Goodbye girl

The 9th of April is coming up again and this time, it would be 7 years since we first 'met'.

It was a day before his birthday, I was just going to leave the computer to pack for a trip to KL that night when this irritating random man messaged me on ICQ for the THIRD time.

Goodness gracious, he sure is persistant, and he doesn't even know me. And he had an annoying nickname 'soonami' - I thought he was some stupid 20 something dirty minded man who thinks he is as powerful as a tsunami but couldn't spell.

Oddly of course, I discovered that his surname is actually Soon. So it was a play of words, but it wasn't because he couldn't spell. Thank god.

The even weirder thing is that after we got married, I took his surname, and now I'm Mrs. Soon Ae Mi. So basically, I've become soonami with an E. Strange hey?

Our love story isn't a simple one, it was a struggle, mainly because of distance. He was in London I was in Ipoh. We were young, we were penniless and we couldn't make any decisions without involving our parents.

I remember thinking it is going to take us forever to find a stable platform. Every time we found the opportunity to meet, every time we held hands, it was precious because we couldn't take it for granted.

A close friend took this photo of us sometime in August 2004.

We were both so young then, our love seem so raw, so excitable.

This photo was taken sometime before Christmas 

We look so different now. He has lost a lot of his boyish looks and we are so much calmer and contented with each other.

I remember he used to promise me that we will make it to the end, that he will show me a better life, take me away from my misery and unhappiness.

I never really believed him, but when I look around me now I know he has kept his promise. We are now a family and we love each other just like we did 7 years ago.

I have forgotten my past. And I'm now home at last.

Everybody wants a hand, but I'm too busy holding up the world..

One of my favourite band is Travis.

I'm trying to think if I like them more than Vertical Horizon but honestly.. I don't know. They are both completely different. But I do know I can sit at home all day listening to both their albums front to back again, again and again.

I used to sneak car trips to Penang on a school day when the husband and I were still dating (this must be what? 6 - 7 years ago?) and I had only my Vertical Horizon casette to listen to, but it was nice. I didn't like that we were away from each other but every car trip is now a beautiful memory.

Here's one of my favourite songs from Travis.. I don't think anyone write better lyrics than Fran Healy. The song is a bit depressing but hey ho, the husband will tell you I'm the queen of depressing songs.  

Mind your manners!

Why don't people say please or thank you anymore these days?

It really frustrates me.

I have coursemates who skip classes all the time (when I say skip, they probably only attend 35% of their classes!).

Even better, most of my coursemates actually come 30 minutes - an hour after a class have started.... and a class typically lasts only 1 hour 40 minutes.

Of course, it isn't a problem when they're skipping the class. The only problem comes when they do not know how to do the assignment or do not know where to look for information for the assignment.

And who do they ask when they are lost?

Me.

Yes, always the easy target.

Why? Because I actually take the effort to make it in time before a 9am class starts and I sit in for the 3 hour classes even if the lecture bores the hell out of my guts.

And I DO mind when people don't turn up to classes and then proceed to ask me a million questions.

What's worse though, are coursemates messaging me on Facebook asking obvious questions they should know the answer to if they have attended the class, and then after giving them what they want, they just disappear.

They don't say thank you.

That is just disgusting.

I am not rude enough to pretend I didn't get their messages, so these days I just say I don't know, I'm sorry, I can't help you.

Truly. Madly. Deeply

"You know how there are couples that stay together just because they feel they can't do any better or there are people who are sad and miserable and love alone but then there is this microscopically tiny group of people who get to be with the person they are madly in love with." - Loser, 2000.

I feel blessed to be within the microscopically tiny group of people.

I love you babyboo.

Growing up, growing tall

Walking dogs sound fun and easy.. afterall you just strap them up and take them out, what could be so hard.

Well, first off, your dog does not always listen to you off lead. I never realise the level of discipline, communication and commitment you need to have to keep your dog and yourself happy AND safe.

We used to walk Bronx and Jake off the lead in the nearby park.

Most days, it is okay but sometimes you meet the most idiotic and unreasonable people.

I personally believe in only telling my own dog off and not another's even if the other dog is being a nuisance.  I don't think it is my place to discipline another person's dog or wave them off.

Sadly, there are others that believe differently..

There used to be a lady with a Tibetan Terrier who walks her dog in the same park as us and one 'lucky' day we bumped into her.

Bronx was off lead and as usual he would sprint to the other dog to investigate and say hello (if it is a smaller dog, he would try to herd it like sheep - Bronx is a collie and we think he used to live in a sheep farm).

This lady immediately went on defence and started waving her hand at Bronx shooing him away.

We quickly went to grab Bronx and the lady complained that Bronx was trying to attack her dog.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...........................................................

Bronx attack another dog? Really????

Bronx gets bossed by the neighbourhood cat.

Bronx runs when a plastic bag blows his way.

Bronx sits and patiently allows L to investigatively poke his eyes and pull his ears.

Gosh..

Why would Bronx attack her dog?

Her story was this - My dog is a Tibetan Terrier. He is very rare, and other dogs for some reason or other like to attack him. We think they're jealous.

Can you believe that?

We rolled our eyes, walked away and nick-named her dog Pompous.

A week or so later, we heard from another fellow friendly dog walker that Pompous's owner have been going around telling people Bronx attacked her dog!!

What a nut job!

Thankfully we never saw much of her again, the second time we saw her we were across the street and when her dog saw Bronx he launched into a frenzy of loud barks while Bronx quickly move away.

Heh.

Last we heard she's also moved out of London. Thank god!

Pompous isn't the only dog with stupid, unreasonable owners. We have met quite a handful over the year.

So far, there's already Pompous 2 and Pompous 3.

We have noticed, it is mainly owners with small dogs that are a pain. They always think other dogs are trying to attack their dog.

I used to be really scared dealing with people like that and would constantly apologise even if I wasn't on the wrong but these days I don't anymore.

I hold my ground, tell them off for being rude and walk away.

Jake's death put things into perspective for me and I realised how unimportant all these idiotic and problematic people are.

I realise I didn't have to deal with people who are just out to make life difficult for me. I just have to put them back in their place and move on.

And it has worked a treat.

We no longer have to deal with painful, accusatory emails demanding that we get divorced (I know! How ridiculous is that?) even though we are happy together, love each other and have worked so hard to build the life we have.


I can now stand my ground and fend off unreasonable, unthinking and lazy classmates.

It is still not easy, but we are getting there.

I know it is all part of growing up and we will have to learn all these sooner or later.

Thankfully, we have found ways around our problems and now that we have Bunny, I don't think many people would like to mess with her.

Baby Mine

Bunny the German Sheppard is only about 3 years old, she has lots of energy but can't go for long walks because it makes her tired and it puts too much strain on her front leg.

Luckily for us, she spends half her day being entertained by live TV

She loves watching the rabbits and can stare at them for hours sometimes.. The rabbits aren't really bothered by her presence, they stare back sometimes but most times they just get on with whatever they want to do.

Here's Wibble sleeping like a dead rabbit (always gives us a shock!) and he only does that when he feels completely comfortable with his surroundings.

Once, Wibble decided to sleep in a sausage roll pose (all stretched out, flat on his belly) and Bunny thought he was dead.

She went around the hutch whining as if encouraging him to move and trying to look for signs of life, it was all quite funny.

For some reason or other Wibble does that a lot and I've lost count of the number of times he has managed to frighten both me and the husband.

Here's a photo we took of General Bibbles (Wibble's nickname because he looks like General Woundwort in Watership Down sometimes) yesterday night..

Isn't he just adorable?

Wind beneath my wings

Spent the weekend playing housewife to the husband who was supposed to be doing his coursework. 

Evidently from his previous post.. he wasn't.

We had a noodles weekend because I had some rather strange cravings. We went to the Chinese supermarket because I wanted to eat 'Tai Lok Meen' (which I am supposed to be intolerant to, I can't eat round noodles, they make me nauseous - but this is a story for another day)

So we bought those fat round noodles and braised it with a load of dark soya sauce and added some heart attack inducing pork fat cracklings.. this really isn't a dish for the health concious

As we were also making Char Koay Kak for the weekend, I had some leftover mouli (white radish) and with chicken carcass in the freezer, made mouli soup for the lucky man.

Apparently when my mum was pregnant with me, she ate a lot of Tai Lok Meen.. it was the only thing she wanted and had large plates of it every night..

So you would understand that I cringed with fear when I started craving it for no reason (I've actually never really eaten it before, I stole some from Uncle Mike's plate a few months ago when he ordered it in a restaurant).

Of course you'd expect the husband to panic as well, but I think he's already immuned to my strange, irregular cravings. I don't think I'm pregnant.. a little windy and bloated from the mouli soup, yes, pregnant, probably not.

And no, it's not that we don't want kids, it's just that at this time and with this space, it is going to be near impossible to raise children without killing and stretching ourselves. Plus, I want to have a career before ditching it all for the screaming, probably ungrateful monsters.

We watched a really old movie through the weekend - Beaches, starring Bette Midler.

It was a good show, very emotional and got us both crying our eyes out.

I never realised that the song 'Wind beneath my wings' came from this movie, it always used to irritate me how my dad kept going 'did you ever know that you're my HEEEEEEEEEEEEEerooooooooooooooo????'

Apart from all that crooning, it is a very meaningful song. I guess in any relationship, be it friendship or a love relationship, there is always one person in front and the other behind working together to bring things together for each other.

There will be arguments, quarrels, tears but to have that one loyal person stick by you is  really an honour.

In my case, I will always have wind beneath my wings, courtesy of the windy husband.

Char koay kak

The way to a man's heart...

Sitting here, supposedly doing my coursework, That Thing You Do on the TV as background noise, listening to and smelling the ridiculously mouthwatering sounds and smells of the wife cooking Char Koay Kak...it brings to mind a song I've always thought was very sweet.

...Who could ask for more?
Will you still need me?

Will you still feed me?
When I'm sixty-four?

Written by the Beatles, my favourite version of it by John Pizzarelli et al...never fails to bring a smile to my face

For what it's worth, I love you..

I was in Kingston last Friday after uni and decided to drop by the market to get stuff.

Kingston market has a new butcher that sells free range meat. It IS more expensive than the normal chicken.

You can buy a normal farm bred chicken from Sainsbury's or Tesco's for about £3, the same from Kingston will cost you £5.99 or £10 for 2.

Is it worth the extra £2? 

Definitely. The chicken tastes better, it doesn't have so much fat, the skin is thicker and flesh firmer.

So.. I got us a chicken and some pork belly from the butcher at Kingston as I was having a craving for char siew pau and nam yee pau..

Got cooking during the weekend (yes, despite all the programming coursework I had due), the char siew didn't become pau as there was too much nam yee pork..

This is the husband's first taste of nam yee pau.. I think he will probably stick to char siew.. haha.. 

Bronx on the other hand.....

 

Here's what the paus look like raw, I had extra dough and kaya in the fridge, so made a kaya pau for the husband..

Notice we have our new kitchen worktop in? That's been installed months ago back in November, it's Corian, it's easy to keep clean and it's blue - like Jakey's eyes..

I still miss him... everyday..

It's finally March and spring is a-coming! 

We are going to have a rather full month with 2 pieces of coursework due for the husband, my consulting project going on full swing, both of us researching our thesis and us starting up the finishing jobs for the house again..

April had better hurry and come!