Greetings from Malaysia

OK, We're here and we're alive. Highlights from the first 1/2 day:

US Airways check-in person can't find us in the computer, even though we've already printed our boarding passes online. Eventually she prints new boarding passes and checks our luggage thru to Kuala Lumpur. We aren't very hopeful that US Airways' computer is going to get our luggage to the right place.

We call Malaysia Airlines from the gate to make sure they have us in their computer. They do. They assign us good seats and we feel a lot better as we fly to Newark.

We check in at Newark. As we pass thru security, Bernie notices that the boarding passes don't have the same seats that we were originally assigned. This means no certainty of an aisle seat. I get angry as we wait for the gate attendant for two hours. When he finally shows up, he tells us that we do have an aisle, but not the cozy aisle-and-window seats we wanted. Grrrr.

Fight to Stockholm is OK. In Stockholm we get off the plane, go thru another security check, walk down a stairway, and check in at the same gate, wait a few minutes, and get back on the plane. What was the point?

I watched 9 episodes of season 3 of House on the next leg of the flight. Since I've never seen the show before, I guess I caught up with it. I like it, though it's hard to suspend disbelief when you watch 9 shows in a row where a patient comes in with one disease and somehow ends up with a completely different life-threatening, rare disease and House diagnoses it without consulting a computer, textbook, or a different doctor.

We landed in Kuala Lumpur, and I had only managed about 2 hours of sleep in 27 hours. The bags made it, believe it or not. Aunt Annie and Bernie's mom met us at the airport and we picked up her dad and we went to get dim sum for breakfast. We checked into our hotel and I caught a 4 hour nap, while Bernie took care of her number one priority - getting her hair straightened at the mall. After that, we got dressed up and went to a birthday party for her Uncle Sam at a fancy club. I would have liked to have partied harder, but honestly, I couldn't keep my eyes open. We got back to the hotel at 11pm and I crashed hard. I didn't dream, wake up, or even turn over until morning.

We had decided to not pay for an extra breakfast buffet at the hotel, so Bernie told me to go try the one we got free with the room. It was totally amazing. They had every breakfast food imaginable, including all the Malaysian ones, of course. Dim Sum, Roti Canai, Roti Telur, Chee Cheong Fun, Curry Laksa, Fried Rice, Rice porridges, Beef bacon, Chicken sausages, Breads, Tropical juices, and Western stuff as well. After I reported back, Bernie decided it's worth paying for.

Today's activities included a quick turn around the mall in the morning. I had to get caffeine, as my addiction is not being fed properly and I'm a bit headachy as a result. We got some Red Bull at the local Jusco. Then we were picked up by Bernie's parents and we got Roti Canai for lunch. I had never tried Murtabak, so they ordered it for me and it was wonderful, but it was way too much food. We went to visit her Grandma next and some of her aunts and uncles were there as well. They had food and tried to feed us again. I'm beginning to suspect that I have a "Feed me" sign around my neck. After a short visit, we went to her Godma's house and got our briefing on Felicia's wedding and our duties. There was food there also, but I knew what we had planned for dinner so I tried to abstain. I can't resist Char Siew Paus, though, so I held myself to only one.

Dinner was an attempt to re-create a wonderful meal that Aunt Annie treated us to three years ago on my very first visit to Malaysia. We went to this restaurant that specializes in crabs. They have 32 different crab dishes to choose, and tonight, we had 30 people to feed. We had crabs in butter sauce, crabs in tomato chili sauce, black pepper crab, crabs steamboat style, and also had mantis prawns fried in cream sauce, La-la, which is clams in chili sauce, beef short ribs, and some sweet and sour prawns. Bernie and I then split a young coconut and drank the water and spooned out the white meat for dessert.

Pictures of the food were taken and I'll post them at my next opportunity, I promise. They tell me that Malaysians only eat one meal a day, but it starts at dawn and ends at bedtime. I can believe it.

Now we're back at the hotel and I'm sleepy again. I guess we'll go to bed early and get a quick start in the morning.