Your first days in your home in Malaysia

The questions are so broad that it would take 30 pages to answer. Got 5 hours?

I'll just say it was very hard to settle down and not for any of the reasons I expected.

I didnt move-in on my first trip, I came on 3-month visas and stayed in nice hotels. I did this four times before I decided I wanted to stay. I did things slowly also did work in Malaysia from nearly the first day by creating my own employment. My first job was being contracted to write a book on the Malay language which was published in 2001 and everything after that was one new idea after the other.

I wasnt wealthy or gifted or privileged but I did have energy, enthusiasm--- and credit cards. In fact, by the time I was settled down through the renting of a place, buying a car and appliances, I didnt know I was. What happened exactly was that in the doing of self-projects I met people; the more people I met, the more opportunities opened. One thing led to another, time went by and here we are a very long time later. In a sense, I never have settled down, i just let life flow. Its been a dream life I could never have imagined or planned for. I repeatedly got away with murder to make things work, stories about I'll save for a book one day, and just kept moving.

Returning to the second line of my post, one thing stands out about difficulties in settling down. Extreme malaysian predjudice, racism and xenophobia initially prevented me from renting a place to live. Landlords and agents hated foreigners who they blamed for all the ills of the country and I must say such allegations werent completely unfounded. Foreigners often absconded and deserted, leaving huge bills in their wake. In fact, one potential landlord said I could rent his condo if I first paid up the huge bills left by the previous tenant. Otherwise, it was pure racism like, "we only rent to chinese (or indian or malay)," or "We dont think youd be happy in this chinese (or indian or malay) neighborhood, so goodbye." This kind of treatment was tough to overcome and I did so by teaching myself an obvious lesson one learns, or should learn, to be here -- take the time to get to know and be patient with one person at a time. How do you convince a whole country to believe in you and take you seriously? One at a time, an arduous but necessary task, harder for me because im so introverted! And how do you do that, exactly? Its different for different people. For one, it might be sitting down on some steps and chatting for three hours; for others it might be going out for tea or meals a few times and talking about nothing. But its how I made friends, got things done and it took years. However, this is hindsight. Had I known any of this in advance would I have stayed?

Not everyone will have the same experience both settling down and living here day to day but learning the pace, and LETTING the pace of the place dictate actions is probably the key. Would it be any different for any new country?

Before I traveled to Malaysia, I did a search of properties for sale on line. I lived most of my life in the country side in US, my house had three acres and I wanted something with land and trees around. I found a place and when I came here, I bought it. The house was not complete and I had to work with a lot of contractors to do the labor work. As far as materials like tiles, kitchen equipment, lights, fans, furniture ..etc  I had to shop to find the right quality and what I needed.

Some of the issues I was the lack of contractors work quality. Contractors here offer zero suggestions and provide no options. They just do what you asked. In US the contractors offer options and I had to choose. Here you are the designer, and the foremen. You really have to know what you want and have a solid understanding of how things work and provide constant feedback on the work.

When you are not from here, contractors tend to inflate the prices so much so make sure you get several estimates and then lower the least estimate by at least 30%.

Contractors will ask for more money in the middle of the project and provide you with a million reason don’t fall for this it is just a tactic most of them use.

I had an electrician who came and I had him install around 35 sockets. I asked I needed the sockets to be white color, he brought golden color and I said no. He supposedly replaced them with white colored sockets. He said he was done and they all work and he needed me to pay him the rest of the money. I said let me test them first, he got upset and said you don’t trust me. Anyway, I tested the sockets. 19 of them had no power and then, he painted the golden sockets with a cheap white paint so while testing one of them the screw driver barely touched the service and the paint came off.

I later discovered that the working sockets were already hooked up before and the new sockets he put all of their wires are hanging in the roof.

If you are looking for quality of work here you need to be involved and monitor everything. Also, all the projects I had were late. Patience is required.

I am happy with the place now but it took almost 5 months to move in.