Penang -- Week 33 -- We Missed Deepavali Too

MONDAY - WEDNESDAY, October 27th - 29th
George has the day off again on Monday.  This time it's for Deepavali, the festival of lights, the Indian equivalent of Christmas, or so we're told.  I'm so excited for this one.  We've been invited by Rada, the security guard, to her house and there are supposed to be all sorts of lights and happenings in Little India for us to check out. 


But first we go for a dip in the pool on the roof.

We foolishly teach Regin to leap into our arms in the water.  Before we know it, he's going to parts of the pool where we aren't standing and throwing himself in almost before we can get there!

Cute.  But bad idea.

Sadly, George didn't find out what time we're supposed to go to Rada's, and I can't seem to reach her by phone.  We go for a drive through Little India, but it's a ghost town.  Most of the festival lights aren't even lit.

Public events ended two days ago.  Everyone is at home with family.  Sad.  Another missed event.  You know, one thing about being here... I feel pressured (self-induced) to experience all of the cultural events, and there are so many (and our time here so short).  It makes for added stress which I so don't need.  I am going to really miss all the spectacular events when we leave here, but it'll be nice to relax at home, in boring old Thornton, without feeling like I should be going somewhere or like I'm constantly missing out on something.

This is cool... dinner in the street:

On Wednesday, someone at work gives George the North edition of the Star newspaper.  George is on the cover!  They tease George.  "What, you're hear for less than a year and you're already on the cover of the newspaper?"

I'm less significant, so my photo doesn't make the cover.

That's me, bottom right.

We're also in a Chinese paper.

Penang -- Week 33 -- Babywearers on Parade

Week 33
WEEKEND, October 24th - 26th
Friday is Shanti's last day before Deepavali. She's been hinting around like crazy since Wednesday for the bonus that a month ago she informed me I should give her. Finally, after a lot of back and forth in my head, chats with other expats and locals, I decide to give her a little something. It's just less than two-week's pay, which is plenty big to me, but she'd asked for a one-month bonus. I explain our financial situation nd apologize, but she seems tickled with whatever I give her, so I think we're still good.

On Sunday we're helping to support Jess, the organizer of our Babywearing group, and the creator and chair of Malaysian Babywearers. She's trying to promote International Babywearing Week (November 12 - 18) in Malaysia and she's enlisted us all to help out with several booths and a show at this month's Little Penang Street Market.

It's a huge success! We're drawing tons of attention from current and prospective babywearers, we're being photographed left and right by the gaggle of photographers that show up here every month (they're like a club), and we're being interviewed by all the major Malaysian newspapers.

Photos...

 

George shows how manly babywearing is.

  

Jess and others man the booths.

  

Jess and Bee Gaik help this woman try a pouch for the first time.  (I also gave a demo of the pouch and the wrap rucksack carry)

  

George and Regin break for lunch.

 

Regin is a nut for juice, or as he says, ooh-oh (as in "jugo").

Valderiiiii, valderaaaa, valderiiii, valdera-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, valderiiiii, valderaaaa, my baby on my back!  (Still have Oktoberfest on the brain!)

 

Debz (on the right) is talking to an australian woman who might start coming to our group meetings.  We're like a cult; we recruit.

George was busy for a while with this reporter who I think was from the Straits Times.

 

Alison and her baby, Sabastien.  She's been babywearing for ages, but has recently taken up the ring sling.  She asked me to teach her how to do back carry with the ring sling.  Seems like no one but George and me use the carriers on their backs!

  

Eloise (Alison's daughter) with Regin.  Such a beautiful little girl!

  

Valderiiiii... my boy on Papi's back!

  

All the kids were playing in this phone booth. I have some sweet photos of Regin "making calls" in the phone booth that I'll put up later.

  

  

This was during our show in the entertainment tent.  This is by that same New2Mac guy that got our Oktoberfest picture.  Too bad he didn't get one of George.  I thought he was totally hot in the show.

 

You can see more of the pictures from the day here.

P.S. There was a gorgeous Swiss-Malaysian girl teaching salsa later in the day!  Naturally, we introduced ourselves.  She's lived much of her life in Europe as well as Penang and speaks 8 languages including Spanish!  She's been living in Singapore most recently.  She seems to be a pretty cool chick.

Penang -- Week 27 -- What's a little mooncake among friends?

Week 27
WEEKEND, September 12th-14th
Friday, Shanti is finally available and we can finally go dancing again.  It's been a month!  It's so great to go dancing again, but boy has this month away made us rusty!

Saturday is nice.  We have Babywearing group in the afternoon, and everyone flips out about my fruit salad.  They're all commenting on what a good cook I am and how I know "how to make all sorts of interesting things."  OK, I did have cream for drizzling on top, and I suppose that makes it more unusual but the person who made most of the comments didn't even know about the cream!  Everyone says not to bother trying to complete with local cuisine, that anything you'll make will not be at all exciting to local palates, but I have to disagree.  Fruit salad?!  One woman was freaking out because her son never eats fruit and he was gobbling it all up, so she was examining the package of cream so she could see what she should buy.

Everyone else generally brings store-bought sweets.  Jess has brought durian cheesecake.  I don't know how it tastes, because I can't try it, but the smell doesn't exactly entice.  I could smell the stink of the famous durian from several rooms away.  Peee-yew!  George will have to clue you in on how the fruit and the cheesecake taste if he ever posts on this blog again.  Come to find out, several of the locals have strong aversions to the "king of the fruits" too. Hunh!  It's supposed to be a local delicacy and a regional source of pride, and there are durian fruit farms and fruit stands selling durian all over.  But it smells so bad that you aren't allowed to bring it into the hotels.  And it's a distinct smell.  Imagine an aroma that would be something akin to smelly socks and moldy cheese mixed with just a hint of something sweet like papaya.  Blech!

At the group, a few people invite us to a little Mooncake Festival gathering with friends and kids.  We're so glad we're invited because we've been asking everyone where we should go to check out Mooncake Festival happenings today and no one has any clue.  It's hilarious!  But I guess it's more of a personal, family thing.  I mean if someone asked me where to go in Denver to experience Christmas Eve/Day, I wouldn't know what to say either.

The evening is nice and cozy; we know almost everyone from Babywearing group, and we all get along great.  George and I have been wanting to invite everyone to hang out outside of the group at some point, but we just never have.  So, yay!

 

  

    

  

 

As far as the mooncake aspect of the evening, we have lanterns and we have a picnic in the dark.

We're supposed to be on a beach, but it's drizzling, so we're all camped out under cover at the marina where one of the couples lives in their boat.

 

I'm not sure when, but at some point someone notices that we're walking around with lanterns (=flaming candles) and hanging out where the boats fuel up!

 Whoops!  So when Regin's lantern blows out, I'm not all that inclined to relight it. 

There is also some actual mooncake to eat, but no one notices it among the KFC and fruit salad.  So it was sort of a Mooncake-less Festival.

I'm just glad we got to experience this event.  George and I have developed a catch phrase for our experience here in Penang.  It can all be summed up with:  "Something is going on around here that we don't know about."  We say this often.  It's pretty much the story of our lives here.  We're often seeing parades and hearing fireworks, seeing crowds, and cars lined up to go who knows where, and we rarely have any clue what's going on with any of it.

Towards the end of the evening, George made a comment about how we were all a bunch of babywearers and yet none of us were wearing our babies!  Within about 30 seconds there were three or four of us whipping out slings and wraps and getting babies tucked in.

This also happened to coincide with our friend Dave's birthday, so we had a little cake & song for that too.

Yay! A package!

Sometimes I get indecisive about whether I should post things like this in the time line of my travel journal, or if I should just post as it happens. Today I'm opting for the latter.

We received a package!!! We've been waiting on the new diapers for a while. JoAnn kindly went and bought me a new batch of my favorite diapers from Tiny Birds Organics in Austin, Texas! (They no longer sell their diapers online). I don't know if the diapers got stuck in customs or at Agilent, but there was a fair bit of a delay between shipping and receipt. Also in there was a knitted diaper cover, yay! Thanks SO much JoAnn! Muah!

Agilent combined my mom's package with JoAnn's so we were also excited to meet "Ducky" who was traveling along with the new diaper stash. Ducky is referred to by name already and has received numerous kisses.

How about some fashion/babywearing photos? I'm wearing one of my new hand-embroidered tops from Sam's Batik (post to follow), skinny jeans, and of course, Regin. He was so adamant about taking a nap that he went and found this wrap and dragged into my office saying, "Back! Back!" (He wanted to go on Mamma's back.)

Penang -- Week 22 -- Not His Fault This Time

Week 22

WEEKEND, August 9th - 11th

Babywearing group again.  I finally did a good job of managing my hypoglycemia during the afternoon so I had a FANTASTIC time.  Plus, I made a new friend and we might hang out outside of the group.  Her name is Shereen.  She is Malay/muslim and she has a son who is about Regin's age.  Goodness, her son is a funny kid!  He has some intimidating eyes man!  He was after my almonds at one point and he was seriously staring me down!  

Shereen and I talked a long time at the group.  Mostly about hypoglycemia.  After talking with me she thinks there is a strong possibility she has it too.  I think so too.  She may even have a more severe case than me by the sounds of it.  Poor girl.  I'm passing on all my info to her, but I only hope her doctors don't dismiss it.  That's my fear whenever I hear that someone is going to investigate the possibility that they have it.

After that, we're driving around and I'm practicing some more taking pictures with that 50mm focal length as George is driving, and then just as we turn into our street, we're hit by another car on the driver's (and Regin's) side of the car!  Finally (as if such a thing could really be a relief) an accident that is not George's fault.  We're so close to home that Regin and I don't stick around for the rental car company to arrive and sort it all out.  But George tells me that basically some money was exchanged to avoid the obligatory trip to the police station.

I'm going to go back and take some serious photos of this building.  It has trees growing out of the second/third floor!

Here umbrellas are used just as much, if not more, to shield from the sun as from the rain.  Many people have special sun umbrellas that have a metallic silver coating on top to reflect the light off of the umbrella.  I haven't tried it to see how much difference it makes, but it looks fun.

Post accident.  George and the guilty driver.