Monday, July 26, 2010

10 things I learned after I arrived!

10. All their units are in imperial unit,

9. Chili sauce are made from tomato puree,

8. Most of the food are salted and their Chinese food sweetened,

7. Every time you want to subscribe to a service, you will be ‘credit check’ for your credit history,

6. You need a phone number so that you can be reached to subscribed to a cell phone service although it’s a pre-paid service,

5. It’s all about tax and tips,

4. You have to listened hard to differentiate the pronunciation of can and can’t. I now says ‘I can’ or ‘I cannot’!,

3. People drive on the right side and even walk on the right side of the corridor,

2. Most of them think their summer is too humid and hot for them. Wait till they are in tropical countries and they will know what is hot and humid, and

1. All their toilet don’t have a hose or tap. Do remember to bring  wet tissueS if you want it really clean after your ‘business’!

Thursday, July 22, 2010

life @ Hershey

We have been in Hershey for a week. Our life now slowly falls into a routine. We have get over our jet lag. It wasn’t that bad with the time difference but it’s very tiring. For the past one week, we have been going to bed around 9pm and woke up at 5am.  Today, we manage to sleep till 7.30am which is good for us.

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After that, I will get ready for work and Mee Siing will gets up to prepare breakfast and to do some house chores. I have to walk for about 20 minutes to work which is quite leisurely. I will passed through a shopping area and a large condominium community. Walk back home will be a bit hot for now as it is summer and the sun is very bright. I hope I can get a car when autumn comes.

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Mee Siing will also work on her thesis. However, being home alone and in a new place, it is quite boring and lonely for her. She still can’t go anywhere or visit anyone. Hopefully, when we go to church this Sunday, we will be able to make more friends and she will have more people who she can mix with.

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We try to sign up for a phone too but since I am still new here, I will have to pay a deposit of USD500. This is not worth it since I won’t be using so much. Everything here has to be ‘credit-checked’ before you can subscribed to something. This actually makes the life here harder to settle into fast. You want a cellphone, TV, electric, gas, etc…anything that need subscription, you will be credit checked. If there is no record or history of you, you will need to make a deposit for a year. Imagine how much money is there…

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Next thing is that you will need to get a driving license too. Most places you go to, they will ask for your driving license. That’s their way of looking at our Malaysian  ‘IC’. You don’t let people know your social security number here and you don’t carry them out too!

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Nevertheless, we still need to find our footing here. A lot of things need to get used too. There are four seasons here and the weather changes very fast. It is too dry for our liking.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Arrive at Hershey & Culture Shock

Finally, we arrived at Hershey, Pennsylvania after 26 hours long flight. We thanked God that He made our journey smooth. For all the flights were delayed. However, somehow, all flights arrived at the destination earlier than schedule. So, we managed to get on all our connecting flights.

Our rented place here is fully furnished and has a big garden. We like the place. It’s very convenience for us to walk the supermarket to do our groceries and also for me to walk to faculty to work.

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Anyway, hopefully the novelty of new place and doing new stuff will not wear out. Did I mention that we can see rabbits, squirrels and fireflies in our garden. They are everywhere, especially the squirrels. Hopefully, this will not be a pest later on.

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Anyway, we learned new things too that we are here and some of those which give us a ‘jolt’ to our system.

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Firstly, almost all Chinese food is is sweetened. Fried noodles is sweet and they eat together with rice. I can’t imagine how sweet the ‘Sweet and Sour’ pork will be.

Secondly, most American products are salted. Bread is salted too. How to eat that? I wake up so many night thirsty for water. AND their Chocolate powder is salted too!

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How to drink that? Imagines drininking milo with salt in it! Yucks!

Thirdly, the Chilly sauce…Gosh...American take ketchup only. We are so happy to see Chilly sauce and bought one.DSC01707

However, later we found out their Chilly sauce don’t have Chilly as one of their ingredient. But guess what they use to produce that? TOMATO puree!

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Why do they need to call it the Chilly sauce when it’s sweet and not a hinge of spicy-ness too it and it’s made from TOMATO! We ended making our own by adding Tabasco sauce to our ‘Chilly sauce’!

Fourth, the whole house is carpeted. I know we will need this later on in the winter and we have to get used to it. However, being an Asian, first thing I thought of when going for our initial shopping is to buy a mop so that we can clean the house. But, where can I mop now except our kitchen. However, now we clean the house using the vacuum cleaner.

Oh…they wear their shoes into their home. How can you do that when you wear your shoe everywhere you go and you step on God-knows-what and then, you just walk into the bedroom which is fully carperted with shoes on?

Sun here during summer rises around 5am and set at 9pm. We are still learning to adapt to that especially in the morning when we wake up too early. But we like it at night when we can still walk to the supermarket at 7 and it’s bright when we come back.

I think there will be more to come as we learn to adapt and stay here. But every moment of it, we are also missing home so much.

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Friday, July 9, 2010

Moving

Soon, we will be moving to US. Well, Hershey in particular. I don’t like to call it migrating, well, it is not. We hope to come back here in another few years. However, as the date draw nearer, more and more stuff is cropping up for us to settle. Anyway, I know we are having a mixed feeling about everything now.

For once, a lot seems to be a lot mores sentimental. I start to have the ‘this-will-be-the-last-and-don’t-know-when-will-be-back’ feeling now. The last time I am going to cut my hair in this barber shop, last time dining in the various restaurants, last time meeting up with our friends in Malaysia. A lot of last time, at least before our trip to US…

Packing. The number of bags seems to be increasing and the weight too. It doesn’t help especially when ‘this also I want, that also I want’ and keep asking question like, Do you think I can get that there? Let’s be safe!

Family members. It’s always the hardest to be away or part with them. Close friends too. Have been praying hard that we don’t cry on the day.

Trying to expect what to be expected. It’s an exciting but scary experience to go to a new place. It’s always very easy if it’s for a month or two, but when you know it’s for a long term and you don’t have your return ticket, it’s scary. How will be people be like? How will your colleague like? how is the working experience? How will be the weather? a lot of uncertainty and questions but I guess, that’s life and have to trust God. 

Nevertheless, it will be exciting to try to stay in a different country and culture. It will be new experience for us from the all-year-round summer country and to enjoy the new four seasons and having sun rises at 5am and set at 10pm during summer.

It will be exciting to learn new things and although the same language but might be a bit different of how we are going to use the word or even to pronounce it!

Let see how it goes and I do hope I can have time to continue to update this blog. If not, let’s hope my wife will get on the bandwagon of blogging!

Adios!