Marianne will be here tomorrow!
First, let me start by apologizing for any typos or errors in this post. I'm a little rushed, so I'm not going to stop and fix any of my errors (hopefully this won't become a habit).
With that out of the way: Marianne'll be here by tomorrow afternoon! As we speak (or rather, as I type), she is in a plane over the ocean. Total travel time for her: I think over thirty hours. From TO to SanFran to HongKong to Singapore and to Malaysia. I hope she's still doing ok. She left TO around 17hrs ago. 13 more to go!
So, I've been doing lots of work trying to get ahead so that when she's here I'm not at the office all day, and instead we can go out on the town, Baby! Yeah! ...Or something. Actually, this weekend I have a trip booked to Langkawi: a little island off the west coast. It's supposed to be very nice. Although, the airline that I wanted to fly with (Air Asia) didn't have any late enough flights on Fri. So we're flying with the "good" airline: MAS (Malaysian Airlines). Turns out with MAS, the flight costs us over twice as much as it would have with Air Asia. So in total, for both of us it came to $315CAN. Outrageous. Hopefully we'll have some decent photos to post of the beaches! I'm also definitely going to take pictures of my place in the next few days and post them. I know what you're thinking, and yes you are right...Marianne will probably take pics of my place and post them.
She's staying for just under three weeks. I am super-pumped that she's coming!!! (I actually wrote "super-pimped" by accident, but I figured that was a typo that definitely needed correcting).
Other than getting into the office at 7:30 in the morning and leaving at around 10:30 or 11:00 (I'm at the office right now), I did find some time go on a trek with a few locals. It was an unofficial trip, since we didn't have waiver forms for the students to sign. As such we only took one student with us (a guy that the lead trekker/lecturer knows from before). So we went: Myself, TMC (Tan Meng Chwen) the master trekker, climber, everything basically),a former student of his (from 4 years ago) by the name of Neon (I'm serious), and Shima (another lecturer at the school).
It, uhhh...It was, shall we say, an adventure. Anyway, the important thing is that everyone is still alive and has their vision and feet are still in one piece.
It was extremely hazy that day, so it wasn't a picture day. In spite of that I did post some to my album just because I know that's what people want to see (if anything).
The trek was awesome. It was a hill called Bukit Tabur. Bukit meaning hill in Malay. TMC said it would take about 2hrs to get up to the peak and back down. Well, about 2 hrs into it, we weren't nearly to the peak. I'm sure if he was on his own he could do the entire thing in two hrs...Anyway, it was starting to get dark and we were worried about being stuck on the hill (in the jungle) in the middle of the night. This hill did have a trial (you might call it), but it was quite rugged. Anyway, the short version...right: We turned around and came back down. On the way, a branch nearly took out my eye. But hey, now I've got a cool new scar! Also, poor Shima: her shoe got caught in between two rocks and she couldn't get it out. Now we were on the side of a cliff at this point. There was no room for me to go up beside her and help out. So, since I was behind her, me thinking that I'm a smart guy and all decide I would slip my toe underneath her heal and prop her shoe out. It makes sense, right? Anyway, As I provide some leverage, she pulls up with her foot. What happens? Her foot comes out of her shoe, just as her shoe pops out from between the rocks...And goes flying off the side of the cliff. I'm not talking a few feet. It fell off a vertical wall, easily 300ft down. The shoe was lost for good. I felt terrible. Shima would not hear of taking my shoes, and got quite upset with me for asking repeatedly. She walked down the hill in sock feet! But now we were moving even more slowly and darkness was falling quickly. So, TMC told the three of us to go up ahead and he and Shima would come down by the light of a little penlight he had with him. (I know good preparation; but we were supposed to be up and down in a few hours. We started at 3:30!). Anyway, the three of us got down before it was pitch black, but TMC and Shima came down after dark. I guess somewhere along the line, TMC conviced Shima to take one of his sandals (Yes, this dude was climbing this thing in sandals:take a look at the photos to see how crazy that is). Well, shortly after he was barefoot, he stepped in a large colony of red ants and they chewed up his foot pretty good. Oh yeah, Amir also fell down the hill, but TMC was there luckily and caught him just before he would have plunged into a roll down very rocky terrain.
TMC took us on this trek because it was a nice easy one, just to get warmed up.
Overall, it was super-cool! He wants us to work our way to climbing a mountain that actually takes 8-12hrs of climbing time: just to ascend! If I had this much fun on this one, I can't wait for that! I really hope next time I go that it is nicer out so that I can take more pictures of the rainforest canopy as we climb. It really is spectacular! It was just such a phenomenal experience. This is the Malaysia I came to see! Lots more of this type of thing to come!
I tried to post a pic here, but it's not letting me (I'm not sure why...no time to play with it now)
With that out of the way: Marianne'll be here by tomorrow afternoon! As we speak (or rather, as I type), she is in a plane over the ocean. Total travel time for her: I think over thirty hours. From TO to SanFran to HongKong to Singapore and to Malaysia. I hope she's still doing ok. She left TO around 17hrs ago. 13 more to go!
So, I've been doing lots of work trying to get ahead so that when she's here I'm not at the office all day, and instead we can go out on the town, Baby! Yeah! ...Or something. Actually, this weekend I have a trip booked to Langkawi: a little island off the west coast. It's supposed to be very nice. Although, the airline that I wanted to fly with (Air Asia) didn't have any late enough flights on Fri. So we're flying with the "good" airline: MAS (Malaysian Airlines). Turns out with MAS, the flight costs us over twice as much as it would have with Air Asia. So in total, for both of us it came to $315CAN. Outrageous. Hopefully we'll have some decent photos to post of the beaches! I'm also definitely going to take pictures of my place in the next few days and post them. I know what you're thinking, and yes you are right...Marianne will probably take pics of my place and post them.
She's staying for just under three weeks. I am super-pumped that she's coming!!! (I actually wrote "super-pimped" by accident, but I figured that was a typo that definitely needed correcting).
Other than getting into the office at 7:30 in the morning and leaving at around 10:30 or 11:00 (I'm at the office right now), I did find some time go on a trek with a few locals. It was an unofficial trip, since we didn't have waiver forms for the students to sign. As such we only took one student with us (a guy that the lead trekker/lecturer knows from before). So we went: Myself, TMC (Tan Meng Chwen) the master trekker, climber, everything basically),a former student of his (from 4 years ago) by the name of Neon (I'm serious), and Shima (another lecturer at the school).
It, uhhh...It was, shall we say, an adventure. Anyway, the important thing is that everyone is still alive and has their vision and feet are still in one piece.
It was extremely hazy that day, so it wasn't a picture day. In spite of that I did post some to my album just because I know that's what people want to see (if anything).
The trek was awesome. It was a hill called Bukit Tabur. Bukit meaning hill in Malay. TMC said it would take about 2hrs to get up to the peak and back down. Well, about 2 hrs into it, we weren't nearly to the peak. I'm sure if he was on his own he could do the entire thing in two hrs...Anyway, it was starting to get dark and we were worried about being stuck on the hill (in the jungle) in the middle of the night. This hill did have a trial (you might call it), but it was quite rugged. Anyway, the short version...right: We turned around and came back down. On the way, a branch nearly took out my eye. But hey, now I've got a cool new scar! Also, poor Shima: her shoe got caught in between two rocks and she couldn't get it out. Now we were on the side of a cliff at this point. There was no room for me to go up beside her and help out. So, since I was behind her, me thinking that I'm a smart guy and all decide I would slip my toe underneath her heal and prop her shoe out. It makes sense, right? Anyway, As I provide some leverage, she pulls up with her foot. What happens? Her foot comes out of her shoe, just as her shoe pops out from between the rocks...And goes flying off the side of the cliff. I'm not talking a few feet. It fell off a vertical wall, easily 300ft down. The shoe was lost for good. I felt terrible. Shima would not hear of taking my shoes, and got quite upset with me for asking repeatedly. She walked down the hill in sock feet! But now we were moving even more slowly and darkness was falling quickly. So, TMC told the three of us to go up ahead and he and Shima would come down by the light of a little penlight he had with him. (I know good preparation; but we were supposed to be up and down in a few hours. We started at 3:30!). Anyway, the three of us got down before it was pitch black, but TMC and Shima came down after dark. I guess somewhere along the line, TMC conviced Shima to take one of his sandals (Yes, this dude was climbing this thing in sandals:take a look at the photos to see how crazy that is). Well, shortly after he was barefoot, he stepped in a large colony of red ants and they chewed up his foot pretty good. Oh yeah, Amir also fell down the hill, but TMC was there luckily and caught him just before he would have plunged into a roll down very rocky terrain.
TMC took us on this trek because it was a nice easy one, just to get warmed up.
Overall, it was super-cool! He wants us to work our way to climbing a mountain that actually takes 8-12hrs of climbing time: just to ascend! If I had this much fun on this one, I can't wait for that! I really hope next time I go that it is nicer out so that I can take more pictures of the rainforest canopy as we climb. It really is spectacular! It was just such a phenomenal experience. This is the Malaysia I came to see! Lots more of this type of thing to come!
I tried to post a pic here, but it's not letting me (I'm not sure why...no time to play with it now)
posted by Leon at 10:43 PM
1 Comments:
First of all, Hi Marianne!!!! :D I hope you have a great time. Secondly, Leo, YOU'RE NUTS! I'm glad you didn't lose an eye stinker. Punk. Seriously of course only you would decide that was cool. haha. I'm glad you're ok and poor Shima losing a shoe because of you ;) Enjoy your weekend getaway!
xoxox
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