SATURDAY/SUNDAY, June 28th & 29th
Another weekend of not feeling great, and so we cancel on Shanti last minute again to babysit for us. Ugh. I feel guilty, but I'm also dreading the upcoming hint-dropping she'll do. I'm sure I'll hear lots about her money woes after this. Still, what am I going to do? I'm totally unwell and unfit to dance or even go to the movies. Am I going to invite her over and pay her to hang out with us? Not sure we can afford that. And after doing a budget this weekend, I'm not sure we can afford any babysitting. Man! We're spending a scary amount on our groceries and eating out -- two things that are supposed to be unbelievably cheap here. But even if we cut back pretty hard, we're still left with only $45 a month for a travel fund. Yeah, that'll get us far! So much for living here almost for free! Guess what? The bills at home are just the same as they were, house is still not rented, car is still not sold, and we do have real expenses here. And now we have a big medical bill to deal with on top of the rest of it! Next time... MUCH MORE PLANNING AHEAD IS NEEDED!
We go to kill two fabric birds on Sunday. Bird one: Buy some sling fabric, preferably batik. Bird two: check out something cultural/local, such as the batik factory. Turns out, the batik factory is nothing more than a surprisingly expensive gift shop on days when the batik artists aren't in. We're told to come back another day. Also, I'm not inspired by the fabric for sling usage, so we head off to find the fabric store.
Kamdar, the fabric store, is outrageously big, and I have no idea what I'm doing there. You can barely move there are so many fabrics packed in, but they look mostly to be fabric designed for the typical (old-fashioned) muslim/Malay outfits, which I'm guessing now are largely homemade. Some fabrics have the fiber content written on the sign, many do not. We wander around and on what is probably our fifth lap around the store, a man spots us and tries to help us find our fabrics. We ask for flannel (I'm planning to make some new cloth wipes) and he shows us some, but it's pretty thin. I ask if they have any other flannel and he asks another employee standing nearby. They speak in Malay for a couple of minutes and there are some gestures towards other areas in the store, then he turns back to me and says, "no." Hunh. I wonder what was lost in that translation!
I finally choose some fabric to try out and there is no cutting table to take it to. Instead you have to hunt down a boy with a yard (meter) stick. I ask for an amount, the boy stands there with his yard (meter) stick and measures my amount, eyeballs another two inches or so, folds the fabric, and with the fabric hanging down from his hands, he cuts downward to the floor. I ask for another piece of fabric that's yellow for my sling, he unrolls the amount I want, and there are dirt marks all over it (it's one of several rolls that are on the floor). At first he shrugs and expects me to take it dirty. His shrug reminds me an awful lot of the shrug I was given by the sofa delivery guys when they left dirty finger prints all over my new white sofas. When I am unwilling to take it dirty, he unrolls the whole roll to find that the whole piece is dirty. I opt for the dark red version of the same fabric.
You know, this whole DIY/green thing is a pain! I love it, but I just wish that there were more supplies available to me. Thing is, I am tired of consuming disposable plastics and papers. I've been making strides already to ween myself off of them. Crunchy Chicken and others have enlightened me on further ways to do so. And this leads me to making my own cloth wipes. I had some cloth wipes already, but have decided (after almost 15 months) that terry cloth is not appropriate for wipes. I looked online and discovered that flannel is the way to go, and indeed some people are using flannel instead of TP! I'm not ready for that yet, but my new mode of avoiding purchases of things I can make myself has led me here to the fabric store and looking for flannel. But I'm not sure I can find anything I can use! And this is not a Penang thing. When I bought my sewing machine last year, I was all excited to start making my own clothing but when my inspiration took me to the fabric store I found hardly anything that my fashiony mind craved. Am I just not able to see the potential in these seemingly frumpy fabrics?
I'm also having trouble with being green in general. I have this huge collection of plastic bottles on our balcony and a big box of empty cans that are waiting for us to figure out exactly what to do with them. The apartment building janitor says he wants the cans, but what to do with the plastic? George says he thinks there is a small bin to drop off recyclables at the gas station. They don't make it easy here!
I'm so bummed to realize, Sunday evening, that we missed the Little Penang Street Market that I loved so much last month. I will have to wait a whole nother month now to go again!
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