Around Town

After a full month of travel in November, I was happy to spend a few consecutive days in Kuala Lumpur last week.  It gave me a chance to meet up with friends, take care of some errands, and finish putting my room together.  Since we moved into our new apartment on November 5^th, I had only spent 5 nights total sleeping in my own bed.  No complaints, I love traveling, but I am also paying rent so it’s nice to “use” my apartment once in a whileJ

View of the city night from my bedroom window.  How did I go from Anchorage, Alaska to this?!?!

My apartment complex must have been built by a Chinese company because in Chinese culture, certain numbers are believed by some to be auspicious or inauspicious based on the Chinese word that the number sounds similar to.  Four is considered to be unlucky because it sounds like the Chinese word for "death".  Therefore, there is no 4^th, 14^th, or 24^th floor in my building, instead there is 23 and 23A.  Buildings that have 50 floors also skip 40-49, therefore only actually have 35 floors.  In my old apartment complex, they skipped the 13^th floor.  Apparently, many Chinese designed product lines skip the number “4” and if once you think about it, you can notice this in many places.  One example is my camera, the Canon PowerShot G series, it goes from G3 to G5 with no G4 model.  I have the G12, so I’m assuming they will soon get to G13 and have to skip G14. 
 

No 4's here.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve never lived in a place that doesn’t have four seasons.  Therefore, living so close to the equator is somewhat bizarre for me, especially coming from Alaska where geographic location plays such a huge role in your daily life as the seasons change.  Here the sun rises and sets at the same time every day, it’s pretty much the same temperature every day, etc. etc. 

In Malaysia, where only 9% of the population is Christian, I wasn’t expecting much hoopla surrounding the Christmas season.  But although Malaysia is not a Christian nation it is a consumer nation.  Christmas is a public holiday, but much of the public celebration of the season is commercial in nature and just an excuse to buy stuff, same as anywhere else.  I am surprised at the amount of Christmas decorations, Christmas music playing in the shops, and Christmas trees (all fake of course), although there is hardly anything depicting Santa Clause.  I was in Cambodia for Thanksgiving and some Malaysians in the group were asking the three Americans about our Thanksgiving traditions.  I was telling them how when I am with my family, we usually go out the day after Thanksgiving and hike into the woods to find a Christmas tree to cut down and bring home, and then enjoy a nice picnic of left over Thanksgiving food, even if it is in the snow.  I was surprised when one of the other Americans, who had grown up in southern California, stated that he had never actually heard of anyone going into the forest to cut down their own Christmas tree. 

Its just strange for me to be seeing Christmas everywhere when its 90 degrees out, Christmas means winter to me, and now I am going a year without winter!  I like winter, but I also love having this opportunity.  Many people ask me if I’m going home for Christmas and my response is that I just got here…and it’s a long friggin’ way to travel back, very expensive, plus my folks are coming to visit in January J  Here are some Christmas shots from some of the shopping centers:

Since my arrival in Malaysia, and even prior to, I have wanted to experience or learn how to make/create batik artwork.  Batik is a fabric dyeing technique which originated in Java, Indonesia in which wax is applied to areas to remain uncolored.  I found a craft complex that offered sessions to make your own batik and jumped at the $6.38USD opportunity to try and do something creative.  This whole creativity thing is a stretch for me since I’ve just been studying science for the past seven years, it’s exciting to try and exercise the other side of my brain!  Luckily they had tons of designs to choose from, so I didn’t have to strain my mind too much. 

The process begins by tracing your design on to silk or cotton fabric with a pencil, and then one of the batik artists traces your design with a tool that they dip in hot wax.  You could choose to do this yourself, but they suggest to start with you let them do it because you have to absolutely make sure to connect all the lines by wax, the wax line will keep the color from penetrating.  After that, you just get to paint away.  Not quite paint by numbers, but fairly fun and relaxing because you just fill in the sections.  I chose to use silk so when you touch the brush to the canvass, the color spreads so it took some trial and error to figure out the best technique.



My creation!



As I was walking to the monorail station, I came across this huge display of 140 painted bears that had not been there only days before.  Similar to the painted sheep that are placed around Reno, the life sized bear statues are painted by different artists.  This particular exhibit is called United Buddy Bears (more info) and is to “promote living together in peace and harmony.”  The bears are painted by international artists to promote tolerance and understanding between different nations and cultures and represent the countries recognized by the United Nations.  They are placed hand in hand to symbolize the future vision of a peaceful world.  They will be here through February 15^th, so I’m looking forward to visiting them on many more occasions.