We have now been in Miri a little bit over two weeks and we are still having that vacation feeling. But more on that later. Let me first give a quick recap of what has happened in the weeks since our last update.

Mom and the kitties left on Wednesday the 14th as planned and the same day the movers came to start packing up everything in the house. The three of us moved into a hotel in the Hague such that we did not have to live among the boxes. Sebastian took all of this remarkably well. On Friday the movers came and picked up everything and managed to stuff all our belongings in a 20 foot container. This was quite surprising as the initial assessment estimated that we were 3 cubic meters over. On Friday evening we ended up watching Holland play their world cup match against Ivory Coast in the lobby of the hotel together with our neighbor Rutger and his girlfriend. Sebastian was showing very clear signs of early manhood since he just did not know where to focus his attention. His eyes kept moving from the beers on the table (mind you, only the full glasses), to the soccer on tv, and the girl sitting next to him. I’m not going to have to teach this boy anything.

On Saturday we attended Chad and Pauline’s wedding, which was Sebastian first real social event, and again he held up real well. He only started getting fussy after about two hours when we sat down for dinner. There he slowly became the center of attention which turned out to be a little bit too much for him. On Sunday we drove down to Limburg to stay with my parents for the remainder of the week before we left for Malaysia. Unfortunately we had a little bit too much luggage to be able to take it all in one trip, so I ended up driving back to The Hague the same day to collect the rest of the bags. Fortunately the second part of the trip was not too bad since I got to drive dad’s Audi A8, which I of course never drove faster than the speed limit.

We had a really nice time while in Limburg. We got to surprise both great grandmothers with a visit. This was especially nice for great grandmother Hos since this was the first time she got to see Sebastian. Needles to say, it was a very emotional visit. We are all very glad we got spend the time with the family before taking off. The most notable thing to happen was that Sebastian decided to start teething the night before we had to leave. Out of the blue he just started screaming bloody murder and there was just no consoling him. We were preparing for the worst flight of our lives. I was mentally picturing the faces of all the people in business class who had paid so much money to have an enjoyable flight.

On Thursday we took two cars to drive to Schiphol were we all (Laura, Seb, me and my parents) stayed overnight so that we did not have to add that trip to our overall travel time which was going to be bad enough as it was. We had a very emotional night with lots of tears which was inevitable. The next morning Chantal met us at the airport to add a few more buckets of tears to the whole experience.

As we were about to board the plane we were told that some of our hand luggage was too heavy and we were going to have to check it in. There was no way we were willing to do this since all those bags pretty much contained our lives. So Laura was prepared for this and had taken a bunch of plastic bags, so I started reshuffling stuff until every bag weighed less than 10kg. This of course meant that we now had about 33 carry-on items per person which we somehow managed to get on the plane in one go. The flight attendants were looking at us kind of funny but they did not dare say anything that could potentially spoil out mood even more.

Once we were seated we started to relax a little bit. We got a nice 3 seat row in the middle of the business class section with space for a bassinet. Now the fun could begin. Would Sebastian make it through the flight without too much ruckus. We were preparing for a trip with no sleep (which we did not get since we were too afraid he would have a melt down…) but the second the planes engines were turned on, Sebastian pretty much passed out. I think I’m not lying when I say that he must have slept about 8 to 9 hours out of the 11 hours of the flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. That’s when we knew we simply had to go and live in Boeing 747.

The 4 hour lay-over in KL was quite painful. Neither one of us had slept and Sebastian was wide awake. We spent the whole time in the lounge trying not to pass out and miss the connecting flight. We somehow survived and managed to get on the flight to Miri. Once arrived we were picked up by my Boss, who had chartered a taxi to come along with him to ensure he could transport all of our luggage. He then dropped us of at our temporary apartment in which we remain to this day. Everything was arranged very nicely. They had even put some food items in the fridge so that we would not starve to death in the first few days.

Sebastian is now slowly adjusting to the local time, which means that Laura is still suffering from the biggest jet lag ever. She likes to refer to it as simply lag. Hopefully when we move into our new house we’ll be able to get a bit more rhythm going and she’ll catch up on some that lost sleep.

That’s all for now. As soon as we move into the house I’ll try and get an internet connection hooked up. Currently we do not have internet at the apartment which explains the lack of updates and pictures. So I’ll now stop taking valuable work time.