2013 has been quite exciting so far. I have been jobless for the last um… 3 months or so. Gave up the job at the end of January, and have yet to start my next job, now scheduled for mid-May, …maybe. Meanwhile, we have been going around, trying to do some (or all) of our long outstanding errands (if I can remember), and putting in a few (ok, more than a few) holiday trips along the way.
This holiday and joblessness period has been an eye-opener. After 6 years of marriage, Anu’s starting to get irritated with my lazy ways while I am at home. On the other hand, my libido has definitely picked up since I dumped the job, so it sort of balances out the irritation hehe. My imagination, vocabulary and writing style are slowly (but surely) going down the drain, thanks to the contractual documents and letters that I have to read and write every day. Guess I have enough reasons now to restart reading novels and nonsense again, hooah!
My joints are starting to creak and ache (even without working very hard, that must explain the laziness huh?). I am becoming more forgetful by the day. Otherwise, I feel super. No receding hairline, my waist is still at 32 inch, and I have fixed my one broken tooth.
Anu’s fine (except for the occasional irritation with yours truly). She is still staunchly against having another kid, thanks mainly to my less than satisfactory after birth service when Justin was born. But I did buy her a nice zaatar croissant (from the hospital canteen) when I visited her the next day! (her first food after 36 hours with more than 24 hours of that, in labour)
Justin’s growing up just fine, but getting a little tanned due to activities completely of his parents’ making (like sitting under the burning sun for hours on the beach, and going on a spree of outdoor excursions at mid-day, after all this is a holiday, and we gotta see them all, right?)
Our adventures of these 4 months, has taken us to 5 countries, 8 states in India, and 8 of the 11 states in Peninsular Malaysia. We’ve flown 14 times, stayed in err… 22 different hotels, and travelled thousands of kilometres by road.
And I have India, and China to thank for, for all this fun.
India (or more precisely the Passport Office of the Government of India), because if it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t have driven 18 hours from Silchar to Guwahati (which is incidentally only 335 km) through a road so bad, they should’ve featured it on National Geographic or something, in our brand new little yellow Tata Nano car, and the same distance back for nothing (because we didn’t manage to get an appointment at the passport office online!).
We wouldn’t have gotten our brand new car damaged by the insane Gypsy taxi driver from hell at Khliehriat. (Gypsy is a type of jeep, and Khliehriat is a town roughly halfway between Silchar and Guwahati, characterized by bad roads and even worse traffic caused by coal laden trucks.) We wouldn’t have spent 2 nights at Shillong and a night at Guwahati for nothing. And most important of all, we wouldn’t have flown all the way back to Guwahati again, (this time from Singapore! via Kuala Lumpur and Kolkata) to finish the unfinished business, causing me to lose the chance that I’ve been waiting for, for so long, to vote in the upcoming Malaysian General Elections! And all this because India, being a high tech country that is known for its IT industry, has to have its passport appointment system online. Never mind that there’s only 1 friggin office in the whole North East India (i.e. 7 friggin states, in an area the entire size of Peninsular Malaysia TIMES 2!), with a population of 38 million. Never mind that there’re only 40 measly slots available in a single day (for express passports) and the slots are typically filled to the brim in approximately 1 minute and 10 seconds (yeah, it really feels that way, because if your friggin line is slow, by the time it finishes loading, all the slots would have been filled – so sorry, please try again at 3pm tomorrow). The result is we tried for 10 friggin days at Silchar, and failed to get any appointment. We finally got our appointment in Singapore!
And China (or the State Construction & Engineering Company of China, my soon-to-be employer) for being absolutely vague about when they want me to join, and when my visa will be done, and therefore gave me lots of excuses to embark on our crazy adventures and passport making journeys. (By the way, I just checked the mail and saw my visa in the mailbox!!)
There, I think I’ve written a little more than enough to cover for the 2 month absence in blogging. I’m leaving a photo of our passport journey thru hell, one of the very few that we took on the way.
Church at Khliehriat, Jaintia Hills, Meghalaya
This holiday and joblessness period has been an eye-opener. After 6 years of marriage, Anu’s starting to get irritated with my lazy ways while I am at home. On the other hand, my libido has definitely picked up since I dumped the job, so it sort of balances out the irritation hehe. My imagination, vocabulary and writing style are slowly (but surely) going down the drain, thanks to the contractual documents and letters that I have to read and write every day. Guess I have enough reasons now to restart reading novels and nonsense again, hooah!
My joints are starting to creak and ache (even without working very hard, that must explain the laziness huh?). I am becoming more forgetful by the day. Otherwise, I feel super. No receding hairline, my waist is still at 32 inch, and I have fixed my one broken tooth.
Anu’s fine (except for the occasional irritation with yours truly). She is still staunchly against having another kid, thanks mainly to my less than satisfactory after birth service when Justin was born. But I did buy her a nice zaatar croissant (from the hospital canteen) when I visited her the next day! (her first food after 36 hours with more than 24 hours of that, in labour)
Justin’s growing up just fine, but getting a little tanned due to activities completely of his parents’ making (like sitting under the burning sun for hours on the beach, and going on a spree of outdoor excursions at mid-day, after all this is a holiday, and we gotta see them all, right?)
Our adventures of these 4 months, has taken us to 5 countries, 8 states in India, and 8 of the 11 states in Peninsular Malaysia. We’ve flown 14 times, stayed in err… 22 different hotels, and travelled thousands of kilometres by road.
And I have India, and China to thank for, for all this fun.
India (or more precisely the Passport Office of the Government of India), because if it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t have driven 18 hours from Silchar to Guwahati (which is incidentally only 335 km) through a road so bad, they should’ve featured it on National Geographic or something, in our brand new little yellow Tata Nano car, and the same distance back for nothing (because we didn’t manage to get an appointment at the passport office online!).
We wouldn’t have gotten our brand new car damaged by the insane Gypsy taxi driver from hell at Khliehriat. (Gypsy is a type of jeep, and Khliehriat is a town roughly halfway between Silchar and Guwahati, characterized by bad roads and even worse traffic caused by coal laden trucks.) We wouldn’t have spent 2 nights at Shillong and a night at Guwahati for nothing. And most important of all, we wouldn’t have flown all the way back to Guwahati again, (this time from Singapore! via Kuala Lumpur and Kolkata) to finish the unfinished business, causing me to lose the chance that I’ve been waiting for, for so long, to vote in the upcoming Malaysian General Elections! And all this because India, being a high tech country that is known for its IT industry, has to have its passport appointment system online. Never mind that there’s only 1 friggin office in the whole North East India (i.e. 7 friggin states, in an area the entire size of Peninsular Malaysia TIMES 2!), with a population of 38 million. Never mind that there’re only 40 measly slots available in a single day (for express passports) and the slots are typically filled to the brim in approximately 1 minute and 10 seconds (yeah, it really feels that way, because if your friggin line is slow, by the time it finishes loading, all the slots would have been filled – so sorry, please try again at 3pm tomorrow). The result is we tried for 10 friggin days at Silchar, and failed to get any appointment. We finally got our appointment in Singapore!
And China (or the State Construction & Engineering Company of China, my soon-to-be employer) for being absolutely vague about when they want me to join, and when my visa will be done, and therefore gave me lots of excuses to embark on our crazy adventures and passport making journeys. (By the way, I just checked the mail and saw my visa in the mailbox!!)
There, I think I’ve written a little more than enough to cover for the 2 month absence in blogging. I’m leaving a photo of our passport journey thru hell, one of the very few that we took on the way.
Church at Khliehriat, Jaintia Hills, Meghalaya
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