I bought a chinese food/cooking book a while ago and tonight we tried a recipe called 'Ants climing trees'. It's a Sichuan recipe with Rice Vermicelli (the very thin rice noodles), sliced marinated beef (of course from Australia!), black bean paste, a little bit of greens and some red chillies. As all the ingredients, other than the noodles, have to be cut very small, when all is mixed up, the red and green bits look like ants...

Tasted good, but someone took TOO MANY CHILLIES and it was so hot...

Over the last 2 weeks, we went out quite a bit with people from work. Celebrations are fun here and a bit different than home. One agrees on a time to meet and one generally comes some time later than that, orders some food (no-one waits for the others here with eating) and always offers some to others. After that, it's basically pure fun. People make jokes, talk cynically about each other, pull each other's leg and so on. And normally with no alcohol. Well, at once occasion one girl was bought a lot of drinks for her birthday, and it didn't end that well for her. ;-)

Yesterday, we went to a farewell party of a german friend of mine. She lives within walking distance and had a get-together around her pool. Was a very nice evening, and we met some interesting people - a Macedonian guy, a Taiwanese Girl, a Czech girl, etc. All of them had interesting stories and good advise for traveling in the region.

By the way - the internet speed is sooo slow here, that I can't upload any pics. I need to find a time when others are not using the the net, I guess early morning would be good.

It's Sunday evening and we are sitting at home trying to watch a DVD, but the sound is playing up. We had a nice weekend. On Saturday, I went to Spanish class and in the evening we checked out the local indian Deepavali festival tent, where they sell lots of incense, cloths and also some food. We ended up going for Indian Vegetarian at Woodlands, across from where we live.
Today, we had our first ballroom (waltz) dancing class and it was a great experience. I understood the price wrongly before and thought it would be Euro 36 per hour per person. Well, it turned out that it is Euro 4,5 per hour. What a nice surprise!
Our teacher, Mrs Jovy, is a chinese lady in her 50s, who has been dancing for 20+ years. Her last name should be Stickler, as she is so precise with the foodwork, the head position, where we look, where the hands lie, etc. But no complaints - she is great, a real character.
In the evening we met with a Alex and Alina for Chinese food at Fong Lye. We like that place, but it's a bit more expensive these days. Still, for european prices it's ok, as we had high quality chinese food (steamed red snapper in soy sauce, beef and green veggie, spicy mussles, mixed veg and rice) for Euro 10 each.
Our evening ended with a little way through KL, past some DVD stalls, chinese medicine stores and of course many people!

Always wanted to do it, but never did it. Until today! You can see from the picture who was the brave one to try 'ear-candeling'. They stick a hollow candle inside your ear, lit it and let it burn down. This somehow gets all the stuff out of your ears and the sinuses are also clearer then. T didn't like it that much though, as it did nothing for him... oh well... I however, had a foot reflexology massage in the meantime, which was so nice, tender and relaxing that I just got up from an afternoon nap. :-)

Hao! Yes, it's true - I am doing 'good' with my newly started Mandarin classes. My private teacher, Joe, comes to our place once a week and teaches me mainly speaking Mandarin. We will also work on chinese character recognition and some writing. The main motivation behind my efforts is that we want to travel to the Yunnan province in China next year, but WITHOUT the typical tour-bus. So, I 'had to bite the bullet' and start learning the language. Well, I love doing it, actually... :-)

It can't be compared with anything I have learnt before, as every (!) character, every pronounced word has nothing in common with anything in any other language that I know. This is train-the-brain, plus train-your-tongue hardcore. but enjoyable!

Duibuqi, ni hui shuo yingwen? - Excuse me, do you speak english?

Guess I will be using this sentence a lot...

Hello friends!
Most of you will know that I just spent two weeks in Austria, as my sister had a cute little baby boy and I had to practice my auntie-skills. Guess I was doing alright, as he only complained every now and then... ;-)
Being back here, we were rather busy during our days, but also spent the weekend playing our first round of golf at Bukit Jalil Golf Course. I tell you, it's different playing in the tropics! The cold drink afterwards tastes even nicer.
I try keep this site more updated, but let me tell you, we are having a kind of 'normal' life here at the moment...

Today, Saturday, has been busy but was very sucessful. :-) We went to the golf driving range of KLGCC - Kuala Lumpur Golf & Country club and it turns out that it's really cheap. We paid about AU$ 4 for 100 balls and the balls even come automatically out of a whole in the ground and place themselves for you. Playing a round of golf is still more expensive than Australia though, so we have to figure something out.
In the afternoon we went to IKEA and the Curve (a new shopping center), as we had to buy a table (desk). I found a shop that sold Brooks running shoes, which are the only ones I use. :-) While in Borders, we saw that KL has a TimeOut magazine now and bought one. Inside we found a voucher for a new indoor-golf-range, close to where we live, even with a 2for1 voucher. How good is that!
And to top it off, Emu will cook for me tonight! Aaahhh, those days could last longer...

We did a rather weird thing on Saturday afternoon. In KL they have places called 'Fish Spa' where you put your legs into a basin of water and little 'doctor fish' come and nibble the dead skin of your feet. Really! We went to the one in MidValley and the experience is unforgettable! We didn't notice that they had the tiny fish for 'beginners' (about 3 cm long) and the half-piranias for 'advanced' people (about 9 cm). So we happened to sit down at the piranias pool and instantly schools of fish were stuck to our feet and it's so ticklish! ... and weird... and more ticklish! If you can ever try this, go for it.
As a 'warning' - all our visitors will be taken there for the ultimate fish-sucking experience! hahahaha....

On Friday night I met another girl from InterNations, who is from Edinbough and has been living here for 5 years already. She brought her working colleague who turned out to be a real Aussie from the eastern suburbs of Melbourne. We had a fun evening at La Bodega, a tapas bar in Bangsar. Towards the end we met up with my other half and a work colleague. It turns out that the Aussie loves golf and pool (which is the new past time activity on Friday nights...) and he may be filling the 4th needed spot for a pool tournament on Tuesday. It felt good hearing some familiar english again! :-)

Today, I met an Austrian lady - Elisabeth - for Thai dinner in a shopping mall (of course, lah!). She and her family (husband and 2 teenagers) have been living abroad for 17 years, mainly in Asia and we had many interesting topics to talk about. She also mentioned that the Austrian Embassy has monthly drinks, where fellow Austrians can socialize. I met her over internations.org, which is a blog that caters for expats. It was good talking in 'austrian' again... :-)

Seriously, I can't stand them anymore! Since we have arrived, we have spent a considerable amount in shopping malls, buying various things for our life/apartment here. The problem is that there is too much choice! Trying to find working shoes, cardigans (against the freezing air-cons), water filters (and I don't mean little Britta ones, but proper big Korean ones), various computer cables etc is exhausting. Even if you want to buy 'normal' stuff like milk/bread you have to go to a shopping mall first, in order to enter the supermarket from there. As the malls are nicely air-conditioned, malaysians tend to just hang out there, go for a stroll, etc. So to sum it up: it's evening, one is hungry, there are many slow walking people around you and you have 500 different shops where to go. I tell you! But then, when I nearly gave up hope to find good working shoes - I found the perfect pair of Campers! And all the sorrow is forgotten... :-)

Yesterday, we went to a very Malaysian Mall called SoHo, as it is cheaper than many other ones. We were looking for some kitchen utensils and some golf stuff. We found both and also hoards of women on a shopping frenzy. Check this out! (Thank good we were passing them on the elevator...)

Well, we arrived in KL two weeks ago and stayed in a hotel in the beginning until we managed to find an apartment. After looking at a few, we made a decision and moved in last Sunday. We are staying in a fully furnished 2 Bedroom plus study apartment on the 13th floor on a big condominium. Apart from having a lot of space in our place, we like the 50 m pool and the new gym. We are located very close to various public transport and also right next to a lot of Indian shops and cheap restaurants. :-)

We still spend most of our evenings going to malls and getting the necessary items for our apartment. Even though it is fully furnished, we need to buy linen, towels, water filter, various cables, etc. We only got the gas connected two days ago, so we have been eating out a lot - which is one of the great things in KL. Great food very cheaply.

That's it for now... more blogs to follow to let you know what we are up to!

Hope you are all good!

xxx

Hello everybody!

I will be using this space to inform you about our new adventures in this part of the world!

Keep on checking for updates...

xxx