This morning I am dealing with being the only one at home after just over a week of having a teen around again. We have had eight days of combining exploring as tourists and defining a new home. Not a lot of study got done but we also saved a few options for when he returns after school finishes.
It occurred to me the day he arrived that I had been here a month, which in terms of how much we have achieved in getting things sorted was not long at all. We have an apartment, a car, phones, internet (!) and unpacked our airfreight plus acquiring assorted kitchen and furniture. There is already some regular gatherings I go to and there is less need for a quick dash out to the grocery because I am missing a basic item for dinner. On the other hand it already feels like quite a while with flashes of home-sickness for friends and a known environment.
While having the occasional teenage boy moments where communication is via raised or lowered eyebrows and the odd grunt – Jon is good company exploring the city. His first day was taken up with expanding his lightweight clothes wardrobe and taking him the Korean BBQ restaurant where we had been the first night I arrived. While there are a lot of expats in Mont Kiara we discovered that we are quite recognisable as they remembered us from that first night. It could have something to do with how we engage in conversation. Jon showed off his proficiency with chopsticks while Nick got an intensive lesson from the Korean girls sitting at the next table. Jon was also quite adventurous in his menu ordering as he included baby octopus which had even our waiter/cook laughing as he watched Nick and my faces as it cooked on the grill (was pretty good!) 
Thursday saw us head over to MidValley and Garden Mall where we got Nick a birthday present and generally checked out the shops. Jon learnt about the scarcity of shoes his size and I discovered one of the more temperamental aspects of Malaysian banking. Dinner that night at our favourite Italian restaurant saw Jon contributing snails to the antipasto selection which required figuring out how to use a different kind of cutlery.
Friday and Saturday saw us moving further afield. We got a taxi into KL Sentral so I could get TouchnGo cards and a SmartTag for the car (many of our surrounding roads have tolls). A little bit of investigation and a helpful infodesk attendant revealed that we could use the cards on the trains and identified the train line to take. So rather than another taxi we took the train to Central Markets – which was high on the tourist list of places to check out. The trains were every few minutes, clean, and ridiculously cheap (1MYR-1.20MYR) for the trips we took.
Central Market is an old Art Deco building with two level of lots of little shops and stalls. I am planning on a visit by myself to take some photos but we were a bit overwhelmed by all the textiles, wood, pewter and jewellery. In the open street next to it were lots of stalls selling knock off goods – we got Nick an “adidas” Ajax away team shirt for about 70 MYR ($24 NZ$) Jon wanted to try his hand at bargaining having watched me do it twice but was a bit intimidated by the Chinese gentleman selling him two pairs of sunglasses (which lasted about five minutes – they don’t make Ray-bans like they used to 😉 )
Sunday night we went to the night market one of Jon’s friends had told him about. That is a bit of a story in itself so will save that for tomorrow.
There is so much to write about here, both the mundane and the unusual that I have struggled to decide what direction to take this blog. Over the last couple of weeks though I have been busy with a number of things that I thought sharing would be useful for other new arrivals or visitors with certain interests and in some way it brings me full circle to buying my first bangles at KAN.
