Category: Malaysia

This will probably be the last installment of pictures that we post.  It’s a good one though.  Some of it comes from our last week or so of roaming around KL, and the rest consists of updates from our friend Lindsey, who has sent picitures from her visit.  Her digital camera takes great pictures too.

• Our album Around KL has pictures of the smoky haze that has enveloped KL in the past couple of days, JM’s coworkers, and some others.  Start here and scroll forward if you have been following along at home.
• Culinary Delights now includes an extensive series on our favorite Malay wet market, plus a guy spinning roti canai and all sorts of goodies we have cooked lately (start here).
• Langkawi has a bunch of new pictures, including monkeys, cats, a great sunset, and us driving a boat (start here).
• Melaka has a couple new ones (start here).

It looks like our flights from Singapore to Tokyo and then Tokyo to the US are going to be very full.  Again, we are not complaining, for we are happy that United is still in business.

We are now pretty sure that our driver screwed us yesterday by driving us to Kota Damansara the long way, via highway, when it could have been done much faster.  Kota Damansara is right next to Damansara Heights.  Argh.  This is one thing that we will not miss–not knowing what’s going on.

Besides that, we can only think of one other thing that we will actually not miss.  The smog and diesel fumes, maybe?  Nope, that’s part of the fun.  Negotiating in bureaucrats in strange languages?  No again, that’s part of the fun.  The one thing that we will really not miss is line behavior.  Let us explain.  We are unabashedly culturally relativistic in our view that standing in line is a fundamental social convention.  When we are in line, we demand that people who arrive in the line after us stand behind us.  Here, that convention is broken on a fairly regular basis.  JM gets it worse than I do.  The other day she was standing in line at the bank, the next up for the teller.  When the person in front of her walked away, she was plowed over by some guy who just walked right through her to get to the free teller.  JM heroically pushed back and maintained her place in line, but the whole premise of the interaction is almost unthinkable to us.  In the US, that would have raised stares.  As George Costanza said once, "we’re living in a society here!"  We are like intrepid Danes travelling to the Italian Riviera, wondering why everyone insists on waving their hands when they talk; or like Asians visiting the US, perplexed that someone would wear shoes inside somebody’s private residence.  We have gotten used to a lot of things, but we are too American to have lost this.

These are the things that go through our heads as we spend these days packing, shopping, and eating.  Besides, of course, simple incredulity that we managed to accumulate so much junk in the space of 11 months.

Any last requests for Asian packaged goods?  Our last day at the grocery store is tomorrow, so let us know.