31 REASONS WHY I LOVE YOU

 Today, is a very special day for my wife. Today on 31 May, 2013, she turns 31. She has been nothing short of a blessing to me so here’s 31 reasons why I love her (you)…

1.       Because you first loved me…

2.       You have been my place of solace after a stressful day at work.

3.       You have been the voice of reason when I am unreasonable.

4.       You have never contacted the psychiatric ward when I do outrageously stupid things.

5.       When I forget to hang the clothes, you quietly do it while I sleep.

6.       You enjoy beaches as much as I do.

7.       You laugh at my jokes even though they can be lame.

8.       You have a hidden talent of telling jokes seamlessly which never fails to amaze me.

9.       You completed your degree in 2 and a half years.

10.   And you completed your masters in less than 3 years.

11.   You never fail to buy my most needed wants as gifts.

12.   You love kids.

13.   You delivered to us a baby girl.

14.   And then you decided to make it a pair by delivering a boy.

15.   And you seem to be considering doubling that.

16.   You went through 20 hours of labor to deliver our girl with epidural.

17.   And you decided to do better by going through 10 hours of labor WITHOUT epidural.

18.   Your consistent fervor to provide the best for our kids – in terms of healthy food.

19.   The nights where after your work or during the weekends, where you spend that free time not on yourself but by cooking super healthy meals for our kids for the week to come.

20.   Your sacrifices in bearing with breastfeeding our kids and the countless times you’ve cried cause the journey has been tough.

21.   Your sacrifices through interrupted and barely sufficient sleep to take care of the kids at night.

22.   Your strength in going through a wailing child.

23.   How you have for the past 2 years over been fetching our girl to your parents place while you carried your bags, her bags and her down 3 flight of stairs into the car.

24.   How you still continue to hang on through your job no matter how tough it has been to further supplement our salaries.

25.   How you introduced me to coffee and that now, I am a self-proclaimed half-baked coffee connoisseur.

26.   In the available free times you have, you cook up a delicious meal for our dinner.

27.   Your support in all that I do.

28.   Your love for food.

29.   Your warm smile that melts away all the worries of the world.

30.   Your faith in God and the assurance you exhibit.

31.   Your patience when I have been mean.

So today on your birthday, I just want to let you know that you have been an absolute blessing to me and the fruits of our loins (our kids). I am thankful that the fruits of your parents loins bore fruit to such a wonderful woman whom I have the privilege of calling “My Wife”. I cherish every moment that we have gone through and look forward to the coming years together as we both age. I love you!

4 IV FOUR EMPAT

4, IV, Four, Empat years ago, I married a beautiful lady at the tender age of 24. Of course getting married young, people had a lot of things to say…

4, IV, Four, Empat Things People Thought About My Decision:

                     i.         Why so early? Can wait sum more ma…

                   ii.         Ha…? Shotgun? (Had to make sure Ju Li maintained her weight (and me on diet just in case they see wrongly) less to create more suspicion… and now.. 4 years down… when I tell people I got married at 24, I have to make sure I also tell them, “I also have a daughter born 2 YEARS LATER”)

                  iii.         Gatal… Tak boleh tahan ar?

                 iv.         Still got so many choices ma…

But that decision to marry my college sweetheart, my one and only true love (any previous gf’s less than 1 yr not counted) has been one decision that I have not regretted and I am so glad we decided to get married then. In any case, by then, we have already been friends for 2 years and dated for 4 years… Wanna wait for what sum more? So why did I married JL (my wife)…

4, IV, Four, Empat Reason I Married JL:

                  i.            She loves KIDS as much as I did

                ii.            She was my anchor, my stabilizer, my Xanax and my island of solace

               iii.            She wasn’t a workaholic who spent more time in office than home (women I fear the most)

              iv.            She loved me

Through the 4, IV, Four Empat years together, we’ve gone through ups and downs but the best part of the journey to me has been always learning from each other. We definitely come from 2 very different family backgrounds and of course those shape who we are today. My family was very routine focused while hers was more laid back and bonding focused. So while my family always had everything planned out in advance, her family sits back and is able to converse with each other for hours. So when she married me, I was all about getting home, settle dinner, wash the plates, bath, watch TV and sleep and she was left feeling emptiness in the relationship and wondering – What happen to conversation? Dinner was just about finishing up. Sitting down in the couch was just about watching TV. Lying down on the bed was just about sleeping. To me, that was life. But to her, that was definitely not life. And through the years, I have to learn to converse with her more, which was something that didn’t come easy but refreshing in the end.

4, IV, Four, Empat Things I’ve Learned From JL:

               i.      There’s more to consider than being super duper PRE-punctual – I use to get irritated (and sometimes still do) when we’re like sharp sharp on time for something. But through the years, as much as PRE-punctuality is still important, I have to consider other aspects (i.e. if we reach super early for a wedding, baby would have to endure through the delay and in the end, nobody’s going to be happy, our own fatigue and there’s no point in reaching there early and not being able to enjoy ).

             ii.      “Put the sponge down and come spend time with us!” – Making sure the plates are washed immediately is not as important as spending the time to first bond with both baby and mummy. My schema of eating – bring the plates to the sink – wash it had to be reconstructed. I’m really glad that JL has brought about much more perspective to what is important. “Plates can wait. We can wash them later. Spending time now before she sleeps is more important.”

            iii.      My values are not always right. This is something that I have learned and have to be constantly remind myself.

           iv.      Eat fish. Eat healthy. My staple food before I met her was Maggie mee & fatty pork.

4, IV, Four, Empat Things JL Has Learned from Me (I think):

            i.         Expand food choices – she now loves Si Ham & have learned how to suck Balitong.

          ii.         Increase risk appetite – she can go on manageable roller coaster rides, drive a new car fresh from the showroom, snorkel and canoe far off to the ocean.

         iii.         Swim – even though she told me that she has a “crooked backbone” which causes her to not to be able to float in water (which was a lie but I took it as a fact and I have successfully thought her how to swim – so for swimming lesson (even if you’ve got a physical problem that causes you to sink in water), contact Master Swimmer Chan).

        iv.         Cleanliness is not everything. Sometimes can close one eye. So sometimes when I wash the rice 4x instead of 5x, can close one eye a bit  :P

Looking back at our differences and how we have adapted together really puts a smile on my face. That’s to me is the true meaning of love and being together. Sure she’s kind, loving, understanding and all… but with these new found maturity in our relationship to learn to understand where we come from and change and adapt… to me… that’s beauty. It was definitely not easy, a journey infused with arguments (as we’re both quite hard headed – 1^st child syndrome), nights where I just ignored and slept while she’s left still fuming over our conflict, but in the end, the journey has been worthwhile. A true value of a great sword is one which has been immerse in fire and tested in battles. Don’t get me wrong that our married life is only filled with conflict. Our married life definitely has more enjoyable moments than conflict but relationships will be tested and year after year as we mature together, I treasure and love her even more. The experiences that we’ve been through, both good and bad becomes the very foundation that we build our relationship on.

To my beloved wife, I love you very much and love you even more as the years go by. Sorry for the times I’ve hurt you with my insensitivities. Thank you for being the anchor that I can rely on. I look forward to both calm seas and rough tsunamis that we would go through and in which through each experience, we come out stronger in the love we have for each other. I love you very much!

CUPID STRIKES 3 (years)

Today, 13 December 2011, is the day 3 years ago when Ju Li and me walked down the aisle and took a vow to be together for better or for worse. It was a beautiful day.

REWIND

I met Ju Li while we were studying in HELP together. It was definitely not love at first sight because I did not remember that we were working together in the same group for our 2^nd semester project and had to be reminded by her a year later (when we got closer). And till today, I still have difficulty recalling that :P For her, I was the guy that her parents would have warned her to stay away from (not that I am some badass punk who smokes, drinks, parties, curses or visits Bangkok frequently). I was just the guy who was never serious in lectures, made full use of the 30% absentee allowance (you had to attend 70% of your lectures in order not to be barred from the course), slept in most of his classes (especially those held in the auditorium – cinema type of chairs), got her to mark my attendance for 8:00am classes and attended church very consistently – once every quarter.

But as fate had it, in our 2^nd and 3^rd year, we started getting closer and closer and I believe that it was the Cantonese dramas that we watched together at my rented house that really brought us together (if we/she had classes that ended at 6:00pm, she’ll come over to my rented place and watch Cantonese drama’s in the hall together with me to wait for the traffic to clear).

But then, Ju Li being Ju Li, she wanted to be sure that I was the right person… the right man… the only man… the awesome man… the wonderful man… the great man… THE MAN...! So we had like a waiting period of a couple of months before kicking it all off.

Years passed, outings, dates, movies, of course the time I left for the States for 1 year, back and getting married.

PLAY

Today of course I am happily married to the college sweetheart and we now own a little baby girl. Through the 7 years of being together, there were definitely ups and downs… “Focus on the ups and there are more ups… Focus on the downs and there are more downs” (Mahaguru Mua, 2011). But with every passing day, it’s the appreciation of the things that we have gone thru that keeps us moving forward. More significantly of course are the bad times, when it’s all done & said, sitting back (of course not immediately) and reminiscing on the things that were said, the actions that was done, we just appreciate each other even more day by day.

Of course it takes a heck load of humility too to change your so thought “grandeur” or “the right” way of life… to break down all schemas and to build up new ones together to fit into our own needs and wants. To say sorry, to forgive, to move on, to laugh again and to hold each other once again genuinely.

FAST FORWARD

Many times people have asked, how do you know you’ll be with her forever? How are you so sure? The answer is really as simple as this… “You’ll know”. It’s not cliché, it’s not out of a text book but really each and everyone would go through different experiences, and when you’ve found the one, “you’ll know”.

With Ju Li, it was simply 2 things:

1. Being a normal boy, I obviously had many a couple of “past relationships” (such a nice word for gf’s).

How many “past relationships”?                               

(Take Ju Li’s “past relationship” x 5) – (my 2 brother’s total relationships/2) + (my age/5)

The equation just goes all wrong when you reach “my 2 brother’s total relationships” cause 1 of my brother totally lost count :P So let’s forget about counting…

As I was saying, when it got to Ju Li, it never crossed my mind of thinking of a breakup through our 4 years of dating (now of course no need to breakup.. can forget about it already). Simple but that was one big difference when it got to dating Ju Li, for some strange reasons, it really never crossed my mind to call it quits even through the downiest point of our relationship.

2. I don’t cry in front of people (it’s not an MCP statement but just how my emotions are crippled by the fact that there's an unclear passage between my heart-brains-eye that would require further medical intervention). There are only 4 times in my entire life that I have cried in open (apart from when I was a kid and when I got a bus load of spanking) – and all of it happened in church (when I was prayed for, when we prayed for a close friend who had cancer and when a close friend had a miscarriage and was reflecting on God’s grace) except for the 4^th… which was when I was about to leave for the States and with Ju Li in my room, I just cried. Public outflow of emotion is something that is very difficult for me to let out, but when it does happen, it is something that I am just overwhelmed with and at that moment, I was just overwhelmed by the fact that I loved Ju Li so much and could not bear the thought of leaving her behind for a whole year.

These things might seem really simple but these are the things that are significantly different from everything in my past coupled with the inner peace within that I know that Ju Li is THE ONE.

Of course it’s not going to be a peaceful cruise ship through calm oceans and it could be the titanic sinking experience everyday but deep down I know that God has been very faithful and gracious through the years and would definitely guide us through the storms to calmer waters everyday. It’s really not about watching the sunrise everyday but watching the sunset everyday that matters - to sit back, reflect on the day that has gone by (good/bad) and to know that no matter what, we still have each other for the next day come what may.

Ju Li... I definitely love you very much and appreciate all the sacrifices that you have made. I look forward to the years that will come, fights, quarrels, misunderstandings, comfort, company, kindness and most of all, LOVE. Muah!