Penang -- Week 2, Part 3

DAY 10 - Monday
George is at work for real now. Regin and I don't have a great time. He has several explosive poopy diapers (he won't go in the pot anymore), and I am not ready for housekeeping to come, so I hang up the do not disturb. I'm in the middle of the messiest poop I've seen and the phone starts ringing like mad -- it's the front desk, they want to know if I really mean it when I say do not disturb, or do I want housekeeping to come? I try to explain it's a bad time, they don't understand, Regin starts squirming angrily because I've got him in a strange hold to avoid getting his poop on me. Finally he wressles free, tries to sit on the floor, but falls and hits his head on the tile instead. Screaming. I say I have to go and hang up on the front desk people. Who calls when you have the sign up anyway? Aren't phone calls a disturbance too? I just get the diaper changed when Joo Lee calls and laughs that we haven't made a decision on an apartment. She tries to give me advice, but I have to hurry off the phone because George is coming home for us to go out for lunch.

Lunch is nice. Too bad we can't do this when we have our apartment. The hotel is a few minutes away from Agilent, but he'll have to drive a half hour or more when we move. George gets Sour Plum Chicken which he really loved, and a glass of Iced Milo -- a local obsession. He thinks he's tasted this before, maybe something his mom's made. I look it up later and find out it's super popular here, and also Colombia, go figure! It's really a malt/chocolate drink. It's actually pretty good. I get noodles. They're not bad.

George takes absolutely forever to get home from work. It seems like it takes about an hour for him to complete his 5 minute trip. Apparently you have to avoid the after school traffic here. They have two school shifts, the later shift gets out at around 5:30 or 6 and everything is stand still.


Day 11 - Tuesday
Another day alone. George comes for lunch again. It's nice. In the evening, we end up in a Chinese restaurant. I order the plum chicken, not bad, and George gets stir fry pork. Funny to me that it doesn't come with any veggies like stir fry in the States. It's just pork ribs and sauce.

In the evening, we go grocery shopping at the mall. Yes, believe it. We're listening to CDs from a teach-yourself-Malay course I bought. Selemat tengah hari! Saya Elisabeth. Perkenalkan George dan Regin. Kami dari America.

On the way home, George gets flagged over at some kind of check point by local cops. This may be the second time we've seen any police the whole time we've been here. They say George ran a red light, George disagrees, but he's not going to argue too much with them. They ask for his license and his passport. We've started leaving our passports at the hotel, it's just too scary to carry them around. I wonder briefly if the cop is fishing for a bribe before he angrily scolds George and sends us off without a ticket. I think it would be too much of a pain since we complicated things by not having our passports. Before he sends us off, he says, "Who is that with you? Your wife??? Malay?" Ok, it's dark, but that's kind of funny.

Back at the hotel, we watch a movie we downloaded from iTunes. Sunshine. (Yes, we're already caught up on Lost.) It's ok, but really stressful to watch, so I'm up late online.

Day 12 - Wednesday
Another difficult day with Regin. Sleep didn't go so well, and I am having my first full-day, hypoglycemic crash since leaving Colorado. I have a short fuse and no patience for a baby. Housekeeping comes. Even though I had the place reasonably clean before, it's nice for someone to come in and clean more. I may miss this when we move. But someone coming to clean really messes up our schedule. Regin never naps right. In fact we go all day with very little napping.

In the evening we go out to dinner with the other family that Agilent sent over from Colorado. On the way George and I are losing our cool with each other. My short fuse has made it impossible to tolerate his driving a moment longer. I'm yelling at him to be more defensive as a driver. He's telling me he doesn't want me in the car anymore and I'm on my own here. I threaten to leave with Regin and go back to the States. He acts fine with that. All that calm and cool that my sister was so impressed with us for having when we were packing to come here is gone. Well, for a short while. We have to put this all away so we can go to dinner with these people.

This is our first real get together with fellow ex-pats. We meet them at their favorite Indian restaurant. They are nice, have two pre-teen daughters. They've been here two months and are eager to pass on all the knowledge they've gathered: The wet markets are disgusting (yet they continue to shop there even though there are grocery stores), ambulance drivers are not to be trusted and we should drive ourselves to the hospital or call friends, etc. They tell us that there is a phase everyone hits, when they get homesick and start surrounding themselves with all things American -- including Chili's. She says they're there. They've been here since January 20th and they have 128 days left on their stay. I hope we don't get there so quickly, if at all. We commiserate over the nuttiness and the driving. They ask if we've made that wrong turn that forces you onto the bridge (one of the longest in the world) to the mainland yet. We say we have. We tell them about the rat at the restaurant. The guy says that Agilent has rats casually running around in the office. Great!

Mom and kids say they've got the potties figured out, and they now prefer to squat. She wants to help me figure things out here because she received so much help when she came, but she sees a little less need when she learns that I grew up in Europe. The offer for help is nice, but I'll have to ask her for it when I need it, and that's not something I generally do. She hasn't joined, but others have said it's vital to join the AWA (American Women's Association) or whatever they're called now, but I can't see doing that either. I'm such a loner. And women's groups aren't exactly my thing, though I can see the value in it here, even if it is a little gender specific for my taste.

After dinner, we head back to the hotel, George is practically falling asleep in the elevator (lift). But when we get to the room, we can't go to bed. There are ants on the bed. Our hotel apartment has three bedrooms and the two beds that were changed today both have ants all over the bed. The only ant-free bed is a single. We call the front desk. They don't answer. George calls the hotel from his cell phone. He tells them to send someone up to change the sheets. They do, though we wait about half an hour first, and they can't change everything because house-keeping is closed for the day. It's somewhere between 12 and 1 before we get to bed, and who knows who or what is in there with us. I want out of this hotel. I feel like I'm living in squalor. We've had multiple lizards too. If I see a rat in here, I'm hopping on the next flight home. Will it be like this in our apartment?