My baby made it out of surgery safe!
Well okay, my real baby did have surgery a few weeks ago, and he also came out safely, but today I am discussing my laptop. Hard drive went belly up all the way back in JULY and it's been at the Apple store since late August and only now did we finally -begrudingingly- pay up for repairs. Yes, my husband and I are rather cheap and will put anything frivolous off for as long as possible before we get sick of living without and then will finally pay. (This obviously does not include food or traveling (I mean, duh) which is why we actually have to put stuff like this off because we're too busy spending our money on stupid shit.)
When Apple informed us it would be 500 ringgit to buy a new hard drive plus labor, my husband asked if we could purchase our own and bring it in. When they said we could, we started shopping. Right off the bat we learned purchasing our own would be about 200 ringgit, but we continued to shop around for another month before settling. 180 was our final price and we put that off until the night before our trip to Penang to hand it over to the Apple store. Way to save that sweet, sweet money.
After another five hours (!) we were finally able to pick up my trooper of a laptop. Meanwhile we hiked the Adventure Trail off Waterfall Road, saw Pan, and ended with impatient beers at Berlin's Bier Houz. Overall quite a nice trip to Penang, and my mother in law got to spend her holiday with her grandson. Pretty good day for everyone.
Our Awal Muharram Holiday
So the reason we were able to go to Penang in the middle of the week, was for the Islamic New Year. Now Malaysian public holidays are a bit confusing to me, but in Penang this is still a working day. In any case, my husband had the day off, but the Apple store was open so we took advantage of the overlap and spent our day on the island.
First we went to the hiking trail, my husband had recommended the park as a place he used to go a lot when he lived in Penang a million years ago (+ or - 250,000 years). What I didn't know is he had meant just walk around the park. I see a sign for an Adventure Trail and just go down that path, cuz I mean we were there for hiking, right? And my husband follows without saying a word. I should say that this is my first real attempt at exercising again since giving birth, other than walking a few laps around the neighbourhood or getting winded trying to do 10 minutes pilates videos on YouTube.
An hour later, after following my DH up the "stairs shortcut" versus the softer incline walking path, I finally give up. Two older Chinese ladies who have been on our tail the whole time tell us, that in fact there is no waterfall oasis waiting at the top, and that we hadn't even made it to the first turn around yet, but if we want theres another, longer, trail after that. Still trying to troop on (while watching these ladies casually stroll up the stairs) we come to yet another steep staircase carved into the side of the hill. I had to give up, something I haven't really done before on a hiking trail. I was so worried that coming down was going to be a nightmare, so I insisted we take the longer, safer path back down. Which was great, in my humble opinion, because by the time we got back to the car I was feeling much better, and kind of regretted not pushing myself to go farther. Next time I will definitely take the longer path and make the entire (shorter) circuit.
I should also share, I didn't even realise that DH had never been on this trail before until we hit the monkeys near the bottom, in a panic, he left me behind and shot down the path ASAP. Realising what he was up to, I yelled to him, are you afraid of the monkeys? Haven't you been here before? Didn't you know there'd be animals? To which he responded, Yes, No, No, LOOK AT THAT BIG SCARY ONE! But of course he stops to point out a baby monkey being carried by it's mother "Oh it's so cute!" he says, not realising he's facing down the most dangerous of any of the monkeys he's passed so far. Aren't husbands adorable?
One thing I love about Malaysia is all the characters you meet anywhere you go. Several groups had one person carrying a speaker playing the radio, but one group of two men were listening to an old Dane Cook stand up routine on their way up. I started laughing just hearing the comedians familiar voice. So odd to hear on the opposite side of the world, while doing something I would never think to connect to comedy stand-up. Another group of girls were all huddled around a camera on a tripod off the side of the trail. Thinking they were taking photos of wild life, I tried to sneak a peek at what they were photographing, only to see that the camera was actually facing the trail and they had hiked up all that way with all this equipment just to take selfies.
All-in-all a great hike, even if I was absolutely, literally dripping sweat by the end of it. I am sorry to everyone who had to smell my BO for the rest of the day, but I was quite happy.
After the exercise, we did the obvious, feed ourselves, of course! DH took me to one of his favourite hawker stalls where we had Ban Mee, roasted pork, nasi lemak and kopi for breakfast. DH also insisted on buying buns on our way out, and they had cinnamon rolls! So he had his pork bun and I my delicious cinnamon roll (even if it did have raisins in it, still pretty good).
After dropping off the hard disk and insisting to the sales lady that we did not live in Penang, so we needed the work done today, if possible, she agreed (no one ever believes that a white foreigner doesn't live in Penang, but she played along thankfully), we decided to just mosey on over to the mall, figuring that would give us enough things to do until the laptop was done. After only an hour and a half we got so bored, we decided to catch a movie. DH was excited for Pan and since we had already seen The Martian we grabbed the next showing. Nice movie, not really my cup of tea but cute and the graphics were pretty good. I was in and out of it after the hike, actually falling asleep a few times, haha, but I did wake up in time to catch a quote "Home isn't where you are from, it's where you make it" Hubby and I looked at each other and made sappy "awwww" faces.
After the movie, we headed back the Apple store where the lady informed us they needed another hour to finish installing the operating system back onto my lappy. So thus my long awaited visit to Berlin's! I'm really more excited for that then is probably normal, but I was excited for some German cuisine...which ended up not happening, we just got a roasted pork appetiser, which was delicious, but lacked the bread and/or potatoes I had been craving. However, the mustard dipping sauce more than made up for it, and the beer was actually pretty damn good, considering I usually like dark beers but threw a hail mary and went with lightest beer instead.
OMG, Sarah, does this story even have a point?
Well, no, I'm just telling you about my Penang trip, as my title said, inspiration was dry but I needed to post something since it's been so long and since WOOHOO I finally have my laptop back!!!!
Anyways, October is usually the Pinnacle of my year and now it also holds my wedding anniversary, so I am sure I will have more to post on in the weeks to come. Please keep checking in, I adore attention.
P.S. I had the genius idea to leave my phone in the car most of the day, so it was up to the hubby to take pictures of everything....a screenshot that sums up how that turned out;
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