week three: the smelliest and lowest yet.

i cannot believe today that i have been here for three weeks. sometimes i sit and think how i really only have two FULL years here (as in january - december years), and that doesn't seem like that long. i conveniently forget i have from now until december 2012, and january until march 2015. for some reason the broken-up time doesn't seem like time to me. that's weird.

anyway. i have still been resting and taking it easy. by "taking it easy" i mean i take a lot of naps and don't work out. it's like the world is giving me a giant refund on the past two years, wherein i had no naps and a lot of working out. i like it. at least i like it until i'll start gaining weight.

tuesday evening we had an officeandfamilies going away dinner for my predecessor at din tai fung. everyone said i had to try the xiao long bao, aka soup dumplings, but i was nervous, as usual, because the meat was not chicken. but then there on the menu, there was "xiao long bao" and "xiao long bao chicken. i win. so we ordered those for me, with a backup of sweet and sour chicken. also spinach with garlic.



and wouldn't you know, i loved the dumplings. i didn't love the sweet and sour chicken. i suppose when you go to a place that is known for one thing, you should expect everything else to be subpar. but they were so tasty, i ate the whole thing (i think six)!

the next day, or maybe the day after (every day runs together now), we went out to lunch at kelab aman. it is a very old club (aka older than me) and the name means "club peace." there is a field for sports, and while we were there menly men were playing cricket. the food is northern indian. we ordered butter chicken, rice, naan, another kind of chicken, spinach and cottage cheese, and something else. mostly i don't remember anything else because all i ate was the butter chicken, rice, and naan.





it was really very tasty!!! i liked that chicken. i feel as though i was confronted with the most serious, intense, native chickens at the beginning, and now i am finding normal-katelyn-chicken is not so hard to find. and then, i saw my very first monkeys!! unfortunately, it was while we were in the car driving away, so i did not get a photo of them. i was so excited though.

now, i will talk about today in reverse. the world should know by now that i am one of those people who is crazy about disney (seriously, i told my mom earlier this week i think we should plan a family vacation to disney world while i'm home on my r&r. a time when most people would want to relax, i want to go to disney world. and you know i'm going to make my way to as many of the parks in asia as i can). attached to that is my affinity for chip n' dale. maybe it's because we speak at the same high-pitched level, or maybe it's because i think most people overlook them. i don't know. but i love them. i have always loved them. see?


pure love.

so anyways. you can understand why when i saw these cookie cut-outs at isetan (a japanese department store/grocery), i had to have them.



i also found a recipe to make cheese-nips from scratch (here), so i thought that would be the perfect thing to use them on! however, as with most things i bake, they did not come out as they did on the website i got them from. the dough was pretty sticky, and that was ruining my munks' faces, so i only made a few. they are tasty, but really very greasy. i might try to find a butter substitute and see if that cuts out the greasiness. i don't even know if butter substitutes exist here. you have to go to each of the different grocery stores to truly find everything you want if you want specific things. for example, my rainbow chip is at one grocery store. it isn't at the others (that i have found). my oatmeal is at another store. for this reason, i have to figure out a grocery-shopping-plot. this will come in time!


see, they're not the prettiest things. but i tried. it just needs tweaking. i bought parmesan so i can try to make some parmesan/garlic ones too.

before i did that today, i went for a run outside. i have been avoiding working and running out because i have a sick feeling in my chest/stomach/body, but this morning i was determined. it was sprinkling outside, but it wasn't so bad. one thing about walking around in KL is that you have to look at the ground while you walk. the reason is that there are things like this all over the place:



in fact, on the route from my apartment to KLCC park (where i ran), there are 2"x2" holes with nothing over them. they're just there. so i did fairly well to run there and run back and not fall down or get stuck in a hole. the running path in KLCC park is only 1.3 km, so i am anticipating i will not like running there for very long because i hate repetition and even four loops to make 3+ miles is too much looping for me. still, it's a very nice path, and you smell the flowers the entire time, so it makes for a very peaceful run. my nose was so happy while i was running.

then. i returned home. i watched my path the entire way, until i reached my apartment gate. i let my guard down. suddenly i felt something splash my leg as i walked down into the garage. i looked down and saw two brown specks, which i tried to wipe away thinking it was mud. it. was. not. mud. a quick smell of my hand confirmed it was not mud. it was from an animal. an animal with an inconsiderate human (at least, i assume it was one with a human and not a stray, because there's no way to get in without going through the gate). i did not see the real damage until i got up to my apartment and noticed it covered my entire right running shoe. how did it splash onto me? i have no idea. i don't want to think about it anymore. i cleaned it and showered and now the bathroom needs to be cleaned also, but at least my shoes are clean and i am clean and i don't need to think about the bathroom until tomorrow. i suppose because i haven't seen any dogs around my apartment building, i assumed they just were not here. this was really an unfortunate event after my lovely smelling run in the park. i guess now i have learned i must not only be on the lookout for holes and random things on the ground, but also for animal excrement. just as you would anywhere else in the world, though.

but, on the topic of dogs (i mean this is really the only reason why i included that lovely tidbit of my day), this weekend is a very big weekend for my very dear best friend's non-profit organization, paws4people. paws4people is a wonderful organization in so many different ways. the dogs are trained by federal inmates and placed with adults/children with physical and mental disabilities, veterans with ptsd, volunteers who take their dogs into classrooms/hospitals/nursing homes/etc. it's just all around wonderful. and founded by my best friend! so anyways. it's a big weekend for them. they are having their first "family reunion." they are having their fourth annual 5k race on UNC-wilmington's delightful campus tomorrow, and clients and volunteers from the past and present will all be getting together for a weekend of fun. today they are holding a conference to talk about paws4people's development and graduate a whole new class of service dogs! i am so very proud of kyria and all she has accomplished. i am only (as the title indicates) very upset that i am not by her side through it like she has been by mine for so many big events.

i think that is why this was a little bit of a difficult week. it is finally hitting me a little bit that there are going to be a lot of big events like this one in the next three years that i cannot make it home for. i won't be there to see my new nephew once he is born. i can no longer call my best friends when i just need to talk to them, because they are likely asleep or doing their own work. that is difficult. but if that is going to be the most difficult part of being on the opposite side of the world, then i am not too very concerned. things will adjust, we will work out phone/skype schedules, things will be fine. overall, i am still very happy and feel so lucky to just be here.

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week two: "i won't kill you, just torture a little. like the saw movies."

two weeks down! this week was actually not interesting. maybe. whereas i was super-excited and hyper all last week, i think my jet lag finally set in at the beginning of this week. i was sick, the kind of sick that makes you operate at 25% of your usual operating-rate, and that is never fun. at least now my appetite is sort of back. but i did do fun things!


on sunday, i walked over to KLCC. KLCC is the central park for KL, and houses the petronas twin towers. it is about a 10-15 minute walk from my apartment, at katelyn-pace. the park has a running path, which i haven't been on yet, but seems safe enough to go alone during the daytime. the petronas twin towers are the tallest twin towers in the world, and tied (duh) for sixth as the tallest skyscrapers in the world. in other words, they are really tall. at the bottom sits a six-story mall - suria KLCC. this is really the only important part of this entire paragraph.


this isn't the best angle for a photo inside the mall, but it is the best angle to capture one of the only two stores in the mall i actually really care about. bonus points if you find it. kate spade opened in early march, right before i arrived. i think they planned that. i walked through, mentally comparing the prices, and did not think anything was too outrageously expensive compared to the american prices. i also went to banana republic, which i was surprised to find because when i searched banana's website after i found out i was moving here, they didn't have malaysia listed as an international location. i bought a shirt that was only $5 more expensive, which is not too terrible of a price to appease my need-for-instant-shopping-satisfaction. considering my two very favorite stores don't fall into the "way more expensive in KL than the US" category, i think i will be okay here. i think i'll stay.


do you know how sometimes you enter a mall and smell auntie anne's, and then you can shop for three hours, but still smell that yeasty-pretzel smell, and cannot leave until you satisfy your palate with cheap mall pretzel? i hate auntie anne's for that. it got me this time, but mainly because i am still a little scared to try the local fast food places. suria has a food court that seems to always be insane (after two visits), and it's just a little too intimidating to do by myself right now.

later in the week i was taken to a second, seven-story mall, pavilion, by new friends! pavilion is just over one mile away from suria. it has different stores though! such as forever 21, which is pleasing. we ate at morganfield's, which has "safe" food. at least, chicken without bones. i had a chicken sandwich and so i was happy!! we went back to pavilion last night to see the hunger games. without having read the books, i liked it. the violence was very :| but it was good. and when we came out, there was a fashion show!


i have never seen a real life fashion show, so that was exciting. for a bit. then we went out to some bars on changkat bukit bintang. it is a street filled with bars and restaurants and kind of cute. although tired, i was happy to sit and drink and relax and people watch. as we were leaving, one of the waiters at a bar we were at tried to make us stay. he offered to take me as his fourth girlfriend, using my title quote as a reason i should consider. he was joking, but it was entertaining. i like the people here, for the most part.

week two was not easy, what with the many hours of sleeping and headaches, but i am slowly adjusting. hopefully. overall, it was a good week!

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malaysia, week one.

so. i will finally bend to everyone's demands that to accompany my three years living abroad in malaysia, i must document everything in a blog. i think it's actually simpler this way, because with the time difference i can't always tell everyone everything that's happening here. this way the whole world can see! i have a real challenge with doing this and posting pictures to facebook, because i feel like why do it in one place versus the other, but i finally reasoned with myself that facebook isn't necessarily a chronological order of things (to include the messy "timeline" layout), whereas this will always be here in order. it may have taken me an entire week to decide on a name for it, but obviously i finally settled for stealing lyrics from taylor swift.

they say it takes one day for each time zone that you travel across to adjust to the time difference. this is probably very true, but i realized the other day when i was about to eat my hand at 12:30 that at least my brain's "this is feeding time"-function has adjusted. getting settled and adjusted and into a routine is definitely one of the biggest challenges to moving anywhere, let alone to the other side of the world (side note: how do i know it's the other side of the world? you can go east or west out of DC and it's still the same amount of travel time. un.for.tun.ate.) in DC i had a fairly simple schedule: work, work-out, sleep, repeat. i need to fix that here.

so. what have i done this week? i have eaten many items that many people will be astonished by (considering that it's me). i have gone grocery shopping twice. i have gone shopping (in my first twelve hours in-country, even!). i have set up my "nail polish bathroom." here are photos to prove it all:

this is actually from my hotel in LA, where i was stuck during my layover. classy.

my ever-faithful moose, so tired of traveling already.

interesting tv options.

this felt like forever.

this was the food on my flight from tokyo - kl. i suppose i have to get used to the food on asian flights. i pretty much ate the noodles and that was it :(

my first malaysian meal! i forget what this place was called, but their lunch special comes with an entree, the soup of the day, a drink, and then ice cream for dessert. this is my green tea and my soup. i didn't realize i got soup with the meal, and so we asked the waiter what kind of soup it was. the conversation went as so: "normal soup." "what's normal soup?" "it's normal."

it was actually a normal kind of soup - chicken broth with some ginger root in it. i liked it.

this. i. did. not. like. ok. that's a lie. it was pumpkin curried chicken and rice. malaysians put fried eggs on everything, i have learned this in just my week here. as a non-egg-lover, this is a difficulty for me. luckily eggs are easy enough to pull off, and i was with someone who was happy to take the extra protein. the curry was tasty, but the chicken. the. chicken.

let's just make something clear, the thing i have to tell everyone and they just. have. to. understand. i don't like chicken with bones. i don't like chicken if i've seen it raw. i don't like chicken if it's even slightly pink (reason why i didn't eat my chicken on the flight down). i don't like chicken with skin. i don't like chicken if i bite into it and see those little purple-red things. so you can see why i had difficulty, and will have difficulty for the next three years. they don't use chicken breast like we do, so it's difficult. difficult difficult difficult. i managed to pull off a few pieces of meat that i could eat, but the rest went, again, to the delightful person with whom i was eating. this is a learning process for me.

fortunately, then came the absolutely wonderful scoop of ice cream. i had chocolate, and it had mini-chips inside! very tasty.

the rest of the work-week, i didn't take pictures of my food. but i ate a lot. a lot more than most people would give me credit. i finally found an indian stall with tasty eggplant and potatoes in a brown sauce, and that i could eat every day. i also found a frozen yogurt bar! two blocks from my apartment. i've decided to limit myself to fro-yo once a week.

today, we went here to celebrate the wonderfully nice person i am replacing. it was a bit out of town, but so delicious. 

this is tofu. yes, i ate tofu.

i very obviously did not touch this, as i don't eat things from the sea.

or this, as it was more things from the sea.

i did have the fried chicken (totally boneless), and fried pumpkin! the fried pumpkin (on the left) was probably my favorite. 

this was almost the whole spread.

annnd my plate.

we cleaned it up quite nicely.

dessert was a sweetened corn soup-thing. i actually really liked it. i like anything sweet, so that's no surprise.

on our way back, we saw this construction. it looks like it's been there for a while, but it's a little funny to drive by and just see a road hanging out like that. cover up, silly road.

TODAY i found the best treat ever: my rainbow chip frosting!!! everyone has told me that each of the grocery stores has a different selection, when it comes to looking for things from america. i cannot believe i was so lucky to find this so soon. it's becoming more and more difficult to find in america, so i was shocked. i bought two cans to start up my stock. a lot of people buy the pillsbury funfetti icing and think it's the same thing: it's not. BC's rainbow chip has actual little white-chocolate chips in it, which make it so tasty and wonderful.

so that was my week, sort of. it hasn't really even hit me that i'm totally on the other side of the world from everyone i love and care about. i feel like i'm just down the street. i also haven't yet experienced the "omg what am i doing with my life" shock that everyone has told me about. i guess this is just the way i am. i don't like to think about the negatives in any situation, because i know looking at the negatives just once gives you the ability to hone in and focus on it, and i don't want to do that. this is such a wonderful opportunity, and i want to make the very best out of it. we shall see. this is only week one!

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