The Servants are Stealing Sugar

Part of this trip has been travel, and the other part practice. Josh is practising having a real job, and I am practising being a diplomatic wife. A diplomatic wife, you ask? Yes, the partner of a diplomat who, because diplomats' wives are not allowed to work, becomes more paranoid and cooped up, eventually falling into a pool of drink and abusing the household servants. I mean, at the very least, it's a romantic ideal.

So on Monday, Josh went off to a conference at the Eastern and Oriental Hotel to meet and greet, and I started searching for an apartment to rent, holding a gin and tonic and yelling at the maid the entire time. If you used to read my other blog, then you remember the multitude of apartments that we went through to get our current place. I vowed not to repeat that experience.

Armed with the Malaysian version of craigslist (craigslist does actually exist here, but no one uses it, ever), the newspaper, and my mobile phone, I discovered the following things about myself: (1) I am not a Muslim. (2) I am not Chinese. (3) I do not wish to rent an apartment for two years. Granted, none of this was new information, but apparently my love of bacon disqualifies me from furnished apartments owned by Halal-keeping Muslims. Halal is the Islamic equivalent to Jews who keep Kosher (there is a statement designed to get you beat up in both Tel Aviv and Cairo). I didn't realize this, but cooking bacon while smooching my boyfriend and drinking a beer at the same time basically means that the apartment owners have to burn it down and start over. Seems drastic, but there you go.

In America, if you state in your apartment listing “Chinese Only” or “Black Only” or whatever, it's basically an invitation to go to court, twice. First as guests of the federal government, and second as a class action defendant. I like that system. It's cruel but fair. In Malaysia, it's totally ok to be all “Chinese Only, peeps, Whiteys Smell Like Butter and Can't Trust Indians, so Later Skaters”. I called a couple “Chinese Only” apartments just to see if they were serious. The sound of getting hung up on indicates that they were.

Short-term apartments are not really that common in the US, but normally you can find a student's place or something to sub-let. I could not, here. Everyone wanted me to sign a two year contract, and asking for a shorter contract involved a lot of teeth sucking and hand waving on the part of the agent, only to be offered a one year contract. Asking for two months caused the sky to rip and frogs to rain from heaven.

But, persistence wins. (Persistence and cheating. They both win.) I found an agent that was familiar with the concept of short-term rental, and who didn't care if we were Chinese Muslims, and now we live in a three bedroom apartment on the twenty-first floor next to the ocean.

Totally didn't see that coming.

View from the room where the washing machine is kept, because, obviously, laundry enjoys a nice view.The Sultan of Kedah (the state next to Penang) has a house right across the street. Not much seems to happen here, but I like to imagine it is a den of inequity.
This is the view of the Straits of Malacca from our balcony. Just across the water you can see mainland Malaysia.