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Published: August 28th 2008
Good Morning Malaysia!
Here I am in the office this morning when I decided to write this blog! I am wearing a shirt that has the skyline of Malaysia on it - I bought it for $3 at a department store at the mall nearby. Very comfy. Good Morning!
Thought I would write with a few random thoughts this morning, less about what I’m doing and more about how things are going for me in general (and post a couple of random pics ). A Loooong entry, but I will be at the beach for the next 5 days, so you have a while to read this one and check out all the pictures : - )
Hibernating in Malaysia
I was IMing with a good friend of mine over skype the other day telling him about my life here and how I’ve been sleeping a lot, and he aptly pointed out that I am “hibernating” here - which is sort of true. I realized that I’ve actually been RELAXED since I’ve been here - which hadn’t occurred to me before. I’m not stressed about anything, I’m being productive but I’m not overloaded, getting time to catch up on my personal stuff (i.e. keeping my email inbox clean!) I think it’s been good for me….I haven’t been bored but it’s definitely been some down time, and it’s nice to be able to take care of everything in one day, and still have some time
My breakfast this morning
They have this sticky rice called "fatty rice" - it's delicious and unhealthy, cooked in coconut milk. Here is a snack where they make the rice, fill it with coconut pieces, roll it up in the leaves and then grill it....it was yummy! :-) to relax at night w/o being totally burnt out.
The Mornings
In the mornings I generally come in to the office between 9:30-10am, have a cup of coffee, check my school mail, yahoo mail, and facebook ;-), then review all my work emails for new info, etc. Right now, I think previously mentioned, I’m building a financial model to check the commercial viability of this new vermi-composting project. I actually LIKE building financial models, so I’m finding this fun. If it is viable, I’ll turn it into a more fully fleshed biz plan. I spend most of the mornings working, I interact over email and phone a lot with the guy who is the “worm” expert here and understands all the environmental stuff. We work together on developing reasonable assumptions for the model, which I need to run by more people as some of them I have no idea how valid they are (ie. How many kilos of waste does one worm eat per day, how fast do they multiply, how many worms can one person keep in their home, etc.). Around 1-ish, we go for lunch. In the beginning I was practically fainting from hunger, but now
Buying Muruku
Rachel and I bought Muruku, a chip-like fried snack from this guy on the street. I'm impressed that he can balance all that on the back of his bike! I’ve learned to eat a more substantial breakfast so I’m fine. We get in the car of either Poo-lai or Rachel, the two women who I work with in the office, and we drive to - some random place. Cole describes it as “Christmas” because he has no idea what he’s gonna get to eat ;-) The majority of the time we end up at a little “food court” place - Chinese of course - where each vendor has some sort of noodles they serve. I posted a picture of this in my first blog entry. Pretty much every day I get lime juice, cause I love it, (just like lemonade). Strangely I haven’t gotten sick here AT ALL….and I have been drinking the water/ice everywhere I go, even at ghetto restaurants. I’m thinking they might actually boil it from the tap or something, as I’ve heard the tap water will definitely make you sick. When I first turned on the sink in my bathroom, it came out brown for about 5 minutes. Anyways, we get our noodle bowls - I have something different every single day because I never even know what I got the day before, and I
My Lunch Today
Very traditional Malaysian meal...Cole and I got the same thing look around at what people are eating, and then just ask for that…..i'm getting a lot better at choosing something i actually like. Normally there are then a few errands to run after lunch - snacks at a convenience store, bank, post office, that sort of thing, or we just wander around a bit.
Afternoons
We return to the office an hour later, and by then it’s 2 - 2:15, so there is not much time left. After lunch I try to focus on getting personal matters out of the way for a while. This is obviously random depending on the day - figuring out what classes to take, doing my financial aid paperwork, planning transportation on weekend trips, making dinner plans on the weeknights, writing back to people’s emails, uploading pics, blogging, etc. There is plenty to keep me busy. In addition, and this is perhaps what distracts me the most, people start appearing online and I end up chatting! I have a few friends in Africa who are just waking up in my afternoon, and for some reason all the people in China start getting online late afternoon, so….inevitably chatting with someone ends up taking a
Lunch close up
Lunch every day (including drink) is less than $3.50 disproportionate amount of time ;-) Between all that, I normally have some work I want to finish up for the night, so I take care of that, and then anytime between 4 - 6pm really (normally it’s 5:30 I would say), I head home.
Nighttime
At night, we have no internet at home. At first, because my laptop is broken, I didn’t even have a computer! Now I have one on loan from the NGO which I bring home and can watch movies on at night. So what do I do? I try to have plans to do something every night - dinner out (it’s super cheap here!) or I just exercise, go swimming in the pool, walk in the park behind our condo, walk around the mall (huge mall 15 min walk from us with starbucks, movie theaters, burger king, all the comforts of home ;-) ), go into the city to meet friends for dinner or drinks, and then later at night - write in my journal, read a book, sit on my porch and watch the monkeys swinging in the trees, or watch a movie on my laptop while working on my photo albums (thrilled
Picture Albums
This is where I sit working on my picture albums (remember, our place is pretty much unfurnished). I set up my computer and watch a movie while I work that I’ve made a lot of progress on these! I am hoping to be caught up through the beginning of the school year last year by the time I go).
So no internet, and kind of no phone, since I can’t connect with anyone in the states really and I can’t get text msgs, so I’m definitely disconnected from the world a bit. Between that and all my sleep, I think this is where the term “hibernating” is a good description.
Classmates in KL
There are four of my classmates here and we’ve made some Malaysian friends ;-) Last Sunday there was an event for all Stanford alum (not just business school) so we met some other alum and have met up with them for dinner, etc. (future blog). In addition to Cole and I, there are two classmates living downtown who we hang out with quite a bit. Both actually appeared in my blog last summer! They are from Beijing and Bangkok, and I met each of them for dinner in their respective cities while I was traveling last year. Feng, from Beijing, is a total riot - always cracking jokes. Just before he came to
I can't work the stove
It's gas and you have to ignite it with matches, only i can't figure out how to even turn on the gas. So, don't really cook at home though I do have this hot pot, so here you see me boiling some carrots in it :) Malaysia, (and I can hardly believe this) he bought a bike in Seoul, and BIKED for 5 days, ALL the way to the peninsula of South Korea! He would stop along the way, sleep in churches and they would feed him, or anything really. I find that seriously amazing! He’s working on some sort of investing stuff for one of the richest men in Malaysia, which he found through a GSB alum. Gab, is an adorable girl from Thailand who is the super super sweet and polite! She has a beautiful apartment right in downtown (she is working in private equity here) and it is officially my “home away from home” (pics included) - I have a key to the place and am free to come / go / crash whenever I like - it’s very luxurious compared to our place and super convenient! (i'm sleeping there tonight) And of course, best of all, I love hanging out with gab. She’s so hospitable! Feng and Gab both work long hours, so they haven’t gotten to see much. So we have a system worked out whereby Cole and I plan the logistics and Gab and Feng are happy to follow our
lead and join us on trips, etc. if we do the research.
Malacca (think of this as a separate entry)
(This is the part that probably could have been a separate entry, but I realized that too late…..)
Last Saturday we spent the entire day in Malacca, which is a very historic town about 2 hours south of here, by bus. 5 of us went - the 4 GSBers and then the 1 georgetown MBA (who just left monday morning). We got up early to go, so Friday night I went into the city and slept at Gab’s place. Cole came in with me to the city and we grabbed some dinner. I’m not even that into history, but it was pretty cool reading about the Portuguese, than Dutch, than British rules and seeing the evidence of all this in the architecture, etc. Sadly it was raining that day, but it cleared up in the afternoon and we made the most of it! We got back quite late at night, and I slept so well that night after a hot shower! (correction: lukewarm. The water in my shower doesn’t really get “hot”, per se)
There are
also two other friends of mine who are in Singapore, which is 5 hours away by bus. They’ve just arrived, and I’ve been emailing a lot with them, hoping to meet up somewhere, at some point! Feng Gab Cole and I are thinking of going down to Singapore next weekend, in which case we’d likely crash with them. These are the two Peruvian boys who I met in Lima (again, referenced in last summer’s blog!). Also really great and fun people. Hopefully they will also visit Malaysia, so we will see them on this end. They are working in biz dev’t for some guy who runs a fishing company in Singapore.
In retrospect, this probably should have been 2 blog entries and it may take forever to load w/ all the pics, so I’m sorry about that but I’ve already uploaded the pics into this entry and it would take a LONG time to change it…
Now to the beach!!
But, on that note, I will abruptly end here! I’m headed into the city tonight, where I have dinner plans with Gab, Feng, and Cole, and then I will crash at Gab’s place so it’s easier to
Taxi in front of a Starbucks
Taxis are cheap here, which is great (gas is subsidized) get to my 7:30am flight. You won’t hear (MUCH) from me on the blog until post-“vacation” - so Happy Labor Day Weekend everyone! (and happy independence day to all the Malaysians).
J
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Dad
non-member comment
Jaime, glad you are ralaxing, and enjoying yourself. After viewing these pictures, we have started to remodle your bedroom and bathroom here so you will feel more"comfortable" next time home. And definitely that new kind of dryer(utility is raising rates) Have fun at the beach and we will see you in two weeks at SFO Dad