The previous year, I was in Malaysia. I had expected to be the only expat left on the tiny island of Timor, and was going to stay with some of our partners in a convent, preferably in the mountains. But then very bad things started happening like a couple of robberies and an unsettling feeling that my house was going to burn down, so when I was asked to transfer to Indonesia I went. But no one wanted me in Indonesia for Christmas, so I flew to Malaysia to spend the holiday week with a dear friend from university. There’s a great deal to be grateful for in that story… as well as a lingering feeling of failure. New Years was spent on an airplane, flying from Bali to Sydney to spend a few days with friends there.
I didn’t blog that holiday, but when I got back to Indonesia in early 2010, I started catching up on email, Facebook, and the like, and was rather shocked with how much I’d missed while living on my tiny Pacific Island. Here’s the post: 2009 in Numbers
There may not be much (any!) snow in Malaysia, and it might not even be a Christian country. But they've got the Christmas BLING mastered! This is from a mall in Kuala Lumpur.
