Hello Goodbye

It’s our last few hours in LA and soon we’ll be on the plane, making the 10,000 mile journey back to KL. Yesterday we took one last walk around Old Town Pasadena, passing our “old” apartment on the way. I said to Lucas – “look, that’s where we used to stay”, and as I said it, I realised that it feels like a lot longer than 3 months that we’ve been here. Even Lucas was completely silent the whole way, taking the surroundings in like he knew it would be a long time before he returns to Pasadena.

In the Accenture KL office, up on the 66th floor of the Petronas Twin Towers, there’s a quote printed on the window – “Live as though it’s your last day, dream as though you’ll live forever”. I think that’s very good advice and if we are able to experience every 3 months as though it’s a year, we will “live” for several hundred years! My dream is that I will be able to keep involved with the project, maybe even be a part of the team that realises the vision and hopefully I won’t have to live forever to do so…

The reason I was thinking of this quotation is that I received the sad news yesterday that Robert Davies, the CEO of the Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF) passed away last week. I only knew Robert briefly, having been privileged to spend a week touring India and Sri Lanka with him as part of the IBLF Tsunami Task Force 2 years ago. Robert is a person who embodied this quotation – every day with him was exhausting yet exhilirating and he pushed all of us to look at the world a different way and make a positive difference. Being part of the Tsunami Task Force and meeting Robert I think planted the seed for me to do this ADP project at World Vision.

It was a perfect last day at work – the project team threw me a farewell tea party (US style with bagels and coffee) and we went to lunch at In ‘n Out – this time I got the Double Double with Animal Style fries (living like it’s my last day…). I had been wanting to participate in the World Vision Child Sponsorship program ever since I joined the project and amazingly, today in chapel there was the opportunity to sign up (a timely reminder!) so I did so right away. Lucas now has a big sister in Lebanon, her name is Mary Theresa George and she likes science…hopefully the last part will rub off on Lucas!

To all who have made our short time here such a great experience, thank you for everything you’ve done and I hope we will keep in touch. Taking my cue from the Governator – hasta la vista and we’ll be back!

Road trip - part 3 (San Francisco and back to LA)

I think I am more than a month behind on this blog now, I have not finished our Independence Day road trip report and now it's already coming up to Memorial Day (which we will no longer be here for, but instead we will be back in Malaysia to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Malaysia's independence!).

So let me catch up with San Francisco - we stayed at the Hyatt Embarcadero because they had an Independence Day special deal and somehow the advertising implied that we could view the fireworks directly from the hotel. So it was a bit of a letdown when I checked in and they said that we would have to go to Fisherman's Wharf to see the fireworks. The room itself was nice for the price, and the hotel is very well located just by the Ferry Building and a cable car end station. We checked in around 5pm and started going to Fisherman's Wharf at 7pm. Good as SF's public transport is, it is not baby friendly. Strollers have to be folded up and there is usually standing room only in the trams and cable cars. It was pretty stressful trying to get on and off the trams carrying Lucas in one arm and a folded up stroller plus all his gear in the other arm, trying to find the correct change and having other people push by at the same time. We made it to Pier 39 in one piece, but there was a free rock concert going on right outside the Hard Rock Cafe and the crowd was building up. We had a quick dinner at Hard Rock (went to the front of the queue with my All Access card!) and by the time we came out at 8:45pm the crowd was so packed that it was almost impossible to move. We then decided that it would not make sense to stay for the fireworks with Lucas (everyone must have thought we were out of our minds to bring a baby there!).

Walking back to the hotel was fairly smooth as everyone was already at Fisherman's Wharf. We did in the end catch the fireworks from across a large parking lot near the hotel. I think we probably saw more of it than we would have from Fisherman's Wharf, since there were no crowds at the parking lot!

The next day we took the cable car to Chinatown - it was a smooth ride as we got on at the first station and it was relatively early in the morning. San Francisco has the largest Chinatown in America, and it was great having authentic Chinese food at reasonable prices again. I took the opportunity to get a haircut with shampoo for $10 ($6 for just the haircut, even cheaper than my haircut in KL!). Lucas also had his first haircut, which he was not impressed with. After Chinatown we tried to take the cable car again but by this time we had to wait about half an hour as all the cars passing by were packed. When we got to the end of the line we saw that there was a massive queue to take the cable car going up Russian hill (the steepest part of the line with a nice view, so very popular with tourists) so we decided to just walk back from Fisherman's Wharf (again) to our hotel. We went to the Ferry Building at about 8pm to try and get a nice dinner but all the shops and most of the restaurants had already closed. So apart from a couple of cable car rides and Chinatown, we did not really do much on this day. We ended up getting a sandwich from Subway for dinner - none of the restaurants near the Ferry Building are open for dinner, I guess they cater only for the office crowd.

Our final day in SF we drove to the Presidio and walked all the way to the Golden Gate bridge. That was very pleasant although it was cold and foggy - 59 Fahrenheit (15 Celsius) at noon! No wonder Mark Twain said that the coldest winter day he ever experienced was a San Francisco July day! However Lucas was very happy - he likes being outdoors and he is more into cold weather than warm. The fog never lifted high enough for us to see the whole bridge, but what we could see of it was very impressive.

We then started on the long drive back to LA - it took us about 7 hours as there was quite a bit of traffic leaving the Bay Area. What was interesting was seeing the outside temperature climb from 59F (15C) to 110F (43C) within a distance of 50 miles! We had to make a stop at a place where it was 105F and I don't think I could last very long in that heat. Las Vegas was over 110F that entire week, hitting 116F on a couple of days so I was glad that we decided to travel to the coast instead of Vegas.

We arrived back in Pasadena at around 10pm (and a very comfortable 71F!) and that was all in all a very enjoyable trip. It gave us confidence that we could have an enjoyable extended trip with Lucas as long as we plan ahead a little and we are flexible when conditions change. So watch out for more family trip reports soon!

Just 3 weeks left...

The time has just flown by - we’ll be flying back to KL less than 3 weeks from now and although it’ll be nice to be back home, it is with a twinge of sadness that we leave LA. Amazingly, this place has grown on us in a short time, much more than I could have imagined possible. Here are some of the things I will miss:

- The cool evenings sitting on the little balcony of our apartment (and Lucas calling out to all the dogs, babies and cars that pass by)
- Going to Lacy park in San Marino for Lucas’ playgroup (and gawking at the $2 million houses around the park)
- All the good stuff we can get at Trader Joe’s and Pavilions ($2 Charles Shaw wine anyone?)
- Ralph’s 10 for $10 deals (and double coupons!)
- Cherries, Strawberries, Rasperries, Blueberries (with or without ice-cream)!
- Decent sized parking lots (and free parking at the mall)
- Weekends at the pool or the beach (and the almost 100% reliable sunshine)
- Wednesday chapel at World Vision (very thought provoking and inspirational)
- Some great friends we’ve made both at work and outside
- Last but not least - In-n-Out Burgers and Baha fish tacos!

But at least we will have our nice memories (and photo evidence for Lucas), which reminds me that I need to finish my trip report of our road trip to San Francisco before it fades too far into distant memory!