When a man loves a woman

Since Hallyu Wave has spread across the world, Korean dramas are shown in all tv channels and Astro even has 2 dedicated channels for the K-Drama fans. Honestly, without embarrassed, I admit that I'm one of them. Their drama is so addictive and bring you out of your current mundane daily life to another world. Me being me, I'm only watching those romantic, funny and melt-your-heart kind of drama with handsome and pretty actors and actresses. I avoid those serious and thriller type of drama. If I want to distract myself from my daily life, might as well goes to the extreme happiness rather than making you depress right.

From the drama that I watched, I noticed that their romantic-ness are somehow over the top and obviously not realistic in real world. In real world, men will not do things like that. Sometimes I'm scared that some naive ladies out there who dream of having a man that will do what the actor did in the drama. I once read in forum that a guy wrote that he was sad that his girlfriend wanted to break with him coz he was not romantic. And the worst part, the girlfriend actually used K-drama as a benchmark of romantic-ness. Haih.. we need to differentiate what is entertainment and what is reality.

In reality, this is what a man will do to show that he loves his woman (based on personal experience):

1. Accept that she doesn't know how to cook and patiently teach and help her with cooking
2. Ate whatever she cooked even it taste really sucks
3. Charge her iPad/phone at night so that she can use her iPad the next day with full battery
4. Switched on the light when he went out for his night shift so that she will not come back into dark home
5. Support her to follow her dreams
6. Be her shoulder to cry on when her dreams face challenges and motivate her to not give up
7. Pick up and send her to airport every week
8. Bought network wire when she complain the hotel wire not long enough
9. Spoon feed her when she sick
10. Wait patiently for weekend to watch the new episode of tv series so that they can watch together
11. Skip futsal so that he can spend the all night with her before she moved
12. Quietly buy breakfast for her before she wake up
13. Remember what she likes and dislikes
14. Hate people who make her sad
15. Help her with the house chores
16. Make sure her car is in tip top condition
17. Kiss her before he leaves for work everyday
18. Provide 24/7 computer technical support
19. Never fail to call her everyday 
20. Become her biggest fan and biggest critic
21. Concern about her safety
22. Don't let her carry heavy stuff
23. Hold her hand when walking
24. Always on her side even the world is against her
25. Remember her favourite songs
26. Frantically search for her when she is not by his side in underwater
27. Make sure she always gets the best
28. Guide her when she's lost
29. Accept her during PMS
30. Cuddle her tightly every night
31. Keep a portion of his favourite food for her so that she can taste it
32. Buy her supplement so she will be healthy
33. Encourage her to be healthy
34. Respect her belief and principles, never force her into anything
35. Love her unconditionally

The list can go on and on and on. Actually the list is based on my husband. I'm so lucky to have him as a husband. He never lavish me flowers, jewellery, poems, poetic words, but his love is clearly seen in his action and decision for me. That's usually not capture in drama. So be wise and appreciate your husband.

Oh, lately I always see posts shared in FB about a good husband needs to do this, this and this. It is always about husband not being good enough and I will judge you if you share that. I will assume that your husband is not doing what you shared no matter how much you try to comment back saying "oh, my husband is the best, he's doing this bla bla" coz if your husband is ok, why you need to share and tagged his name at the first place? If I'm the husband, I will be pissed - why ask him to do things publicly on things that he already doing which giving an indication to public that he's not doing it?

I miss my husband T_T. Can't wait for Thursday!

Things that I miss

Things that I miss while living in Miri:

1. My husband
2. Eating with my husband everyday
3. Sleeping with my husband every night
4. All activities that I do with my husband
5. Gardenia bread - all kind
6. My colleagues in Cyberjaya & Damansara Heights
7. My family
8. My friends
9. Fly FM
10. Ikim FM
11. Good food
12. My dryer
13. My bathroom
14. My bedroom
15. My kitchen
16. In short, my house
17. Unifi

Things that I did not miss while living in Miri:

1. Traffic jam
2. That's all

The first 30 days

Today marked the 30th day of my arrival to this 'quiet' town of East Malaysia, Miri. It has been a roller coaster ride for me. I thought I will survive this with a breeze, especially after living in US for 1.5 years and used to be away from home. Boy, I was wrong. Every place has different challenges and I sometimes underestimated what I will face.

Week 1

Arrived in Miri on Sunday afternoon alone as I didn't want to feel comfortable to have someone with me. I checked in into my temporary accommodation that the company has generously provided to me. I chose Marriott Resort and Spa as I wanted to be as comfortable as I can, even though the hotel is the furthest hotel from the office, which is 20-30 minutes away driving (in Miri standard, that is far). The first week was the honeymoon week. Everything was a new discovery to me. I excited to see boats, river and sea on the way to office and everyone at the office was good to me. What made it better was the fact on Wednesday one of my good friend in Cyberjaya came to work in my new office and made me less officesick.

That weekend, was the long Chinese New Year weekend and my husband came over. We had a good time exploring Miri and the neighbouring country aka Brunei while enjoying Marriott's facilities. Together we shortlisted areas that I should looked into for my permanent housing here.

In short, I can imagine myself doing well here and whenever people asked me how is the new place, my answer was good.

Week 2

Week 2 went by quite fast. The first 2 days were public holiday and Zainal was here, so whenever he by my side, I'm always ok. The other 3 working days were quite quiet as many people took the opportunity to have long holiday. At this time I started to have officesick. I started to miss my old colleagues and friends, missed to have lunch and chat with them. It was not helping that I still haven't given any jobs. I ended up reading all the material in company website and even managed to finish a 50 pages manual.

That Friday my parents arrived and weekend was not so bad. As usual, there's nothing much to do in Miri except driving around and Brunei. At least I wasn't lonely that weekend and it has been awhile since I spend time alone with my parents and this was a great opportunity.

Week 3

This was the week that I discovered things going down the drain emotionally. At third week of working in new office, I still haven't have lunch buddies, not even one. Not even one person asked me if I want to join them for lunch. Everyday I need to ask around if I can join them. This is where I realized there's 2 kind of friendly -  a genuine one and a fake one. The lowest point of the week was when I was so down and lonely, I drove to McD drive thru with tears running my cheek, bought my lunch and parked at the side road to eat it. 

However Allah has answered my prayer that day when I met a friend who moved here from Cyberjaya and we made a pact to become default lunch buddy. I realized she was having the same issue with me and that made me feel better as I know I was not alone in feeling this. 

This has definitely lighten up my sadness a bit but I still didn't have any works in the office. I raised this to my supervisor and she asked me to use this time to myself while she sort out my portfolio. At this time I was restless at office, I started to think more about this job. Is it worth it? Why am I doing this? Is this what I want in life? When I started thinking like this, I know this is not good.

Alhamdulillah Zainal came that weekend. Not seeing him almost two weeks added the stress and made me emotionally wreck. At least being with him for one night released a huge amount of sadness and loneliness that I have been carrying all week.

Week 4

Finally I started to do my work. The real work. Business invited me to join him in a meeting in KLCC which means I got to go back home! Even for less than 24 hours -arrived in KL at 10.30pm and my flight back to Miri the next day at 9pm, it means a lot to me.. But it is definitely recharged me. This week brought me more good news. My car has arrived and so were my stuff. Finally familiar things! Ditched the new car that my company lend to me to drive my old faithful Gen 2. It felt so good to be with something that I familiar with which remind me that I'm not far away from home.

That weekend I went home. It was so good to be home and I missed everything about home. And that is how I survived my first month here.

Oh, 18 months, please come quickly and let me finish this as soon as possible.