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04/12/09 - Week two of my travels has passed, and I've been making new friends and seeing new sights. I met Lee, the husband of my Chinese-Malaysian Tesco work colleague, Jeannie, who took me to the Pavilion shopping mall in KL. I also met an Indian guy called Stanley, at KLCC, to collect some things for Isaac and Charlotte (Gap Year friends), who are getting married in February. And I met Pastor Jebaraj, from India, who wants to come to England. He preached at today's Taman Wahyu service, where I spent most of the day helping decorate the church for Christmas with Victoria, Anitha and Pathmini.

I attended the memorial of Hema and Ranjita's grandmother, but no Hema or Ranjita to be found. I'm not sure if their father, Karberi, is keeping them away from me, possibly out of jealousy that I've managed to bond with his daughters, whereas he hasn't had or tried to take the opportunity to do so. I also stepped into 'forbidden' territory this week, going back to the Taman Tun Hindu village, only to find that Ashwini and Theeba had just gone to Singapore for the school holidays the day before. My four girls all gone AWOL, it feels as though my timing for this trip has been a bit off course.

But the worst ever tragedy struck me on Sunday evening, when Pathmini accidentally selected Delete All whilst playing with my camera! Most of my Sri Lanka photos have gone, plus various photos from around Malaysia and in the church, including photos of Pathmini herself, who had just done some modelling as a fairy, which was supposed to be used for invitations for the Christmas Service. I've taken the memory card to Low Yat Plaza to try and get the photos recovered. Fingers crossed...

11/12/09 - More sights and more friends in my last few days in Malaysia. I met up with Lee again (Jeannie's husband), who took me to Putrajaya for the first time, where I bought a Malaysian Balik Shirt. Putrajaya definitely has a lot of worldwide inspirations; they built a man made lake, just so they could build fancy bridges to go across it, just like London, and some of the architecture is similar to Dubai, though they're both Islamic countries. I also visited the Mines Shopping Mall, which has a little Venice inspiration, and attended the Peace Charis AOG Church in Serdang, and joined in their Chinese Youth Service.

I signed out from Taman Wahyu for another six months by giving out photos and chocolates, and after visiting families in Jinjang to say gooodbye, I could really feel how much my presence was appreciated with them. One family in particular that's caught my attention is Dharsini and Shakina's; I visited them last week, and was shocked that two girls who come to church dressed so beautifully could live in such poverty. Victoria came with me to their house on Monday to meet their mother, who upon my view looks potentially like a drug addict. I feel quite bad, having spent my two trips this year chasing Ranjita, who's now securely in the care system, whilst Dharsini and Shakina, who have been coming to our church without their mother for atleast twenty months now, desperately require some social service.

My feet have had a hard time this past week, after twisting my right ankle on Saturday and cutting my left big toe on Monday, both at Wangsa Maju LRT. I'm hoping I've finally sorted my refund with my former Malaysian ISP, iZZi, where I've been waiting to inherit my RM396 for the past 18 months; atleast its value is higher than what it was 18 months ago. Also, I managed to set Victoria up with an e-mail and Facebook account; unfortunately I didn't have much time to teach her how to operate it herself, as we did it within the last few hours of my stay in Malaysia.

As I've said the past few weeks, I really feel this Malaysia trip was at the wrong time. I missed a Robot Wars show; had a Team Leader vacancy at work, though fortunately I'm still valid for; received a call from Adult Education about a teaching position, only for it to cut off as I was in Sri Lanka; missed Hema and Ranjita, who had been staying at their grandmother's place a couple of months before she died; missed Ashwini and Theeba; missed the Christmas lunch at work, plus most of the Christmas overtime. Things could have been very different had I gone several weeks earlier, probably during Deepavali, though it would have voided my errands for Charlotte and Jeannie, and my Sri Lanka trip.

Back in the UK, I watched a very interesting episode of Horizon, which asked 'How many people can live on planet Earth?'. It was a very informative statistics fest with David Attenborough, which stated that the 'productive bio capacity' of the Earth could sustain the typical lifestyle of 15 billion Indians, but only 1.5 billion Americans, who use over four times their recommended 'bio capacity'. The documentary also complimented the Indian state of Kerala, stating that a good education is the key to good population management, as opposed to forced birth control and sterlising.

And finally, after becoming quite jealous of most people in Kuala Lumpur having a better camera than me, I bought a new camera with my father, which we had pre-planned to do anyway, buying a Nikon D3000, a big step up from my Fujifilm S5700, which I've had a year and a half now, and little success with taking many top quality photographs. As for my memory card, it's currently at Jessops after data recovery in Malaysia was unsuccessful, but the chances of me getting my photos back are even slimmer, as the place in Malaysia decided to format my memory card as it 'had a virus'. Thanks, idiots.

18/12/09 - Been back in the UK just over a week now, time is passing slowly and I'm trying to get motivated again, despite my lack of hours at work. I visited Elizabeth to give her some early Christmas gifts from Malaysia and Sri Lanka, and found that the tea I bought when I visited Pussellawa was Elizabeth's old hometown. It's a small world...

25/12/09 - Merry Christmas! It's dissapointing to be away from Malaysia again this Christmas, with their annual Desa Water Park trip and Christmas Service, but fortunately Pastor Paul has put some photos on Facebook of the churches big events. Attended the Palmers Green Carol Service over the weekend, which was a nice service, but lacked a little compared to last year. Stayed with Sathees, who's family were planning on going to Paris, but the Eurostar was closed due to the weather and an incident in the tunnel.

My Christmas presents were also a bit dissapointing, though by accident. I got two copies of Slumdog Millionaire on DVD, and also received a bilingual book of 'Ali Baba and the Forty Theives', which was supposed to be in English and Tamil, but we received it in English and Urdu. My main present for Christmas was, of course, my new camera, which I used for the first time at Palmers Green. I'm surprised that such sophisticated cameras can carry less zoom than the cheaper, more standard digital cameras.

I've been suprisingly workshy over the Christmas period, though I wasn't able to get much overtime anyway due to being in Malaysia. But I've made no attempt to try and get extra hours, despite it being our busiest time of year, but I guess I'm still recovering a little from my latest Malaysia trip. My latest wage packet was only a third of what I got last month, due to being away, so I'd best get back into doing long hours again soon, as my money's not going to save itself...