After working on campus we drove home for showers (we did work-up a sweat on a warm, humid morning), and then headed-up to Bukit (hill in Malay) Antarabangsa to pick up Tracy at their place. Since Tracy was willing to drive, and since their Jeep would hold more stuff to transport home, we left our car and headed out “Middle Ring Road” (something akin to the beltway in D.C.) with some pretty good directions on how to get to IKEA. Tracy did a great job driving, but with both Ron and Nancy acting as navigators, we got-off at the wrong exit, knew it almost immediately, and spent about 15 minutes before we could make a U-turn and head back in the direction we hoped would take us back to Middle Ring Road. Through some small miracle we succeeded, drove into the huge underground IKEA parking garage and begin our great IKEA shopping adventure.
After a couple of hours wandering through the IKEA maze, we collected the shelf numbers of 4-5 items we needed to find in their warehouse and also accumulated smaller items in our grocery carts. Since I’d had only a few apple slices for lunch, I talked Nancy into heading for the cafeteria at about 3:30, where I consumed a small shrimp salad and a baked salmon plate with broccoli and boiled potato (the delicious salmon plate cost an extravagant 12.5 Ringgit [$3.70!]). While shopping we’d kept in touch with Tracy by cell phone and connected with her at the warehouse where we picked-up the boxed versions of 3 wooden storage units, a straight-back chair to supplement the 6 around our dining table, a chair for reading in the bedroom (Ron’s need while Nancy watches 1st and 2nd year re-runs of ER on TV), and a chest of drawers for the guest bedroom. From the warehouse we headed to “check-out” and then to the delivery desk where we paid an additional $33 to have most of the boxed-up stuff delivered and assembled. As we were getting ready to head home we witnessed another of KL’s famous sound-and-light thunder and lightning storms, complete with pouring rain. Tracy, however, did another great job of driving and, aside from gridlock part of the way, we were most grateful for a safe arrival home and a successful IKEA trip. At Doug and Tracy’s we collected Reeve and drove to our place for his Saturday night sleep-over. (Kraft macaroni-and-cheese was his menu choice since an adequate supply of it was left-over from the day before when I’d cooked it up for Gabi while I was hosting her for swimming, computer games and a nap.)
Today (Sunday), we went to church at 10:00 a.m.—after watching the Red Sox amass a 10-1 lead over Cleveland in game #6 of the ALCS on “Malaysian ESPN”—at “The Bridge” (an interdenominational multi-racial international church which meets in a very nice rented facility) where we connected with Doug and Tracy and the kids, Anita Stansell, and two others from church, and came up with a decision to eat at the food court at “The Great Eastern Mall.” No sooner, however, had we sat down to order when Nancy’s cell phone rang with news from IKEA that our furniture delivery would arrive within 30-45 minutes! So, we both made a hasty decision to skip lunch and head home in time to meet the IKEA truck. It was a fortuitous decision since we’d no sooner exited from the car when the IKEA truck pulled-up at the gate. Three workers carried boxes to the elevator, rode up with me to the 19th floor, carried all the stuff down the ½ flight of stairs to the 18th (the elevator stops only at every-other-floor) and began their 1-1 ½ hour task of assembling all the items we’d purchased.
After the IKEA workers left, Nancy and I got to work organizing things on the three wooden storage units in a small room adjacent to the laundry area. And, since that task involved some perspiration, we concluded the afternoon by cooling-off in the beautiful swimming pool downstairs. - rw
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