Malaysia!

Yes, we're home! (well, Malaysia will always be home)

After a harrowing 20 hour flight, we got in at 2 am. Inexplicably, by some weird cosmic coincidence, I always end up sitting close to noisy kids.

That one year it was a child planning to run for presidency. He would recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the top of his voice at 10,000 m in the air. Over and over again. Almost made me want to stand up and salute.

"I pledge allegiance, to the flag of the United States..."

This time, I had a krazy hyperactive Korean kid with lungs the size of an adult hippopotamus, who would just babble away, at 150 decibels. Ba-ba-ba La-la-la Whoosshh Nya-nya-nya. That, and his incessant kicking of the back of my seat. Not that he had some cognitive disability or anything, since he was talking normally to his parents.

Until. He. Got. Bored.

You wouldn't like him when he's bored.

My ice-cold glares, usually reserved for reckless drivers talking on their cellphones, succeeded in shutting him up only for minutes at a time. I must have had that crazy must-kill-someone look on the plane, as Kristin anxiously asked me to use her noise-cancelling headphones several times.

But this kid, he was unusually resistant to my looks of death. A worthy adversary. He finally fell into a stuporous sleep 5 hours out of Chicago (perhaps one of the other passengers laced his drink with Benadryl?).

With my luck, our trip back to the States would have me sitting beside The Screaming Baby Triplets From The Netherworld. Don't believe me? Just you wait.

Anyway, we're here. Kristin's folks resting in the hotel, everyone else sleeping, except this idiot with jetlag. We did make the customary stop at the mamak from the airport, and one murtabak and roti goreng and teh tarik later, it feels like I never left.

Malaysia, here we come!