuck it out. The last straw was on the Malaysian Airlines flight when I asked for milk for my tea and was handed a sachet of creamer powder instead of the usual tub of UHT. Creamer brings back memories of long, hungry days in Algeria and Gabon, also milk-free zones.

My taxi driver could have died on the way to work this morning. He opened the car door while driving along to lean out and have a huge spit, just as a motorbike came flying up alongside. It then took me about 15 minutes to get up to the office on the 46th floor because the lift seems to stop at every floor. I am spending so much time waiting for and standing in lifts that I am having to become a patient person. Good meditation time. I had lunch with the big boss from Perth at a Sundanese restaurant (is that Indonesian?) and dinner at the Aust High Commissioner's house - the first Xmas party of many hopefully. Tested the "Law of Attraction" on the food platters, drink waiters and the charity raffle with little success, but then jagged an unexpected unvisualised unanticipated lift home with friends of friends. Oh well even Murphy's Law doesn't work 100% of the time...

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Christmas everywhere

For a predominantly Muslim country, Malaysia seems to be very excited about Christmas already. I had to hold myself back from buying a fibre optic Xmas tree today at lunch.
Just got back from ripsnorter of a visit to Perth to collect belongings and catch up with the crew in head office. I also managed to catch a wedding, a ball, a housewarming, spa party, work Xmas party and a birthday dinner. Very serendipidous. The BellTower Gods were conspiring to make Perth life look far more enticing than it did before I left. I afeared that I wouldn't want to leave again. Fortunately, I felt surprisingly happy to get back to KL and see those Twin Towers again. While in Perth, got some surprisingly blog feedback. Some people want to hear more about my job! Start reading again at asterix for those not interested.
Much as I am now happy with my career choice, I think there's a good reason why there aren't TV dramas about Engineering and Accounting offices. I think they could be unsexy professions. That's why till now I have spared this blog from work talk. Work's a bit piecemeal at the moment anyway (due to being "between phases" of a project with Client A). I'm not complaining however - it's my first quietish stint in 3 years so I'm trying to recharge a bit. A holiday would probably work better! Luckily there are a few potential hols coming up - Pangkor Island (Dec). Bali (Jan). Japan (Feb). Beijing (Aug). Off topic Claire!! You were supposed to be telling June about work! Something new popped up today (an overworked understaffed Client B that appeals to the people-pleaser in me) so stay tuned. Oh and we are recruiting local graduates so pretty soon I should have someone to handball things to. Oops I mean nurture and develop...
* ok enough work stuff. Time for other important stuff. I am off to try to master my new battery-operated eyelash curler, for which the instructions are all in Chinese.

chicha and chichi

Week 3 in KL was quite relaxing - just what I needed after 2 weeks of acquiring Malaysian antibodies. I'm feeling a bit weary and much, much vaguer than usual - but alas, deadlines don't go away and I'm disturbed about the fact that my new client is eager to receive and read long reports. Andrew and I have destroyed whole sections of the Amazon the last few days.

Spent Saturday eating, shopping and pub-hopping with various new ex-pat buddies and spent Sunday with Sri who I was on Schlumberger boot camp with in 2001. We went to Bangsar for shopping (can't wait to go back alone and spend hours in that Ted Baker changeroom guilt-free) and later on to Bukit Bintang for tapas and apple chicha - very yummy but now that I've googled and found out it's as bad or worse than smoking, I won't be making a habit of it! Then back to Skybar for the trademark Chi-chi cocktail. They wouldn't let us in though because Glen was wearing three-quarter length trousers and they have a "No shorts" dress code. Fair enough we thought - at least we were allowed to sit in the entry area which still had a pretty speccy view of the Twin Towers. As we sat there sipping our cocktails and trying hard not to take the offhand treatment personally, at least one female in short denim shorts was allowed entry. O well...

I had my first Nasi Lemak (typical Malay dish) - see piccy. After a couple of weeks of thinking it was the weirdest combination of foods ever, I have discovered it really works! Yum.

Penang

Ok I'm getting a bit over this food poisoning malarkey now. It has been a week now! Going to Penang for the weekend was just the ticket - there was lots of lolling around in a five-star hotel getting spa treatments. I was very warmly welcomed by all the gang who were there for a wedding on Sat night, including the bride and groom themselves and invited me to all the 8 course Chinese banquets! Air Asia was great - I travelled in a brand new plane with leather-look seats. The cleaner in the airport toilets (pictured) was so amused about our height difference!

Like Kuala Lumpur, Penang has good night life and we had a lot of fun dancing to old classics like "Uptown Girl" in every nightspot. I'm trying (with huge difficulty) to get used to people smoking around me again - inside!! How quickly I got used to waking up without smoky clothes and hair. I had a fun trishaw ride home from the club on Friday night. One of the crew from Perth persuaded the driver to let him pedal us home. It proved to be pretty hard work! Another trishaw driver stopped halfway back to the hotel and dropped off 2 of our crew saying they were too heavy and had to catch a taxi!!!

Finally someone pointed out to me what the arrows on the ceilings in the hotel bedrooms are. I thought they were pointed towards a safety device (emergency exit?) but of course they are pointing to Mecca (NOT Macca's as the stereotypical blonde in me misheard...) to assist with prayer time!

Coming back to KL after a weekend away felt surprisingly like coming home. Viknes the taxi driver is such an angel-in-disguise...it was lovely to get picked up at the airport by a familiar face and know that I wasn't going to be white-knuckled or ripped off during the 1hour journey!

food poisoned

Yes I can now tick food poisoning off the list of life experiences conquered...
The buffet at the KL Tower is the main suspect and I'm never eating there again. Alanis Morissette would call it ironic - it was the first expensive meal I've had in KL... As a result, I missed a critical 5-hour meeting but I couldn't have got there - I could hardly stand up in the lift to go to level 8 to get some fizzy drink (I found something that tops Lucozade in the placebo effect stakes). Colleagues and the cleaning lady were very sweet and offered to bring me drugs but all I need is time and sleep... and Mum of course...
On a positive note, I've just booked to go to Penang for the weekend, joining a friend Claire from Perth who is there for a wedding. I am excited at the thought of being in a holiday spot and seeing a familiar face from home.
Update: Another new-colleague-buddy ("The Pingsta") has just succumbed to "Buffet Bug Belly", 24 hours after I did, and 48 hours after Jimmy did. I feel inclined to write the KL Tower a dirty letter about their hygiene practices but maybe I won't, for fear of being given a free voucher to another meal at their anorexia-inspiring buffet! After a phenomenal amount of sleep, I managed a somewhat brain-dead half-day in the office today, just in time for a public hol tomorrow (Deepavali). Apparently it's traditional for Hindus to open their homes for friends for a meal at Deepavali, but we haven't managed to be invited anywhere. My new friend from Melbourne is disappointed but I'm relieved - I'm not so brave around strange kitchens at the moment!