Kuala Lumpur: the Early Days

You know you've made it when you come through the arrivals gate and there are two people waiting for you with a sign that says "Alice Abrams."  Craig and I had both separately always hoped for such a greeting...  After over 24 hours in transit, the sight of our sponsors was particularly welcome.
It's hard to see the countryside at midnight, but the city was hard to miss: so many skyscrapers at the end of a freeway flanked by dark, thickly growing trees...

Our neighborhood is just off a main thoroughfare and is residential with modern multi-unit buildings and more colonial appearing homes behind 6-8 foot stucco walls.  Going up to our apartment entails swiping a card over the glass in the elevator and arriving at our private balcony to enter our front sliding glass door.  We wandered around, checking out our new digs before collapsing into bed.



The first thing I did the next morning, while trying to find the light switch for the dry kitchen, was press the panic button. Why I thought a round red button might do anything benign is beyond me. After the alarm started, I noticed the sign over the red button: "Panic."  I followed orders and ran around in a panic, trying to figure out how to make it stop.  Our guards rang the bell, but there wasn't anyone at the sliding door and it took us a bit to find the back door and let them in to shut off the noise.  Fortunately the panic button does not alert the Embassy guards!

Live chicken in the morning
grilled chicken at night !!!

The first few days have flown by...
The welcome has been warm: each person I meet tells me how happy they are for my arrival! No pressure there... Our sponsor hosted a fabulous Saturday brunch, then took us to get a few staples.  It's hard to describe the mental confusion of arriving at a new place, your body sorting a 12-hour time difference, with no landmarks or known reference points to guide you.  And, then the miraculous work of your brain in just a few short days of finding those landmarks as you actually gain bearings and feel a smidge of confidence that you won't be dizzy and dependent forever.
We walked to the central park this morning (KLCC) without any guidance, then walked home from the local ex-pat grocers alone.  "There's our building!"  Craig was taken to the market at 7:30 am and came back with veg & cut while you wait chicken - which provided our first cooked meal that night !


...So Alice has just left for her second full day of work and this dog & pony show is off to the race tracks !  It has been a good arrival schedule allowing us to be introduced to part of the Embassy community while beginning the settling in process, learning how not to hit panic buttons ;) and how to open doors by clapping the key card on EXACTLY the right spot of the sensor... meanwhile the many guards sit and chuckle at our fumbling around... We must go through a total of 5 doors - all with security locks to arrive inside our home...



Our apartment is clean, elegant and full of new ways to cook, clean and dispose of garbage !!!
Then there is the pool !!!

                                                    


The mantra - "WE CAN DO THIS" is constantly being chanted.  We have been mostly able to set up our phones and quickly learned that WhatsApp is the vastly preferred means of talking around the world so we strongly encourage everyone in our sphere to download the app:

https://whatsapp.com/dl/ 

Now we can add yet one more method of staying in touch !!!

Both Alice and I have our new cell phone numbers:

If calling/texting us from the US -   006 is the country code for Malaysia

Alice: 006 017 651 4862
Craig: 006 017 335 9146

We are 15 hours ahead of Portland/West Coast... have fun doing the math on that one !!!  Actually it works out pretty well for mid afternoon (3pm) West Coast & early morning (6am) KL chats !

More soon - we are now taking reservations through 2018 !!!!!!!

The Rad Tax

Saturday before our departure: loads of errands to consider and not a minute to spare.  Time for a trail run, of course.
I've been working on a circuit along the Potomac, but first try was turned around by high water in late February.  Seemed like the time to go and get home by late morning to get in last minute sites and sounds of DC.
I left a carefully crafted plan for Craig (we now know this is part of self preservation) on where I would be running, but also left my cell phone.
Setting off, I saw a cardinal flash through the brush, which is an amazing site for a girl from the Pacific Northwest. Surely, an auspicious sign!
Mile 3.8 or so, I missed the climb up to a bluff above Chain Bridge.  The blue markings disappeared, but I could see the bridge and quite a few guys fishing on the banks of the river.  It wasn't a bad idea to just push on and take a slight detour.
Until it was a really bad idea.  While crossing a stream over a a very sharp rock sitting at an angle in the stream bed, I slipped. It hurt a bit more than usual, so I looked at my left knee, noting blood and a large gash where the skin used to smooth over the top of my knee cap. Brief reflection on our medical training last week: No tourniquet needed... But the run was over and the day decidedly out of alignment.
A nice fisherman, who turned out to be another foreign service officer soon-to-be-in-training, gallantly drove me to urgent care and a few hours later, 5 stitches in place, I was free to kick myself repeatedly.  But, sweet Craig reminded me through gritted teeth I'm a rad chick.  Sometimes, you have to pay a tax for being rad.  We'll call it the Rad Tax.  Apparently, usually due just before you have to get on a plane to move to the other side of the planet. I've done it before, but that is really a story for another day!

Whatever happened after Alice left for Washington, DC?

Our back story in brief:

Some time in the summer of '14, Alice huddled over her computer with her sister, Mary, completing a very long and detailed application for the U. S. State Department to become a Medical Provider serving in an Embassy anywhere worldwide.  A few months later, her sweetheart, Craig was diagnosed with throat cancer; then she flew to Washington, DC, for an interview and passed, paving the way to diplomatic life; so he proposed to her on Valentine's day and they got married in June (so fun!); and they waited... And waited...  And waited...

Craig got better and they painted the house, enjoying the hottest summer in Portland history.

The finished masterpiece

Then Mary, Gary, and Stella, their dog, moved to Hawaii.
Alice and Craig gave up hope of ever leaving...
Until one day an email came that Alice had passed her top secret security clearance and another week passed, and poof! She was invited to start training  in Washington, DC, on January 25, 2016....

When a blizzard hit...

My first two days as a federal employee were snow days since the government was shut down due to the blizzard. (Forgive the switch to first person for no apparent reason.) We arrived to find two feet of snow on the ground late on Monday and spent Tuesday sledding. Craig stayed with me in DC for 3 weeks.  Our orientation involved lots of briefings with about 90 other specialist candidates who will fan out over the globe to support our diplomatic corps in the areas of administration, IT, security, courier services, and of course, medical services!

Alice and Oliver in the race for the White House

Daddy Craig lives on as Uncle Craig

On flag day, our first tour location was declared: Malaysia!

We were sworn in by a Deputy Secretary of State at a ceremony attended by Charlotte, Craig, and Craig's niece Aimee and her family.

Then, poof! Craig headed back to Portland to continue packing up 15 years of history and I entered the next phase of training, focusing on running a health unit. Our group was small: two other nurse practitioners, one PA, one lab tech, and a doctor.  We went to Bethesda to learn about parasitology (ew!), took classes on leadership and supervision in Arlington, and flew off to San Diego for training with over 100 other medical providers and medical officers from all over the world. Every day amazes me. All these people who reference their lives in far flung places like Conakry and Jakarta like they live down the street.

Fast forward again: Craig packed up the house with some professional help,

sold our cars, and many other things on Craig's List, went skiing in Montana, and finally came back to DC.

One last fling in the cold with Willie & Tom

Shock and awe in Big Sky

Now we find ourselves learning how to represent our country in far away lands and preparing to board our plane to Malaysia early next week !!! We've made final trips to Trader Joes and Costco in the vain attempt to take a slice of home with us, not knowing what creature comforts will fade into memory to be replaced by unknown equatorial wonders !!!

The adventure is really about to begin, although it has felt pretty darn adventurous since that day in the summer of '14.  

Here we are in Old Town (and it really is an old town) Winchester, Virginia after a hard day of training... Now that's another story!

Stay tuned for our first impressions from Malaysia...

Selamat Tinggal !!!