Dominica May

So the last few weeks has been quite the whirlwind journey, particularly since my birthday. I had a number of plans for my birthday, but they were changed at the last minute for receiving the biggest birthday present ever – all of our stuff arriving from Australia. I was actually quite keen to see everything again, especially my collections, as I guess I see my collections as part of my identity, or an extension of who I am, or something like that.

But other than unpacking, I spent my birthday looking around the Central Market, then we had a babysitter look after Doyle, while Jeremy and I headed off to Bangsar for dinner, and to look briefly around the area.

Soon after, Jeremy was off to India for almost a week, which left me to put away the majority of the boxes on my own. I was quite happy to do this, however, as it was quite calming compared to the other things stressing me out at the time – namely bank and visa issues, along with Doyle acting out my stress. However, all those issues have since been resolved – Doyle and I have our extended stay visas now, and are entitled to stay in Malaysia until Oct 23 2010, and we managed to get enough money into Malaysia after several ways of trying, and thus now have a brand new, blueberry tea coloued Proton Persona. Although both Jeremy and myself are too scared to drive it in the actual city, so we’ll see how that goes. Our GPS got us entirely lost for a few hours yesterday so that we missed out on seeing a Christmas concert that Jeremy especially had been looking forward to seeing. After finally managing to make it to the carpark at KLCC, without any help of the GPS (which was still trying to give us incorrect directions compared to actual street signs), we sat down for some lunch, and got in touch with some new friends to help bail us out and find our way home.

Jeremy stayed behind at KLCC, so I had my very first experience driving a) a brand new car and b) in a foreign country, just in the carpark. I was so stressed just in the carpark that I ended up having Carol swap with me to follow Cecilia back to our apartment. We dropped the car off, and Carol for a facial, then went to look at some shops for some final things for our apartment.

The apartment is really starting to feel like home. The majority of our things are packed away, and even things I brought up from my old family home have mostly been organised into a logical manner, rather than the mishmash of items in boxes they were when I a) was at the family home and b) had them packed to bring them here. All of the boxes we sent over are entirely empty now, and are being collected by the moving company on Wednesday. Also on Wednesday we have a guy coming to hang our pictures and paintings on the walls, so after that point, we should hopefully have the place in a decent enough position to take photos to share on our gallery.

The friend situation seems to be coming along quite nicely. One of my Internet friends, who lives in Japan but is from the US, introduced me to the aforementioned Carol and Cecilia, whom he met whilst travelling in Turkey. Cecilia is very outgoing and will also be taking me to a breakfast with more of her friends tomorrow morning. I am truly thankful for this introduction because the conversations have been very comfortable and natural. I also made friends with a guy on the bus a few weeks ago, Adeel, who is from Pakistan. He is also very nice and kind, although I fear sometimes I am too busy or anti-social for his liking!

Apart from my stress rubbing off on Doyle, he seems to be settling in a little better now, and is doing well to put himself to sleep in his own bed at night again. He is absolutely enamoured with Bob the Builder. We had bought him a book whilst with a friend of Jeremy’s, Mun Yi, before my birthday, and he always asks us for at least 2 of the 5 stories in the book to be read to him every day. We also picked up a Bob the Builder DVD for him beforehand.

Christmas is just around the corner, and we’ve been receiving a lot of lovely mail from friends and family. I’ve had a birthday card, Christmas card, and 2 postcards from 4 friends I originally made on the Internet (though I have only met one of them in person so far, I will be meeting 2 of the others in the US early next year, and the last lives in Germany, who I would also love to meet one day). We also received a nice card and book/DVD gift from Jeremy’s Aunty Judy and Uncle Malcolm, Doyle received and Unbirthday kaleidoscope gift from his grandparents, and just today we received a Christmas card and 2009 calendar of Western Australia from Jeremy’s Aunty Peg and Uncle Lindsay. I am feeling incredibly blessed with the family and friends I have in my life right now, despite being quite the distance away from all but those who moved here with me, and the new friends I have been making. This year has been far too good to us.