Our family had been planning this move to Penang, Malaysia for what seems like forever (in reality it's almost exactly a year). My wife, Rochelle, works as an engineer at Intel. No, not the cloak and dagger intelligence ‘intel’, but the computer chip maker. Though how cool would it be to have your wife in the spy game? Maybe not so cool when I realize she could dispatch me with a Q-tip if I annoyed her (which I do all the time). Previously we moved to Rio Rancho, New Mexico (which we honestly really like. Seriously.) to work at the plant there, and who are now leveraging her skills in Southeast Asia as they build a new factory in Malaysia. Having previously discussed accepting an expat assignment, Rochelle asked me one day out of the blue “what do you think about going to Malaysia?” I, in my usual unflappable eloquence responded, “uh...waa...whe...huh?” Thereby showing my vast and unmatched knowledge of the world we live in. So I put away my crayons and pictures of butterflies and diligently started to research (i.e. Google) this far away exotic land of…of…of… oh yes, my 'knowledge' was impressive. I quickly learned that Malaysia sits between Thailand and Vietnam on the north, Philippines on the east and Singapore and Indonesia on the west and south. The country is split in two major pieces, the main area sits on the mainland peninsula of southeast Asia, and the other part sharing a large island with Indonesia.
The national language of Malaysia is Bahasa Melayu (Malay), also called Malaysian Malay or just Malay, and it is spoken by over 80% of the population. The second official language of Malaysia is English, which is also one of the most commonly spoken languages overall (the three main 'Malaysian' languages are Malay, Hokkien, Mandarin and Tamil). This small country is home to a diverse 137 living languages. So basically if you come here you’ll need to learn 17,000 languages. OR just the main Bahasa Melayu language. OR just speak English (which coincidentally, I just so happen to speak fairly well. BONUS!). The country is very warm and humid (i.e. HOT and MUGGY, but as they say it’s not bad because it’s a 'wet' heat). The tropical terrain has monkeys (good and bad ones), big ol' monitor lizards (aka Dinosaurs), flying squirrels (death from above), tigers (run away) and if that wasn't enough, the largest population of Cobras in the world! Yay! This will make hiking or playing paintball in the jungle exciting! In my mind I imagined when we arrived we would find a place with lots of muddy roads, villages with thatched roofs, and fruity drinks with umbrellas in them. What I found was a thriving, modern country which in many ways are leading all of Southeast Asia. The capital city of Kuala Lumpur (known locally as 'KL') is well known, at least the Petronas Towers are to us westerners (we’ve all seen pics of it, even if we don’t know where it is, as well as Harry Potter gaining his powerful magic from those imposing structures).
And the high tech industry is BOOMING and the infrastructure is moving as fast as it can to keep up. Think Hong Kong or Taiwan and you’ll get the idea. They eat…well, all sorts of dishes from all sorts of places. As well as stuff we’re scared to try (but do anyway), as well as even stranger, more exotic eateries with golden arches, kings crowns and even a white suited saintly old man called the 'Colonel' selling crispy chicken. Now that we're all together on the basics of Malaysia we can move on to more pressing matters, like what's it like when you move out of the country and become an expat? Ah, adventure awaits as our real preparation begin in earnest.
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