To Do -- E.

• move into temporary house
• buy car
• find new house/apartment
• begin to learn Bahasa Melayu

As you can see, our initial to-do list is coming along okay.

A video of the temporary housing is on Facebook.

A picture of our new car (hopefully not so temporary!) is right here.  I am so happy with our little 2001 Perodua Kelisa.  What you can't quite tell from this photo is that the Kelisa is narrow.  Very nice for city driving and city parking.

 

Now that we have our own vehicle, it's time to start looking around for a place to rent.  Say a prayer!

As for Bahasa (Malay language): the idea is that we begin serious language learning after we've taken care of the basics of moving in.  I guess that means that finding a home is more urgent than learning to speak Bahasa. 

For the time being, we are getting by with English and Queena's Mandarin Chinese, as most of our neighbors can speak at least one of these languages.  But there are exceptions!  Last Saturday, the lawn service guy showed up at our gate, and this man knew no English at all.  When he had finished trimming our lawn and was hitching his weed whacker back up to his motorbike, I tried to pay him.

Well, I did pay him -- but probably too much.  I knew I wasn't in a good situation when I found myself standing outside my gate with my wallet open, pulling out 10-ringgit notes one by one and saying, "This much, or more?"  He didn't know the word "more", but he got the idea.  He finally held up four fingers so I paid him 40 ringgit.  I'm pretty sure that was a little steep, but I was in no place to argue.

After he drove away, I went inside, grabbed the English-Malay dictionary, and turned to the 'Numbers' section.  Satu, dua, tiga, empat, lima . . . .