Happy 2019 People!
There’s a reason why I’ve not written for such a long time. Actually, there’re a handful of reasons. Here goes: -
1. We friggin went to New Zealand for 3 weeks. Family reunion trip! (Kim’s family stays in Auckland, and Dad and Hazel flew from Malaysia to be there). This was our first NZ visit, yippee! Only missing ones were Jason’s family.
2. I friggin applied for the NZ visa for Anu exactly 19 days from the date of our flight. Immigration NZ’s (INZ) recommended time for submission is 30 days (I have no idea why they need 30 friggin days to process, when other countries can process theirs in a day e.g. Armenia – 1 day, Sri Lanka 30 minutes). Anyway, INZ mentioned that 75% of visa applications would be processed within 19 days. So, there’s hope. And by God, did we hope, and pray, and beg, and did everything we could, towards the end of the last week before our flight date. Yes, we called New Zealand (because that’s the only way you can follow up on a NZ Visa, unlike other countries where their foreign missions actually do that work in the country where you applied), and we had to call in the middle of the friggin night (because NZ is 9 hours ahead of us, meaning that the Immigration Office opens at 11pm Dubai time (8am NZ time) and closes at 7am Dubai time (4pm NZ time)). I cannot count how many times we called, and how many times we were told by the god-damned machine that all the officers were busy, and how many times we were greeted with ‘Kia Ora’ (the NZ hello) by the machine, but I can tell you how many times we succeeded in talking to an actual person. ZERO! Once I even held on to the phone for 45 friggin minutes! (And this was long-distance call from our land phone!) But luckily for us, INZ had a call back service (it only ever calls back to a number in NZ) and Kim managed to talk to the officer, and escalated our case. She also discovered later that Anu’s visa would be processed in their Beijing office! (So they DO process visas in the foreign missions). We finally got Anu’s visa approved (praise God, hallelujah) on the very day of our flight! At 11.45am (i.e. 3.45pm Beijing time, 15 minutes before INZ Beijing closes for the day). Our flight was on that night itself, at 11.35pm! I had the flight reservation website opened, ready for cancellation (I wanted to wait till at least 1pm (i.e. 5pm Beijing time) to do it!) Whatever it is, with such a suspenseful and thrilling time (that's what you get when you procrastinate), d’ya think I have the peace of mind to think about updating the friggin blog???!!
3. I was up to my friggin head with work. Yup, despite being only an ‘Acting’ Project Manager, acting was the last thing I was doing. I left for NZ with about 100 unread emails on my company’s inbox. I came back to see a whopping 1,685 friggin emails!! And that was not including the ones I read (and replied) during the 3 weeks off! It took me 2.5 weeks to clear it! Fuck!
4. My friggin portable hard disk CRASHED!!! And took with it, all our photos, videos, past work, etc, secrets (ahem …shhhh)! I brought my laptop to NZ (first time I did that for a trip since I could remember), coz of the worry of work, and to download photos into the hard disk, from Anu’s phone and my camera, coz on every other trip, we’d run out of memory and would end up scrimping on photos, until we find a friggin shop that sells memory cards! So, on that fateful day in Kim’s house, I started doing what was the normal friggin process, plugged in Anu’s phone, downloaded photos, then went on to my phone. For some reason or other, the downloading from my phone felt like it was taking forever, and then my laptop battery died, and I forgot all about it. I also pulled out the friggin hard disk without much of a thought. The next time I switched in on, I was in a hurry and just closed all the messages that appeared. Guess what happened when I tried plugging in the hard disk. It fuckin said it needed formatting!
5. But luckily, not all is lost. I friggin bought a Data Recovery program online, and lo and behold, it works! …And is still working. It managed to find about 50% of the files. (How do I know? Because I could see that the disk contained 900+ GB, and the program managed to find 555 GB of data in it). It never finished scanning (I tried it for more than 8 straight DAYS OK? 200 friggin hours, and it still sez "program is trying to jump over bad sectors, it will take some time". Some time, my foot!) That’s only the scanning. The recovery is another different story. The recovery, (not unlike the scanning), runs at 3.5 hours per friggin GB! Yeah, no kidding. And partly because I’m running it on a laptop with USB 2.0 port. At this rate, it’ll take 3 fuckin months of non-stop running to recover ‘em all! Fuck!
I could go on, but what the heck, I’ve got a TON of work waiting for me, so, I’m calling it a day, till we meet again, Adios! Here’re some NZ family photos for the time being, enjoy!
Meeting the cousins! Lynnmall, New Lynn, Auckland, New Zealand
A family Vietnamese lunch at Lynnmall
Dad, at Kim’s home, Titirangi, Auckland
The suburb where Kim stays
Christmas play at the local church – notice Jayden, Skye and Jared?
Justin at Kaurilands Primary School – This was where the Titirangi Baptist Church held its Christmas service
Justin & Nelson (the little toy monkey which Justin had to take care and write about when he got back to school, yup, there’re school assignments even during holiday breaks) at Titirangi, Auckland
It’s Christmas! Christmas party food – Christmas ham and smoked salmon, compliments of Daniel, Kim’s husband; pasta, from Michelle, Kim’s friend; siu youk (roast pork Chinese style), from Ken, another of Kim’s friend, and some fiery olive chutney, from Anu (love u, honey, mmmuahhh!)
The Christmas Party gang at Kim’s house, from right, Kim’s friends Derick, Michelle, Ken, Jan (I hope I spelt them correctly) and the kids. The little baby is Skye, blurry kid in green should be Jared, and at the extreme left, Justin being his usual self i.e. totally engrossed in something, completely oblivious to what’s happening around…
Kim at home, cracking sea urchins (yeah they’re edible), and baby sister (Skye) likes ‘em
Heck, she eats everything, …here, eating raw frickin garlic! Should’ve seen her face, …but that didn’t stop her from eating more!
It’s 2019! New Year’s Party at Michelle and Derick’s house, somewhere near Auckland Airport, I think it's Clendon Park. Wait, lemme see, I think I can nail it with Google Maps. There, that corner house in Kopara Pl! The power of Google Maps!
Kia Ora! Jayden with cousins, Jared and Skye, at Michelle’s house
