Lonely In Kluang

So it’s been a whole month of Kluanging… the first few days were quite hard to get by.

*goes about pretending that I didn’t just leave this blog unblogged for the past month*

For starters, I don’t have any friends or family members here. It was quite tough to come home to an empty house praying that the electricity won’t get cut off because if it does, I have no one to scream out for. 🙁

But like all the shit that have ever happened to me, I usually embrace strange new circumstances quickly and fall into a comfort zone.

So here’s my comfort zone:

I wake up at about 6.30am (I know) and roll in bed till like…7am? Then I stumble into the bathroom and slap on some eye-make up (only eye concealer, without any foundation so that my skin doesn’t age because of cosmetics..haha like very pro like that). Depending on what’s available in the fridge, I pop whatever it is in my mouth and make my way to work in under 5 minutes! How awesome is that right? Even back in uni I had to like travel 15 minutes to campus and I thought that was near! Actually the whole of Kluang is like 5-10 minutes from any one point to another.

The day flies by with about 20-25 patients (some of my classmates have reportedly managed 70 patients a day. How is that possible?).. I’m doing things that I learned in my second year of dentistry, nothing like the intense stuff I had to endure in my final year. Some of my classmates are attached to specialist clinics but I’m to be doing six months worth of outpatient work (or as we call it, OP) which is pretty much routine dental treatments, nothing much to scream about. Relatively stress free but my mind still draws a blank at times and I seem to be developing the bad back that all dentists dread. 🙁

Especially when I have to extract an upper molar, it takes quite a lot of effort on my part to get it out and I’ll be in a weird curved position which is hell for my back, with sweat pouring behind my visors and the muscles in my right hand cramping up. If I couldn’t go on any longer, I’ll go round to the next bay and get some help from my seniors who all willingly come to help me and heroically sort of just roll out the tooth that I have been struggling with. I’m always dumbfounded with how easy they make it seem.

I’m the only First Year Dental Officer at my clinic and there are four other senior officers here with me who are in their second, third and fourth year already.

By 4.30pm, everyone will be seated at the waiting area waiting for the  punch clock to belt out a rendition of Fur Elise.

I get home slightly after 5pm and start making dinner, as you can see in my facebook mobile uploads  if we’re FB buddies.

A couple of chinese shows, answer some sticker orders and I’m usually too knackered to even edit photos, blog or upload new stocks to The Sticker Monster.

But thank god for public holiday like the one today! And yes, that’s why I’m here typing away. 😀

So here are some photos from my Galaxy S of my life in Kluang, which have all been uploaded on my FB mobile uploads album..so nothing new if you’re on my Facebook friend!

This was taken on my first day in Kluang. I got myself a fully furnished place (even comes with an airconditioning unit in the living room!!) which is about 5 minutes away from work.

The clinic that I am posted to! They call it a Klinik Kesihatan, sort of a small integrated medical facility. The pharmacy and the medical side is on the ground floor while the dental clinic is on the first floor!

The inside of one of the surgery rooms. 🙂 One of the benefits of being posted to Johor is that I get to use the OHCIS which is a digital way of keeping patients’ records. Apparently Johor was chosen to run the beta version and only a town in Selangor is using it.

Dad got me a budgie to keep me company in Kluang. I love how blue its feathers are and on the back of its head the feather looks like newspaper print in blue. Since it’s a blue bird, we were thinking “Lam Cheok” (blue bird in cantonese) and it ended up becoming Lanciao. To reserve some form of dignity and cuteness for the bird, its name is Elsee. Elsee is a blue bird. Elsee is a very noisy blue bird. Elsee is a very noisy blue bird that eats seeds infused with honey and egg (for protein). Elsee eats confusing seeds. Seeds come from trees. Why is there egg in Elsee’s seeds?

A while ago, my little nephew came round to visit! Mum’s holding him from launching at Angel.

Angel doesn’t give a damn. Most importantly is that her bowl gets refilled.

Another peek at Kluang life! As with all other parts of Malaysia, it rains heavily in the evenings so I’m still under the impression that Kluang is a cooling place! Hope this assumption stays true for the rest of the year! Pictured here is a portion of Kluang Town on a rainy afternoon.

This is as close as I get to a hypermarket. There are three Giant supermarkets here (only one of it is sort of a hypermarket)…well, I make do. 😐

Candies at Kluang Mall…….i helped myself to some. Heh.

The Sticker Monster HQ has been established at my new place, although I’ll only be here for six months. But it’s more comfortable now as I don’t have to shift my stocks up and down the North South Highway like how I did back in uni when I had sem breaks. Good news is that my stuff can stay at one place, bad news is that I no longer have semester breaks.

On my second weekend I went back home for a day trip up to Ipoh to meet with some of the ex classmates who got posted to Perak and Penang. Boo to those who couldn’t come down. 🙁

Poh Yee shows us how Ipoh people park – TRIPLE PARK!

Another lonely evening, heading back into Kluang. 😐

A little something to keep me busy! Many new stocks to be uploaded on The Sticker Monster! Thank god it was a public holiday and I have finally managed to photograph all the stocks.

Not that different from the last five years…………

As dad was back from Indonesia on my third weekend home, we decided that it was high time to take our proper studio shots before the novelty of graduating wears off.

Dad struts his stuff for the camera.

Obligatory yumcha session at Melur. It was an important meeting because we had to discuss about the goodie bags that we were preparing for International Dahlings’ Weekend 2010! Read about the first International Dahlings’ Weekend here!

Back in Kluang again… this is how Malaccans and Johoreans roll. My house too has an antenna that is damn tall to get Singapore channels.

My fully equipped kitchen! No oven though….after a few paychecks, maybe I’ll get one and….uh, learn to bake? Fingers crossed!

Hope I have not been boring my Facebook friends with photos of my dinner. I’ve become one of those eat shit sleep Facebookers! 🙁 But it’s always an adventure as I am learning the ropes of reallllly living on my own. In Kedah I had my kedah mum and dad, Lie Yuen and Cze-Yin, and my other sisters, Zhu Zen, NIen, Brenda, Poh Yee..etc etc.

I wanted to cook regularly too in Kedah but I didn’t want to be left out from the dinner time gossip… but now that I am alone, I can actually cook everyday! The tough part is planning ahead. ;|

My godma has a very good system where she cooks enough for the whole weeks, with a variety to boot, and separates each dish into smaller portions and pops them in the freezer. She then takes out a couple of containers each day to reheat. So clever right?

I loooove soup. That’s some herbal soup packet I got from Giant. The brown dish is some brinjal in dark soya sauce, stir fried with eggs and onions. The veggie dish is made up of four angled beans, fishballs and taugeh.

My usual broccoli+chicken+oyster mushroom in oyster sauce combo to accompany my leftovers from the night before.

A truly FML moment, dripping dark soya sauce without knowing it. This was when I had to clean out the fridge because an egg was placed at a wrong angle and slammed into the chiller’s door. 😐

On my fourth weekend, Chee Kiang came up to Kluang to visit me. Just to test how near is Kluang to JB, I decided to try driving down. It takes me an hour and a bit… can be quite tiring after a long day’s work! I had a nice time exploring City Square while waiting for Chee Kiang to cross over from Singapore.

Bringing him around Kluang where we seriously pigged out. So damn sinful lah if you’re on a makan trip. This was taken at the famous Kluang Railway Station Coffee place.

We had surprise visitors from home that night! Charis and Aloysious were here in Kluang to attend Charis’ cousin’s wedding.. thank god for Facebook or else Charis would not know that there is a lonely girl in Kluang who could do with some company from home.

And Samsung Galaxy S has only one lousy point – no flash. 🙁

I managed to meet their little girl, Cheryl too!! I love babies!!! 😀

Before Chee Kiang left the next day, we HAD to try the Kluang Railway coffee or else his first trip to Kluang goes unjustified. Ignore the men digging his teeth with his straw.

The prices are awesome!! You can just eat and eat and eat..

A half boiled egg is a half boiled egg.

But this Roti Bakar Bulat is SOOOooo good. They have the Roti Bakar Keping which is the usual sliced bread with butter and kaya slapped in between. This one is like a hamburger bun that has been sliced into sections with the butter and kaya oozing out from the sides. I WANT TO GO BACK FOR MORE~

The rustic interior. Lie Yuen and I will have a photography expedition in Kluang when she comes to visit!

All fenced up! Chee Kiang says it’s to prevent birds from flying in.

Talking to Lie Yuen on the phone. No lah, we are not like Siamese twins, just that she called to ask about some upcoming dental conference that we are keen on going for.

Can imagine his 1940s Shanghai whatever-you-call-a-man’s cheongsam flapping behind him with a bowler hat on as he waits for his beloved (me!) to arrive on the next train.

After stuffing our tummies with ‘breakfast’, we immediately went for ‘lunch’. Tangkak beef noodles!!

I love mine with beef stomach and tendon…Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. My senior at work brought me there for lunch one day and ever since then, I’m hooked!

Chee Kiang’s train has arrived. 🙁

Counted on him to survive the train ride before I decide if I should take the train for my future visits to Singapore. According to him, it was damn fast! It arrived in Woodlands within two and a half hours!

All aboard~!

After dropping Chee Kiang off, I drove around my housing area. That’s Gunung Lambak in the distance. Like Gunung Jerai (the mountain that I saw everyday in Kedah), it gets enveloped in mist in the mornings. I get to see the whole mountain too from my surgery room’s window!

Later in the day, Cze-Yin came down from Melaka (she underestimated to distance and was super tired) to have dinner with me. My second visitor!! 🙂

So that about sums up life in Kluang for now.