My Malaysian summer days
We've been in Malaysia for over two weeks, since July 10th. Life takes a different pace when we are here. Instead of waking at 6 AM and rushing to school or work, at the sound of a buzzing alarm clock (or a harried parent shaking Erika awake), we wake when the sun's rays are high in the tropical sky around 8:30 AM or later. We change out of our pajamas, and casually come downstairs. We wait for everyone to be awake, then head out to lunch at a local outdoor hawker center-- it is a feature that is not found in America. Hawker centers are like mobile food trucks in the USA except without the wheels, so it's a compact stall where a vendor may sell a certain style of food: variations of fish ball noodles, for example. You could get fish ball, fish cake, or fish strips, in a broth; with a variety of long vermicelli-like rice noodles, flat linguine-like noodles, or round noodles, etc. The next store over may sell burrito-like sliced vegetables called Popiah. It's hard to explain the cuisine, since none of it is found in AMerica. It's hard to function in the harsh sun of tropical Malaysia between the hours of 10 AM and 4 PM-- so much so, that locals look at you with a mix of amusement and shock when you suggest any sort of outdoor activity between those hours. "Ah, those foreigners!" they will laughingly retell the story to their friends over coffee later at midnight, "they said they plan to walk around the outdoor markets at noon! Hahaha!" they will chortle.
And then there is the case of non-overlapping naptimes. Amelia (our 1-year old toddler) takes her morning nap at 11 AM to 12:30 PM. Then Gong Gong (65-year old granddad) naps from 1:00 - 2:30 PM. And Erika, who spends that entire time zoning out in front of the TV watching cartoons on Disney Jr., finally gets tired and goes down for her nap at 3:30 - 5:00 P.M. As you can surmise, if we try any time of daytime excursion, often to an indoor shopping complex to escape the relentless heat outdoors, one of the three of them ends up exhausted and cranky... We still attempt it occassionally, or we'd all go stir crazy from too much cabin fever.
Next we find a place for dinner around 5:30 PM, eat for an hour, then walk around for a bit until 8:00 PM. A shower to cool off and wash off the dust from the day, then bedtime for the children at 9:00 PM.
Rinse and repeat.