Day 2 of work

After a cockroach and gecko scare this morning, we were all awake shortly after 6 am. Everyone left to go to work and I was left by myself. Jessica and I decided to go swim some laps in the pool to get some exercise and fill in our morning. Malaysia wakes up quite late so it was very quiet in the pool. We headed to work a bit earlier than yesterday since the train schedule is so unreliable. The train finally came at 11:30 so we had to wait 30 minutes for it again. We found out more details of our specific jobs at work today. We have to have our presentation ready by Thursday because we might start presenting by Friday of this week. Now that we have a deadline, we actually have something to do which is nice. The evening was pretty quiet. It's exciting to come home and share our daily work adventures with each other. There is a significant separation between the two apartments but we are still getting along great! Tomorrow is our first seminar where we will listen to a Malaysian guest speaker. Because of a cut in the budget, it is held in our apartment which is not very professional but there is not really any way around it. I hope that it will be interesting to listen to.


I'm off to bed because even though I work the least amount of hours in the group, I still wake up at the same time so I'm exhausted. Time to get some sleep!!

First day at Perfection The Training Academy

WOW, what an awesome first day of work! Jessica (my co-interner) and I left the hotel at 11 to catch the train. Unfortunatly, we missed the first one and had to wait 45 minutes for the next train. They don't really have a schedule so you just have to wait and see if a train will come to pick you up. The train finally came at 12 which was when we we're supposed to be at the office. We hurried to work and were 35 minutes late. Luckily, people in Malaysia are so laid back that no one said anything about us not being on time. They were surprised that we showed up today because they weren't really expecting us and had nothing prepared for us. We sat down in their little meeting/lobby area which looked like the inside of a spa. There was soothing music playing and lots of candles burning, we loved it so far. Terrence, the assistant manager had us fill out orientation sheets which included question about our hobbies, favourite food, and  what places we wanted to visit in Malaysia- these things would not be included in a Canadian orientation. We then got a tour of the place. Basically, it is an after school program for kids with learning disabilities or who require extra help with their education. There were 8 classrooms, a teachers lounge, some other small rooms and a very crowded and cluttered office. One of the desks was cleared off for us and there was an ancient computer that we could use- we brought our laptops to use instead. After that, we had to wait until our boss- Mr. Christopher (a dr.)- came in to tell us more about what we will be doing.


My boss came in and gave us our job descriptions and requirements. In short, we have to go into the classes to promote their exam preparation lectures. We are also guest lecturers for a 6 week, 1 class a week seminar in which we will be teaching an English class. We were showered with gifts all day long. We got a bag with about 10 notebooks, a pencil case, a folder and other materials. Mr. Christopher brought us a fresh loaf of his favorite bread and two delicious mangos. When we left, the ladies gave us a bag of candy!


Work was done by 5 and Mr Christopher loaded us in his fancy Mercedes to go explore the city. Mr. Christopher is a big deal in Malaysia. He was a judge on top chef Malaysia and is big in the food scene. He owns a lot of expensive real estate and sports cars. Most of all, he wants to show us all the great places in KL and make sure that we get a great experience. After work, he drove us around the nice part of the city. We drove past million dollar condos and 5 million dollar houses. I thought it looked like 90210 but he said that there were places much better than this! He then took us for "coffee" in a super fancy mall that has only been open for 8 months. (He just bought a condo across the road from it for 600 000 ringet ($200,000)) This was not just any coffee shop but one where they make cool designs on the drinks! We were taking pictures of the drinks and he taught us some photography tricks to get the best food pictures. see below for our drinks...

This was the coffee shop. Journal by Plan b

Outside the shop

Mr. Christopher's Latte

We HAD to eat the carrot cake but they were sold out so we had to try the caramel banana pecan cake instead. It was really good with rich butter cream icing in the middle.

 After this, we walked around the mall and onto our next food destination. We tried a chinese donut- deep fried dough sticks. They came in this bag- haha

Then we went to the food court for a Malaysian noodle dish. I can't remember what it was called but it was quite good.

We finished off with this interesting dessert. It was a mixture of fruit and vegetables topped with brown soy bean sauce, fried fish something, peanuts, and some sweet sauce. This was not my favorite. The soy was really over powering and I was already stuffed by this point from all the previous food we had to eat.

When we thought it was all done and we could go home, Mr. Christopher walked us around the mall some more and took us to the top where you can see the KL skyline.

This was the name of the brand new modern mall

It was open in the middle, a couple stories high and a couple miles long

Here I am with the KL skyline in the background. Notice the Patronas twin towers and the KL tower in the back? It was so beautiful!

We then got back in the Mercedes and saw the parliament building, a street full of bars and pubs, and a street full of authentic Malaysian street food which was full of people and you could barely drive through it. He said that he usually drives his porsche through this street. (yes a Porsche!). Then we made it back to the apartment and we were both yawning and super tired after all that. 


That was a long blog and a lot of information but I had a great experience and want to share as much as I can on here. I'm so excited to go back tomorrow!

Commuting and Batu Caves

It's day 3 in KL, Malaysia. We're slowly adjusting to the time change, the climate, the people, the culture and the smells. Following are some details of what i've been up to.


Our professor took me and the other student working at the same place as I on a trip to find out how to get to our workplace. We went at night because we were the only group left and we had made plans for the next day already. To get to work, I have to walk about 10 minutes to the commuter train. Then I have to buy a pass (1.10 ringets= <$0.40). They have special train cars just for women so I'll be taking that train to avoid creepy guys :D. I take the train for three stops and then have to walk about 15 minutes to my office. The walk is along a major highway and through a chinese neigborhood in the city. At some spots I had to speed up my pace because I don't trust some of the people around me. Hopefully it won't be as scary when I go during the day. 


I got back to the apartment after 9 at night, showered and went to bed and fell asleep instantly. 


Today most of us in the apartment woke up early due to the jetlag. We made our breakfasts and met the rest of the group at 10 in the lobby to go to the Batu Caves. We took the commuter train and got out at the caves. Following are some pictures of the day...

This is me in front of a large statue at the entrance of the Batu Caves. Here you can also see the 272 steps that we had to climb to get into the caves. At this point it was raining so the we were soaked and the steps were very slippery. 

This is inside the cave. There were a lot of shrines in the cave and a lot of vendors trying to sell us souvenirs. At the top you can see the trees and an opening in the cave. The smells were also very interesting as they were burning a lot of incense and there were lots of different animals living there.

While the rest of the group went into the dark cave and took a 45 minute tour to see large spiders and bats (I wasn't jumping to see this), a few of us stayed back and got henna drawings on our hands. This is the one I got. The girl that did the drawing was so fast and it was super cheap too! It's supposed to stay on for two weeks.

After waling around in the caves and exploring some of the other vendors around this area, Andrea took us to this really good indian restaurant that we HAD to try. First of all, the Indian people eat with their right hand and use their left hand for going to the bathroom. They also walked around of bare feet and the floors were very dirty. We decided to eat with a fork instead.

This is where we ate lunch- a very Indian eatery

This is my banana leaf. It had a variety of "salad" type things at the top (the one on the right was marinated onion and cucumber, then a squash type potato salad, then some jalapeno salad  and then something else) something that tasted like potato chips on the bottom left and some plain rice. Below are the sauces that I could put on the rice. They were curry, a coconut sauce, a tomato sauce, and some other that I couldn't identify.

It looks a bit messy and it was. They don't really clean well but the quality of the food was still really good.

After this delicious but very interesting lunch, we took the commuter train back to Putra station and had to go to the mall to take passport pictures for our visas. I got some groceries for breakfast and now we're chilling in our room. We'll go get some supper soon, watch a movie an get a good night sleep since tomorrow is our fist day of work! This will be exciting but also scary since we don't know what to expect or what we have to do.

Day 1

The fist day in Kuala Lumpur (KL) was so amazing. We slept in a bit and made breakfast in our kitchen. I had the air conditioning on all evening and turned it off when I went to bed because it was so cold. But I had to turn it on again in the middle of the night because I was sticking to the sheets :D. I made yoghurt and oranges, my normal breakfast which was super good. Andrea took students out in groups to practice our commutes to our workplaces. There wasn't enough time to get every one done so I am going tomorrow to find out where I work. We went and got some missing groceries for the apartment like dish soap and laundry detergent in the mall and then went to a restaurant for lunch. This restaurant had a lot of "north american" food which we indulged in. I had some fish and chips. They also had cheesecake, burgers, fries, ceasar salad, etc. We'll try the authentic Malysian food later when my stomach has settled. 


After lunch, some of my roomates went swimming and I sat by the pool for a bit. I surely got a bit of a burn and am putting sunscreen on in the morning from now on. Alicia and I went to explore the downtown streets of KL. It was really weird to see all the people here staring and pointing at us white people. Especially me with my blond hair, I really stand out! We are getting better at crossing the streets. People don't yield to pedestrians and they have no pedestrian crossings so you just have to run across the road. We usually cross one lane at a time and then focus on crossing the next one while standing in the middle of the road. We stopped at a 7/11 for a popsicle to cool us down. (it was 1 ringet which is 33 canadian dollar cents!)


The rest of the afternoon was spent hanging out in our apartment with my roomates. We are getting along great and we're going to be really tight at the end of the six weeks. 

Arrived!

I just arrived in our apartment in Kuala Lumpur. Even though the trip was very long, I slept well on the plane and don't feel to jet-lagged yet. The flight to Hong Kong and to Malaysia were very smooth and the service was better than KLM. Way more variety. We're about to go explore, rent a water cooler since we are all very thirsty, and get our cell phones. Till next time.