HHE (Finally!) and Brunch

We have had a lot of bumps on the road to getting our HHE from the U.S. to Malaysia, so, not surprisingly, there were a few dramatic flairs left for the final delivery day.  We packed out on June 7th, and our UAB (air freight) showed up quickly and easily.  A couple months later, we still hadn't heard anything about our HHE (sea freight), so we reached out through the people at the embassy here.  Essentially, the response we got from the shipping company was, oh, you wanted us to ship that?  Our stuff had just been sitting in DC for months, not going anywhere.  Once we finally got it on a boat, it was supposed to arrive on November 1, but then, for some reason, they switched which boat it was on, and the new boat, had twice as many stops and kept getting delayed.  

Finally though, the ship made it to KL, and the embassy did a great job getting it through customs quickly.  They scheduled a delivery day for us and said the stuff should arrive between 10 and 10:30, so Jeff took the day off, we put the girls on the bus, and then waited for our boxes.  And waited.  And waited.  First, it was going to be delayed until 11.  Then 1.  Then it was definitely going to come by 2.  The truck had had a problem, you see.  They sent us a picture of a truck, which presumably had something wrong with it.  They finally decided to give up on the big, broken truck and load our belongings onto two smaller trucks instead.  By 3:30, the first boxes were coming through the door.

Almost as soon as they started bringing in boxes though, water started pouring from the light fixture under the air conditioning unit.  I ran to get a bucket, Jeff turned off the light and the AC, and we pushed the furniture off to one side.

Noby called the main office to see if someone could come and figure out why water was still streaming from our ceiling, and the moving crew just kept bringing in boxes, walking undeterred around the bucket.  Of course, by that point the girls were home.  I advised Vivian to go to a friend's house, which she did, but Elena wanted to stay and watch, so I put her in charge of checking off the boxes as they came in.

The AC maintenance guys actually came really quickly, but then the movers had to carry boxes around a bucket AND a ladder.

The philosophy seemed to be get all the boxes off the truck, then unpack them, so they started unpacking right around the time the AC guy showed up with a water vacuum for our ceiling.

And to finish the move with a bang, one of the first things they unpacked, they broke.  The man unwrapping my grandmother's sugar bowl threw the paper on the ground without checking for a top first.  Bye bye top.

That was the point at which I decided I needed to leave for a little bit, so I decided to take Elena (protesting all the way) over to her friend's house for the remainder of the unpacking.  They kindly kept her there for dinner, which allowed chaos to reign in the dining room a bit longer.

When she finally came home, she was thrilled to discover a cooler full of stuffed animals in her room and promptly jumped in.

By 7pm, everything was unpacked, if not yet put away, and we felt pretty proud of ourselves for getting it all into the apartment in such a short window.

In the morning, we found a makeshift table for the girls to eat their breakfast at, and then we put them on the bus and got down to work.

Noby was a HUGE help.  She got the kitchen in order, and even managed to fit all of our holiday stuff into one corner of what is supposed to be a maid's bedroom.

By the time the girls got home from school, it looked like a proper home that someone could live in.  They were thrilled to be reunited with all their books and toys, and so, to celebrate, we had some friends over for delivery dinner and a bingo game.

The next day, someone came to hang the pictures, which was a relief, because I kept waiting for one of us to bump into one and knock it over.

It's so nice to have color on all the white walls now, and we were so thrilled to have everything set up, since we had already offered to host Thanksgiving the following week.

While it may not seem like the most logical way to celebrate, we went out for Sunday brunch once the house was organized.  We had actually been trying to meet up with new friends who had been introduced to us by mutual friends, and this was the best time for it.  Plus, they wanted to go to a place on our list, Fuego at Troika Sky Dining.  The way the Troika Sky Dining is set up is that there are several restaurants that share one level.  They're all quite fancy, and they have great views.  On Sundays, the restaurants rotate through serving brunch, and this Sunday was Fuego's turn.

It's best known for its steak, which was on the menu, but many of the other dishes sounded excellent too.

We definitely want to come back for dinner one night, because while the decor looked good during the day, I'm sure it's magical at night with all the lights on.

We even spotted a grand piano with a music stand next to it, so there's a good chance there's live music too.

There were six of us all together, and the waiter brought two of each dish and placed them at either end of the table.  He also made it clear that we could ask for more of anything, but we tried to pace ourselves.  The guacamole with halibut was my surprise favorite of the starters.

The tomato soup wasn't terribly photogenic, but it tasted good.

Jeff's favorite starter was the bread that came with the shrimp dish.  It's the only thing we got seconds of, and even though I teased him, other people ate more of it too.

The clear winner though, was the steak.  It was phenomenal.

There was very good roasted chicken as well, but we were so into the steak that Jeff didn't get a picture of the chicken.  Dessert was lovely as well, and a great way to finish off the feast.

It was not cheap, but Jeff and I figured that it was a well deserved celebration of finally receiving our HHE and getting our house put together.