WORKING FROM HOME: A SERIOUS MATTER

It has always been a dream for me to be able to work from home, for a few reasons. 
A. I get to accompany my husband, who has been working from home for an employer who is in the United States. 
B. I get to spend more time with my daughter, and mould her into the minion that I want her to be (buahahahhaa)
C. I get to learn to become a better cook.
D. I don't have to waste my time, or waste away my health by dealing with the horrible process of commuting to work. and lastly...
E. No office politics (yay!)

However, little did I know that working from home would come with a full set of new problems that would make one want to throw in the towel within the first two weeks alone. Here's what happened:

I quit my previous job in late 2010 and found myself in a new home, in new surroundings and a ton of creases that needs stomping out. Basically, I got my own home already (hurray!) - which practically came without an internet connection or cable TV. We also had to start looking for new places to shop for raw materials, as well as new places to dine in, and let's not forget new recipes to apply to our daily makan routine.

Along the way, I was lucky to have been given several jobs by an ex-employer, on a freelance basis that pays alright for someone who doesn't have to step out of her house to get some dough. 

In the meantime, my daughter was trying to get used to having to face both her doting parents every single day, and by that I meant, she was trying to figure out what are the best ways to manipulate us into giving all that she wants. Oh.... I will count the ways. 

Needless to say, Havoc ruled the first three months I was here. 

But then... 

Things began to fall into place around chinese new year. 

For starters, my husband and I have established that we will share the household chores although he rules the kitchen more and I rule the washing machine more (no complaints there). We finally got our Unifi connection, 2Mbps (thank you)

As for being perfect parents, we are far from it, usually leaving Eva to the mercy of the idiot box (no complaints there either) until one night, she woke up at around 3.30am and asked (more like screamed) to watch Elmo. 

Her needy condition led to both her parents ending up in fights, arguments and tantrums (I don't wanna watch her, you watch her) and it had gotten so bad that one day I told my husband that I want to stop freelancing and just watch Eva, due to Fact 1: he is the breadwinner of the family and Fact 2: since I am without a stable income, whenever he is busy I HAVE to drop EVERYTHING to watch Eva... might as well make it permanent. 

That's when he came up with the idea of having the SCHEDULE.

The schedule

Eva sleeps at around 11pm at night (that's early for her) and will wake up between 10 am and 11.30 am. So my schedule turns out to be from 12pm to 6pm, after which her dad will take over from 6am until she goes to sleep. If you think that doesn't sound fair, Eva does take a two-hour nap at around 2pm to 4pm and while it is easier to let her nap, it is a whole other thing to get her to go to sleep at night. Initially, I was pleased with the arrangement, until I realised that by the time I am done looking after Eva at 6pm, it will be dinner time, and that coupled with a LONG day would make me too tired to do anything else. 

I struggled for about two weeks, before asking for a flip with my husband. Turns out the switch was useless since he takes some afternoons off to Skype with his employer in the U.S.

We reached a dead-end once again. So what happens next? My work got delayed pretty badly and it got me really worked up that I can't deliver as punctual as I used to no more. So what they hey, I'm already screwed, why not take this time to just hang out with my kid? And hung out I did, and I discovered something extraordinary.

They just want you to listen.

Maybe it's just Eva (who's barely 2), but I hope it's the same with all kids, but kids like her, all they really want is for you to just listen. Once they pass the 18-month mark, they undergo a sort of transformation that allows them to be self-conscious. They understand what they want and will demand for it and even though they can't talk, they will find other means to let you know they want that banana or more milk, or just an empty bowl to bang around for fun. And the magic happens when you stop and just listen to them. 

For example, I once asked Eva when she was around 19-mth old if she would want milk. She would stare at me like I'm a statue and then she would look to the side for something else to stare at, then look back at me and then nod. Eventually that nod evolved into repeating the word I use for milk "neh-neh" repeatly until I get it and start making her a bottle of milk. Later on, our conversation would become something like "Do you want milk/neh-neh?" Eva: "Neh-neh? Yao (I want)". Up until now she would say this, as if to confirm if I am offering her neh-neh (as opposed to biscuits or fruit or yogurt etc), and then saying "yao" I want or "bu yao: I don't want. 

Until early February, I've never realised what a connection Eva and I have established until her father got some time off to actually watch over her while I catch up with my work. He was having a rough time for a bit and had resorted to using the back of his hand to deliver messages to her daughter, like "time to take a bath", "do you want milk or not?", and "stop wriggling around and put your pajamas on" whereas when I take over from him I got her to do those things with less of a hassle on my part, and less of pain on her buttocks on her part. I told Eva's dad repeatedly to be gentle with her and to listen to her but I guess by that time Eva had decided that she could only trust one person, and I had the luck to be the one she chose to trust. 

Eva took full advantage of being the mama's girl, demanding things by doing what I ask her to do, up to a point where she is starting to show the effects of being over-pampered. When her grandfather came over to stay around two weeks ago, he confirmed this state of affairs by saying that she is a spoilt brat. So again we went all flexible with this parenting gig and started changing our modus operandi again. 
I introduce the clothes hanger.

To be continued...

TOO LATE FOR TOO LONG

It's well into the first month of the first year and close to two months since my last blog post. There is nothing to apologize for (which many bloggers tend to do and which I think is a bit sad) but there are plenty to be blurgh in here. 

Currently I'm writing from the state of Sabah which has earned the label of being the second poorest state in Malaysia in 2010 (or perhaps longer, nobody cares enough to keep count). Sabah is part of the island of Borneo which it shares with Sarawak, a fellow Malaysian state; Brunei, a country on its own; and Kalimantan, part of Indonesia. See the illustration below.

Bor-nee-oh

Sabah has lots of land. Acres and acres and ACRES of it. Those lands have trees, which contain wood, which translates to timber/lumber/sources for moo-lah. Did you know that Sabah also has oil off its coasts -  funny how our history books never mentioned it much though. All in all, there are few reasons why Sabah has to be in the poor category. 

A penny for your thoughts
A friend from the US visited us recently and he remarked that when he visited Kota Kinabalu 8 years ago during his first trip to Malaysia, he was surprised that KK was more developed than he had expected. 

I had just been to KK last October (of 2010) and even though it looks like a nice place to visit, the place still reeks of slow development. In KL, overhead bridges, new roads, flyovers and 18-storey condos are built in the span of 3 months to 3 years. You can't find anything in Sabah that you can boast about in the same capacity. 

With the head screwed on backwards
What you can find in Sabah, or at least in Tawau is idiocy on the roads and I do not mean the regular culprits (being the drivers).

Who freaking builds two traffic lights that are in a length of 5 cars apart? 

Who makes you drive on the wrong side of the road in one freakin' street in town, in an effort to reduce traffic jams? Note: Critics dubbed this the American road. It has since reverted to the colonised nation way again.

Who turns two healthy, beautiful, perfect two-way roads into two one-way roads that lead to a traffic light crossroads?

Who digs up the roads to fix a pipe underneath then leaves the road unfixed after?

Who stops and summons a van driving on the right lane because there's a sign saying Ikut kiri jika tidak memotong (Keep left if you are not overtaking)?


>>>> Dare I say it? Idiots bah.

DON'T MAKE ME...

My love for writing fiction has died. Or at least, I have let my technical side take over the creative side. I'm second-guessing myself every time I write a sentence. At least now it isn't so bad but that was only because I wasn't attempting to try to write anything.

Hence, a note to writers out there who aspire to be fiction writers, do not indulge yourself into other forms of writing work, don't work for publishers who have a specific agenda that is not fiction-related. It will kill your creativity, and if your supervisor is bad enough, it will kill your love for writing.

NEW SCHEDULE

Took about a week plus to readjust from time-chimed working life to no-time-limit whatsoever life. I won't say it was all hunky-dory but hey... just needs some getting used to. Mornings have disappeared from my life because I now sleep at 2 am (on a good night) and usually it is after other people have started snoring. What do I do with the time? Nothing useful, you can bet that. 

But I what wanted to write about was the new phenomena (at least to me) of going from a 9-to-5-I-don't-have-time-for-anything mode to a I-can-do-whatever-the-hell-I-want mode. The latter is scary, seriously. 

You don't keep track of your meals, when to get your morning coffee (usually it is already what, 1pm by the time I remember that I needed it), brushing your teeth is not the first thing you do in the morning, your daily objectives is to think of what meals to prepare for lunch and dinner (whenever that happens), bathing is an option (but still necessary if you want to go out and meet someone and keep that person alive at the end of the meeting), you hog the TV because now you need not schedule TV into your.. er.. schedule, you can actually go to a sale anytime you want (which makes it no fun or half as alluring no more) etc.

I seriously had a hard time adjusting to all that. It might all sound peachy but to go from "there is a time for every thing" during school, university and work to "there's time for anything and everything"... well, if you don't have goals, you will go nuts.

That's what happened to me. I felt blurry in the first week. I don't know what day it is, what time it is when I wake up (but the sun was shining down on me with vengeance), I don't care about the news no more unless it is funny or it has to do with me forking out more money, speaking of which, yes I am still doing freelance work stuff for peanuts but hey, I'm having fun spoiling my kid.. speaking of which, is a real pain-in-the-ass while she tries to recuperate from her soggy mood from being sick for more than a week now (checks her watch) eh yup, it's been 8 days now but she is doing better thanks to the antibiotics the doc gave her. I really need to put in more effort to raise her immune system up to standard. This cannot go on! 

That's it! That's my new goal! woo hoo... now to actually organise it into something that is workable. I feel so productive suddenly. Yeah, maybe that's what I was craving for, to feel productive. Sigh... Is it too early to go back to work?

I AM FREE

My last day was last Thursday. The farewell was brief and almost non-existent. Best thing about it is, I don't really care. Sigh, that's how low it has sunk, and how bad it stunk. But anyhow, I can now spend more time with my daughter, with my already dying blog, with my husband, my family (my sis) and going back to school. I have missed the closing date for this January's intake but it's not a huge loss, because now I have no qualms of applying for the June intake. And while we're on this topic, the websites for local universities really really suck. Even though they aren't directly paid to maintain the websites, but they will do better if their universities are ranked better, and how can you get local universities to be ranked better if you can't get more foreign students to apply to study in your university? 

It's frustrating that you lose out on an application due to a technicality, and for god's sakes, this is the Internet age, all the latest updates should be on the website! How can you ask a student from penang to drive all the way to your doorstep to get info, just because you want them to be independent, proactive and have initiative? You don't have any of those things to begin with. 

*breathe, breathe*... enough with the ranting. What if people find out that you are b*tching about them before you apply for the course? gasp, I have half a mind to delete this post now... but I won't until I apply for the January intake, and get it, and graduate from it. Besides, what I just wrote is true what.

I hope I won't miss January's intake. Sigh...

GOALS BEFORE 30

Excuse my fascination with goals, but apart from the fact that I was brought up with goals, it really ensures that things get going and more importantly, get done.

From the day you are born until you come out to work -- which could be between 18 to 23 (or 30 for some people who prefer to study longer) -- almost all your goals are set by somebody that is not you. How many A's to get, distinctions to obtain, ambitions to follow... it's all dictated by your parents, teachers, guardians, even your peers. Until you come out to work, everyone is pretty much following a scale that is set by society. The rest just follows.

So what happens when you come out to work? Many lose their way in the first few years of their working life. It's not to say that they cannot find their way around -- not that kind of loss although it does happen in no-GPS occasions -- but they lose sight of what really matters in their life. For instance, some work and take out the 'play' in life. They stay in the office for 12 to 15 hours, are rarely seen out under the sun and attend office parties that they can't really say no to. 

But I digressed.

Back to the point of this post, yes, what are the goals that one would hope to achieve by 30? Frankly, I wouldn't know because everyone has their own list of things to do before they die: travel, have property and assets, marry, start a family, have their own business, start their own centre, have a gallery named after themselves, get a PhD, fly a plane, find the Loch Ness Monsters etc. 

It doesn't really matter which is it, there is not right or wrong, but at the very least, you have to achieve some goals before a certain time. Else, you will feel it in the next class reunion. It's not shameful to bow to peer pressure, in fact, there seems to be a biological need to feel the pressure or to stand up to it by competing against the rest. How else can you explain how much you hate Carrie's new handbag or killer pumps?

My goals were really set by the time I was 16. Achieving them is in a whole new category but still, I am lucky that I have pretty much most of them covered: Get married and have lovely family and children (1 down, 1 more to go), have a car, get a nice house, a stable career (which I am putting on hold for the time being), a Master's (going for it, hence the pit stop for the career; may consider a PhD if the bill fits but it's not a goal set in stone) and being free from financial despair (after paying for a wedding, an album, a house and everything in it, a kid, a Master's) with plenty of save-save-savings and a walking, talking ATM machine to fall back on (I got two, tee hee hee).

Problem now is, figuring out a new set of goals to achieve before I'm 40. O_o"