Getting Down to Business

After a nice long weekend to start off my time in KL, it is finally time to get down to business. The highlight of the weekend was a visit from my colleague, and friend, Tigga Kingston who is currently at Krau Wildlife Reserve studying bats. Tigga is the person that first got me to think about Malaysia, so I have her to thank, or blame, for this experience. We had the second installment of "Crickets in KL"- I wish you all could have been there.

Visit to MACEE

The Malaysian-American Comission on Educational Exchange (MACEE) is the group that officially oversees the Fulbright Program in Malaysia. Dr. Jim Coffman and his staff (especially Meena) have been extremely helpful throughout the who process. Today I visited MACEE for the first time to get started on some of the paperwork, and the important stuff like getting paid. They wrote me a couple of checks, but I haven't been able to deposit the cash yet because I can't open a bank account here until they do a background check (I knew my career in money laundering would catch up to me- I have a big wad of cash right now, so please don't tell anyone my hotel room number). They introduced me to Bill Adams, a current Fulbrighter from George Washington University who has been working in the Public Administration Department at the University of Malaya. I was able to visit his apartment and chat for a couple of hours about his experiences in KL and working at UM. I was pleased that the only regret he had is that he wasn't ready to go home. I am sorry that Bill and I will only over lap for a short period of time. I think that there are two other Fulbrighters coming from the US later on this month.

House Hunting

I spent most of the afternoon on the internet searching the "apartment for rent" adds and walking around looking at places. Not surprisingly, the quality of apartments varies greatly and seems to correlate very strongly with how much you pay. Because I will be here for 10 months I have decided that I will try not to skimp on housing.

The big decision is to decide in which part of town do I want to live in. I am currently staying in Bukit Bintang, a very active part of the city located quite close to everything that is going on down town. Because I have never lived in a big city before it might be fun to stay down here and commute out the the university. Alternatively, it is possible to get housing nearer to UM, but there doesn't appear as much to do nearby the apartments that are closer to the University (and it seems like the apartments are not close enough for them to be considered to be super convenient). Tomorrow I visit the university so I will be able see how difficult it is to get there (I will take the monorail to the train then walk- alternatively taxis are pretty cheap) and what it looks like once I am there. Because of the magic of the internet and google Earth, I have a pretty good idea where apartment complexes in certain parts of KL are located- pretty wierd.

Strange Thought of the Day

Not surprisingly, most things here seem pretty "foreign" to me. I am trying to learn which way to look before crossing the street (but there is one street that will certainly be the death of me because you cross a divided road where the cars are going one way and when you try to get from the center divider to the other side you find that the cars of coming the same direction- who would thinking of looking to the left on both sides of the street). Luckily, I am learning where the overpass crossovers are.

Anyway, I still don't get much meaning out of the street signs, so all of my navigation is based on things that are familiar to me. There is the "McDonald's Street", the "KFC corner", the "Pizza Hut road", etc. (maybe that's what the Malay words are saying on the street signs). Two familiar things that you can not use to navigate in KL are Starbucks and 7-11s. One day I will get bored and formally count which of those two are most common. It makes me thing that the national drink of Malaysia must be Slurpees and Coffee.


Visit to UM Tomorrow

Tomorrow I will visit University of Malaya, my host university. I will meet with folks from human resourced department who will get me fixed up with identifcation cards, start to work on my visas, etc. and with my new colleagues in the Institute of Biological Sciences. I am excited to meet them and get started. Hopefully, I will be settled into an apartment in the next couple of days and I can really get down to business (this hotel living is getting expensive).