So we were kind of like house-hunting the other day. Took our dog along and off we go scouting the neighborhood and the ones nearby. We spotted a few nice, empty houses. There’s this one particular house, a corner house with huge lawn – perfect for our dog(s) and future cat(s). It’s also perfect for a family picnic or Sunday barbeque. Sssssssooo nice.. until we came up with one question.

“Do we buy or just rent?”

Of course, I’d love if we could buy the house. But my fiance seems to think otherwise. He prefers renting than buying. “Not worth it.”, he said. Not worth it?? But it’s a beautiful house! Wait till I get the Martha out of me and you’ll see how worthy it is!

So we moved to another house. Then another. Then another.. until we spotted a few dogs. Chiko got so excited, he was barking and whining so loud! Such a pain in the ears, we wish we had In-Ear Headphones in the car.

And then we ‘accidentally’ ended up in this very nice neighborhood. Almost Wisteria Lane-like. Nicely designed houses, lots of flowers and huge lawns. Then it occurred to me that this is where our friend, Amir Yussof lives! That famous musician who’s really talented in music. Such beautiful place he lives! And we were saying things like, “So this is where he practices his music and does his stuff!” “Where’s his dogs?? I wanna see his dogs. And plants.”

Unfortunately, Amir’s at Kuching at that time. So.. no dog visiting or plants peeking.

And as for our house-hunting? Well.. we’re still looking.

Sunday.

I was at the church today, standing in line for the Holy Communion when I saw a lady who almost looked like someone I know. Someone very close and dear to me. Well.. used to be so close to me. She looked like her. Instantly, my mind flashed back to our much younger years when we were still back in college. Staying up late nights for some girly entertainments. Counting buses and cars that passes us by. Breaking the rules of college ..etc. Once, we went straight to church after having too much fun with a few friends all night long. Trust me, you would NEVER want to attend mass after partying all night long. :-P

Move forward to present. I haven’t seen her for a long time. Sometimes I wish I could just buy gold coins that could bring me back to the past and try to get to know her better. Or maybe not abandon her when she really need someone to talk to. Have I not tried harder in the past? Was I not a good friend at all? I don’t know..

I only know that it’s not easy to mend what happened in the past. It’s not easy for me to accept who she is now and I believe she understands that. I just hope in time, we can see each other again and talk things out.

I wish she would just for once, sit down to talk and listen to what her family has to say or feel about her..or maybe just have a talk with me. The person who was once so close to her.

I miss her.

*sigh*

I can’t say this enough, but, yes, God is good!

This could be one of the hardest post I’ve ever made.

The couple of months since we moved to this city, I have to say that..life has not been so easy on us. My fiancé’s father passed away. Money was spent on the emergency flight tickets to Sarawak (which happened to fall on a public holiday and all the flight tickets were understandably expensive!), casket, burial etc. A lot of money has also been spent on the shipping of our car and our stuffs over. And there’s also the down-payment for the apartment that we were gonna rent (which is where we currently reside right now), flight tickets for two, car insurance & road tax to renew, money to buy things for the house (we literally have nothing brought over from our previous place but clothes, DVD, cute stuff that I collect etc) and none very useful for a new home. All in the same month! And the heart-breaking part was, we had to leave our cats behind because we couldn’t afford to bring them over. I did not know that it is SUPER EXPENSIVE to ‘migrate’ a cat over! My only consolation is that the cats are living a happy life in a new home right now. All my sincere thanks to the ever so helpful Mimi. Without her help, the idea of having the cats roam around the old house is terrifying enough!

So we basically had to fork out our dear life savings to get stuff filled into our new ‘home’: stuff like stove, mattress, chairs, dining table, plates, forks, spoon, yadda yadda. I am so grateful to my parents, especially my mom who has lent us a lot of her stuff from home, just so our home will feel more like a.. home. With pots and pans.

And then my laptop died. DIED. Along with all the precious files inside. If you didn’t know, my laptop is my source of income. I make money through that laptop, you know, design stuff. With the demise of that poor old laptop, I had no choice but to again, break the piggy bank.

To add salt to injury, out of the few (if not, many) job applications that I applied for, almost none of them even bother to contact me. Not for this 1 job, however, which would require me to work over 12 hours per day with a salary that could not even cover my monthly expenses and entertainment! OK, well, not exactly entertainment. Maybe my basic makeup needs. And hair color. And if you should know, financial problems could lead into depression.. and so are questions like:

“When are you getting married?”

“How long has it been between you two?”

Do you know how hurtful it is to hear some meanypants ask you the same question over and over again?

I would liken it to a root canal, except that I’ve never had a root canal done in my life.

But God is good. He has always been good to me. When life turns sour, He doesn’t give me lemonade. Instead, He always, ALWAYS managed to find a way to solve my problems.

As most of you know, I have been a freelance graphic designer since I started this blog. I’m not saying that I’m super good, but this God-given talent of mine has been feeding our mouths and assisted in making the ends meet. And buy me hair colors. This past month, I have been getting requests after another for designing work: web design, blog design, wedding card design etc. And the biggest Valentine’s gift from The Man Above would be the project we hit from one of the State Govt department. Good times!

Also, I managed to finish working on a client’s blog design today. I helped her setup her new design on her blog host since the coding looked rather scary (to a non CSS or HTML reader) and I guess she was happy with my service, she gave me a $100 tip! USD 100 for a tip!!

God is really good, eh? And so is that kind woman. She also taught me to speak Finnish. Ei se mitään. That means, no problem! :-)

The strange thing is that, I had just made a baby poster recently for a dear friend of my fiancé – for free. (He’s expecting his 1st born who could be born anytime soon so I thought a baby poster would be nice for him and his wife as it would make a nice picture in the baby room.) And now, I am getting the reward from God for being kind. He he. This is what I made for them:

I guess that when you do good to others, good will come back to you. Maybe I’ll earn enough this year to get myself a brand new curt hitch. *hee*

(THAT WAS A JOKE)

Oh! Life is getting better. My fiancé’s getting on track with his new job and his kind company is paying him real good money. And yesterday, while I was working on a design, he suddenly came up to me to kiss my forehead, telling me that he loves me. How sweet is that? We also bought a puppy and we named him Hachiko, after that famous Japanese dog. My custom-made chic, country-style sofa arrived this evening and I’m so in love with it! The apartment is starting to really look like a home now!

Well, OK. I have to stop posting. Plenty of work to be done. I am already behind schedule!

Thank you, God and all the good people in Heaven. :-)

(which has something to do with graphic designing, web designing, blog designing and munching a lot of cookies/candies while I was at it)

Despite hating the job, I kinda miss having tight deadlines, very picky clients (who couldn’t make up their mind even when they’ve already decided to stick to a particular design), late nights at the office eating take-away foods while trying to get some book cover done and the events at exquisite hotels! YESSSSS… I kinda miss THAT life. My life currently is loud music, super-irritating people and music blasting from the car audio.

Well ok, I party all night long. At least it’s so much better than having to withstand the politics in the office. Yes, office politics sucks!

But I guess that life is OK. Embrace my life and accept what I currently have. If I dislike it, I can always change for the better! :-)

Ever since I got back to tanah Semenanjung, I’ve been really, really busy.

And I HATE IT.

I miss waking up late, knowing that breakfast or lunch will be waiting for me on the table. I miss making plans for the afternoon with my family. I miss taking our pet dog, Girly to the beach and laugh as she runs away from the incoming waves.

I miss all that.

Life in the big city in the ‘working class’ is just so laden with excess baggage that sometimes I think I’d be better off going back to school and get me an information technology degree or something.

The truth is when I’m sitting alone at a corner, I think of leaving everything behind and go live a humble life back home in Sabah.

Maybe I’ll just do that someday.