So what happens now?
Trip Start
Jan 06, 2010
1
64
171
Trip End
Jun 21, 2010
Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan, Malaysia
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
The rest of the day I spent learning a bit of Mandarin (most of which I have no forgotten) that O might be able to use with Ben's Beijing colleagues, watching a set of BBC documentaries on Beijing before the 2008 Olympics which Dad gave to me before we left. I also decided that while I have a literal conversion of Frances Lally to Mandarin, it doesn't follow the usual Chinese rules and I would quite like a Chinese name too. So after some research and some decision I decided upon :
Luó YīngFeī
羅樱霏
According to the various websites I was using, this could be a terrible name, but unless someone corrects me I have no idea! Essentially, 羅 Luo is the surname, which a Chinese woman usually keeps from her father but the children take their father's family name. My maternal grandfather somehow converted Lally to Luo, but we don't know how. So anyway, that's the surname. Then 樱 Yīng means Cherry Blossom and 霏 Feī means fall of snow. Which rather epitomises my favourite vision of the Far east: Cherry Blossom in the Winter. I didn't get to see it this year as Kuala Lumpur is in the tropical zone but I will get to see it at some point in my life.
The landlord appeared around midday to delvier a new mattress for the spare room after only looking at it and the leaking bath in our ensuite on Monday! The cleaner appeared around 12:15ish and stayed until 2pm. Thrilling stuff.
In the evening, Ben and I headed to the Pavilion to buy Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and stopped at "Hot Roll" for dinner. I had a Crispy Pizza Beef and Ben had a Paratha Chicken Satay. They are essentially large pancakes/parathas folded up with food inside. I preferred the bread of the paratha but the spice of the beef, so next time I will have to have a Paratha pizza beef! They weren't that big, though very cheap (RM5.40/£1.10 for mine which was twice the size and RM3.40/70p for Ben's). We were still hungry but not in a savoury mood so we ended up at J.CO's donut company where we have admired their "baby donuts" since we arrived. Ben ordered a blackforest donut and a coffee, I had a "Why nut?" donut (white chocolate with hazelnut centre) and a blackforest chocolate iced drink thing. Ironically my drink alone cost more than both our dinners had at RM11. Plus, it turns out, the drinks come with free plain donuts! Which we couldn't eat, so we took them home with us. One thing I would say about J.Co's is the service is very gruff and abrupt! But the food is good.
We returned and watched Pirates 2 only to figure out that we had seen it, but in the long and distant past so while we recognized many scenes, there was no way we could have recalled the storyline from memory.
Generally struggling having found out that some friends are moving back home. While I'm excited for them, it rather compounded my feelings of sitting still and not going anywhere which has arisen from the need for a job etc when we get back. So today I really hit the two month crisis. I know I can't go home, and I know time will pass quickly, but I'm currently desperate to get home and get on with life wherever it may take me. So, not great on the emotional front, but I'm sure it will pass soon enough. Now to just find something productive to do to while away the time. Maybe I'll just take a book to the gym and just stay on the treadmill till I've finished it. Maybe not. La la la.
