Change

So here we are. 2012 and finally, together, not together apart but together. It's a pretty overwhelming feeling but not the kind that hits you hard on the head, but the kind that slowly seeps in bit by bit and made to realize over and over again at different times. It's funny how easy it is to get up in the morning now and just start the day. Previously, it took me uncountable snoozes just to wake up, get ready and go to work and it's not like I dreaded work or anything, but maybe, I just lost zest for it. Nowadays, I wake up to prepare breakfast for the man, thankfully, Oliver likes it simple; bread and coffee, muesli and coffee etc. and see him off to work. My skin breathes more now that I'm not putting on beautifying chemicals just to look presentable or professional. Okay, so maybe a bit of BB cream and eyeliner. I spend my days scouring the internet over recipes for lunch and dinner. Oh just the other day, I woke up at 3 am and started marinating chicken. Never in my life have I done that. Before you think I'm nuts, it was only me in my Malaysian body clock. I walked to the supermarket today with a grocery bag brought from home. When paying at the cashier, I put the groceries into the bag myself;  something that I don't do back home because the spoilt Malaysian me would rather drive to the supermarket even though it is only 500 metres away and let the cashier put my groceries into plastic bags. In the kitchen, we have 4 disposable bins; bio waste, plastics, papers and soiled waste. I am still trying to understand which waste goes where. Not easy I tell you. And don't get me start on the weather. Cold, no sun, constant cold. The only plus about the weather is I get to play winter dress up. Question is, how long will this 'plus' excites me before it turn into 'minus'. These aside, I am having a swell time with Oliver. Nothing beats being with the love. Not even the weather. Little mundane things like waking up, going for walks, having meals, or even just snuggling in front of the Mac watching How I Met Your Mother and Grey are so precious. 2012, is definitely a year of change for both of us. I just resigned from my job to come here. It's a pretty scary thing to do because I'm so used to doing something, I mean, ever since high school, I went straight into University and after that, I got a job straight after graduating. So, I'm not used to this, not doing anything. But again, this won't be long because I'm enrolling into German Language course which starts in March and it is going to be a full time study thing so I'm really looking forward to it. Until then, I guess I'm just going to enjoy bumming around, haha, okay maybe not, I hope to write more, which reminds me there are so much things to write about, I haven't even shared our wedding pictures and videos, there were celebrations and yeah, you know, stuff. This whole trying to write something after being idle for so long is pretty tiring. So, I'll stop here and write another day. Ta.

Silent Reverie

Today had been both emotional and inspiring; from testimonies of unconditional love to a song about a dream. Despite the bad news and casualties that are happening in amidst of our lives, there is also hope and  dream. And both of these extreme happenings were of the unknown being. I wept tears of sorrow for those who’ve passed. I wept tears of joy for those who live to celebrate. Funny cos' while it has nothing to do with Oliver and I, it has everything to do with us in nature. Sort of like a paradox of life. How you perceive the others and how it reflects upon you and affects the things you do. Life is fragile. But I think that is why we should celebrate it every chance we have. I’m feeling very melancholy; but in a good and appreciative way.

On a less melancholy note, yesterday, I was on a business day trip to and fro KL. Upon reaching KL’s international airport, I had some time to kill while waiting for a colleague to arrive on a later flight to hand me some documents. I decided to head to the bookstore and ended up at the magazine corner. The cover of Hot Magazine caught my eye with the likes of Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber on the front page, thus the lure of the juicy Hollywood snippets, tempting me to just buy the magazine. The moment I picked up the magazine, I felt this guilt tugging in my guts. There I stood, in a business suit, about to buy a 5.90 gossip/entertainment magazine. How seemingly wrong, unprofessional and cheap in a bimbotic kind of way I felt. So without hesitation, I picked up Reader’s Digest magazine with the title ‘Your Guide to Investing, Saving and Making the most of your Money’ on its cover, brought both magazines to the counter and paid for it. I felt less guilty when I left the bookstore.

Guten Tag

means ‘Good day’ in German. I’ve been trying to pick up or learn German for quite some time now. I bought German pocket book that I can carry everywhere I go. Oliver bought me an audio learning device that he hope could accelerate my learning progress in German.

Having said these, I have to admit, I have not been a good, consistent learner. Maybe for the first few weeks, I’ll be all enthusiastic to learn new words or phrases each day. I’ll even show it off to Oliver over the phone. ‘Hallo liebe’ ‘Wie gehts?’ ‘Was machst du heute Abend?’ ‘Mench,du bist langweilig!’ All of that means in this order, ‘Hello love’, ‘how’s it going?’, ‘What are you doing this evening?’, and ‘Crikey, you’re so boring!’

German is an interesting language. Picking up words is easy. But saying it in a proper and correct grammar is another matter. I know a lot of words independently. I know how to count from 1 to thousands, I know the days in order. I know that ‘brot’ is bread and ‘gemuse’ is vegetable among many other food. I’ve learnt quite a few adjectives. I know simple greetings. It’s all up there in my head. Tons of it all jumbled up. My problem is practicing it on a daily basis. Other than with Oliver, I don’t really have the avenue to practice it. Even with Oliver, I hardly try to converse German with him. The most would be ‘Was?’(pronounced as ‘vas’ means What?’) or ‘Warum?’ (pronounced as ‘varum’ means Why?’) and my favourite one ‘Ach so’ which is an expression for ‘I see’.

My worry is this, that if I do join Oliver in Germany after we get marry, I felt like I need to know German in order to fit in, get by or ease myself into that transition of being in a foreign place. What more if I need to find a job or continue my masters, which I aim to do. Further to this quandary, living here in Kota Kinabalu, while there is a demand to learn foreign languages like Korean or Japanese, there is none for German. A while back, I was looking for a German Language course locally, I stumbled upon this local institution that said it conducts German course. I called up the contact person to know when the course is starting. According to the contact person, they need at least 6 people to register for the course in order to start the course. And guess what, I’m the first to register. The person was supposed to get back to me once they have enough people to start the course. That was about 6 months ago.

So, I guess it’s back to self-learning. But first, I need to rekindle that enthusiasm to learn German. Pick up my pocket book and learn a word/phrase each day. Listen to the audio learning. Let it be my lullaby. Practice it with Oliver. Even, if he’s not the most patient teacher. There is this German restaurant here ‘Gunters Gasthaus’, just a little bit out of town and I’ve heard that the owner (who passed away awhile back) was a German and he married a local. So, I had the inkling that maybe, the wife may know how to speak German. Thought I drop by one day to check out the restaurant and perhaps see if we could do the weekly meet up and I could practice conversing in German with her. It’s a plan.

Till then. Auf Wiedersehen. (Bye in formal)

Dark Clouds

Past few days have been a mix of hectic schedules and emotionally challenging week for me. Work, dance practices and frequent visits to the hospital. At the end of each day, I would be physically and emotionally knackered.  It doesn't help that I barely had time to video skype Oli for the entire week. The feeling of detachment and isolation was upsetting. That's the downside of long distance relationship.

On a side note, I had a dream this morning that I gave birth to a baby girl and she was beautiful. She had Oli's eyes and fortunately, my nose. :) Funny thing was, contrary to a newborn baby who's always sleeping, mine was fully awake, always playful and she smiled a lot. The funnier thing was, it can talk! But she only uttered one word though, she said 'Weiiird....'. In my dream, I was thinking, 'This is weird. My baby can talk and she's barely a week old. She must be a genius like Oli!!' Anyways, I woke up after that and thought 'No, wonder my baby can talk. It was just a dream.' Anything is possible in a dream.

Well, it's a Saturday and the week is almost over. I hope next week, things will turn around for the better. I can't stand this 'dark cloud' hanging above my head. It's too depressing.

*Shoo-ing away dark clouds*

Thank God for Skype!

People always ask us "How did you guys do it?'

Yes, long distance relationship is not easy. It can be frustrating to not be physically present to each other in times of joy and sadness. We don't have the luxury of planning for movies or meals or a weekend get-together like other couples do. So, it does get pretty lonely at times.

But what we have is a shared dream and hope, commitment and Love that one day, we will be together. As in together-gether. Not apart. :) And that day is something to look forward to.

Till then, Skype is a blessing to us!

My monkey. :)

The Presents

Have you ever look a picture of yourself and wonder where and when was it taken as you couldn't recall being taken picture of. It is those instances that slip by under your nose without you realizing. I wonder what was going on in my mind at that time, how did I feel at that time, what happened that was worth remembering. Humans are selective of their memories. They choose to remember things they want to remember and things they don't wish to remember but somehow were embedded in their memories nevertheless. But sometimes, those little things that usually go unnoticed, the inobvious, would conjured up in the mind. The memory. In a vague manner that you knew it happened but somehow couldn't quite put a date or time reference to it. It's the things that just happened some time ago. For now, I guess I'll just be happy to know that whatever had happened, it had brought us here. The presents.



What was Oliver thinking when he took this picture? Maybe he was attempting an artistic shot.



One of those days. I wasn't particularly happy with Oliver when this shot was taken. But somehow, when I look at it now, I am glad that we took it.



Just in case (Updates)

Good news is a few airports have resumed their operations and flights reinstated. But officials reported that new ashes could extend travel threat. Hmm. So, I'll continue to hope and pray that the plan is still on schedule. Allrighty then, I have to handle a few backlog cases of passengers myself.

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So you know how I'm all excited for my trip right? which is in fact less than 2 weeks now. And unless you've been hiding deep inside a cave in an isolated jungle for the past week, you would have heard the news; Iceland Volcanic Eruption.

Yeah, so that above is the sole reason why the airline industry is losing USD 200 mil per day due to airport closure and flight cancellations.

And thing is, I'm a little bit worried because there is a possibility that this may effect my travel somehow, I don't know. Probably, if the airspace condition does not improve by then, or maybe, the airlines may have reinstated the flights but due to thousands of backlogged travelers, they might give priorities to those backlogged passengers. So, just the possibility that i might not be able to go or maybe this could just delay our travel plane, well, that'll be a bummer.

But, I'm just trying to be optimistic here. Just pray that everything will turn out okay. That I'll still be leaving to Paris in less than 2 weeks. That I'll still be celebrating Oliver's birthday with him. Till then, ta.

To Auckland, I go

'm currently at KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport). I have three hours plus to kill before my flight to Auckland. I'd skyped with Oliver, stalked everyone on Facebook (yeah right), did people watching, watched plane land and take off and just about anything. So, here's the thing. I, initially planned to drive around Auckland and to Rotorua and Lake Taupo and I was so confident about it. Like, "oh well, I'll have the GPS and in New Zealand, people drive on the left lane, so it's similiar to back home and such until I checked my driving licence again and realized that it has expired since 12th November 2009. :(

Oh well, here's to a great holiday, nevertheless.

Bon Voyage!

It's just one of those days

Just spent a long break over the weekend. The family was back. Celebrated Grandma's 73rd Birthday on Saturday night. Catch up on Season 5 and a bit of season 6 One Tree Hills. Had two Starbucks Ice Caramel Macchiato. Did some studying on GMAT Maths. Read three quarters of Sophie Kinsella's The Undomestic Goddess. Overstuffed myself with Durians, Rambutans, Mangos and Mangosteen. All the things I love. Missing one person though.

Otherwise, it would have been perfect.