Saturday, August 2, 2008

Looking for a home

It is hard to believe we've been here a week. It's been busy.
  1. We've looked for housing
  2. We saw a soccer game- Chelsea vs the Malaysian National Team
  3. We've looked for housing
  4. We spent 3 days at school orientation sessions
  5. We've looked for housing
  6. We attended a social for new staff (there are about 25 of us)
  7. We've looked for housing
  8. We went downtown on a Saturday night
  9. We've looked for housing
Perhaps you noticed a theme here. We've looked at lots of condos but haven't settled on one yet. I think we are the last of the new teachers not to get accommodation yet. We got things narrowed down to two options and hope to decide today.

The soccer game on Tuesday night was an amazing experience. Getting there was even an adventure. The traffic was something we've never experienced before. Besides traveling during rush hour there were 80,000 fans heading to a stadium not serviced by mass transit. Fortunately we had Albert, the taxi driver, in charge. We weaved in and out of traffic all the way there. Within about two kilometers from the stadium people were literally parking all over the place, on the freeway, on the highway dividers, and stacked up 10 to 15 cars deep in every gas station and pull out nearby. Apparently they don't park in the stadium parking lot because it is a fast exit doing it this way. The game was fun although Chelsea were playing at half speed. They ended up winning 2-0.

The orientation to school was a bit overwhelming. Everything seems new and different but I'm sure we'll get the hang of it soon. The positive factor is all the people seem very nice and helpful. Al's classroom was a bit of a dumping ground for everyone at the end of last year so there will be a lot of cleaning up to do to get ready for school. Maureen has a nice new office but right now the air conditioning isn't working. When the temperature is always 30+ degrees and humid, AC is a must in order to do anything.
On Friday they was a social for all the new teachers and department heads. The food, like all over, was incredible. Maureen is concerned because it is all so good and nothing of course is low fat. We closed down the social, as usual, and then headed over the local square to catch some jazz. We lost track of the folks were supposed to meet there but ran into some parents and another teacher from the school and spent time with them. They identified us as new teachers and were very welcoming.

Saturday night we went down to city centre. Wow. There was an unbelievable number of people wandering around. What really surprised us were the number of ladies in burkas because we had not seen any around the hotel or school. We found out today that a large number of folks from Arabian countries holiday here because it is a Muslim country.


Today we got a taxi driver to drive us around the town a bit so we could get the lay of the land. We then had him drop us off at the Central Market. This is a market sight that dates from the 1800's and has thousands of little shops selling all sorts of things as well as restaurants etc. From there we walked into China Town and had a look around. Here are hundreds of hawker stalls selling watches and leather bags and pretty well any other knock-off one might want. We weren't shopping but it was fun asking for the price of things and then having the price of things drop in half in seconds as we began to walk away. On the way home the cabbie told us not to pay any more than 20% of the initial asking price.

Next blog: Our decision about housing and what's up with school.

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