Meeting Qatar friends in KL

We arrived in KL in the afternoon and got a taxi to Cyberjaya where our friends James and Deborah now live. As we were arriving to the gate of the fancy compound where they live, Deborah was also arriving from school with Jack, Molly and Ewan. Flora couldn't hold the excitement of meeting Molly again, one of her best friends in the first five years of her life. A friend whose home she would just walk into everyday after school for fun and games. Although the compound resembled Al-Khor Community; the gate, the pool, the gym, etc., the houses are bigger, fancier and the landscape is dominated by green and lush vegetation.
As they were at work during the week, we spent the first couple of days lazing around, swimming in the pool, teaching Flora and washing our clothes. At night we had dinner together, drunk a few and caught up.
On Friday we visited KL by the Petronas Towers and Flora had her play in the adjacent park interrupted by an heavy and long thunderstorm that left us waiting for more than half an hour under a bridge until we

could escape to the mall under the towers. As we learned during our stay in Malaysia, these thunderstorms are frequent, strong and the lightning potentially dangerous as a few cases of death by lightning strike had occurred before. Schools, swimming pools and compounds are equipped with lightning alarms causing PE lessons and youth clubs to be cancelled. At night the Dale-McKinneys joined us and, after having a couple of craft beers at a nice pub overlooking the park, we walked to Jalan Alor night food market for dinner and fun.
The following day was the twins ninth birthday party attended by James' and Deborah's new friends and their kids. It was good fun, just like what one would expect from these type of occasions, where the kids play the entire afternoon and the parents drink, exchange experiences, get to know each other, listen to music and argue politics. Their friends were fun and interesting and one particular couple had met at university in Sheffield and knew Chrish, Winks, Jimmy Tunes, Luigi and Tony Brooks. Small world...
At the beginning of the following week, during half-term, we headed south to Nusajaya and spent a full day at Legoland! The theme park was small but was almost empty which gave the kids the chance to enjoy the rides and Lego constructions as many times as they wanted without queuing. In the end, it was amazing to see our friends from Qatar that we had spent such an intensive time with over the past five years.