sjamesho.v3

we had about a 7.5 hour lay-over in Kuala Lumpur so Malaysia Airlines paid for a hotel room and lunch while we waited for our next flight to Chennai, India (MAA).

as we left the airport the humidity didn’t waste any time to reintroduce itself to me. thankfully, i’m on the bus with air conditioning and a glass that separated me from the moisture.

unfortunately the pleasantness of air conditioning was short-lived. although the hotel was farther from the airport than my dad and i assumed, i wasn’t quite ready to immerse myself in Malaysian atmosphere. that’s okay… the air conditioned hotel is right behind me and soon i will refresh myself as i shower off the travel grime.

our room number

our room

on our previous trip to Malaysia our hotel had mold growing on the… moulding. but we are quite impressed…

…that this hotel, specifically our hotel room, was mold-free.

remember i had mentioned that Malaysian Airlines not only paid for a hotel room but paid for lunch? you know what that means? food pictures! oh yeah… we sat next to a floor-to-ceiling windows so i had plenty of light to make the food look extra yummy.

string beans

spicy tofu

noodles and spinach

chili!

dessert

dessert

pandan and coconut dessert-thing

papaya

pandan dessert-thing

dessert

pandan and lime vanilla ice cream

after lunch we took our refreshing and relaxing showers. and by the time both of us were done, there wasn’t much time to sleep so we just got ready to head back out to the bus to be shuttled back to the airport. while my dad was checking out of the hotel, i wanted to use the computers in the lobby to e-mail my mom but when i logged in there was no connection out. the hotel person told me that perhaps the servers were down. obviously. here’s a ceiling picture of the departure terminal at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA). it’s quite different.

my dad and i were one of the first people at our gate and were delighted to find lounge chairs at the waiting area. well… they are actually outside of the gate area. you know… before you enter the waiting area inside the gate.

my dad

me

we thought that these would be comfortable enough to catch some z’s before the gate opened and they were. however, KLIA has these bells that ring off right before they make an annoucement. and they seemed to make an announcement every five minutes. so if you’re able to sleep with bells going off every five minutes, these chairs would be great for you. actually they’re great for just sitting as well but there was no sleep to be had.

it is that time again to get myself out of the country and into a mission trip and to eventually use the India visa that i applied for back in october. the journey of 30+ hours of flight time (not including lay-overs) started from San Francisco (SFO) to Los Angeles (LAX). the only downside of traveling to places as far as India is the amount of time spent sitting strapped into your seat.

here i am waiting in line at LAX. “they” told us that this is where we needed to line up but its about 9:50p and our flight to Taipei (TPE) leaves at 11:53p so my dad went to investigate the matter because this line didn’t seem to move at all.

its a good thing that he did because obviously “they” didn’t know that we had already checked our bags to India and had only carry-on bags with us. so we we quickly made our way to the counter to get our boarding passes. as you can see, as soon as we got to the ticketing area we were next in line.

after we got our boarding passes we thought that we were able to quickly get to the gates since we had by-passed all the other people who were still waiting in the line to check in their luggage. but we found ourselves waiting in yet another line. it is 10:24p and though the line is slowly moving, its at least moving and we were able to make our flight out of LAX.

about 14:35 hours later we arrived at TPE… on wednesday! i didn’t have time to take pictures at TPE because its transit procedures are the most impractical and inane of procedures. how so? okay… so we arrive at TPE to transit to Kuala Lumpur (KUL). we leave the airplane and the gate and are directed by airport personel where to go… and then there’s a line. at first we couldn’t see why there was a hold up. but then eventually we had the view of what made the delay… security. okay… i would understand having to go through security of our final destination was TPE… to have transit passengers take off their shoes and place their carry-on bags through the x-ray machine only to return to the same gate that we had just left was utterly ridiculous! wasn’t the security check at LAX good enough for TPE? apparently not.

about 4:35 hours later we arrive in KUL. of all the airports that i’ve had the privilege of going through, KUL is my favorite. it is modern, clean, convenient, and has free wireless internet too! they just don’t print the “World’s Best Airport” for nothing. i think that title is from a third-party assessment. but even if it is self-proclaimed, i would have to agree.

when my mom came home from work yesterday, she had a box which had three interesting and delightful objects of consumption. honestly, i would have been happy had the strawberries not been dipped in chocolate and sprinkled with coconut and nuts. although i have not consciously committed to axe chocolate from my diet, chocolate is an item that i’m slowly becoming unexcited about. i’ve never really been excited for chocolate in the first place and of course, it isn’t the most healthy thing to ingest. but nonetheless, the visual presentation of the strawberries indeed makes it desirable to devour. so since they will be eaten and will no longer with us, i quickly took pictures of the strawberries.

hmm…

…which one…

…do we eat first?

okay… this is the last post of the three posts that had gotten away from me. even though it was ten days ago there hasn’t really been anything major going on between then and now so don’t worry, you’re not missing much… or maybe its me who is missing things to blog about? argh! oh well… here it goes.

11 Dec. the party/Bible study thing that i’m involved in, if you haven’t caught on already, is really model of sorts of small groups. so if you check out Acts 2:46-47, you’ll see the correlation. so this particular sunday of this month, it was time to throw yet another party. i like the word “party” but i think in the coming months we’re going to shift the event to a less frivolous tone in terminology but keeping the formula the same: food, fellowship, and the Word. but in my mind, the joy of “party” will still be alive.

sweet potato, watercress, and pear salad. i found this recipe as well as the combination interesting so i decided to try it out. it was okay, but i think it would have been a lot better had i given the pears enough time to ripen. also, this is the first time that i worked with watercress. i’ve had watercress before but only in small quantities. but since this recipe uses watercress as one of its three main ingredients, the flavor was strong and sharp. its not a bad flavor and had the pears been sweeter it and the sweet potatoes would have complemented the watercress nicely but since it wasn’t as ripe the balance was off. i had enough watercress left over to make it again which was better but i think that, unlike the “cranberry, apple and jicama salad”, its broad appeal index is not as high. i did notice that the flavors of this salad seem to be better the next day. it makes better as a leftover? go figure.

the bread was made and brought by Melinda Fletcher. quite tasty and quite photogenic! not only do i like eating bread but i like looking at their textures.

Left to right: Danette, Brian, Nana.

Left to right: Melinda, Heidi.

Left to right: Aiko, Michelle, Brittany. this time around Aiko presented the study. it’s a December month and typically the focus would be a Christmas theme… as in nativity and the like. but we’re not typical. so we took the theme of “Peace”, like “peace on earth” or “peace to all”, and examined how the world offers it against how Jesus offers it. there were many facets that were covered also but the bottomline is that Jesus came to this earth to bring us peace and provide deliverance from the chaos we bring upon ourselves. that deliverance is not that we are taken out of the chaos but we now have a Peace going through it… and that’s mind-blowing or as King James would say “passeth all understanding”.

Left to right: Nikki, Andrea. while we were eating, Nikki and Andrea was going over some childhood memories in grade school. there was a story about busted teeth and another about Heinz 57 that was very, very amusing. we had a very good laugh. i guess i can relate to you what i remember of the stories but it’s one of those “you-had-to-have-been-there” moments. ahhh… good times, good times.

so that’s it, i’m “caught” up. and like i said before, there hasn’t been anything major going on in the ten days between then and now so unless i feel really compelled to turn some small thing like a mole hill into a mountain, i’m just going to do my best to be more current.

during the last two months, we have been excavating dirt from our backyard in order to redo our back patio. i don’t know whether its related or whether its the season or maybe a combination of the two, but there has been a lot of ant activity around the house… and even in the house. in fact we have been having to make a conscious effort to make sure everything is really clean in the house because now even one small crumb is vulnerable to an ant invasion in no time. even when the kitchen counter is apparently clean, you’ll see them congregating in a place that doesn’t seem to have food at all.

10 Dec. on sunday afternoon my dad spotted about three trails of ants going up the right side of the garage molding. it was quite the sight to behold. so i took a few closeup pictures and brought out the Raid. Raid. what a nifty invention of chemical warfare! in seconds the ants are dead or in the spasms of impending death. as i marvel at the effectiveness of Raid, i’m also thankful that there’s nobody higher on our food chain that dispenses at their whim a solution via an aerosol can. however, it would be to the stupidity of our own species to unleash its equivalent of nerve gas on each other. that aside, we use Raid to kill ants and insects because they are just doing what they were meant to be doing.

and regarding ants, they just work and work and work. i doubt they take breaks and we kill them for that. if only all humans can be as hardworking, then maybe a chemical attack may be even more painful. don’t get me wrong, i think death to anyone is terrible. but consider the difference between an active person who dies and a lazy person who dies. yeah… consider. (Prov. 6:6) let’s not be lazy… especially me.