How to be a pedestrian in KL...

Hellooooooo friends!

Thought I should let yall know that things have gotten ALOT better over the last 7 days here in Kuala Lumpur. The one thing that was missing in my Kuala Lumpur life was companionship – i.e. friends --- someone to converse with, someone that could make explore with me, someone to joke with J In the last 7 days, I have met an overwhelming number of people! I have met both AIESECers and Mindvalley coworkers, both groups consisting of really lovely people from all around the world. I have never engaged with such a diverse group of people at one time, and I am the sole Canadian. The closest person around to a Canadian is a girl at Mindvalley who started about 6 months ago – She went to UBC but is American. So upon meeting AIESECers and ppl from Mindvalley, I finally made plans with real life PRESENT, PHYSICAL people and exchange my number with the other interns and newbies at Mindvalley. I initially took a cell phone plan with 100 txts and 200 mins under the pretence that I had no friends and therefore no one to talk to .... Now I def don’t think that 100 texts it going to be enough J

Now although I was happy to meet people, happy to finally find a taxi driver that I feel safe with (and will get me to my destination because he knows where he going...this is not the majority of taxi drivers) and I finally have purpose in my life in the form of going to work, I still found myself feeling uneasy.... and then I realized why:

Because Kuala Lumpur is not a city for walking around or for taking public transport. To literally transport yourself 1 km, maybe a 5-10 min walk, the locals catch a cab to take them there. So as I walked from my apartment to the grocery store, I did not pass or see one single person walking up or down the street, in broad day light, and this was the creepiest feeling ever. Coming from Toronto, and more so, the last 4 years in Montreal where walking is basically the ONLY way to get around, I was like, WHAT. IS. GOING. ON. Why doesn’t KL care about its pedestrians?? The lack of planning for pedestrians is clearly demonstrated by commute to work. Even though I literally live across the ‘street’ from my building, the STREET that I must cross is a 4 lane HIGHWAY consisting of the ramps leading on and off the highway. This means I’m crossing an area where cars are traveling at VERY HIGH SPEEDS. I tried to explore where the closest crossing was so that I could cross to work safely, but that required walking 15 min away from my office in one direction, crossing, and walking 15 mins back to my office. Totally insane. Basically, I found myself having to cross to the middle of the highway, stand on the divider praying that I wouldn’t be stuck there for ever, watch more gutsy people around me cross the highway in half the time I did, pray again that there would be a break in the traffic so I could leave the death trap, and then RUN across.

Now you may think I’m being a baby, but I was NOT the only other person complaining about this when I got to my office on the first day!! Luckily, another girl named Natalia (from Poland) was also starting out like me and lives in the same building as me (along with 24 other ppl from Mindvalley). We discussed the highway situation and decide to ask some people about the safest place to cross. LUCKILY I found one person who told me of such a place! Under the ramps was a really bushy area that made crossing a lot easier. Instead of crossing the 4 lane highway, it was only 2 very spaced out lanes. But you could see that within this bushy area, a path had been FORGED by pedestrians. This was no KL-city-constructed path.

Anyway, I can truthfully say that finding this area to cross improved my mood by 200% regarding living in KL. And as I met people from Mindvalley and as they asked me how I was adjusting, I kept thinking about how nice it was to finally meet ppl who went through the same adjustment process as myself. Things were put even more into perspective when I was asked if this was my first time in Asia, to which I obviously said no way, my mum was Singaporean and my dad grew up in Hong Kong! I came to realize that SO MANY of the ppl at Mindvalley literally picked up their lives and moved to Asia without stepping foot in Asia before. Now THAT is bravery. At least I (Sort of) knew what I was getting myself into.... sort of.

AIESEC also quickly demonstrated to me that many ppl who came to KL on short internships (6-12 months) have remained in KL for 2 or 3 or 4 of 6 or 9!!!! years!!!!!!!!! So that means there must be something really great about KL out there... I still need to explore more but I know that things are only looking up from here. What I find really ironic is that before I left Toronto, the one thing I for sure knew was that I wanted to live in ASIA for some time. Now, being here, the only thing that is making e a little iffy over my decision is that I’ve come to ASIA. In Toronto, I knew in my head and heart that this is what I wanted. Now that I’m in KL, my head knows what I want and my heart needs to play catch up.  But it’s getting there J.

Also – wanna give a shout out to my roomies, Diana and Uza. They are the most wonderful people. They are genuinely interested in my day, how I’m adjusting and how I am feeling. I really, really love them J

Enjoy pics of the apt and my walk to work!!

My messy messy bedroom

My roomies and I swimmin

My toilet/shower combination

THE FORGED PATH

which is located underneath this RAMP

Ze living room

P.S. MANY thanks and hugs and kisses for the bday wishes. Im feeling the love :) Talk to you soon xoxo

My *new* Home

Hi friends.

I’m writing you a blog post because I literally have nothing else I can do with myself at this moment in time. I have to say that this blog is one of the few things preserving my sanity right now. Even though I only have 3 more days till I begin working – I’m just about at the tipping point where this unproductivity may just send me into a fit of madness.

I’ve learned another thing about myself since graduating university – I cannot sit still and do nothing without my brain feeling like its wasting away. I feel like this can be a positive thing – I enjoy doing work! I enjoy being challenged! I enjoy being active! But it can also be a not-so-good thing. I really have issues RELAXING. I already knew this about myself (give my anxiety) and now when given the chance to relax, I’m having anxiety about relaxing. I’m totally hopeless :p

Anyway. The reason why I’ve come to write this blog is because I was about to leave my *new* apartment and take my first solo adventure in Kuala Lumpur (Which is to audition for a choir) when it started RAINING LIKE it was the biblical flood. Moments after I ordered my taxi and walked out my door, the skies opened up and in seconds, I was WADING to the front of my building. When it rains in Kuala Lumpur, GOOD LUCK finding a taxi. I got a text message from my taxi company saying “I’m sorry, the taxi booking you made is canceled. Please try again later”. And I really, really want to be a part of this group called the Young Malaysian Singers because singing makes me happy and I would really like some happy things in my life right now.

Let me update y’all on this week. Last Monday, I left my parents in Singapore and took a bus back to Kuala Lumpur. Saying bye to my parents wasn’t fun. I miss them already so so much! (I go through this pattern, it seems, where I am most homesick closest to leaving my family). I try and apply Hindu Heritage Summer Camp thinking to myself - I always told the counselors I was training that they need to do their best to distract their kids so that they forget about their homesickness. I am trying my hardest to find things to distract myself.

1. Read – I am currently reading 3 books at one time, keeping a personal journal, and writing a blog

2.  Eat – At my cousins, I was literally eating four meals a day

3. Sleep – I napped! And this is saying something because I hate naps so much. Can you guess why? Because I feel like I’m wasting my day.

4. Talk to everyone I know from back home – this probably isn’t too healthy because it increases the longing I feel for home (Again, I always told my counselors not to let their campers call home too often. I am the number 1 violator of this rule).

Then, I decided to finally move into my apartment! Yipeeee. Something BIG to do! I am now a resident of an Apartment block called Bangsar Permai – situated in the area of Bangsar where my office building is as well. Bangsar is supposedly a great location because it has its own light rail stop, it has lots of places to go and eat (and grocery stores close by) and I can walk to my place of work! Bangsar Permai its self is good because other people who work at Mindvalley  (who remain faceless as of now) theoretically live in this building. This is also a really expatty area and this becomes very obvious when you go to the grocery store and see that even the simplest things are imported – like toilet paper and cooking oil.

So my new apartment is nothing glamorous. It’s basically student living, but in KL, and a little less homey because I only brought two suitcases with me.  My room is cute – it’s yellow like my room at home and I have two flatmates who are both Slovakian women who are much older than me. One has been in KL for 4 years, the other for a year and a half so they are well acquainted with this city. Both are really friendly and welcoming. The bathroom would have been a little shocking to me if I hadn’t already used one like it in Tanzania. Basically there is no specific area to shower– it’s just a shower head over the toilet and when you are done, you have to make sure to squeegee all the water into the drain. This isn’t bad at all, in comparison to my friend Shanthi (who has just moved to Ethiopia for 2 years to work in public health). She’s a wonderful writer and you should check out her blog: www.shanthiinethiopia.blogspot.com . Shanthi takes bucket showers and has zero comforts. Shanthi –  you are so brave and if you can take the risks you have so far, I can keep on pushing over here in KL!

The kitchens here are interesting. My tap only has one knob, so I don’t really know where I’m suppose to get hot water from........................ and the stove/oven as we know it in North American apartments don’t really happen here. The gas stove top is pretty standard and sits on top of my counter, but we don’t have an oven (and not too many people have them). This means I can’t bake banana bread or cookies or anything that could make my roommates like me considerably more in a short period of time. I will post pics of the apartment at some point but it isn’t anything too interesting to look at. The thing that is killing me the most right now, though, is that I only get 3G on one tiny section of my bed, and only 50% of the time can I get the 3G. I currently have no internet (unless I am in the building’s internet area with free wifi) so number 4 on my list of things to do has been scratched off. I’m not sure if this is healthy or unhealthy for me right now but I do have a really unhappy feeling inside my heart sometimes. I am quite sure, though, that as soon as work starts, I will make friends and things will get better. I just need to remember that I can do this thing where I’m not constantly surrounded by/talking to people... like I did in east Africa, and which I actually came to enjoy. I’m totally in withdrawal after the family/people intensive month I’ve just had!

Leave me happy thoughts.

Love, sheena

To Bali and Back!

After Heena’s wedding, my extended family decided to prolong our vacation and take a trip to Bali, which is also located in Indoneisa but is its own island, about 1.5 hours away by plane. Bali is divided up into a few areas that people drive between, each with their own culture and specialties creating an endless list of things to do. This was my second time visiting Bali and I left still knowing that there is more to see for the next trip! The group I was with consisted of 15 people related to me and 2 of them were my second cousins that I had met for the first time EVER at the wedding. Our expansive group managed to make it to quite a number of Bali's different areas!

We first decided to visit an area called Ubud which is know for its rice patty fields. In Ubud, there is a temple located on a cliff above the ocean where we went to see a dance performance of the Ramayana epic. For myself, Arun, Jalesh and Kaajal this became way more than a performance. Since we were sitting right on performance level, we literally became a part of it. At one point, the flames they created as “part of the dance” got blown into our faces by a gust of wind. I was OBVIOUSLY freaking out because I did not want to burn my eyebrows off or set my hair on fire (again).

Not exaggerating - I was almost engulfed in these flames.

Arun - Basically part of the show

But I lived to see another (beautiful) sunset:

On Christmas night we went to an area called Jimabaran. There are a TON of sea food restos in this area and each of them sets up their chairs and tables along the length of the beach. You go to their fish tanks to choose your seafood and a few minutes later you eat the fish you just pointed at and it’s really really yummy and the beach is really pretty all lit up at night :)

Finally, we also took a trip to an area called Kuta on Chirag’s birthday. Kuta is the touristy area with all the nightlife and a really fun beach. We spent the day body surfing and playing soccer with some of the local Bali boys on the beach which was a lot of fun because I finally got the sunlight I needed to TAN. 

Kuta has all the clubs and bars and at night, as we walked down the street, many people openly offered us “magic mushrooms” on every corner. There were even signs posted that said “Magic Mushrooms This Way”. One guy gave Jalesh his card if he ever needed magic mushrooms on the go.  I was a little taken aback by how openly drugs were sold but the sheer number of people selling them made me laugh.

So funny story: My family was staying in some simple and nice villas and on the morning of Dec. 26^th, I was sitting on our balcony with Devesh and Arun when we heard a really loud siren go off followed by some woman announcing something in Bahasa Indonesian. Arun and I immediately looked at each other and worried that this was an alarm for something like a tsunami! We looked at Devesh who really did not share our fear. We looked down to my aunt who shrugged her shoulders and continued reading... we called out my cousin Chirag who did not care at all about the siren. I asked Arun why we were the only people who cared!! I went down to the restaurant to ask the Indonesian man what the siren meant. He literally shrugged and said it was a tsunami warning. So I was like “WHAT? A TSUNAMI? SHOULDNT WE GET TO HIGHER GROUND?”. Then he made the very important clarification that it was just a tsunami warning DRILL.  Just to be sure, Arun and I checked the tsunami warnings online and found out that the coast was clear (literally). Then we remembered that it was exactly 8 years ago that the tsunami hit Indonesia, and there we were, sitting on the coast of Indonesia enjoying our holiday. 

I also think that I need to start a blog completely dedicated to the traveling issues I run into because when we were trying to fly OUT of Indonesia to Singapore.... we had issues. My family did not realize that we each needed to pay the equivalent of 15 US dollars per person in taxes to leave Indonesia. When we realized this we had 2 adults in line (my aunt and uncle with da $$), and 7 “children” (with no money), and this was JUST after we tried to spend all our Indonesia dollars since we were leaving the country.  So as we stood in line, scrounging for the last Indonesian dollars we had, we definitely thought we would have to go all the way back out and change more US dollars when all of a sudden, my uncle pulled out 1,000,000 rupiah from his pocket (the equivalent of 100 US dollars). By the time we counted our last pennies, we found that we were only 10,000 rupiah short of getting through customs. That is ONE AMERICAN DOLLAR PEOPLE. ONE. DOLLAR. So we had to change money anywaysssssss.

ANYWAY. Bali was a lot of fun but it was another few days of late nights and early mornings so I was so happy to arrive back in Singapore and just take one whole day to SLEEP :)

Thanks to Aarti for her amazing pics! And just a personal update from me: After a week and a bit in Singapore, I am back in KL safe and sound and sorting out my apt and cell phone yaaaaaaay for taking care of business (doodoodoo).