September 30th
Some of us get a lot more stomach aches here than in Canada; not bad ones, just uncomfortable after eating a meal.
September 29th
I think we have now entered the rainy season. Since about the last two weeks or so, it is cooler (average temperature about 25 - 27 degrees) and it rains at least once a day. It rains really hard, often just as children are starting their lunch time coincidentally, but it won't last too long usually, less than an hour. Often it will rain during the night but it will usually stop raining by the time the sun comes up. There will be large puddles or even flooding in the middle of the fields because the water just can't be absorbed that quickly. Then it will turn bright and sunny and except for the wet grass or roads, you would never know it rained.
September 22nd
Garth and I have figured out that just like in Canada where the Chinese food is OK but not great, but delicious here in Malaysia, the Canadian food here is OK but not great as it is in Canada. An example is any kind of hamburger or chicken burger that you can get here, including at McDonalds or Burger King.
September 21st
I figured out how to time having a bath so the water temperature is just right. First, I turn on the hot water light which is right outside the bathroom door so the water can start heating up. Then I clean up my clothes from the day before and make the bed (approximately 7 minutes). After laying out the bathmat, the water should be warm enough for a temperate bath which is good enough for this hot weather. If I want a hot bath, I would have to wait about 12 - 15 minutes.
September 8th
Wow, another month has finished! So many things come to mind about what to write about but
sometimes they just don't stay in my mind long enough to get to a computer and record them for "posterity". Thus, here we are in September and my last month's notes seem a bit scanty; I'll just have to try to be more diligent about "September's Notes" :)
- Unusual things to carry on a motorcycle in Penang #4: A lawnmower
- Unusual things to carry on a motorcycle in Penang #5: A weedwacker (thankfully a different guy than the one carrying the lawnmower)
- Injuries like scrapes and cuts take longer to heal here because the temperature is so much warmer and more humid. (I am not quite sure how to explain why that is but we have been told that and have experienced it too.) You have to be really careful to check if they get infected too because of the quick growth of ?bacteria ?germs
- The food stall where we ate dinner last night charged us for ice (no water, just ice): 20 sen. Thankfully, it did not break our budget. That equates to Canadian: 6.66 cents!
- There are no 1 sen. All bills are either rounded up or rounded down to the nearest 5 sen. We get advance practice here with what is coming to Canada. I was happy on a walk this morning to find a 1 sen coin though lying on the ground.
- We have experienced (and were also told this in our Staff Orientation) that if you want to know where some place is, you can ask for directions but it doesn't mean that the directions will be accurate. People are very polite here and won't say that they don't know where something is (like a restaurant or a store or a street). They don't want to "lose face". Instead they will just say their best guess or just vaguely say something and you could very well be sent in the opposite direction from where your destination is. That happened to us last weekend when we were asking where a certain restaurant was and the fellow we asked pointed us to go straight even though we knew that it was somewhere to the left. That wasn't the first example and I'm sure it won't be the last one.
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