KP in KL

Well, here I sit as the water rises in my apartment. Again.

If you're wondering how in the world this happens twice in two weeks in a second floor apartment, let me tell you. A downpour started outside with thunder and lightening to accompany the water, making the scene very dark and dramatic. I decided against using my umbrella as a lightening rod to get to the bank, and decided to stay home and that I should probably check and make sure it wasn't flooding on the patio. But it was. The water was just barely coming out of the drain, and within a matter of about 2 minutes and 21 seconds, the water was pouring in everywhere.

Simple as that, that's how it happened. I was scrambling to find all the towels we own to prevent what happened last time from happening again. I made a barricade at the patio door with towels and they were soaked in no time. I used all 4 beach towels to barricade the water further back with no success. The water was coming in the apartment so hard it was actually pushing the towels out into the hallway! I was mopping like crazy trying to get the water into that wonderful bathroom drain again while I waited on the apartment contractor to get here. Finally when he arrived, he looked at the mess in disbelief and pulled his pants up to his knees, waded in, and did a very, very bad thing. He opened the door to the patio, which in turn let in the 7 inches of water that was standing outside. So in came an even bigger flood and he called 5 other men for backup.

Thankfully, they told me not to do anything and took the mop from me which they replaced with a large shop vac. The guys are still here, coming in and out trying to clean up all the water. The furniture has been moved out of the room, fans are going, and I think they are all wondering why this issue wasn't fixed the first time. Since they told me not to work, I'm sitting here on the couch looking awkward and feeling like they think I'm prissy and stuck up just watching them. But, what else can I do? I surely can't fix the plumbing problem, so I blog. At this point, if we could move to a different unit quicker than the plumber can get here, I would pack up my things today. Not that I'm dying over here or anything, but it's a bit of a hassle to have to move furniture, bath mats, and anything else on the floor every time it rains, and I have a feeling the plumber is still going to be a while. Since it rains here every day, literally, I think my odds of this happening again aren't looking so good.

On a different note, Lynn, my neighbor, likes to drop by my apartment anytime. So, she came over for a while before we had dinner, and she had no problem filling every ounce of silence with words. The first thing she asked was the size of our house and wanted to know if it was bigger than hers. We've realized people here have no reservations about asking questions like that or how much you pay for a house, or how you pay for it, or how much money you earn, and other similar questions. So it's becoming not so shocking when people always compare the things we have to what they have. From Lynn's conversation, I learned all about Muslims and her previous marriage, her current marriage, and other much more personal things that most people wouldn't even share with,... well not with anyone really. After getting an earful, the one thing that was a big shocker was she told me the apartment manager's wife was not pretty and that he could have done better. What was more of a shock was she told the apartment manager the same thing to his face! I guess Malaysian people can say very bold things without it being offensive because that same manager was joining us for dinner at Lynn's house, with his not-so- pretty wife.

For dinner that night, Lynn insisted we come try a Malaysian dish which is similar to Nasi Lamek, but a little different. It was interesting when we got there, the five children, with the three month old being carried by the 12 year old sister, answered the door and told us we should sit and wait on their parents to finish praying in their bedroom. Apparently the call to prayer was later than usual, so their prayer was lasting later than usual that night. When Lynn and her husband Eese came out, she was wearing traditional Malay clothing with her head covered, and Eese was wearing a sarong. It looked like flannel skants (skirt pants). Immediately they started asking what fruit juice we like to drink and insisted we drink something. So when I finally said grape juice was good, they made the 12 year old make it for us. She came out with a serving tray and a pitcher and glasses with ice, then proceeded to serve us all the drinks. You could tell she practiced this quite a bit. By the end of the night someone, who prefers to remain nameless, said the kids were like indentured servants. Not only did they serve drinks, but cooked the dinner, cleaned up everything until the place was spotless, and the 15 year old son made and served hot tea after dinner. Lynn claims she has a week left of confinement where she can't do any work since she gave birth three months ago.

Our Malaysian apartment manager and his wife joined us with their one month old son. So while we sat on the couch in between the two couples, they spoke Malay over Paul and I, and our heads were going back and forth watching them talk but not understanding a single word. We were surprised at how modest the two women were at covering their heads, but had no issue breast feeding the entire night with no modesty revealing everything to us. It was almost like a National Geographic tribal show viewing. As for the food, of course there was enough rice to feed an army, which we then topped with three sauces, peanuts, fried baby anchovies, fried chicken, boiled egg, cuttlefish, and zucchini. The thing that got me about that meal was the baby anchovies. All I could think about was that they looked just like the guppies we had in second grade sitting on our tables that we got to watch grow. Now the guppies layed there in my bowl staring at me with their now crunchy eyeballs. I had made up my mind before I went that I wouldn't knock anything until I tried it, so I forced myself to try the guppies. They tasted as bad as they looked, so I did some shoveling with my spoon until the little guppies were hidden under my chicken bone. I discovered eating a fried chicken leg with a fork and spoon is quite difficult when I almost shoveled food from my bowl halfway across the table on accident since they don't eat with knives. For dessert we had what Lynn called caramel, but it was actually something very similar to flan. After that we moved back to the couch and had to have fruit for a second dessert. It was a fruit which we never tried and they referred to it as what sounded like "Nah", which also means stupid in Thai. In the process of peeling this pink spiky "stupid" fruit, Paul finally got his thumb through the peel and shot a hard line of fruit juice straight into the back of the 7 year old boy's head. I didn't know what reaction was appropriate since the kid just turned around and looked at him like, "what just happened?" but Paul could not stop laughing. It was one of those laughs that once you start you just can't control it. Finally he got it under control and I was wishing I could laugh just as hard with him. By the end of the night we heard so many stories of their many different houses, people they know, and all their connections they claimed, spoken half in Malaysian and half in English, we were a little relieved to call it a night.

A little humor for those of you who know very well how Paul dresses in his down time, and even more humor for those of you who give him a hard time about his camo, academy shirts, and fishing hats. Paul went into the office on Saturday wearing his regular. His cap, fishing shirt with the back and armpit vents, shorts and flip flops, while carrying his orange backpack. His coworkers have no idea that they were lucky he wasn't wearing his boots and jeans. So when he walked in Stephanie, the same girl who hopes she doesn't develop an allergy to eating tree worms, said, "Paul, where are you going? Camping?" Paul said no, totally confused as to why she would be asking that. Stephanie had to explain "well, you're wearing a hat, and you're carrying that backpack, and your shirt,..." Paul just laughed.
Here in Malaysia, they don't have fishing shirts, and you don't wear a cap ever pretty much. Then another coworker in the same day asked, "Paul, why are you wearing a hat?" Paul's response was "My hair". (Basically he had a fro and didn't want to do anything about it.) And the coworker not understanding said, "Why!? What happened to your hair!?!" Paul just laughed. Apparently his wardrobe will always be a topic of jokes and misunderstanding. Poor Paul.

My week has been consumed with cooking it feels like, which has been pretty entertaining. I'm trying to freeze two weeks worth of food so that Paul doesn't starve when I go back to the states next week. Now he has no excuse for eating chicken rice for two weeks straight. And now that the flood kind of threw off the plans I had for the day, I'm going to be running errands like crazy tomorrow to get everything done before we go to Bali on Friday! I'm really excited about this trip, and feel like it's so odd that we could decide today to make a quick trip to Bali for the weekend. It's like we're just headed to San Antonio or something since it's so close. You can be sure I will have some pictures to share when I return. For now though, I'm off to try pioneer woman's recipe for meatballs, while praying that the house doesn't flood tomorrow.