Russian sojourn

Finally after six long years of slogging and a lot of heartache, pain and sickness suffered alone, joy and withstanding the bitter cold of a Russian winter, my youngest Sarah has graduated with an M.D! She worked hard for it of course even though critics here in Malaysia say that overseas trained graduates, especially Russian doctors are not as good as the locally trained ones! Just because many of them were not pampered government scholars who rely on the government for everything, they are looked down upon. Anyway Sarah had a grand occasion yesterday. They looked splendid in their red and black gowns and black graduation caps with red tassels. The ceremony itself was quite simple - it was presided over by the Rector of the Nizhny Novgorod State Medical Academy (NNSMA) and went without a hitch. It began with the Russian National anthem sung by a really good choir who went on to sing the university song.

The morning started with a grand gesture from the students - they had hired for themselves a limousine to go to the convocation venue- a really huge, white limousine that could take 10 of us easily. So we went to the hall in style! There they quickly dressed in their graduation robes and I noticed that there were a lot of Malaysian parents on hand to help their children. Eighty students - all from foreign countries- would be graduating this year. Almost 80% of the students are Malaysian , the rest coming from some African countries (Kenya, Tanzania and Morrocco). There were also some students from Sri Lanka and one from Indonesia.

After the ceremony we all went for a celebration lunch - at a Japanese restaurant, booked by Sarah and her friends but paid for by parents (lol).

The four young doctors

Renovation project (2)

After the initial work (the breaking of the arches and the floor), they put up the windows for the side area. The door will be moved to the front too and will be bigger than the present one. Tomorrow they will put up the window ledges and the door but they have to plaster the walls first, which is still not done. According to the window man the walls need to be plastered and painted before he can put up the windows? Our contractor Lai Ah Yee has not even plastered the walls! And he didnt come at all today, yet he promised us he would finish it by the third week, which is this week! Sigh...

Finally after a lot of  waiting, Lai the contractor (who happened to also be Repin's cousin!) came and in one day worked his miracle. A whole crew came and fixed the plaster, put up the windows and fixed the ceiling. However  he couldn't do anything about the doors because the door man was in KL doing some other work and would only be back in Malacca on Monday! Talk of exporting our talents! Can't KL find their own door making experts? The following pictures show the transformation.

The finished product does look nice, even 80% completed as it is now. Next will be the floor and the wiring as well as the outer door.

Renovation project in Malacca (1)

After the wedding was over Repin and I decided to continue with our planned renovation of the Malacca house - we needed to increase the floor level to prevent flooding and this can only be done if we did some major changes to the outer verandah - cover the verandah, increase the floor level, add windows. I love bay windows so this is my chance to have one!

 

After a lot of discussion and looking at pictures on the internet, we decided to increase the floor level (by 8 inches) and cover the wrap around verandah that is already there. We would close the verandah area and build windows instead so the verandah will be an extension of the living room. Repin intends to have large windows that look on to the yard so that he can be as close to the garden as possible, without actually going to the garden! (LOL) He also wants to set his study there! For now, its dust, and noise every day - while they skin off the outer layers of the walls and add bricks to the lower level. The following are the while renovation pictures. I'll post some after pictures once renovation is complete!

The front door that will be added