She Lives

Sorry about the lag in updates, it's been a hectic few days.

Sunday was a very bad day. After the saga that was Saturday night (described in an earlier post), I thought I was feeling better enough to venture out on Sunday.

Michael, my business colleague, and I hopped a cab for the big city center of the island. Bad idea. No sooner do we get out of the cab that I start to feel very ill, again. So we stop by the Starbucks (yes, even in Penang there is Starbucks) and get some water. Feeling a bit better we hit the mall.

This was the craziest mall I've ever seen. 5 floors packed wall to wall with people and shops. There was some sort of big promotion going on with black and green balloons on the ground floor too. But it was just too crammed to take pictures, so you won't see any new posts to the gallery today.

Upon finishing our venture through the mall we went back to Starbucks to have a drink, in my case another bottle of water. This time I was sure I was feeling better, but no sooner did I get up to walk out that I was overwhelmed by nausea, and this time succeeded in vomiting all over myself, the table and the floor. Luckily, Michael was ahead of me and didn't get hit.

The guy and gal working there had to have been the nicest people I've ever met though. They took me in the back and let me clean up in their sink, all the time asking if I would be ok.

Smelling awful we got a cab and returned to the hotel. I bid Michael farewell and took a much-needed nap. A very bland club sandwich for dinner (which included an Islamic diet approved beef 'bacon') and back to bed wrapped up my Sunday.

Miraculously, I felt fine Monday morning, and have felt fine since. The odd thing is, in the days leading up to being sick, and the days I was sick, I ate nothing but airplane and hotel food. All very western/bland/sanitary. In the two days I've felt better my host here at the office has treated me to some of the best Chinese/Indian/Thai food ever, all from these open-air hakka stands.

Imagine the food court at the mall, but open air, much smaller and no health inspectors running around. You'd think that I'd be sick now, but no, it's been great. This has been lunch two days running and dinner last night. Every meal we get to try new and exciting dishes. Oh, and it all tastes so good! Yet another reason to move to this part of the world. Oh, and the tea, I could go on and on about the tea. Hot, iced, plain, with condensed milk, it just goes on and on!

After we ate at the hakka across the street today we went to the snake temple next door. Very interesting building, Chinese style, with several Buddahs and lots of snakes napping in potted trees. There was also a sign on the front forbidding mediums to go into trances in or near the temple as it disrupts the foot traffic of the visitors. All very fascinating, but I refrained from the typical tourist option of having my picture taken while wearing one of the snakes. It just felt too Disneyland/Knott's/Magic Mountain here's the picture of you on the ride.

On the bizzaro side of things, the cube I'm sitting in at the office belongs to someone who is out. So there are some personal items on the shelves. One of which is a fuzzy little koala wearing a yellow vest that says I *heart* Australia in blue. This wouldn't be so odd, if it weren't for the fact that I have the same object on my desk back in San Jose. A friend at my previous job brought it back for me from her trip to Australia.

I know these things are massed produced and sold by the truckloads. There are people all over the globe with these little koalas. But I still find it just a little odd that I landed at the desk of a person that had one, out, on their desk.

It's a small world after all.