Home Thoughts From Abroad

Still confined to the internet cafes, and darn! I forgot my earplugs again. This is a young culture of rabid gamers – Dave you would feel right at home – and they all like their games LOUD!

Still no internet connection at home. It has been two weeks since we ordered the phone line so we could get online, and still no success. Our apologies to all those who would like to see pictures, but we can’t load anything in the cafes (no access) or at work (Secure server. Locke’s staff will understand).

Other than that we are having a blast, and feel truly blessed to be in this beautiful country serving God and making new friends. I have been hard at work preparing lessons for the July intake and Pam’s been working on getting her office set up at home so she can make contact with the Trans World Radio office in Singapore. We are both out tonight with church activities. I have a men’s supper and prayer meeting, Pam has a ladies’ night out. We are not starved for activity, but we miss the regular contact that the internet allows. Hopefully tomorrow!

Last Monday we applied to have a phone line installed. Not that we need a phone, but we do need the internet connection which is only available through the phone lines in Malaysia. A week ago that was installed and we immediately began getting calls to install the internet service that we had ordered. We were a little suspicious since we had been told that it would take a few days for our phone line to be ‘activated’, whatever that meant. It certainly didn’t mean activated, since the phone worked just fine. But apparently this didn’t mean it was ‘activated.’ There are moments here in Malaysia when you think that you have just followed Alice down a rabbit hole.

Since we couldn’t understand the people on the phone line wanting to install the internet, we were force to trek back out to Telecom Malaysia (the owners of the other huge tower in KL) to find out what was going on. They told us our phone wasn’t ‘activated’ yet. So we waited, and dealt with the telemarketers as best as we could, never know if it was the real installers that we were dissuading.

Yesterday I got an email from TM, which gave me written access to someone at TM so I could get some real info. I found out the name and phone number of the installer and today he came to install the service. I hope. I am still at work so I don’t know for sure, but we will keep you posted.

It has been a few days since we have been able to post.  Having moved to the condo and needing to wait for Telekom Malaysia to get a land line in place, we are limited to internet cafes.  Not a bad option as they are clean and cool, if a little loud. We continue to be delighted by the ethnic and culinary variety of this amazing country. The level of cleanliness and personal safety are issues, but fortunately the Lord provided a place that is both clean and safe, and we have met a number of good Christian friends who are watching out for us. We are looking forward to the day when we can be a blessing in return. We will post a picture when that option become available again. Our new address is T1-L3-A Boulevard, Jalan SS12/1 Subang Jaya 47500, Selangor, Malaysia

Honestly, we did not even pray for anything this beautiful and clean. We still can’t believe that we are moving in on Saturday. Our new condo is called the Boulevard and is just beside our hotel. We are on the third floor with a colonnade out to the swimming pool from our front door- and we still have a view of the Petronas Towers. We are the very first tenants so it is so clean and has some rare features for an Asian home, like a shower stall and a vanity top in the bathroom! (As opposed to taking a shower sitting on the toilet while balancing shampoo and soap on the thin edge of a sink)
We went to cell group last night and met some great people from a wide variety of backgrounds. We are looking forward to making some friends there. Our computer is going in today to be completely wiped so we are a little anxious that we may lose contact and who knows what else, so don’t worry if you hear nothing for a few days.

There are some structures that stand in as a representative for a particular city or culture. Think of the Great Wall, the Pyramids, the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower; they are more than stone or steel they are part of the national and even the world’s consciousness. The Petronas Towers do the same for Malaysia, and serve notice that a new nation is beginning to make a statement to the world. It is also a beautiful and powerful structure in its own right. We were impressed.

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.