March 9, 2008

So begins another week in KL. Jim got off to work ok this morning hopefully without getting lost thanks to his GPS on his Blackberry. Today I am off with another real estate agent named Kenneth whom I met last time we were here. He is a pretty easy going, funny guy who likes to negotiate so it should be fun.

Yesterday Jim and I ventured out together in the car and needless to say we did get lost. Not too bad. We were looking for certain stores that we had heard about. Carrefour is a larger grocery store that also sells household goods and electronics and Tesco is like the Malaysian version of a Super Wal-mart. Jim has definitely adapted very quickly on his driving skills. He was speeding, cutting people off and tailgating people on their scooters, all the while telling me that this is how everyone else drives and not to worry. I finally couldn't bear to look out the front windshield and kept my eyes to my side of the road. At one point I thought for sure that we were going to be toast. Jim was trying to pass a city bus as it was trying to merge into our lane and other cars coming up behind us, somehow we ended up not in a lane but in between lanes and then traffic came to a standstill...we almost became a sandwich between a bus and a car!! Later on he admitted that he probably should have not tried to pass the bus-you think!?!

At Tesco it's half and half. One half is like a 1-story stripmall and the other half is Tesco. I was able to find some tank tops and capri pants even though the sizes are not what I'm used to. Everyone here is petite so the pants I bought were XXL and the tank tops were XL. Jim was happy to see that there were some clothes that he could possibly fit. We're thinking of finding a tailor, we hear it's very cheap to have clothes made instead of buying them along with shoes, which I may have to do because the largest size shoe that I found was an 8, not going to work for me unless I buy men's shoes.

After yesterday I am more convinced that it will be a while before I consider learning to drive here, I am content with walking and riding the subway for now. This morning I am having curry flavored ramen. They are ramen crazy here!! In the supermarket there is an entire aisle dedicated to just ramen. You can buy it in bowls, cups, packets, 50 different flavors, in every convenient store they have a ramen counter so you can prepare it yourself, it's like ramen died and went to heaven!! Oh and if I haven't mentioned it yet, McDonalds has McDelivery, you can get your quarter pounder with cheese delivered right to your door 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week, except for national holidays. Imagine how fat Americans would be if we had McDelivery!?!