Happy F***ing Easter

Nothing like your father giving you the silent treatment says, “we should all join each other at church on Easter.”

So stupid.   Grow some balls and tell me why you are mad at me.

California Dreaming

Lately I feel as if I can do no right.  My parents recently got very upset about something and accused me of something I didn’t do.  I really can’t do anything to change their opinions, and it is forever going to be two (them) against one (me) so I have no choice but just to go with it.  It is made a more difficult situation because I’m currently living with them as I finish school.

Surrendering to the situation was difficult, but actually easier than I thought it would be.  God has given me a peaceful feeling.  A calm.  It is much appreciated.

So now I’m focusing on school.  I want to graduate as quickly as I can.

And I’m dreaming of it being June and me being in California with my best friend and her husband.  I need this vacation so badly.  Summer, come quickly!

Fellowship with Women

This post is kind of all over the place.  Forgive me.

I promise this post will eventually make it to talking about fellowship with other women, but with Mother’s Day around the corner I thought I’d start with the most important woman in my life. My mother.

My mom is easily my best friend.  There is nothing in my life that I couldn’t share with her.  She has always loved me no matter what (even when I got a tattoo), and always looks at the bright side of things.  She is incredibly smart, wise beyond her years, and very, very funny.  Her sense of humor is one of the reasons I’m so close to her.

She has been with me through everything you can imagine.  She was there when I was a strong-willed child who needed a lot or discipline (especially when I was three).  Every night of my childhood we had a home cooked meal as a family, and she is one amazing cook!  My mother has always loved going to the movies and would take me with her to see movies all the time.  She homeschooled me.  Not because it was easy (far from it!).  But because that is what she thought was best for me.  And she stuck with it even when I told her I hated her for making me leave all my friends behind in public school.  It is funny what is tragic when you are 10.

Nothing showed her love for me more than how she stood by my side when I was going through health problems.  She was the one who stayed late at the hospital the night of my first spinal tap.  She held my hand and prayed with me before every brain surgery.  When I was hospitalized for a year and having brain surgery after brain surgery, she is the one who helped bathe me when I was too weak to stand.  She fought to make sure I had the best nursing care.  She watched over doctors and asked the important questions that I was in no state to ask.

All this to say, I miss her terribly.  She is an amazing wife, mother, daughter, and best friend.  Since she left five months ago, I really haven’t changed much in my life.  But the absence of having her in my everyday life is finally being felt.  Lately I’ve been craving fellowship with other women.  I miss having an older, wiser woman in my life.  So far my Aunt has done a wonderful job of helping to fill that void.  Both my Aunt Mary Ann and Uncle Joe love my siblings and I like we are their own children.  Uncle Joe even jokes to threaten boys that my sister or I talk about bringing home to meet the family.  But back to finding fellowship with other women…

Without my mother I’ve been lonely.

I’ve decided to do something radical and blatantly obvious, and turn towards my church family when seeking friendships with other women.  (Who would have ever thought of turning to the church for fellowship?!)  My first attempt at finding new friendships at the church didn’t turn out so well.  The ladies who I sat with at a social function were all very close to one another and had absolutely no desire to make a new friend.  I felt whenever I added something to the conversation they were irritated with me.  As if I shouldn’t have talking privileges since they didn’t know me.

As someone who is not married there are times when it is very difficult to break into the world of friendships with married or older women.  I find this terribly sad.  Young women need relationships with older women.  They need women to look up to.  Women who have been through the things that they are going through.  Women who can give them good advice.

I recently went to a Girl’s Night Out dinner with a small group of women from the church.  For the first time in a long time I finally felt comfortable…as if I’d find a new branch of my family.  Family who loves me and cares for me.  It was nice.  I felt like hugging every woman there and thanking them for letting me be a part of their night out.

Driving home after dinner made me realize just how much I’d been craving that comfortable time with women who have similar life and world views as I do.  I also realized that God works in wonderful ways.  On one of the days where I was feeling particularly lonely, He brought me together with a great group of women.  All women who wanted to get to know me and made an effort to find out about my past and present.

I had that warm feeling inside.  I felt at home.  It is such a good thing to be part of a family.

So as my family grows and changes, and God opens my eyes to my bigger family, the family of His children, I’ll still miss my mother.  But I also know I will be so excited to talk to her about the new friendships in my life.  And I know, because she loves me, she will be happy for me too.

So women, I encourage you to reach out to someone you don’t know at church this Sunday.  You never know when you might be bumping in to your next best friend.

(And as a disclaimer, my father loves me just as much as she does, but that post should be saved for Father’s Day.)

Six Months of Memories

Life is crazy and fun.  Despite being on chemo and a new RA drug, which makes me sick all the time, I’ve still managed to have some fun!  Here is a collection of enjoyable moments from the last six months…

I can’t wait to see what the next six months holds in store for me!

Update from KL

An update from my father

Selamat Siang (good day)! The adventures continue on the Asian continent, and here are some of the recent activities: Friday was the Moslem prophet Mohammad’s birthday, and as such a National Holiday, so we had a day off at work. Lots to do and so we got up early. I celebrated the birthday by frying up some 100% Pork SPAM for breakfast. Mmmm SPAM (it is an acronym for Squirrel Possum And Mouse meat you know). Next order of business was getting me a haircut.

I am a bit particular about my hair so this was stressing me out. We had three options. First, the place in the mall that has 10 chairs and plays beebop music from the US of A America, and all the hair cutters appear to be under the age of 17, second, the 3 chair obvioulsy very expensive, hair salon in the mall with classical Chinese music playing, and lastly, Fast Cuts, the 15 ringgit ($4 US of A American money) place in our building. Vicky convinced me that was the place for me to go. I walked into the place and was directed to the ‘pay machine’. This is a box that accepts your money (like a Coke or candy machine might back home) and once you deposit 15 ringgit, out pops a card you hold onto until it is your turn in the chair. With card in hand, I chose the hair stylist known as Bee Wee. I went into a long explanation of how I wanted my hair cut and she smiled a lot and listened very carefully. I soon realized that Bee Wee was having a good time hearing English spoken, understood none of it, and was just waiting for me to stop talking. About 3 minutes of Bee ‘Flying Scissorhands’ Wee’s work, which ended with her using a long vacuum hose (like the ones they have in car washes back home) to suck up any hair cutings from my head and shoulders, and finally I was done. About 5 minutes total elapsed time. Fast Cuts. Vicky will be getting her hair cut in the mall. I did bring a Panama hat and several New York Yankee baseball hats to Malaysia to wear, so all is not lost.

Next off to the bank (now wearing my Panama Hat). We drove through China town and parked outside the bank. Vicky ran in to get several thousand ringgits in cash. As she left the car, I could see the questioning eyes of Saren (our Number 1 driver, trusted friend, protector and friendly companion). I asked Saren if he had a question. He was wondering why Miss Vicky seemed to be the one to always to go to the money machine. I explained in terms that I knew he would understand. “You see Saren in our house, Miss Vicky is the ‘Prime Minister of Finance’ “. Saren shook his head in understanding. I went on to say she is also ‘Prime Minister of Scheduling’ (she decides where we need to go and when), ‘Prime Minister of Procurement’ (what to buy and from whom), ‘Prime Minister of Entertainment’ (what we watch on TV), and that she holds various other high offices including but not limited to ‘Prime Minister of Solid Waste Disposal’ (she tells me when to take out the trash). Saren now understrood the dynamics of the highly modern and complex lifestyle that is ours here in Kuala Lumpur.

With Ringitts in hand, off we went to the ‘National Festival of Kraft’. This is a yearly event here in our new nation’s capital city, that brings together artisans from both peninsular and non-peninsular Malaysia (the islands and Borneo). Now I do not like craft fairs, but the ‘Prime Minister of Activites and Excursions’ used her trickonology in convincing me to go, as the brochure for the event included a mention of ‘makers of native instruments’ and a demonstrations of ‘making of traditional Malyasian Cookies’. Traditional Malyasian Cookie making (and sampling)? I’m in…Saren speed up the Mercedes and get us there quick!

The fair was incredible. Hundreds of artisans. Wood carvers, weavers, sculptors, cloth diers (sp?) and painters, dress makers, jewely makers, stone carvers, metal workers, embroiderers, basket weavers, futniture makers and more. Vicky…errr..the ‘Prime Minister of Procurement’, acquired a beautiful hand made vase and dried flowers to go in our half bath. By the way in our tiny aparment, we have 4 full baths and one half bath. Can you say ‘overkill’? So if you visit us, there will be no waiting to take a shower or relieve yourself. I picked up a ‘Sompoton’. This is a native instrument from the Sabah region (southernmost peninsular Malaysia) that is basically a gourd with 8 pipes made of bamboo attached. The sound is very similar to the pan flute I bought from the Andes last year in Houston. With those treasures in hand we decided to return to the festival on Sunday and headed out to one of our favorite stores to get some essential provisions. Our prime reason for going back on Sunday, is that we missed the cookie making demostration (we were too early) and a lot of other things.

At our favorite store Tesco, we aquired, gin, waste baskets for our bathrooms, a second variety of gin, cereal, fruit juice, a third variety of gin (gin is very popular here and extremely cheap-3 bottles for 30 ringgit-$13 US of A American), Kellogs Pop Tarts, veggies, a vacuum cleaner, hamburger rolls, peanuts, cheese and Pepsi Light (diet Pepsi). Things are cheap here in part because of the low taxes.

Listen to this bit of tid: In Malaysia 48% of the money the government takes in comes from its share of the profits from Petronas (the national oil company). Another 15% comes from revenue on oil fields drilled before the government formed Petronas and 20% comes from taxes on palm oil which is a major export. As far as income tax is concerned, it is high on expats like us (although Newfield pays 100% of that for us). Locals have a most interesting income tax. They pay 2%. But that’s not all. If you are a citizen, and a Moslem, you can declare that all of you income tax goes into a government fund, that is then given to the Moslem Mosques.

Speaking of Petronas, they sponsor an annual Formual One Race car event here, and a Fromula One racing team that competes world wide. Once a year, Petronas Employees can purchase pit crew shirts and parafinalia at cost from them. Technically, I work for Petronas through Newfield so this week Vicky and I picked up some cool Pit Crew stuff for presents.

Next week Vicky and I begin getting private lessons in Bahasa. That is the native language. Although English is the official language, we thought it might be fun, and Newfield pays for it. They send a tutor out to the apartment one night a week. We thought it might keep us out of trouble, and we just might learn something. Apparently I am the first Newfield expat to take advantage of the program and this had made me famous with the Malays that are working for us. Many have said they will help us practice. It should be interesting.

Speaking of interesting, escalators are interesting here. Malyasians are way ahead of the US of A America in escalator technology and this bothers us a lot. I am writing President Obama, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the head of the National Security Agnecy in Washington about it. We must not let this ecalator gap continue! Here is the scoop: There are 3 types of escalators here. First regular ones like you have back in the US of A America. Second, escalators that are wide continuous rubber belts about 2 meters wide, no stairs, that move kind of like the moving sidewalks in airports at a nice normal pace. The third kind are escalors that are weight sensative. These go very very very slowly until they detect somebody has stepped on them then they take off at a very high rate of speed. This is what they have in the Petronas Tower where I work. I did not know this, and it was quite a surprize and physical challenge the first time I used them. The thought is that they save energy with these moving slowly when nobody is on them (an important thing in a country that is a major energy exporter). Saving energy is important to the good people of Petronas. I was working in their offices last week and at noon all the lights shut off. Near total darkness. Their thinking is that people should not work during lunch, so from noon to 2 pm all lights are turned off to save energy. Who could argue with that?

Well, we are off to people watch and smoke a nice cigar at our local Starbucks. Everyone be safe. More to come. The expatriated Americans in Asia crisis continue….

Malaysian Swedish Meatballs

Another letter from my father…

This is a big week for us, and we had a good long weekend.  On Thursday, Lord willing we will move into the apartment at long last. Due to holidays here, we had the last 4 days off. Not one to miss the opportunity, nor put anything off to the future, nor relax for a day, Vicky spent the 4 days shopping for those necessities we will need for the move in.

There is one Ikea store in Kuala Lumpur, and so it was decided that Friday was Ikea Day.  Now I hate shopping.  I hate it almost as much as mayonnaise on hamburgers, and I have asked my nephew in the Air Force to bomb all restaurants who serve mayonnaise on hamburgers. I hate shopping so much that if I were having a heart attack in a crowded store, I would ask to be pulled into the street to die there, away from shoppers, that’s how much I hate shopping.  If you’ve ever had a root canal, and experienced sitting in the dentist chair wondering when it will all be over…that is how I feel about shopping. But Vicky has worked EXTREMELY hard getting all things ready for the move while I goof off at work, so I really needed to go and help out.  Saren, our normal driver was ill, so Yogen, driver number 2 showed up at noon to begin the adventure.

Ikea is about a 20 minute drive from our temporary home.  Yogen, however, had never been to Ikea.  Oh the humanity…..it took 2 hours to get there!  We saw the King’s Palace and the zoo.  We saw some incredible golf courses, KL’s first high rise apartments and the old train station. We saw a great water park for kids, and several mosques.  We saw great looking family parks and inner city lakes.  We saw lots of shopping centers and the elevated train.  We saw a hotel called, and I am not joking, ‘Allibabas Hotel’.  We saw soccer fields and schools and a Cricket Club.  We saw the new train station. I asked Yogen at one point if we were close and he said ‘oh yes Mr. Marty just another 15 minutes or so’.  I was tempted to ask him if we should have our mail forwarded to his van, but I didn’t think he would get the joke.

Anyway, we got to Ikea, and of course it was crowded with folks from everywhere.  Masses of running children, confused shoppers, dads not wanting to be there, sight seers with aunts, uncles and grandparents along for the fun, and of course the ever present shoppers who decide they must suddenly stop in the middle of isles for no apparent reason, blocking your progress, as they gaze outward into space.  And that was just in the cafeteria.  My only thought was that the author C.S. Lewis got his descriptions of hell all wrong. It was here in Ikea, in Kuala Lumpur.

After some meatballs and French fries (where else in KL should you get Swedish meatballs?), we headed to the great sea of humanity that was IKEA!  We loaded up on waste baskets, towels, dustpans, wine glasses etc. and got out in about 1 ½ hrs, all the while burping up meatballs.  Not bad considering it was less time than it took us to get there.  The road trip back home took 20 minutes.  Yogen had apparently called friends and got the word on the more direct route home.

The next day, our friend Yogen again took us to a great store that was kinda of like Wal-Mart, except this store also had a fresh fish market inside, and a special section for pork products (the Moslems do not touch pork, so you get and pay for your pork in a specific walled in section inside the stores).  We loaded up again on mixers; bed sheets etc, but stayed away from the fresh fish.  We will head back there for that.  It was very fresh and looked great. How often can you get a 450 count bed sheet, and a dozen fresh large shrimp, at the same time in the same store? What could be better?  Am I right?  We’ll probably buy our TV and stereo there too.

Sunday, after church and a great sermon on God’s name for Himself, Vicky headed out to the mall to further investigate the possibility of adding to our stuff from one of our favorite malls.  This is the place that has separate stores next to each other that specialize in baked goods.  There is the cupcake store, next to the éclair store next to the cookie store, next to the donut shop, next to the bread store next to the brownie shop.  A veritable diabetic suicide center.  Vicky showed great mercy on me (perhaps inspired by the sermon) and I stayed home, watched the NFL Pro Bowl, prepared rib eyes for dinner with baked potatoes, and smoked a few Cuban Cigars.  A great day indeed for all.

Monday it was back to shopping in the big mall across the street form our future apartment, and we celebrated the shop-a-thon’s conclusion by going to dinner at our favorite restaurant ‘Lai Po Heen’ (Cantonese).  It is in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, you can google it and download the lunch dim sum menu.   It is the best Chinese food I have every had, and my second favorite restaurant (second only to Commander’s Palace in New Orleans-but a very close second).  We love this place and got a lot extra to take home.  Crispy Chicken immersed in fried garlic and sesame, sweet and sour prawns, roasted duck and fried rice with shrimp.  We were in heaven.  I cannot wait to take my sister and daughters there.

So tomorrow, Wednesday, our temporary furniture is scheduled to be delivered and the Thursday we move is.  We will buy a computer and TV on Thursday, but it will take them a while to get everything hooked up.  Oh I almost forgot the best discovery of the weekend!  We unloaded our treasure at one point at the new apartment.  We then decided to head downstairs to the mall below our apartment, to a level we had never before investigated.  As the elevator doors opened, HOORAY, we were faced with a Dunkin’ Donuts!  Next to that a Subway sandwich shop!  Next to that a pizzeria, and a great fresh fruit stand, and a barbers shop!  Let me repeat, we have a Dunkin’ Donuts and a pizzeria in our basement!  I was speechless, but after a chocolate covered Cruller and a great cup of coffee, I finally composed myself and asked Vicky “is this heaven”?    She said, “no but when the ‘Cigar and wine bar’ opens on level one of the mall in a few weeks it might be.”

More to come.

The great expatriated American in Asia crisis continues….

Malaysian City Living

From my father.

Ah a very good day in the life of the expatriated Americans. We had final inspection of the apartment and officially took over the keys to the place.  If you want to see the building, google K Residence Kuala Lumpur and the website will come up.  Click on the various tabs to get a peek inside and out.  We will take pictures and send them soon.

We are on the 46^th floor and the view is tremendous. One side of the apartment faces my office in the Petronas Tower on the 47^th floor, so Vicky will be able to look out and see if I am working or just goofing off.

I takes up about ¼ of the floor (3200 sq. ft.), all marble floors except for the bedrooms which have teak floors, and we have a porch out side that wraps around the outside of the building. It took me 3 minutes to get from my office to the apartment on foot, so our long commutes, typical of Houston, are over.

In typical fashion the apartment inspection was like a cross between a Marx Brothers movie and a Humphrey Bogart classic.  Lot’s of people decided they wanted to attend.  Pooi Ling our office manager came (I suspect she wanted out of the office and to see the place), our re-location agent Ming Li Lodi, who is really nice, a real estate agent the company hired, another real estate agent who deals just with this building itself, Vicky and I, and a cleaning crew.  Anyway, we spent several hours there inspecting and noting things.  Watching everyone running around in all directions at once in the apartment, inspecting things, caused one phrase to come to mind…’Chinese fire drill!’.

One of the real estate agents, a very small, thin happy Chinese fellow, kept coming up to me, very excited about the view and kept running out on the patio.  He was very excited as far as I could tell.  His English was just OK and with my bad hearing, I really don’t know a lot of what he was saying, but he was a very ‘excitable boy’ as Warren Zevon would say.

An oddity: you get one electric bill each month and a separate air conditioning bill.

The Apartments sit on top of a mall with restaurants and shops.  One unoccupied space said ‘cigar and wine bar coming soon’.  We were excited about that.  With that a trip to the furniture store was in order.  As our stuff is till on a boat (supposedly) on the Pacific, we went and ordered a bed (for one of the guest bedrooms and temporarily for us), kitchen table, couch, end tables etc.  You go to this showroom and see what they have.  Then you place and order and they hand make all the items you want to your specifications.  You choose the design, wood and finish etc.  They give you temporary furniture in the mean time.  I just sat in one of their chairs and Vicky did all the choosing, I decided that was in everybody’s best interest!  Our furniture from Houston should be here on the 15^th, and we will get the temporary stuff from the furniture store this week.

Well that was our latest adventure!

The expatriated American crisis continues!

“The Americans in Asia crisis continues”

From my father

A new adventure today!  In Malaysia the government issues ID cards to residents and people here on work visas.  This is the ID that’s used in cashing checks etc.  It also allows us to enter the country without our passports and gives us priority in immigration when we do enter the country and have our bags checked.  Although Kuala Lumpur is the capital city (the King lives here), the government built all the government offices in Putrajaya, about 50 klicks (kilometers) or 30 miles south of town. Kind of like Washington D.C. So Vicky and I and the office manager (Ms. Pooii Ling) had one of the company drivers with a van pick us up and take us there.  What a complex of buildings and offices.  Very very impressive, and all brand new buildings.  Fabulous architecture everywhere.  We arrived and, since we are working technically with Petronas (the government owned oil company-that makes us special J), it was arranged that an agent would meet us at the doors of the Malaysian Immigration Headquarters.  We were whisked away to have our pictures taken. Because the background for the pictures is white, and Vicky and I wore white shirts, they had to put a coat on us to be able to see us in the picture.  They had coats there for this purpose.  Now the Malaysians are a lot smaller than us on average, and I am a fat guy, so the coat thing with me was a challenge!  I could only think of the scene in the movie Tommy Boy where Chris Farley puts on David Spade’s coat, and sings the song ‘Fat guy in a little coat’.   After that they took us to a room full of a lot of ‘regular folks’ there for the same purpose, to get government ID cards. We were taken to the head of the line. It was odd and a little uncomfortable for me.  I guess this is how national politicians in the US live all the time.  It was kind of odd.  Here we were suddenly put ahead of a lot ‘regular’ folks.  Our fingerprints were scanned and they issued us the cards.  Wham bam thank you mam!  This process normally take on average 8 visits to the Immigration Headquarters.  Our time, about an hour.  Once we got the cards we gave our passports to the agent.  Our office manager arranged for the agent to process our drivers licenses, so by next week they will return our passports with licenses.  No driving test.   No written test.   It was a little disconcerting to hand over our passports, but the office manager assured us all is well.  Driving back we drove past UPM (University of Peninsular  Malaysia).  It is there big agriculture college (like Cornell in NY or Texas A&M).  And what to our wondering eyes should appear but a heard of Texas Longhorns grazing in the grass!  Holy cow!  Actually to the Hindus here they are holy cows.  Once you get out of Kuala Lumpur a lot of folks drive a car called a Kancell.  This is like the smart cars back home, only they are made for one driver.  You really wear the Kancell, you don’t ride in it.  I was amazed by the bravery of those drivers.

More to follow.  Tomorrow we have final inspection of our apartment.]

The Americans in Asia crisis continues

A letter from my father to his mother

Dear Mom, 

Selmat Pentang (Good Evening!)  Just wanted you to know that all is well here in KL.  We are still in temporary housing, though it looks like the contract on the apartment is almost ready for us to sign.  The company is really taking care of us, their lawyers here are going over the rental contract.  It looks as though we will be renting a car, a Toyota vios.  Although we are using the company driver, this will give us more freedom. 

We found a church, St. Andrews Presbyterian.  It was built in 1902 and has been active, except for the years when the Japanese occupied the city.  It is within walking distance so that is good.  We met two couples in church last Sunday.  One has a home near Jersey Village in Houston, the other hails from western Pa. and knew Dunkirk! 

From our temporary apartment we can hear the loudspeakers Moslem call to prayer, and it’s actually kinda beautiful.  Very pleasant and kind of alluring. 

The weather has been good.  Temps range from about 72 in the morning to high 80’s in the afternoon, but by the time I leave work at 5:30 it’s in the high 70’s again.  We open up the windows in the apartment at night, The weather is basically the same year round, except for the rain. When it rains here, and this is the rainy season, it’s very odd.  It rains like crazy for a few minutes then nothing else for the rest of the day.  Also, unlike Houston, after the rain ends, it’s very cool and dry. 

The food is fabulous and Vicky and I meet each night after work in a bar/lounge that is attached to one of the better hotels in town.  Lot’s of characters, it’s like living in a Humphrey Bogart movie, and we can smoke there. 

The workplace atmosphere is excellent.  Work is very busy, with lots to do.  The scale of things is much greater.  I had to make a presentation on a prospect that had 8 million barrels recoverable oil potential, with well that would produce 8,000 barrels per day, and the problem is that may be ‘too small’ to go after! 

The Malaysians are very friendly.  They ‘live to serve’.  I tire of people bowing to me.  I’ve started bowing back to them, they don’t quite know what to think of that.  The food is fabulous, last night we ate at a Chinese place and it was probably the best meal I have ever had (Duck, chicken, prawns, rice).   

Tomorrow we go to immigration to get our final work permits.  They have to get our fingerprints. 

Vicky has found 2 malls within walking distance and lots of grocery stores.  When you buy pork in the stores, the people checking you out don’t touch it, you have to put it in the bag by yourself.  But we did find some excellent ham (just like honey baked), and had great steaks a few nights ago (Australian beef).  Speaking of Australians, you know I work with a bunch, and they are great people but they talk so fast I cannot understand but one word in 5! 

We were going to go to Bali last weekend but immigration was still working on our work permit/permanent residence cards, and they actually had our passports.  Plus I was still feeling the jet lag.  We will go soon.  Looks like we are headed to Singapore for Chinese New Year two weekend from now.  It’s a short bus ride on very nice busses (2 ½ hrs) and it’s cheap at about 30 ringetts round trip (that’s $10 in US of A American money). 

We walk a lot because everything is so close and that is good for me.  I’m kinda getting used to it.  Lot’s of US of A American tv channels but we’re getting sucked into local tv.  Last weekend I watched a field hockey game that was excellent.  We get CNN etc. Well, that’s all for now.  Miss you!
 
Saya Mencintai Anda!

Update from Malaysia

Today I woke up at 5:45 Houston time so that I could talk to my father.  It was totally worth getting up that early to be able to see him and talk to him.  We really hadn’t had a good conversation since he left.

Things are going well.  They are really loving Kuala Lumpur.  It is monsoon season over there which means is rains really hard for ten minutes every afternoon.  They said that, unlike Houston, when the rain passes it isn’t humid and sticky, it is dry and cool.  I think that is a change that they are really liking.

They said they’ve had some amazing Chinese food and they have a restaurant that they are dying to take us to when we come visit.  They see so many things that they wish we were there to see, and have many things that they can’t wait to show us.

My father is liking his job.  He is super busy at work but likes the people he is working with so it makes the job better.

They are in negotiations for an apartment.  There tentative move in date is February 1st, but it might be a little later due to Chinese New Year celebrations.  They are also going to lease a car because their driver got them a great deal.  This will allow them to explore the country a bit more. 

And that is all the news I have from them.  Stay tuned for more…