Thank you and good bye!

Unfortunately it's come to a point where this blog doesn't serve its purpose anymore. The husband have become too busy to write, it has become a complain and ranting ground of negative things for me, all of which it was never meant to be - which is also why I have sieved through all posts and deleted some.

I've come to realise that some things are best left alone, if it is the only way I can achieve peace with myself and be happy, then that's the way it has to be.

We won't shut it down as the blog documents the first 2 years of our married life, a very happy 2 years but as we move on to the next phase of life, we think it is best to start anew, and try to make the best of it positively.

To protect ourselves and our family, we can no longer blog freely, as we have noticed that this blog have become a bit of a track and spot device for certain people we are trying to avoid so any new blog we might start will be fully anonymous, which is sad but necessary.

Many thanks to all who have been readers of our blog.

24

24 more days until the dissertation goes IN!

YES! We both can't wait until it's over. In fact the husband's due in 17 days!

We want to start living, we want our weekends back. We want to enjoy our finally about to be done home which we have worked so hard for.

I want to start consulting. I want to start knitting again. 2 months to knit a nice, warm blanket before little spanish baby girl arrives just in time for winter!!

Meanwhile, here's a recent picture of our handsome baby boy, isn't he just adorable?

It wears me out, it wears me out..

10 years ago, I was 15 and lepaking in the 'fake' CD shop before my BM tuition classes.

I don't usually buy CD's. I prefer the randomness of MTV and Channel V, but I did fall in love with a song and I was going to hunt it down and listen to it on repeat (as I do).

So I found that song on a top rock hits CD. Bought it immediately and listened to it over and over.

Eventually I did move on to the other songs in the CD. One of them is Fake Plastic Trees.

I thought, strange name for a song huh? But I got addicted anyway..

So fake plastic trees played, over and over and today 10 years later, it is still one of my favourite songs.

The song has very deep lyrics. To me, it's a reminder to always evalute the things around me and sort the real from the fake, the important from the unimportant.

There's no point getting all worked up for something 'fake', it just wears you out... like it often does me, unfortunately.

the man I love

Love in the morning.

the Malaysian holiday

This post is long overdue, as is the literature review for my thesis. We are lazy people and are currently doing anything else BUT our thesis :P

So Dodgy Mike dragged us back to Msia to attend a wedding.

Dragged because the hardest part was leaving the babies (as usual, I flooded the taxi, airport and plane).. also, the thought of a 21 hour door to door journey isn't fun.

Anyhow, we are both glad we made the trip, it was really nice to spend time with family and the wedding was lovely.

The parents took us on holiday to Pangkor. Well.. to a neighbouring island because we decided you can either afford Pangkor properly or do something else.

As a child, I used to loathe Pangkor, the ferry was usually dirty, the journey took forever and there's nothing on that island besides ikan bilis (anchovies), ikan bilis and oh...more ikan bilis.

I've been there at least 3 times and have no idea how I missed this:-


There's a hornbill (yes, apparently there are hornbills in Pangkor) eating leftover papaya on the table.

We didn't take many pictures.. we are lazy people. But here are the brothers in law playing Mario Kart.

Everyone thinks that they are brothers.. They have a rather strange relationship. One nags the other gets nagged but they do like each other. We do love smelly boy - there's nothing better like having a botak younger brother you can bully!

And of course there's the wedding. We've been waiting at least 3 years to attend this wedding, but it was well worth the wait, it was beautiful and the bride and groom looks lovely, very much settled and in love.

Here's the culprit who made us go

Strangely we do not have a photo with the bride and groom as we were too busy helping with things and moving around.

Anyhow.. Congratulations CS and J! Thank you for letting us share your day. :)

I do admire people who are able to host proper big weddings. We are both too selfish to do anything of this sort, we don't like the attention and having to host long lost relations we both don't know or don't like.

Hence our small but intimate picnic wedding from 2 years ago ;) I only wish my grandparents, parents, brother and cousins could have been there.

Anyway...

I think the husband is officially in love with Ipoh food.

He have always hated taugeh (beansprouts) but these, he loves.

We celebrated mumzy's birthday with her (and got scolded because it was 2 days early and she didn't want to turn 49 before she had to) and had yummy buttercream cake.

We also discovered that the husband and Ah Kong (my grandfather) have the same watch! Ah Kong's watch is 30 years old and the husband's 10 but essentially, they are brothers.

It was a strange feeling to discover that they both have the same watch. I know it is coincidence but somehow it tells me that I married the right man and I have Ah Kong's approval. Silly, I know.. but heart warming :)

It was a good holiday, although now we are both stuck dreaming of Ipoh nga choi kai, the husband wants to eat 3 yim kok kai (salted chicken) in one sitting, I want to live in a swimming pool of wan tan mee with a border portion of wan tan and we both stare at pictures of Pasir Pinji chee cheong fun whenever we are feeling hungry.

Of course, we miss the people too. There's nothing like family, I only wish I could bring them all here and have them together with the dogs, rabbits and fishes too!

when genes play catch up

I remember the day my mum turned 30.

I was super excited, afterall it's a Birthday! Yay, cakes and all things nice.

But the mother was gloomy, she was rather prickly and didn't want any mention of her birthday at all.

I got rather confused - what's the big deal about turning 30? It's a birthday and birthday means cake and cake makes a happy girl.

Yes, I do love cake especially the ones with butter cream that makes you extra fat.

Fatty cake makes for an even happier girl :)

Anyway..

Next Monday, I turn 25.

Sigh..

25!? Yesterday I was 19! I don't remember being 20,21,22,23,24..

I never thought this day would come, but the way it is going, the day I turn 30, I would be the same sad woman my mother was 24 years ago when she turned 30.

How to challenge the sun

Yesterday was a 'record' (the weather is always a record to the Brits) hottest day of the year so far.

Yes, I could have told them that minus their termometers and weather experts.

How?

June 27th for the past 2 years have been that - a record hottest day of the year so far.

How do I know?

We had our wedding picnic party on June 27th and I remember being toasted black by the sun and last year during our anniversary we were toasted again during a picnic in Horsham with family friends.

This year I managed to stay indoors but it was so hot it might as well be a home sauna.

So this morning I had a plan.

I bathed in ultra cold freezing water after walking the dogs.

Changed into my shortest shorts and thinnest sleeveless tee.

Took our table fan downstairs, stuck it on a high table pointed it at my direction and switched it on to maximum.

Flung the windows and doors wide open.

I was ready. I wasn't going to bake in the heat today.

Only there's one verrrrryy minor problem.




The sun have decided to have a laugh at me and is no where to be seen....

Darn!

What can change the nature of a man?

I remember the first time I came across that question, playing Planescape: Torment (I still rate it as one of the greatest games of all time). For some reason, the question popped into my head a couple of days ago again, and I realise, far too late, that even though that game affected me profoundly and made me sit and think, if I were to play the game for the first time again today, how much more meaningful it would be to me. What did the 14/15 year old me know about change and life? What did the stupid boy know about being a man?

I look back at who I was and see just how much I have changed, how I have gone from being a boy to a man; from being a selfish, irresponsible person to someone who now has so many things to deal with, a life to live; from being someone who just wanted to write code in a corner in peace to someone who's facing customers pretty regularly. Quite a lot of change to go through in such a short period of time.

And I realise one other thing. I'm happy. What can change the nature of a man? Torment's script was written in such a way that no matter what answer the Nameless One gave, it would have been the right answer. My answer, right now, today - is love. I may not be who I thought I was going to be when I was younger and dumber, but I have the love of my wife (yes, she's listening to that Bette Midler song right now), and she has mine, and that is all we need.

Done and dusted

Finished my last paper today - Information Resources Management.

And that's it..

I can't believe it. We have both finally finished all our coursework and exams, all that's left now are our thesis.

With some luck, this is also going to be goodbye to formal education. At least until I start itching about getting my MBA (I hope not!). The husband has had enough and isn't interested in any MBA.

I remember the first day he started his part time- postgrad almost 2 years ago. I thought to myself, it's going to be 2 years of part time hell.

Sure enough it was, we have tried to juggle so much over the last 2 years I'm surprised we managed to come out fairly unscathed (besides being burnt with the crazy mother problem).

Actually we have also found a solution to that problem. We've put a filter in that automatically sends her emails into the trash.

I've been asked by several people if they think it is right to do that. Afterall, she is his mother.

Yes, I totally understand that and I would never recommend what we are doing to anyone either, but in our situation, the amount of damage she's caused and is STILL causing warrants it.

I don't think anyone (even his mother) has the right to constantly make unwanted, untrue, hurtful remarks about me, us and our family.

Apparently, a filial daughter in law will just laugh it off or keep quiet about it. Well, thanks but no thanks, I can live with being unfilial.

We will move on with our lives.

With much luck, I should get some form of a consultant/project manager job by November.. gain 2 - 3 years of experience then maybe with lots and lots of luck, we will find ourselves in a position, ready to start a family.

But you're so precious to me.. sweet as can be..

I have the annoying ability to listen to the same song over and over (when I say over and over, I probably put it on play over 10 hours everyday for 3 weeks or so).

Eventually I either get sick of it or move to another song on repeat. It takes forever to get something out of my system.

Unfortunately for the husband who have been working from home quite a bit these days, his ears suffer.

At the moment, am midway on exams - 2 gone, 2 to go and the dogs are suffering on this song

Actually, they get quite calm when it plays but I'm sure they are sick of it by now, poor babies, but it does say so much about how I feel about them.

From your head down to your toes,

You're not much goodness knows,

But you're so precious to me, sweet as can be,

Baby of mine.

Family is a privilege, NOT a right

I love my mother. I love her even more because it was Mother's Day in Msia on Sunday and I forgot (Mother's Day in UK is on a different day) and frankly, my mum doesn't care. Called her today and nope, she is as normal as ever, nagging me about eating chicken liver pate.

Unlike the husband who got a sudden influx of rather skewed emails no thanks to Mother's Day marketing campaigns (his words, not mine) about how he should start becoming a better son before it is all too late (yeap, the I will be dead before you card).

Strange, because who is to say who is going to die first?

Anyway, my point - Family is a privilege, not a right.

And nope, if you have shaken away a privilege because family is misbehaving, I try to live by my other motto - No Regrets.

So here's my family enjoying the sunshine in April, until the ants attacked him :P

And here a little something from our Spanish friends, it was delicious!

 

Eaten with home made foccacia baked with garden grown rosemary

 

And 2 beady eyed dogs waiting for a chance to swipe some ham or bread or or or, cheese!

 

And we finish the night with lots of love and cuddles :)

Ahh.. perfection!

Happy Anniversary babyboo!

Today marks our 7th anniversary together.

The husband booked a table in Le Gavroche for dinner tonight! And we are both super excited about it!

This will be our first time in a 2 Michelin stars restaurant.

Well.. it will also be our first time in a 'fine dining' restaurant as my brother calls it.

Thank you babyboo for being so thoughtful!

Blind

I first heard this song on the plane to London after my STPM. That was December 2005.

I was blind, and maybe am still. But a big part of me will definitely die if I let you go.

Rebel

This year's April is particularly hot. This past week the weather have been at 25 degrees consistently. It's a bit of a struggle for us but guess who is enjoying all the sunshine?

Yesterday the husband's new toy arrived - a toaster. He's been begging for one for ages. I personally hate toasters.

I'm not big on toast and for something that does only 1 thing it takes up loads of space and makes a mess.

Maybe that's because we have been buying £5 tesco toasters.

So we decided now that we have a home and is a lot more settled to buy a slightly better toaster. A £30 one.

That's the handsome husband cuddling his new toaster. Bronx looks shocked for some reason.

X-Dog

The lean, mean eating machine recovered from her surgery in 2 days and is back to terrorising the neighbourhood cats and dragging the wife across the street.

I've come to the conclusion that we are proud owners of a mutant dog with a liver that appears to be functioning normally despite being 2/3 the normal size and an increased appetite and healing factor.

Look out, cats.

The babies

My project management coursework is giving me cold hands and feet.

I didn't know it was supposed to be THIS difficult. There are too many repeating and clashing elements.

How many times can I write, rewrite and reword essentially the same thing that sits on different documents???

ARGH

At such times, photos like these really help cheer me up. It reminds me what I'm working for and why I'm slaving over this bloody document

 

And here's big baby.. with his little bo peep hat and easter duck handbag

Bluetooth is cool!

Yeap, it's finally working for me. I've been wanting to load this picture for MONTHS! It was probably taken last spring!?

The first baby the husband ever held was Maxie. That was about 5 years ago. I remember passing Max to him thinking he would instintively take Max and bring Max close to his body for a cuddle.

WRONG..

He took Max and held him up but away from his body like Max was some alien thing.. and they both stared at each other.

Haha!

He's improved quite a bit now, and all that training with Max, L and M have made him quite proficient.

Ang Mor Dog

This Sunday is the husband's birthday.. I offered to host a BBQ party (he LOVES the barbie, and so does Mike.. it must be a man thing, they have the urge to grill meat) so Mike offered to help do up the garden.

Our garden have been a bit of a mess while we were doing up the house. We cut down all the massive plants (that was headquaters for some extra large spiders) and crawly plants and left ourselves a blank canvas.

It took us half a Saturday and half a Sunday and now it is beautiful :)

We left a patch to the left for a vegetable garden.

The dogs absolutely love the new garden. They've been doing some exploring and Bunny's been lying out in the grass while we did the lights.

She's not well now so haven't spent much time outside. Bronx has the whole garden to himself and is taking full advantage of it.

You can tell he's an ang mor dog adopted by a Chinese family. Some things just don't change, the sun comes out and Bronx goes sun bathing, just like the rest of the ang mor community while me and the husband desperately look for some shade before we fall over and die.

Drugged up dog

Post-painkillers

Tough bitch

A testament to the spirit of our dog - she may have gone through massive surgery yesterday, she may be drugged to the hilt with painkillers and have a scar the length of my arm running down her belly, but she will still attempt to murder a bee that flies into the house. Long live Bunny!