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.