Ohhhhhh my goodness im SO tired! We have to catch the bus in and back from work every day, but the one in the morning requires that we get up at 6.30, which is breath takingly early and im not particularly good at it, but on the plus side it means alice and i can partake of a second breakfast at 'cili padi' (resteraunt downstairs), which is ultimatly worth the early rise..
We have mayed a few aquaintances on the bus rides, one is a man at the bus stop who carries popcorn around in his shopping bag, and takes great delight in inviting his friends to come and meet us/stare at us. We may start charging for this privaledge, especially around Chinese new yr..... He has offered to take us to a waterfall, but on the off chance that he might bring half of his local community to stare at us we may have to/deff will pass on the opportunity! alice and i are getting quite used to the staring business, we no longer blink an eye when while we wait for our bus in the afternoon we cause a traffic jam on the little rd, as cars one by one stop so they can have a really good, long, detailed stare at us! We're as good as celebs here!
The bus rides themselves are quite exciting the driver seems to be locked away inside some metal cage at the front and there is a ticket conductor who stumbles up and down, as the driver's wild steering causes him to be flung about. We quite often dont really make it around corners, and the windows fall down the whole time letting in floods of rain most of the time. the best bit of the ride is when we come back into Kuching in the afternoon. the first section of the road is coated in sleeping policmen, this causes the bus to rise up in the air like something has possesed it and then crash back down to earth with such verocity you can quite understand why we're the only people on the bus with teeth (at the moment, 4months of this and maybe we'll join them!)
The second bathroom nightmare occured last week......ohh yes another one, it is by far the most fated bathroom in the whole apartment/building i think we can presume! So there i am in the bathroom yet again getting ready for bed, i brush my teeth, think about washing my hair the following day and reject the idea (alice and i have given up washing ourselves just clothes and dishes from now onwards), after the brushing of my pegs has finished i spit and reach for my face soap, out of the corner of my eye i glance something black near to it and so i glance in the direction that my hand is swooping at a far to rapid pace i realise when i see a gigantic cockroach on top of it! I scream, for i almost enclosed the beast in my hand, but this doesnt deter the rascal! It continues to sit atop my soap nibbling and carsesing it....yuck (yes i have washed it since)! So in comes alice to the rescue, and together with me chanting a death chant and alice armed with the cockroach spray we kill it. this in itself is not an easy task though, the spray does little but make it move about , eventually however if fell of a ledge and we managed while its hairy jointed legs scrambled in the air to kill the beast. However due the lack of dustpan and brushes the creatuer is still on our bathroom floor hopefully acting as a warning to the rest of the chooclate brown cockroaches in our building to stay away. It is also a mystery how it got in as it is far to big to fit through any of the holes aparent in our bathroom, however we have sprayed them all just in case!
Food wise we have quite excelled ourselves, now theres a suprise. the first lesson we learned was if you experiment only do it with one dish at a time, jelly fish and pig intestine have never tasted great on their own and deff never will together! the smell of the intestines, sent us into fits of giggels as soon as it arrived, eyes closed and mouths opened hoping to god we didn't loose control of the chopsticks and drop it on the way towards us we tried it.....VERDICT: not bad, but the smell was enough to make you never eat it again, in your life! the jelly fish arrived coated in its chilly sauced splender. 'make sure you get a bit of the jelly fish' i nievely say to alice 'it looks like they've added a lot of noodels to this dish'.....hahaha its all jelly fish and when people in the past have said to me its bouncy their lying bouncy is not enought of a word to describe the insufferably cruchy (but impossible to make a dent in), rubbery tastless dish. Lesson no. two, tenticles are the worst, steer clear! After the mixture of the two, i gagged and was almost sick, alice and i decided that we unfortunatly didn't have enough room for the white fungus pudding we'd been soo looking forward to, shame!
However that is the only bad meal we've had, yesterday alice and i had such a feast, nasi goreng(fried rice, absolutly out of this world) it had little bits of things in it, kang kong (kind of spinichy veg) in garlic, prawns which are about triple the size of anything you see in england, in a salty batter, you eat the whole thing shell and all, Alice doesn't like the head which is excellent as i think its almost the best bit! Then the best bit of the meal a silver plate (i kid you not) with a crab on it and spicy bee hoon( tiny wee noddels), we felt like queens, easily enough food for three, but we finished it, price 6 quid.
The best thing about the chinese has to be that manners at the table is really not a problem, after all they've given you two sticks and an oversized spoon to eat with, why should they care how you manage the eating! You can eat with your nose in the food on your plate (not uncommon) and side spitthings like prawn tails out! Its quite a spectacle!
It basically rained for three days, but now at last its sunny. but as a result of going from hot and wet to cold and air conditioned alice and i are both suffering from colds and coughs although we've read enough cures for them in our work to easliy cure ourselves. On friday we're going to do our first bit of work in the nursery, which should be good. today and yesterday has been spent helping the girls to pack the plants. I feel like the ladies who pick crocus stamens for safron, we have to remove the tiny dead leaves, shorten already tiny roots and wash them all in a dingy little room. But the plants them selves are amazing, tiny little pitcher plants (the ones that eat insects) and casia's. The girls ( well, women/mothers) are also really sweet and make sudden exclemations like 'we're all married' or when I left the room, to alice 'how tall is she?' . Not only this but also all of a sudden this afternoon they burst into absolute fits of giggles and just pointed at alice, i mean i know shes weird but still....!
lots of love bags
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Tuesday, 23 January 2007
Thursday, 11 January 2007
The first couple of days
Hello,
So here we are (alice and i) in our little office which we share with Ralph and Dr Hien..... We are sharing a computer, not all of us obviously that would be tricky, but alice and i which is actually extremy tricky! Alice does the mouse and i do the typing and short cuts on the keyboard. She is awful because the mouse doesnt work and zooms all over the screen in nobodies control, i am however THE worst i keep doing things and thinking ive done them to find nothing on the screen has changed. I was not made for working on a computer , actually neither of us we keep disolving into peels of laughter and yesterday uncontrollable hysterics, im sure that we are utterly disturbing their work! Yesterday Tim the jungle man, brought alice and i a hand of bananas, so we finished the day in the office with that, very nice.
Now to the flat........
Well Patrick the human Res guy very kindy (presumably because of our age) gave us a flat in extremly close proximity (above) three nightclubs and an all night restaurant! this means we have to go to bed early to get in as many hours before 1-30 as we can, this way when the booming tunes start, and the bedroom starts vibrating we at least feel a little refreshed, and less resentful of being woken, and kept awake for about 4 hours on the first night, which was the worst. We now have a fully furnished house, equiped with everything from blender and a knife ladden chopping board, (which im sure will come in extremely handy both with food preperation and when we have an argument!) a fridge and a bizarre washing machine which we used last night (prehaps why we overslept this morning!). We also have two beds now! Yippee! Except i still found Alice crawling sheepishly back into mine (admitidely the double) at 2/3ish this morning....maybe because she was cold (yes it is extremely hot but we have aircon and her bed is below it, plus although we got delivery of the bed it is lacking any form of covers. although it did come with some exceptional cool childish sheets, which is prehaps why alice wanted to sleep on it?!), but never the less outrageous! and in my defense of having the double, shes too short to warant all that space......
So the first night, typically the hardest one, but in a special way for us! At 1-30 the booming tunes started and we were in no way prepared for that, so at some point i got bored of lying in bed making conversation and so i went to the loo, bad mistake, it was flodded! The cistern was overflowing but to begin with i was more than alittle worried about alices bathroom habits and whether i was going to manage 6months of them! We eventually fixed it with our new washing line and a call home to england (the only excellent thing about different time zones!). Also in the morning when we went to mop up the puddle it had all evaporated this means that alice and i are now inhaling loo water everytime we breath....very pleasant! Alice also developed a habit that night of walking into cupboards and walls with out her glasses on.........
Over all its excellent the weather isn't too rainy although last night we had a tropical storm whilst eating lobster, and an oyster omlette in a food hall on top of a carpark! We've been eating like kings. Yesterday for break(fats) we tryed Laksa a spicy noddle soup with meat and fish, absolutly bulging with chili (there was a lot of sniffing around the table, and a little bit of crying from alice...but we ignored her!). We eat alot of the time in food halls. this is a large space or open air room owned by some one, they supply the drinks and then lots of people with food carts rent spaces, so there are huge selections of food to choose from inside them, we've had koolo mee (another noodely speciality, which had liver and somefishy rondthing that was hollow in the middle...i dearly hope it wasnt and eyeball) and pig leg, where we got the skin (not hard and crunchy but soft and tender, and sqidgy) also....very good!
The people out here are planning our trips to the jungle and excursions its all getting very exciting! Oh and aparently you have to wear long pants in the jungle! i think they meant trousers but you never know!
More later, we should do some shared computer work.....!
Lots and lots of love bags
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
P.S make sure granny sees this...........
So here we are (alice and i) in our little office which we share with Ralph and Dr Hien..... We are sharing a computer, not all of us obviously that would be tricky, but alice and i which is actually extremy tricky! Alice does the mouse and i do the typing and short cuts on the keyboard. She is awful because the mouse doesnt work and zooms all over the screen in nobodies control, i am however THE worst i keep doing things and thinking ive done them to find nothing on the screen has changed. I was not made for working on a computer , actually neither of us we keep disolving into peels of laughter and yesterday uncontrollable hysterics, im sure that we are utterly disturbing their work! Yesterday Tim the jungle man, brought alice and i a hand of bananas, so we finished the day in the office with that, very nice.
Now to the flat........
Well Patrick the human Res guy very kindy (presumably because of our age) gave us a flat in extremly close proximity (above) three nightclubs and an all night restaurant! this means we have to go to bed early to get in as many hours before 1-30 as we can, this way when the booming tunes start, and the bedroom starts vibrating we at least feel a little refreshed, and less resentful of being woken, and kept awake for about 4 hours on the first night, which was the worst. We now have a fully furnished house, equiped with everything from blender and a knife ladden chopping board, (which im sure will come in extremely handy both with food preperation and when we have an argument!) a fridge and a bizarre washing machine which we used last night (prehaps why we overslept this morning!). We also have two beds now! Yippee! Except i still found Alice crawling sheepishly back into mine (admitidely the double) at 2/3ish this morning....maybe because she was cold (yes it is extremely hot but we have aircon and her bed is below it, plus although we got delivery of the bed it is lacking any form of covers. although it did come with some exceptional cool childish sheets, which is prehaps why alice wanted to sleep on it?!), but never the less outrageous! and in my defense of having the double, shes too short to warant all that space......
So the first night, typically the hardest one, but in a special way for us! At 1-30 the booming tunes started and we were in no way prepared for that, so at some point i got bored of lying in bed making conversation and so i went to the loo, bad mistake, it was flodded! The cistern was overflowing but to begin with i was more than alittle worried about alices bathroom habits and whether i was going to manage 6months of them! We eventually fixed it with our new washing line and a call home to england (the only excellent thing about different time zones!). Also in the morning when we went to mop up the puddle it had all evaporated this means that alice and i are now inhaling loo water everytime we breath....very pleasant! Alice also developed a habit that night of walking into cupboards and walls with out her glasses on.........
Over all its excellent the weather isn't too rainy although last night we had a tropical storm whilst eating lobster, and an oyster omlette in a food hall on top of a carpark! We've been eating like kings. Yesterday for break(fats) we tryed Laksa a spicy noddle soup with meat and fish, absolutly bulging with chili (there was a lot of sniffing around the table, and a little bit of crying from alice...but we ignored her!). We eat alot of the time in food halls. this is a large space or open air room owned by some one, they supply the drinks and then lots of people with food carts rent spaces, so there are huge selections of food to choose from inside them, we've had koolo mee (another noodely speciality, which had liver and somefishy rondthing that was hollow in the middle...i dearly hope it wasnt and eyeball) and pig leg, where we got the skin (not hard and crunchy but soft and tender, and sqidgy) also....very good!
The people out here are planning our trips to the jungle and excursions its all getting very exciting! Oh and aparently you have to wear long pants in the jungle! i think they meant trousers but you never know!
More later, we should do some shared computer work.....!
Lots and lots of love bags
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
P.S make sure granny sees this...........
Saturday, 6 January 2007
The re-trial.....
Alrighty lovelly people so here we are at the fore front of technology .......THE BLOG.
Janey i hope that your are especially pleased?! It took me ages in fact as i couldn't work out what my username was and so in the end i had to make mum a blog called the 12 lovelly pigs to work it out, very confusing.....and yes im sure she'll be making regular postings on all 12 of her lovelly pigs....
xx
Janey i hope that your are especially pleased?! It took me ages in fact as i couldn't work out what my username was and so in the end i had to make mum a blog called the 12 lovelly pigs to work it out, very confusing.....and yes im sure she'll be making regular postings on all 12 of her lovelly pigs....
xx
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