Happy New Year

Subhanallah, wow! It has been more than 2 months since I last wrote an entry. Time flies so fast and before you know it's already a week in the new year. Alhamdulillah, thank God, now we have finally moved into our new home, on 18 Dec. 2010 to be exact. We managed to move all the big stuff but we still have tons of the small stuff to be sorted out. Since both Steve and I are so busy with our new semester, there is just no way that we can find time to clear the old house right away. So we asked the old landlord to allow us to rent the house for another month or so. I am so looking forward to the Chinese New Year 4-day weekend break in early February to select only the needed stuff to be transfered to our new home. Most of the stuff are books, papers, and old clothes. Both Steve and I have the tendency to keep everything, "in case" if we ever need them in the future :) I miss my old neighbors. Fortunately all my new neighbors are just as wonderful. We had an opportunity to get to know each other last weekend when we had a small gathering. I am very sorry for not being able to invite all my friends and old neighbors but maybe we will do something someday...

Hello Again

Hi everyone, I am back! There is so much to share but so difficult to compose. All of a sudden my passion for writing disappeared. In fact I lost interest in keeping up with the Facebook also. But for the past 2 or 3 days I have been checking my emails and messages from friends. I guess my mind is totally preoccupied with monitoring the development of our new home.

Let me see, I guess I will start with my eldest son came home for the school term holiday. So far we just sent him to Johor once, when he first registered there. From then on he came home on his own by the express bus. So far he's doing quite well in his school, keeping busy with many activities. Right now he is at his friend's house having a mini-reunion with his former classmates. It's hard to believe how tall he is now. By the end of the year, I think he'll be just as tall or taller than his father.

I have to admit that today is the first time I opened this blog after I wrote the last entry. As soon as I opened it, I realized that Yasmin's blog is not accessible anymore. I have to ask her later what she did to it. I know she likes to write but I guess she just doesn't want to share with others. Her trip to Pulau Redang today has been canceled because all her friends who are supposed to go have other commitments to fulfill.

Harris is going to take his UPSR exam this year. I just found out that he's the type who likes to study in a group, kind of like his mother :) He's doing ok with most of the subjects except for the Malay language (the writing part). I do not really believe in sending my children to tuition classes but when he asked to go for Malay subject Steve and I had to agree. So we enrolled him in the tuition center beginning the first week of May. Unfortunately he only managed to attend once due to his involvement in many other school related activities. Last weekend he missed it too because he attended a holiday camp at his school which he really enjoyed.

I do not expect all children to be the same but Hannah is quite different from the others. She seems to be so scared and sad majority of the time. I wonder if I was like that at some point in my life. It has been so long ago that I was at that age, I obviously forgot how I was like then. One thing for sure, she loves to draw pictures. Sometimes I gave her a hard time for "wasting" too much paper but then again she might be the next Monet or Van Gogh. She always remember to give me cards which she drew on her own for my birthdays and mothers' day.

Najla insisted on following me to work and I guess she must be bored because she's asleep near my table. She was bugging me to go to the cafe but I refused. We both ate rice before we left the house this morning. So what's the problem Najla? She has been complaining to me that one of her friends had given her a hard time at the kinder garden. She said the girl told the others not to play with her. That's mean! I am not sure how much is the truth but for a kid that age, that sort of incident means a whole lot. If it happens to me, I just slap the woman's head! Just kidding ;)

Done Moving

Finally we are done with moving. Now comes the hardest part, to unpack and rearrange things. It has been 12 days but our living room still looks like it has just been hit by a "twister". We planned to label all the boxes and pack items according to their importance etc, etc. Unfortunately things don't work out that way in this life for us. Only the first few boxes were labeled. Then we took a break from packing, and suddenly, boomed! It was time to get everything out! So we gathered all the junk into huge plastic bags and started piling them into our car. Now we are paying for it. We can not find things when we need them. We said " the next time we move, we have to be more organized". Yeah, yeah, sounds familiar?

We are still adjusting our routines at this new place. Harris said he has trouble getting up in the morning. At the old place he was the first kid to get up. I guess the main reason is that the internet is not working yet at this new place. Usually he would play some internet games after he did some math problems in the morning. That brings me to the topic of our super frustration with TM (Telekom Malaysia). We followed the proper procedure in that we filled out the form and submitted to them a week before we moved, along with the RM50 fee! They were supposed to reconnect the line on the 1st of April at the new house. We waited for 3 days and nothing happened. So Steve decided to call them and was told it was "under investigation", or in lay man's term "nothing was done yet"! A week passed by and still nothing happened. Steve went to the office and talked to someone at the customer service counter. The response was "there was no line". What? We just moved around the corner for heaven's sake! Surely there is a line. If nothing else they could just use our old line! Then the person asked Steve whether the housing area is new. Gee, that was really pushing it too far. Today, it's the 12th of April and the telephone line is still not in. We are really upset!

2010

We are already in the second month of the year 2010. This year certainly brings a few big changes to my family. The biggest change is not having Danial in the house anymore because he is now enrolled at a boarding school in Johore. We had a very hectic schedule on the weekend of 9 January because of sending him to that school. We hadn't even finished unpacking our mess from our month long vacation in the US then, and yet we had to pack again to go to Johore.

The second big change is that we have to move into another house. Our landlord informed us that he needed the house for his son who will be doing a practical training sometime in April. We have been renting his house for 14 years. Wow, it has been that long! Although we have bought a piece of land several years ago, Steve and I are never in the hurry to build our own home because the rent is very inexpensive. You would never get that price if you were renting in the Klang Valley area. We asked our friends around the neighborhood and we found another rental house which is a duplex. Since we are so used to staying in an old but comfortable bungalow-style house, it's going to be quite an adjustment to do in terms of space considering the amount of junk we have accumulated all these years. It's ok because it's only temporary until we build our own house. I haven't even started packing anything yet. It's so overwhelming and I have no clue where to start! I think I will begin this weekend because it's going to be a 3-day Maulidur Rasul holiday.

The next big change is of course the adventure of building our own home! I was informed that the plan which we submitted to MPK has just been approved. I have yet to see it. I believe it is with the person whom we hired to draw the plan. I am too busy at the moment and will only be able to see the draftsman when Steve is back from his trip to an international school in Bangkok.

The final big change is my career. I will not say much for now because it's still too overwhelming to say and broadcast it worldwide.

New Addition

Baby Ambar is back to sleep after being fed

Last Friday was the most memorable day (or the most depressing day, depending on how one looks at it) for me because I became a grandmother! No! The baby is not one of my children’s because they are too young to be parents. Actually, my niece who got married in November last year just had a baby. They named the baby Ambar Kasturi. Hmm… I wonder what it means. When I asked my niece’s husband that question, his reply was “it runs in my family”. Ok, no arguments from me. I hope someday he’ll be a well-known architect like Hijaz Kasturi. The baby is so tiny, only 2++ kgs. The lightest one of my kids weighted 3.45 kgs at birth, and the heaviest was 4.2 kgs. It’s funny that the weight keeps on increasing from one baby to the next. If I had more babies, conceivably, their weights could climb up to 5 or 6 kgs! OMG! What a scary thought. Luckily I am smart enough to stop (I hope), hahaha!