Your first days in your home in Malaysia

The questions are so broad that it would take 30 pages to answer. Got 5 hours?

I'll just say it was very hard to settle down and not for any of the reasons I expected.

I didnt move-in on my first trip, I came on 3-month visas and stayed in nice hotels. I did this four times before I decided I wanted to stay. I did things slowly also did work in Malaysia from nearly the first day by creating my own employment. My first job was being contracted to write a book on the Malay language which was published in 2001 and everything after that was one new idea after the other.

I wasnt wealthy or gifted or privileged but I did have energy, enthusiasm--- and credit cards. In fact, by the time I was settled down through the renting of a place, buying a car and appliances, I didnt know I was. What happened exactly was that in the doing of self-projects I met people; the more people I met, the more opportunities opened. One thing led to another, time went by and here we are a very long time later. In a sense, I never have settled down, i just let life flow. Its been a dream life I could never have imagined or planned for. I repeatedly got away with murder to make things work, stories about I'll save for a book one day, and just kept moving.

Returning to the second line of my post, one thing stands out about difficulties in settling down. Extreme malaysian predjudice, racism and xenophobia initially prevented me from renting a place to live. Landlords and agents hated foreigners who they blamed for all the ills of the country and I must say such allegations werent completely unfounded. Foreigners often absconded and deserted, leaving huge bills in their wake. In fact, one potential landlord said I could rent his condo if I first paid up the huge bills left by the previous tenant. Otherwise, it was pure racism like, "we only rent to chinese (or indian or malay)," or "We dont think youd be happy in this chinese (or indian or malay) neighborhood, so goodbye." This kind of treatment was tough to overcome and I did so by teaching myself an obvious lesson one learns, or should learn, to be here -- take the time to get to know and be patient with one person at a time. How do you convince a whole country to believe in you and take you seriously? One at a time, an arduous but necessary task, harder for me because im so introverted! And how do you do that, exactly? Its different for different people. For one, it might be sitting down on some steps and chatting for three hours; for others it might be going out for tea or meals a few times and talking about nothing. But its how I made friends, got things done and it took years. However, this is hindsight. Had I known any of this in advance would I have stayed?

Not everyone will have the same experience both settling down and living here day to day but learning the pace, and LETTING the pace of the place dictate actions is probably the key. Would it be any different for any new country?