Life in Transition...Lost in Translation

Departure

Alhamdulillah, we all managed to pack & settle the house and safely arrived at the airport with Kak Hada’s help and all. Thank you also to Kak Hidayah and Nita for their last minute assistance in care-taking the house’s transits arrangement for Kak Zulie and family from Penang. Many thanks, indeed.

Flight

This was our first long haul flight with AAX. Truth be told, the 8 hours flight with them was pure torture! In my condition it was even worst. Their seats really sucks. Perhaps…one day somebody will sue them for injuries caused due to the lack of ergonomic thought put into their seats. Imagine trying to take a nap in a upright seat. All through the flight my brain is saying ‘sleep!’ and my body is saying ‘no way!’. When the both of them have had enough of each other, and I finally managed to drift away...my children would wake up or the plane would hid some form of turbulence. Arghhhh!!! It took me two days to get over the jet lag. Honestly, I am dreading my flight back to Melbourne.

Their meals were not even deserving a space of review. My advise: please smuggle as much food as possible in your hand luggage. I had a stomach flu along with the jet lag. That…and in addition of durian, cempedak, rambutan, petai, sambal tempoyak, rendang in less than 2 days of arrival in Malaysia ;-)

Arrival

Anyway, it was drizzling when we arrived safely at LCCT Sepang at 7 am. Good thing too, since it was very hazy and quite warm even at 8 am. I guess some of the heat also come from the fact that a big demonstration against the ISA was coming up later that evening. We had to pass through one road block along the way home. Many more was held in central KL. How ironic…since I did wish a Muslim Australian couple on the plane ‘to enjoy their stay’. Imagine…with all the main road in KL blocked in the afternoon, I sure hope they didn’t get stuck in traffic. What a miserable way to start a vacation – jet lag + traffic jam = impression?

Life in Transition

We would be living in transit for the next few weeks in Malaysia. In fact currently, the rest of my family is living in transition, waiting for the completion of our family home in Kajang. Hence, our current place also in Kajang has no permanent comfort as our previous dwelling in SP, no air-condition and lack of space due to boxes of goods, new and old, mine and others and unpacked furniture filling up almost two third of the place. The thing is the heat & humidity in Malaysia remains the same to me. We had been living for the immediate 5 years before Melbourne in Kedah. The heat in Kedah is incomparable to KL then.

Waitin and waitin...

Nampak tak my wrapped sofa - has been for 1 year

In SP then, we slept in an air-conditioned bedroom all year round. Unlike KL that rained almost every other day, SP can stretched up to 2-3 weeks without rain, especially during the ‘harvesting’ season. But the temperature here seems to be catching up with Kedah. Worsen by the haze, KL almost looked like Beijing sometimes…plus the humidity. If in Melbourne, the children has no ‘smell’ at all, here after 4 days, especially Uwais smelt ‘masam’ he..he..he. When I asked him, ‘adik masam ke tak?’ He declared ‘tak cam!’ repetitively. The best part in all this, is that we all get to take satisfying cold showers several times a day. No need to test the water or as Kak S.Niza once mentioned ‘bancuh air’ kah..kah..kah. What a missed Malaysian aspect of life – Cold Showers! Imagine having to take warm shower for 360 days a year. Cemuihnya! Macam dlm pantang…;-(

Another missed element is food, of course. Need I discussed that…I don’t think it’s necessary. Why invite the envy of others ;-) But all this food cost money. My reserve is rather low. Luckily, the current exchange rate is encouraging for us. But still, with all the traveling that I need to do this month tracking interviewees, there’s no luxury there.

Lost in Translation

One of the best thing about our uni house in Melbourne is its internet connection. It’s a 24 hours online freedom of up to 10GB worth of surfing, costing only 10 dollars per month. In fact the broadband coverage is also very good, all HSDPA, instead of 3G @ GPRS. How do you live without one then?

In SP, I had always rely on the office’s internet connection. I am devoid of an office here. So having no choice, with the amount of communication needed to be made back to my SV in Melbourne, I registered with Celcom Broadband services, chunking almost RM360++ of my money. But the reception is rather unreliable at my place. Malaysia is so much smaller than Australia or even parts of Australia, I don’t understand why then the coverage is so limited.

I am hoping that now, I won’t be so lost…

Our schedule starts tomorrow in the northern region. The week after that in the central region, then the eastern and southern region. Hopefully, everything will go as planned, Insya Allah.