Home Thoughts From Abroad

We are really settling into a routine and feeling quite comfortble with our neighbourhood; loving the food, the people, the culture and the climate. All this is bound to change somewhat when we leave the comfort of our five star hotel, but is a great way to start.
We have seem a number of potential housing options but nothing yet that seems to meet our needs and still be affordable.
Even in our little suburb of KL- Subang Jaya- we have access to everthing we could possibly need. In fact one of the malls, Subang Parade makes the Eaton’s Center look backwards. There is a Carrefour, which is basically, a three storey Walmart with an Asian flavour which is just great. Shopping is huge here, as this picture of the complex under the Petronas Towers would indicate.
Our IT issues continue to be our biggest struggle and probably won’t be solved until we get settled in a condo. We miss Skype immensely.

Well we are just about through our first full day and have accomplished a lot! We have explored the whole Subang Jaya suburb,on foot, met with the HR department to start the paperwork for visas, saw four condo apartments, found a little church near the school that apparently does their services in both Chinese and English that we plan on attending on Sunday, met a great real estate agent who happens to be a ballroom dancer and is taking us dancing tomorrow night, got cell phones for each of us, had our first meal at a hawker stall, even tried out one of the five pools at our hotel.
We both feel very comfortable here already and are looking forward to setting up our home here. Taylor’s College and everyone we have met through them have treated us incredibly well and we continue to be impressed by the level of excellence they provide in everything that they do.
We are constantly reminded of the things that we loved about Bangladesh that we so longed to return to -and we still love those things. We love the blend of Malaysian, Chinese and Indian cultures, the climate, the scenery and the outdoor lifestyle.

It is 8pm your time, and we have been in transit since 5am the previous day. That makes it 39 hours since we woke up in our little condo and started our day. On the plus side it is 8am our time, and most of our travel has been at night and we did manage to get some sleep on the plane.

Cathay Pacific has been wonderful. Hong Kong is their hub and this airport is really nicely laid out. We had a two hour transfer time to our flight to Kuala Lumpur but because of the airport design the transfer process took about 10 minutes and a minimal amount of walking. Hong Kong has a beautiful setting, surrounded by hills that march right down to the China Sea. However it is overcast this morning so this picture doesn’t capture much of its beauty. Next stop KL.

It is not yet 7 in the morning. We have been flying over North America and are sitting in the transit lounge in Anchorage Alaska awaiting reboarding for the next leg of our journey. The last twenty four hours have been a marathon, sometimes more like a dash as we have hurried to meet specific deadlines. There have been moments of real warmth and encouragement, like supper at Pearson with Wyn, Dave, Sarah and Tessa. It was great to see my brother before we flew out. I have missed our conversations. Then there have been the moments of blind panic, like when Pam thought she had lost her passport. I’m sure it was my fault, but neither of us can remember putting in the pocket of the laptop bag. Not a good sign!

We are in Syracuse to visit with our grandson in the States. It is the last we will see of him until next June; by then he will be walking and talking. We are hopeful that with all this new technology we are learning we will be able to keep in touch by webcam and Skype.

Make sure you keep in touch as well by leaving us a “hi” in our comments so we can know you dropped by.

Ok, I am not a fan of television, I’m more the book and music kind of guy. But I do like The Amazing Race because it is like a travelogue on adrenaline. Sunday night’s show was set in Kuala Lumper. What a treat! The place looked amazing, clean and full of life. We can’t wait to get there and have a look around for ourselves. If you are interested that segment airs again tonight on ABC at 8 o’clock.

Okay, I have been pretty busy getting ready to go to Malaysia. But I did have a minute to drop in to Locke’s last week, and I caught a few former students before school singing in the music room with Mr. Ewaskiw. They looked like they were having fun!

I am hoping to find the time to drop in one more time before I leave, and I am open to suggestions as to when. We fly out at midnight on the 23rd, so I still have a couple of weeks. Let me know what works. That goes for staff as well. I am still hoping for one final game of golf before I go.

I spent a lovely day today in St. Jacob’s, reminiscing with Nancy and Ann, two fellow graduates of the Class of ’73 of the Atkinson School of Nursing. I don’t think that we have changed too much since our five year reunion in 1978.