monday.

happy monday!

it's gonna be a busy week ahead at work.

the past weekend was tiring but well-spent Alhamdulillah. R went out of town for a wedding with his friends on saturday so i brought out jigglyboo with my sisters to breakfast then a quick trip to a local chairty shop by Islamic Relief Malaysia. one of my sister volunteers there so we've bought donated some stuff and also bought stuff (our second stroller that we need for park trips) from there. this time, my sister found a few books and a cute little romper for jigglyboo. i was thinking that i was going to keep jigglyboo's clothes that she's outgrown for future use (who knows, right? haha). but then i gave it some more thought, and i think i should just donate them. i mean, i won't need to use them for at least another couple of years - and they didn't cost that much to begin with - so might as well give them to people who really need them at a cheaper price. those little clothes have brought us so much happiness, insha Allah it can bring someone else the same.

sunday was spent doing a little shopping for myself and jigglyboo (mostly hers; she's a lucky girl haha). we spent the whole weekend at my mom's place; we were just too lazy to go back to our own.

which reminds me; tonight i really need to get a headstart on another round of spring cleaning at our place. need to separate out the clothes that i wanna send off for donation and the ones that i actually wear...and find my workout clothes. cos i also gotta try find my yoga mat that's buried somewhere underneath all the junk. my lunchtime weekly yoga class starts tomorrow, wish me luck!

btw, tomorrow is already gonna be the first day of april. can't believe a whole quarter of the year has passed by - and that jigglyboo is three and a half months already. time flies by so fast! just another month to go, and we'll be sending her off to her daycare during office hours instead of leaving her with my mom. it'll be sad and i'll probably worry a lot sending her to strangers, but i take some peace of mind knowing that i'm sending her to a good daycare (my siblings and i were brought up in a good one as well). and hopefully there'll be an opening at the creche downstairs at my office soon so we can transfer her there.

besides, we really need to give my mom a break. she's been looking after jigglyboo for a month and a half now, and although she never complains, i feel bad taking away so much of her time. she's always so busy doing her own stuff and now she's kind of stuck at home most of the time, then she spends so much time traveling back and forth from kuantan-kl on the weekends that it worries me. at her age, she should be just relaxing and spending her time doing her morning walks and whatever else that she normally does on her weekdays. so that has actually been one of my biggest motivations in sending jigglyboo to daycare -eventhough it's quite a chunk of our monthly income but knowing that she'll be in good, trained hands - but we'll settle into a routine and we've worked out our financials. it's not gonna be easy, but we have so much support and love in my life, i'm sure we'll be okay.

passion.

i feel like everywhere i look these days, people are working on something that they're passionate about. my brother and his wife have a small, independent cake business that's actually really taken off (they even supply to some cafes on the weekends). i also have a friend who runs a business making cookies and wedding gifts. then i have another friend who's left her cushy consulting job to start her own yoga business as well as friends who have been in the business of photography for awhile now. all this is definitely a good thing, i know, but it just sort of leaves me wondering, what am i doing to fulfil my passion in life? am i even passionate about something enough to have it as a career?

honestly, i don't know.

a few years back, i thought i had a real passion for writing. so i left a short stint in one of the big four companies and applied for a place to do masters in journalism and communication (still easily the best decision i ever made). before i left for journalism & comms school, i took almost a year off to just try to get some work in the industry. i lucked out and got hired to become the editor for the website version of a young women's lifestyle/educational/empowerment tv show. this lead to a couple of connections offering me writing gigs for scripts for that particular tv shows and ultimately other tv shows. i honestly thought i had made it; how cool was it that i was being paid to do something that i loved for a living?

buzzkill.

i didn't really LOVE doing it. i mean, i loved writing. but i hated working with producers and how they nitpicked over every aspect of my scripts. i could work with that though, a bigger problem was the payment. you don't get paid a mighty lot for writing scripts. you actually need a steady inflow of writing gigs to be able to stay afloat, because even if you do get the gigs, the checks don't come fast enough. i learned those lessons well, back then. i could go the route of starving artiste, but i wouldn't be able to support my lifestyle.

i know, i know. money isn't everything and all that. but the thing is, i like my lifestyle. i don't splurge on much -i'm definitely no shopaholic - but i do enjoy hanging out with friends and trying out new cafes and all that. so, i need a job that can afford me all those litte things in life that make me happy. which is why i slaved away two years of my life doing a routine, accounting job that paid fairly well. and i cant complain much about my current job. it's fairly interesting in the sense that i don't do routine work, we get to work on different projects, the pay is good, i don't work on weekends and i still get home in time to make dinner.

but when i look at my friends who have their own little businesses - it gets me thinking, what do i have? i could try asking for writing gigs again but that requires attending writing/production meetings which i don't have the time for since i have a job. i like cooking - but i'm not good enough to do it for a living and don't even have the moolah to open a cafe. i'm not good at arts or crafts - so i can't do that. i'm not that into fashion - and i can't sew to save my life. the only thing i like doing is organizing events; but i'm not really an outgoing person by nature so that's probably not the best match, huh?

so i really don't know. i like working, but am i really damned to be one of those people who work in an office until they retire? shouldn't there be more to life than that? i guess that's a conversation i can only have with myself.

two.

i'm supposed to be working on something for work right now, but i'm just not in the mood. sigh.

R and i are always in a mood lately. not good ones, that is. maybe we're just so tired. in between trying to keep the house in order, managing our finances, taking care of jigglyboo - we're just stretching ourselves thin. i can't remember the last time i plunked myself on the sofa and just watched my tv shows on weeknights; the way i did when i was pregnant.

weekends are normally spent running around too, meeting up with family and friends or doing some activities. it's ironic really; you want your life to be fulfilling but the things you do to make it happen, end up being the exact things that tire you out.

these days, i don't have too much time and money at our disposal, so we have to pick and choose which friends we want to see, and what kind of activities that we want to do. it's become quite a struggle.

i am thankful for the little things though. jigglyboo is sleeping so much better at night. she spends her days playing a lot so she normally gets six straight hours of sleep at night. we have fun watching jigglyboo grow every day. she's turning into quite a happy, beautiful baby. it's amazing to think how she was once just a tiny little thing in my tummy and here she is, all laughing and kicking in front us. God is Great.

anyhow, less than two months to our little two-year-anniversary getaway. i'm kinda excited about it - it's somewhere neither of us have ever been to - and it's gonna be our first trip with jigglyboo, just our little family of three.

here's to enjoying life but also keeping a lookout for the future.

home.

flight MH370. B777 aircraft. 239 people onboard. red-eye flight, from KL to beijing.

we've come to memorize the facts of the missing plane. but they're still very difficult to digest. and it hits so close to home particularly because it's our national air carrier; one that we've flown with plenty of times before.

personally, i hate flying. you're thousands of feet up in the air, and you totally have no control over anything that happens. you listen to the safety procedures given out by flight attendants before departure but you never think that you're going to need it. i am well aware that flying is generally very safe and the statistics of people getting into accidents on land are millions of time more than something happening while on a flight but because i'm so afraid of heights, i still hate it.

"have a safe flight."

we say it to family and friends, sometimes without even a second thought. it's just become sort of a figure of speech. you send people off at the airport and you expect them to be picking them up when they come home. for the people in MH370, their loved ones are still waiting.

i remember waking up saturday morning, scrolling through twitter like i always do since R and jigglyboo were still asleep. i saw breaking news that said MAS had lost all contact with a plane that had left KLIA slightly after midnight and was supposed to have arrived in Beijing at 6.30am. MH370 was officially missing.

today, we are all hoping. we are all praying. everyone is clueless about what actually happened onboard, and we fear that no one will live to tell the story. for the past couple of day, we have been the headlines of world news and the whole world is praying along with us. our pilots and crew are acknowledged to be among the best in the world. whatever happened, we know they would have tried their best to save everyone.

there is a feeliing of hopelessness. and we turn to God. because in Him, we have faith. to the people of MH370, we are are keeping you in our thoughts and prayers. This was your fate, but we all know, that could have easily been one of us.

"to our guests, welcome to Malaysia. and to all Malaysians, welcome home."

come home soon, MH370. we'll wait for you.

love and adventure

"may your first word be adventure and last word love." - bruce feiler

jigglyboo is full of life, love and laughter these days.

there are times that R and i put her on our bed in between us and just spend our time laughing with her. what an amazing, precious gift she is. sometimes, i can't believe how much love i have for this little tiny human being.

there will always be challenges ahead of us. pressure from the outside world. and i hope she remembers that she is loved. no matter what, we want her to be safe and happy and for her to have the adventure of her life.

hello.

dear friend,

how are you? i hope you and the family are all well.

it's funny. we don't live that far apart but ever since our fall-out, i haven't seen you at all. not even bumped into you anywhere. i've bumped into way more random people, but not you.

it's been a few years but i there are times when i find myself thinking about you. how different our lives are now and how we would be spending our time together now if we were still talking to each other. i'd see something somewhere and immediately, i think "oh, you would love this."

i know a lot of people think back about their past and say they wouldn't change a thing. with you, i think there are things that i probably would've done differently- gentler words, softer actions. i felt like there was a separation between the real you and the you that i knew. i still don't understand it, or your actions back then - i'm still as painfully honest as i was back then, and you're probably still as mysterious as you've always been, but i probably would've dealt with our situation a little more maturity.


you and i are both mothers to little girls now; how insane is that? i remember that we used to say that one day, we'd find a house near each other and our little ones have fun together. we would build cool treehouses, wings and we'd fill their rooms with lots and lots of books.

it would be so much easier if i could just move on and pretend you don't exist anymore. but that's the sad part; you really don't exist in my life anymore. we're only separated by a little distance and common acquaintances; but we're really just strangers to each other now. we don't have any current memories - and i've built lots of great new friendships since the demise of ours - but they're not what we had. it was a strange, comforting connection,; and it still baffles me til this day.

we shared so much of each other's lives. sure, we had our major differences, but at the same time, we we each other's confidantes and we understood each other's dilemmas. how do i leave you behind in the past, when a part of you is always with me? how do i erase all those moments we sat by the beach, looking at waves and thinking how cool it would be if we could build our future houses right there next to each other? how do you forget all those long conversations we had while driving through the roads of our hometown?

you and me; we're lucky. we found love; within our partners and these little bundles of joy that Allah blessed us with. whatever has happened in our past, we can learn from and try to make our future better. we can make our families different from what we've always known.

i miss you. i'm writing all these thoughts down in a letter that i'll never send to you - but at least i'm putting these feelings into words. one day, maybe i'll look back at this letter and smile. maybe one day things will be different again; in a good way.

blink.

last entry, i was talking about how life has changed for me throughout the last year.

yesterday, i got news that one of my closest girl friend's dad had just passed away of a heart attack.

just like that, he's gone.

i didn't know her dad very well, i knew her mom better. her dad seemed healthy enough; at least there were never any mentions of hospital trips or medical issues.

i can't imagine how she must feel like right now. and to be so unprepared, for such a life-altering moment - i am at loss for words.

and us as friends; what do we say to a friend who is going through such a thing? you want to comfort them, you want to attempt to make them feel better - but of course you know, things won't be better - not for a long time, at least. how do you help soeone get through such a devastation?

in the end, i guess, you just have to let time work on its own. i don't think she'll ever be the same, chatterbox, happy girl that we know - but i hope she remembers that she is still surrounded by love - by people who would do almost anything to take that pain away.

she doesn't know of the existence of this blog, so it's highly unlikely that she would ever read this entry, but regardless, this is for her.

babe, i love you. you're strong, beautiful and kind-hearted. this wound will leave a scar that will always be a part of you, but insha Allah, you'll get through this. may your dad's soul rest in peace. amin.