Miracle Pau

There's nothing better than a good Chinese pau...aka "steamed bun". Sad to say, I did not enjoy them nearly as often as I should have.

The red bean is my favorite. mmmmm, look at that delicious filling. It's the feeling that you get when you bite into the jelly filling of a jelly donut. Except better.



This is the "also delicious but not as good as the sweet pau" chicken-filled pau, at the beach. They're the perfect travel food. They're just as delicious squashed flat as they are round and fluffy.



They will accompany me on my long journey home.

Baby Turtles

When I was a kid my dream was to be a marine biologist. All that I cared about in life existed in water. What did I do for my 6th birthday party in 1989? I went with my friends to see the Little Mermaid, of course. My next birthday, in 1990, I got the movie on video cassette - DVDs didn’t exist back then. It was then that I made a promise to myself to watch it everyday, for the rest of my life. I had the entire movie memorized. I had checked out every single book in the local library that had anything to do with anything ocean. My mom taped every Jacques Cousteau special on TV, and I mourned his passing.

I knew more about sea sponges than anyone. I called jelly fish by their proper scientific name. I pretended I was a mermaid in the pool. I was obsessed.

That suppressed childhood dream came out in me again today. Look what I found at Turtle Beach, at the turtle conservation centere! Finally, the beach lives up to its namesake!





We also spotted a lone otter playing in the surf.



This made me so giddy!

termites and BYU

All this grad school applying has raised a few perplexing questions in my mind.

Question number one. Do I report my grades from my calculus class that I took from BYU? And why in the world did I choose Brigham Young University? I know it is because Calculus didn't fit into my schedule and they were the only school that offered an online course. I just think it's funny that I virtually 'attended' a Mormon university for a time, as I do the fact that my professor stated in his profile that he had 15 children (or something like that). Luckily it was only an online course, otherwise I might have to dress like this: http://www.mtc.byu.edu/doc/sisters.pdf Not that I'm making fun of them or anything, but I'm not a jumper and black pumps kind of person. Although I had a pretty sweet lady-bug print jumper once. My mom made it for me.

Question number two. How did the lowest grade of my senior year go to the class "Backpacking"? Does this mean I am an incompetent hiker? Perhaps I carried too much gear than I should have, but it was still practically winter by Seattle standards...I hate the cold and I had to come prepared! That's no reason to give me a B, Dr. Weathers!

Some quite amazing storms have hit Penang in the past few days. What do storms mean here in Malaysia? Two words: Termite Infestation. Swarms and swarms of them, all attracted to light. They fly into all my light fixtures. When I turn all the lights off, they dive-bomb into the candles that I lit, drowning in the wax. Their 'winged-stage' only last a few hours, then they decide to drop their wings and find some wood to crawl into and destroy. The only remains of them in the morning was countless wings all over the place that are impossible to sweep up.

The same night as the termite infestation, I was at the night market. The termites were there, too, and they were swarming in full force. Not always, but once in a while, there's someone begging at the market. This evening I saw someone new - I noticed him because he looked Burmese and only had one arm - probably lost in work accident, my guess, and resorted to begging because employers don't give people like him compensation. We had bought some corn on the cob to bring home, so I thought I'd give him a piece. I wanted to talk to him, if I could, to find out if he is refugee. Turns out, he doesn't speak much english, but was able to figure out that he is indeed Burmese. I gave him my corn and he was grateful. As soon as I walked away, I felt a sudden tinge of guilt for giving corn on the cob to a one-armed man. How is he going to eat it? I thought to myself. Did I just insult a handicapped man? I'm so insensitive. I told this to Reuben and he laughed and demonstrated that you can, indeed, eat corn on the cob with one hand. I guess I'm used to eating corn with those little stick handles that come out of the sides - you definitely need 2 hands for those. Americans are so spoiled. Good thing refugees don't need cob-holders to eat corn.

I got my hair cut today. Malaysian salons (or as they call it, 'saloons') shampoo your hair without using a sink. Amazing! It comes with a 20 minute head and neck massage. I'll be coming back to the States with a little bit of a mullet, but the 80s are coming back, right?

Morning Market

When you live somewhere awhile life becomes so ordinary. The market just becomes a market. The chicken man does his highly-unsanitary thing day after day and you don't even think about it (and never seems to display salmonella symptoms). The American oldies songs blaring from the speakers at the Chinese market are only mildly entertaining. You don't bat an eye at the rats scurrying about. I end up at the Tanjung Bungah wet market at least twice a week for my food shopping. And I just realized that I'm really going to miss this when I leave. It's not your typical American grocery shopping experience. So this morning I brought my camera to capture it in pictures.

Veggie Man. Every time he tries to convince me to buy celery. I hate celery.




Yummy fruits!



My egg lady. She's the one that introduced me to the double-yolk eggs.



The chicken man. This has "salmonella" written all over it.



Breakfast at the market. My favorite tosei/chapati lady is in the middle stall.



My dear masala tosei...I will miss you when I leave.



A steaming bowl of Wantan Mee, one of my Chinese favorites. Yes, noodles for breakfast is normal here.



Mister Stray Market Dog

Chironex fleckeri

I saw the movie Seven Pounds today. Way to go, Will! He pulled off another great one. A little perplexing, perhaps, but he was great in it.

I come away from this movie with one side effect: I am now terrified of box jellyfish. I cannot tell you why, because it would completely ruin the movie, which you should go see.

For a few weeks now, there have been rumors of box jellyfish being along the Penang coastline. I've seen my fair share of smacks (that's what a group of jellyfish is called - which is, coincidentally, pretty much the only piece of information I can recall from my 3 years as a biology major at SPU) at the beach over the past few months, but I have no way of knowing what kind they are. I'm no sea jelly expert. But whether they are Chironex fleckeri or not doesn't really matter to me; I'll stay out of the water no matter what. They must flourish in the Island's polluted waters and gorge themselves on the EColi. Yummy yummy.

This is just one of many jellyfish I found on the beach 2 years ago. Chironex fleckeri, perhaps???????



Interesting facts: Box jellyfish have the most deadly venom of all the animal kingdom. "You have virtually no chance of surviving the venomous sting, unless treated immediately. The pain is so excruciating and overwhelming that you would most likely go into shock and drown before reaching the shore." "Box jellies are not 'dim-witted ocean drifters' but 'fast, active predators that hunt and kill with incredible speed and brutality.'"

Krista and I went sea kayaking on Sunday. We saw jelly-fish and only casually and nonchalantly steered around it. Thank God we waited until today to this movie, otherwise it would have given us quite a fright.

Perhaps we should invest in some 'stinger suits'. Maybe the Malays have known this all along when they started marketing the Muslim-inspired swim-wear:

Day 1

The following takes place between 6:00am and 12:00am. Events occur in real time. [Tribute to "24"]

0600 – I wake up. Pre-run meal: part of a PowerBar and a banana. Goal: A long run by myself and avoid as much traffic as possible.

0620 – On the road running. No cars or trucks whizzing by for the first 13 minutes – just me and Coldplay. Glorious! [although most of that time was running around the parking lot – but that doesn’t make it any less of a miracle]

0625 – The early birds are beginning to emerge from the blackness and gather for the earliest morning gossip at the local kedai kopi (coffee shop). The Indian eatery has yet to receive its first customer as I run by.

0640 – Some punk at the Tanjung Bungah Beach Hotel terrorizes me with a green laser pen for about 100 meters. I spot the perpetrator from the his (I'm assuming it's a he) hotel window. Isn't that more of a late-night activity?

0700 – I catch my first glimpse of the glorious horizon and the sea as I approach the Seri Tanjung Bungah boardwalk.

0710 – I pass the multi-million dollar houses into the migrant-worker housing. Since last week, they have caged in (such a bad way to term it, but it’s exactly how it sounds) their ‘housing’ (aka shipping crates), so they are no longer visible. No more public tooth-brushing or shameless bathing beauties. A few of them are out enjoying the sunrise also. I stop to eat my Jelly Belly Sport Beans....mmmm yummy.

0730 – I drink the last of my Gatorade and trudge up the most daunting of the hills. I make it to the top, thanks to Celine Dion. Early morning calm is over, and traffic chokes the streets (and me). I notice that I get more beep-beeps from the motorbikes when I'm alone.

0750 – I spot a rather large monitor lizard in the creek/sludge. One more hill, then I'm finished! I take some time to stretch on the playground equipment and hobble back to my place to make breakfast - which I'm not particularly hungry for; but I gotta eat!

1000 – Church.

1200 – We get dropped off at the mall. Didn’t actually want to go here, but that’s as far as our ride went. We don't even go inside - instead we take the bus the rest of the way home.

1300 – I try to take a nap, but to no avail. I was engrossed by a National Geographic article about the origin of blue eyes in humans. A mutation of just one letter in the entire human genome, the blue eyed beauties apparently emerged just 6-10,000 years ago, in some Neolithic farmer somewhere around the Black Sea. In Typical Darwinian fashion, they say that blue eyes is associated with paler skin, which admits more sunlight needed to synthesize vitamin D - hence blue eyes help people survive. Or, our blue-eyed friends may have been more attractive to the opposite sex - thus propagating the trait faster than boring old brown eyes.

1500 – Sea kayaking. My first time taking out a kayak in Penang, we go along the Tanjung Bungah beach coast-line. The wild-life was plentiful: jelly-fish, swarms of squid, and the ubiquitous Tiger beer bottle.

2000 – ESL classes with the Nepalis. My beginner class (the middle of the 3 classes) has 4 faithful students. Thank God I’m not teaching; I think my brain would explode. In the state I'm in right now, my English is about the same level as theirs. “Mother, father, son, daughter, grandmother, grandfather, sister, brother, wife, husband”! Good job guys!

2200 – Late night snack with my fellow teacher volunteers in little India - fresh tosai and naan bread...it doesn't get any better than this!

2300 – Finally, the day is done! I stay up for an extra hour watching some ridiculous Kelsea Grammar sitcom on TV, and writing this.

2400 - I crawl wearily into bed. Peculiarly, I'm not as tired as I should be.

Electricity in Preschool

I read really fast. I was always a fast reader – in preschool I prided myself in the fact that I could read the word “electricity”. Is that normal for a preschooler? Perhaps it is simply average…maybe I was a just a mediocre kid; I’ll never know.

I read lots of books, on all sorts of different and interesting topics. Normally, I am reading at least 3 books at a time: one for pleasure (good old John Grisham or ever entertaining Jane Austin), one for learning (author of the moment – Howard Hendricks), and one for spiritual growth (still plugging away at Celebration of Discipline). I like it this way – I can read depending on my mood.

I’ve read a lot of books in the past 2 years – I can’t even remember which ones. What did I learn from all this reading, you might ask? Absolutely nothing. Which brings me to my point.

I have decided to try something different from now on. Obviously my reading strategy wasn’t working for me – I need a new technique. Ol’ Hendricks has a great idea – spend more time reflecting. If you have an hour allotted for reading, for example, spend 30 minutes reading and 30 minutes reflecting. That’s my problem. I don’t reflect. I cruise through a book, thinking “oh, this is interesting”, but I never think about the words beyond the pages of the book. So the first thing that I chose to reflect on was about how to reflect on your reading...hmm.

I’ve learned a lot since I’ve started using this technique. It really works - I should start my own infomercial! In honor of this new method I have adopted, here’s a few things I learned, off-hand. (The only reason I can remember them off-hand is that I though and reflected on them – amazing!)

“The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent or gifted people, but for deep people”. (Richard J. Foster) Depth of experience, depth of wisdom, conversation, thinking, prayer - whatever. I’m tired of talking about American Idol and the weather. It’s high time we moved out of the comfort of superficiality and into the vulnerability and riskiness of depth. It’s worth it.

Mining 1 ounce of gold (about the amount used in an average wedding ring) displaces about 250 tons of rock and ore. But it’s not just about the environment; think you’re doing your good deed for the world by not buying ‘blood diamonds’? One third of all the world’s gold is illegally mined, and some is used to fund violence. Dirty gold. (From National Geographic)

“Jesus looked on him and loved him” – Mark 10:21
The Bible is amazing because it is packed with so many layers of depth and insight. Whether you skim the book of Mark as a whole or study the dots and the commas, it reveals something new and rich and wonderful about the character of God. When we look at people, do we love them with real, genuine love from the heart? Do we love the FedEx man, the parking meter guy, and the strangers we stroll by? Jesus did. How wonderful – and challenging – are these seven words.


“Instead of asking God why there is so much poverty and suffering in the world, we should be asking ourselves why we allow it to happen; we are Christ’s body, hands, and feet”. (Shane Claiborne) If that’s not convicting, I don’t know what else is. Enough said.