Week One in Kota Tinggi

 MY NEW HOME IN KOTA TINGGI

My first week of my new job and living in Kota Tinggi is complete.  The school week is Sunday to Thursday here and that is what I will be working for the next 18 months.  It's going to take some getting used to.  It's been an eventful week, I got a lot done.  I found a place to live and moved in, I met many of the teachers I will be mentoring and I attended a meeting with all the teachers in the area.  Finding this home was a fairly lucky event I think.  My boss told me what he went through when he was looking for places to show me.  He did a lot of driving around and then just happened to speak to the person renting out this place, got his phone number and the rest is history.  I moved in on Wednesday evening, or at least I brought my stuff here.  I stayed in the hotel for one final night so I could have a little time to get a couple of things for the townhouse.  Here are a few pics of the place.

My "Garage"

This is also where I dry my clothes.

Laundry room and "wet" kitchen

When I do a load of laundry the water doesn't go down the drain near the machine.  It goes down the one that is under the propane tank, so I have to use the squeegee thing to push the water.  I will have to see if I can fix that problem.

The "dry" kitchen

I finally have a proper sized fridge now but I suspect I will be eating out more than cooking.  It is so cheap to eat here that I think it will be worth it.

My living room.

This is where I will be spending most of my time.  Not only is there a big screen TV but the guy left a PS3 system for me to use.  SWEET!

This is the master bedroom.  I am not using this room because in actuality I am only renting a room in this house.  Nobody else lives here but the landlords mother comes to visit a couple of times a year and will stay here, though not in this room.  I almost backed out of the deal when I found out about this, but I don't have to pay anything else here.  Just rent and its very cheap.

This is the mothers bedroom.  I am hoping that since I am here and she doesn't know me she won't be willing to stay here so I can have the whole place to myself.  But if she does come I will just have to deal with it.  

Here is my room.  They are even giving me bed sheets to use.  I think I will get my own set, but for now I will use these.  Once I get a full paycheck I can get a few other essentials.  The closet is just big enough for my clothes.  

Good thing I only need summer clothes here or I would need to get another closet.

This is another sitting area just outside of my bedroom.  I won't be using this area.  Sitting on wooden benches for any amount of time is not a comfortable proposition to me.

another view of the main living area

Well, that's my new home.  The only thing I don't like about it is that there are bars on every window and door.  I find this makes me feel very paranoid when I am trying go to sleep.  Hopefully I will get over this soon so I can start getting to sleep earlier.

Since this past week wasn't a normal type of work week I will only briefly describe it.  

I was able to go to all the schools I will be working at and visit with some of the teachers.  They all seem to be very nice.  I can see some of them might be a little shy with me at first, but I am hoping to overcome that and have a nice working relationship with everyone.  I was able to spend  a significant amount of time at one school and I think if it stays that way I will be able to enjoy my time there.  If my luck holds my other schools will be just as good to work at.  This coming week will be  the first time I will do this job on my own.  The funny thing is that I'm not really sure what I am supposed to do aside from listening to the teachers and trying to help them with whatever problems they have.  I'm sure this will work itself out as I go along.  I do know that the first couple of times I am at a school its more about relationship building and making the teachers feel comfortable around me.

Maybe next week I will do another blog about the job itself.  I will also try to have a few more pictures of the town and schools.

ttyl

Finished Training and at my New Location

Finished my first week in Malaysia

It's been fairly interesting so far.  I've enjoyed my time a lot more then I was expecting to so far.
After spending most of a week at my friends home I moved into the hotel.  It was a really nice hotel, actually it is a resort.  First thing I did when I got there was order a chicken burger and fries, room service.  When I was ordering the woman asked what drink I wanted so I asked for a coke.  I thought it was included with the meal, apparently not.  The price of the burger was reasonable at 29 ringgit (about $10 CAD), but the small can of coke was 15 ringgit (that's $5).  Suffice it to say that I didn't order from room service again while I was there.  I kind of  wish I had taken a couple of pictures of the resort, it was a very nice place and it was just out side of the city so it was quiet and peaceful.

Training started on Wednesday instead of Thursday.  Day one was pretty low key and interesting. They talked a lot about the possible areas we would be going to.  By this point I had already had my placement decided, but others hadn't yet.  They did a real nice job of selling their areas to us.  Everything sounded really nice.  I was a bit disappointed that they hardly said anything about my area, but the manager for my area wasn't there due to going to Cambodia for a work trip.

The long and short of it is that I am living in a small city called Kota Tinggi.  It's about a 30min drive from Johor Bahru which is a large city that borders Singapore, so I will be able to take the odd trip there when I need to get away.  I am looking forward to it.

They gave us each a car at the end of the first day.  Here is mine.

Its a nice little car.  A few of the others were a bit nervous about driving so they left their cars at the office and tagged along with the others.  

I was nervous as I hadn't driven a car regularly for almost 10yrs.  When I realized its been that long I was surprised.  The first couple of times were very nerve racking as the road system here is, at times, very confusing.  I got lost once or twice but thankfully I have google maps on my phone.

After the second day everyone had to get their cars because we were going off to our new areas so we had to check out of the hotel.  A few of us bought GPS systems, word to the wise, they don't help unless you know exactly what the name of the place you are going is called. I ended up using my phone more than my GPS.  Anyways, it was agreed that some of the people driving their cars for the first time would follow me back to the hotel from the office.  I pulled out of my parking space and waited for them to line up behind me so they could follow.  I don't know what happened but they completely missed where I was.  I hurried to catch up with them and I managed to get in front, but they didn't see me and turned off in the wrong direction.  I once again hurried to catch up to them, but this time I couldn't.  Luckily I had the phone number of one of them and I called and asked where they were going.  I said I would wait back at the office for them.  Problem was that only one car had a phone so we completely lost the other car.  Not knowing what to do we went back to the hotel and hoped that the other car would find their way back.  After about 2hrs the final car made it back to the hotel.  She had hired a taxi to guide her back to the hotel.  And here's an example of how nice the people of Malaysia really are.  The taxi driver didn't charge her for the guided trip back to the hotel.  AMAZING!!! 

That was day two of training.  Day three is the final day and we had established a routine of somebody who knew how to get to the office from the hotel would lead everyone.  On the way to the office the leader of our convoy hit a motorbike.  Now it might sound like I thought this was the driver of the cars fault, but you have to understand that bikers here don't follow any sort of road rules.  He only had a couple of scratches, of course when he saw the white skin of the driver he was suddenly in need of a hospital.  In the end the cops took care of everything and there will be nothing coming from this for the driver of the car.  Plus, we all got a good lesson in how to deal with these types of incidents, so in a way this was a good thing for all of us.

After a half day of more training we were off to our areas.  There was a five car convoy going in my direction.  About 3/4's of the way to where I was going 3 cars turned off to go to a different area.  I was left leading the way for the remainder of the trip.  We were on the toll road and it turned out to be not to expensive.  Only $10 for about 200km of driving.  Shortly after getting off the toll road the other car with me went on her own way.  

I only made one wrong turn on the way here but it added about 20mins to my drive.  The road between Kulaijaya and Kota Tinggi is a very nice road with palm tree plantations all along the way.

I have currently arrived in Kota Tinggi and the picture above is the front of my hotel.  Fairly typical business hotel. 

My room

The staff are friendly and willing to try and help out as much as they can.  I think there is a lot less English here then in Seremban which is where I was before I came here.  Having said that, there is still a lot more English in this country than anywhere else I have been in Asia, so I imagine I will get along just fine here.

 view from roof of hotel

view from my room

The town/city isn't very big, but after walking around this morning, I think it has everything I need to be happy.  There is a movie theater next to the hotel I am staying in, so I'm going to watch Pompeii later today.  There is a domino's pizza just outside the hotel too, so I'm sure you can guess what's for dinner tonight.

Domino's pizza :)

My ELC (supervisor) took me out to dinner with his wife last night.  Before we went he took me to the house he is trying to hook me up with.  It's a town house that is fully furnished.  He is having a little bit of trouble getting a hold of the landlord, but I really hope I can get this place.  It's in a quiet area that is pretty safe just outside of the city.  I think it will be perfect.  If I get the place I will take a few pics of it for this blog.  I start work tomorrow.  My ELC is taking me to his school and then we will go around to a couple of my schools and start looking at other apartments in case I can't get this one.  I think week one of the job will be fairly low key and I am really looking forward to getting into it.

In my next blog I will tell you more about the job and the places I will be plying my trade.

BERCAKAP DENGAN ANDA KEMUDIAN! (That's "talk to you later" in Malay)

Gone to Malaysia

A lot has happened recently.  In my last blog I alluded to some goings on in my life and I am here to tell you now about them.  I am no longer in Taiwan.  I quit the job I had and moved to Malaysia.  The day of quitting was very stressful.  I knew the boss wouldn't be too happy with me, but I had to do what was right for me and living in Taiwan wasn't working for me at all.  It's been many years since I was as unhappy as I was in November and December.  Mistreatment from a couple of co-workers and just a general lack of social life made Taiwan a very unpleasant experience.  I know many others from my training group are not very happy about the company they are working for.  Pay is very low and the amount of hours many are expected to work while getting all the grading done is crazy.  I didn't have it too bad, but I just couldn't seem to break out of the culture shock so I left.

     After quitting my job and cleaning out my apartment (mostly) I hopped on a plane to Malaysia.  I felt so good about this move that it really surprised me.  I have to believe that this was the right move for me.  The deal I am getting with this company is seriously awesome.  They bought my plane ticket to get to Malaysia.  All I had to put up with was a couple of months of uncertainty about whether I would get this job or not.  There was a small snafu that had me thinking that I would be passed up for it, but there were some good people fighting on my side here so in the end I landed the job.

     The benefits are what got me interested in this job.  Paid flight here and back home at the end of the contract, somewhere around 10-12 weeks of paid vacation (this was the big one for me), a company car to drive with a gas allowance and an apartment allowance which will allow me to live almost rent free from what I have gathered.  There are a couple of other little benefits as well.

    The job itself is pretty nice too.  I got to tag along with my friend for a couple of days when I got here.  I will be a teacher trainer to the Malaysian English teachers in the schools here.  In essence I will be helping them to teach English by giving them tips and tricks to make learning easier and more fun for the students.  I will also be helping the teachers themselves with their own English abilities.  The job starts very early in the morning as school here is from 7:45am to 1:00pm plus I might have to drive an hour to get to some of the schools.  This is the main downside to the job as far as I can tell.  Getting up early and driving long distances, oh well, not everything can be perfect.

     Hopefully I will be placed somewhere around Johor Bahru.  This is a city that shares a border with Singapore, so weekends can be spent there once in a while.  There is a lot of things to do outside as in hiking and camping and just enjoying nature.  There is a lot of Nature here and I hope to get a lot of pictures for you all in the future. (sorry there aren't any in this blog. I haven't had a chance to pull out my camera yet)

     The two days I tagged along with my friend were volunteer days for me.  I really wanted to get a first hand view of what I would be doing.  It looks like a nice job and the teachers I met were really nice.  Here's to hoping the ones I get will be just as nice.

     I think Malaysia is a bit of a dangerous place to live.  All the houses have bars on the doors and windows and there is security at all apartment blocks and gated communities.  It's not at all like Japan or Taiwan.  I've already heard a few stories about things going down here.  With any luck I will try to avoid any of that.

     I start training on Tuesday.  They call it induction.  Not sure if that is a British term or if it means something other then training.  I imagine it will involve talking about the company and what is expected of us.  After that I have no idea what will happen.  It's three days long and then on Friday I drive to my new area.  At some point I will have to find an apartment.  Once I am in my own place I can start living again.  Something I haven't been able to do for the past 2 or 3 months due to this jobs application process.  It's amazing how much not being able to buy something that you want, but will just have to get rid of shortly, wears on you.  The next hurdle will be holding off until I get a full pay check.  So by the end of March I should be well on my way.  And I get a week off at that time.

Ain't life sweet?