Trip North

North!

We made it to Butterworth. As I sit at desk with the azan coming from the mosque across the street and the 2^nd to the last prayers of the day echoing out of the loud speakers, we are having mixed feelings about what we found. The family house looks really cute! It's been painted 2 tone blue and white. On the other hand it is now situated between 2 buildings of a car dealership. Almost all remnants of the old kampung (village) are gone. The little village road, that people used to walk up and down, yelling in the windows as they pass, is gone. To get to the other side you now have to walk way down and around the block. The street in front of the house is even busier than it used to be. The shops that used to be in front of the house are also gone. Replaced with a parking lot. Mak is doing the usual running around opening all the windows (still no glass so some things haven't changed) and plugging in and turning on all the fans. Aina and Lisa are busy looking through her old photos and reminiscing. Sita is somewhere, she had found a chongkok (mankala) board but I don't if she found enough marbles.

I gave Paman Zane the family tree I printed out. He was happy. He had a big smile on his face and laughed. He said he didn't have time to look at it closely right now (prayer time) but I hoping to either get corrections before we leave here or copies of any documents that he has. I'm hoping he likes it that someone else is helping out with the family history. I do wish I had a recorder of some sort so that I could record his and Mak's stories. Hopefully it won't be long before we come back again.

We stopped and looked at a place that was selling homes on a lake. In some cases literally ON THE LAKE. Houses/apartments built on stilts on the lake itself. They were very nice but a bit small for my taste. We would like to find a place the whole family could use. That way we have our own place to stay when we come back. We'll just have to wait and see what happens.

We found out we still had a bank account open from when we were in in '97-'98 with 250RM in it. We figured it was time to close it so we did that the other day. When we first talked to the teller it sounded like the account had grown to 1,900RM! We were like WOW! We planned on giving it all to Mak. Well our windfall was short lived. Turns out that it was 197RM and that it was going to take 6 months for them to send us a check in the US. Shoot. Oh well easy come, easy go.

We are planning on visiting Aina's sister and brother-in-law tomorrow (I think). We are also planning on seeing the Z's (old friends of ours that live in Penang) soon. I'll probably go to my brother-in-law's barber shop and get my hair cut.

Well that's all for now. I'll post this when I find a connection. Aww.. the continuing battle to find a connection... well so it goes.