It has begun!

.. my Malaysian life, that is :)

For the past several days, I've been cooped up in my room to the point of getting cabin fever, so it's been a relief to get a few of my errands out of the way:

• I've reactivated my Malaysian bank account, got myself a new debit card, and it now has *some* (albeit not lots of) money on it, so I can stop carrying my UK bank cards with me.
• I've got some passport photos done so I can now go on to renew my passport.
• I met my BFF today and we had a long overdue catchup girl talk :D
• I've signed up for driving classes and my first (6-hour theory) class is tomorrow!

There's still loads of things on my to-do list, but it feels like I'm finally getting some headway.

The thing that bugged me the most is how remote my house is and how helplessly immobile I feel. My house isn't exactly cut off from civilization - it's reasonably accessible to everywhere, provided you have *a car* which you CAN DRIVE. Both of which I don't currently have/can do. So my driving lessons will hopefully help me solve the driving problem. I have a rich brother whom I can hopefully persuade to solve the car problem.

But yeah, if you can't drive for any reason, then it fairly sucks to live around my area. The nearest bus stop is a good 40 mins' walk away, and even then you still need to change buses, so you'd probably look at 1 hour minimum to get to the centre of town. I haven't tried taxis yet, but I'm apprehensive about how much it would cost to get one called up to my part of the woods.

So at the moment, I'm heavily relying on my mom to drive me around everywhere. It's a bit stifling to be so reliant on somebody else, especially when I've always been pretty independent about going places when I was in the UK.

I MISS UNI-LINK SO MUCH.

The drivers and the service in particular. Not the bosses nor the scary office lady :P

What I don't miss are the prices though. For example, a 5-min single trip on a Uni-link bus would cost me £2 (RM10.20). My 47-mile round trip to the capital of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, using two types of rail services, cost me RM9 (£1.80). However, it did take me just over an hour each way to get from the first rail station to the last, and I haven't included the 16-mile round trip my mom drove to send me from home to the station and back. So yeah, getting anywhere in here is cheap but exhausting and time-consuming - if you rely on public transport (+ parents).

I really need to get myself a car! And a driving license!