Or, as my Chinese friend spelled it to me so I could actually pronounce it, "Gong Si Fa Chai" And no, that is definitely not the correct spelling, just pronunciation.
I hope you are all warm and safe in your respective locations right now. I have been stalking the storm as it destroys the States and showing pictures to my friends here who have never seen snow. One of them is going to Houston for school and she has never been out of Malaysia before so I predict she will be extraordinarily cold. I suggested that she invest in a Northface jacket when her plane lands. I hope she enjoys it. All of my foreign engineer friends here are always extremely excited to go to school in the US because for most of them it is probably the only time they will ever get to go because getting a visitor's visa is really difficult for them.
I have been craving Hari Raya cookies ever since, well, Hari Raya last fall, so I have started searching them on the internet and I think that I have soom good potential recipes. My only current issue is that I need an oven thermometer so I can tell what temperature my oven is actually cooking at since the knob for temperature is a little loose. Finding one in Labuan has been a bust so far, but I haven't given up hope. This leads me to my new favorite hobby :
Walking around the shops in town and randomly asking them for things I am sure they don't have, but the dumbfounded looks on their faces is AWESOME.
Oven thermometer is one of these things. I have to explain the words, and then how it works. My favorite so far has got to be the one time I asked if they knew of a store where I could buy yarn. They looked at me like I was crazy and they couldn't even pronounce yarn after I did. Of course then I spelled it, tried to explain the concept of "yarn" and what it was used for. I almost gave them the part of speech and used it in a sentence, but then I would've had to explaint he concept of "crochet" and it seemed like too much effort so I gave up. I guess this means I will have to load up on yarn the next time I get to go home. I really want to work on projects so I am getting psyched in advance.
I am really glad Chinese New Year has finally arrived actually because it has been a long build up to it. Starting in early January the local people of Chinese heritage/ethnicity start driving around the neighborhoods beating on what sounds like large garbage can lids and yelling. Every night. Also they practice something that involves loud beating gong things at the local Chinese get-together place
I have started my slow slide into working out regularly again, which is nice. I pretty much stopped right before the end of Eng-1 and then refused to be physically active while I was home. I am enjoying it for the most part, except when I think about how slow and what a short distance I am running. I will improve! I even just bought workout music off of iTunes because (a) I am not good at downloading music illegally and (b) it kind of kills 3 or 4 minutes of a run when you are pumped up from a song and the second you hit a hill your music slows down again.
Job-wise, I am still pretty frustrated right now. We have not heard from America and as you all know I am not a patient person. Also, I joined this company because it is dynamic and you can move ahead and blah blah blah. However, I feel like this isn't happening. I am just waiting and doing nothing truly productive and this is hugely frustrating for me. I don't want to waste my or the company's time and I feel like both of these things are happening right now. However, as this problem isn't immediately fixable, I will just try to not think about it and keep on running this hill. I have to crest it eventually.
Besides this my life is kind of normal. It has been raining a lot recently which is ok with me, and I have been discovering new and fun ways to incorporate potatoes and carrots (popular veggies here) into my diet. I eat waayyy more vegetables now than I ever did in the U.S.
Well, I love you all and hope you are not stuck in ditches someplace. And yes, please save a snowball for me :)
Becca
No comments:
Post a Comment