Zouk Gastronomical Delights

Few weeks back, I gave a sweet surprise treat for my close friend, Kavitha for her 27th birthday at Zouk Cafe Bar @ The Gardens. Not only was I excited for it but also really felt this was a way for me show appreciation of our friendship. A sheer coincidence that Zouk Cafe is lovely place to spend leisure time with best buds. I remembered the last time I had snippets with my dear friend before she set off to States with her hubby.  

Zouk Cafe Bar is on the ground level, prominently located right next to the main entrance to the Gardens opposite of Midvalley. The café looks chic with contemporary finesse that makes its ambiance cozy for a relaxing dining. The concept is fresh and oozing with zing. The café bar comes with two dining hall; indoor and outdoor which is closer to the fountain. 

Both of us were seated in the lounge with a cozy ambiance where we get to feel serene in the midst of nice selection of music tracks being played. As we made ourselves comfortable in the cushiony chair, the waiter furnished us with the menu. With conversation still on the go, we ogled through the menu card to find something that can satisfy our appetite. The choice of food looks tantalizing fit for my taste. 

Kavi ravished on the pan fried salmon with a tropical juice while I went for chicken parmigiana with a splash of lemonade. Kavi’s portion of dish is just nice while mine was a bit huge for me (knowing me I am not a great-eater). But it was good for a lunch meal. I must say the scrap of fries was too generous for a person. The food was delicious and absolutely divine. Fresh coleslaw, crispy fries, tender chicken breast with a topping of lemonade was zesty to end the day with. 

The juicy Chicken Parmigiana

 

Savoury Pan Fried Salmon

 I enjoyed every bite of it and so do Kavi. A beautiful treat for my bestie. Happy Birthday dear! It was a fond memory of simple yet sweet celebration of birthday. I guess as we grow older, we prefer a quiet, warm and pleasant birthday celebration.

P.s. Can’t wait for our hi-tea in few weeks time!

June: A mere hiatus

June is a month with mixed emotions and events filling up the moments. Completion of scientific advisory meeting brings a new feel that euphoric rush of freedom, as I throw my super-tight schedule into the air. The relaxation time arrives and I am looking forward to be treated to the fabulous time of the year. Then, Father's Day was a special time to celebrate a day with dad. My good friend hamster is blessed with her bundle of joy last week. My senior principle scientist, Prof Sanusi retired just to be with his family in US. It was a saddest moment for all of us in office as he was a good colleague and supervisor. There are more things happening in June indeed. 

After a short hiatus from blogosphere, here I am back with a bang. I felt my mind gone astray with many things at the back of my mind. Perhaps I was just too tired of being tired for the past couple of weeks due for the SAC meeting. SAC meeting is a platform for the battle of the brains at the research centre that I am working with. It happens bi-annually which just drains away all my energy. After which we take a huge relief by sitting back, unwind and enjoy the moments till I regain myself. 

Mind you that this does not mean that I can totally whisk away from my project schedule. More challenging and intriguing stuffs can be felt through the progress in my project. In fact I am getting excited about it by which means I have more work to do and new things to learn. More so, my project carries the weight to generate genetic markers related to the trait of interest to be incorporated into the SD breeding programme as soon as possible. Excitement as well as stress is building up within me.

I need a break!

However, June is coming to an end. It’s time to say bye to June till we meet next year. 

Dad....

After much anticipation, the third Sunday of June has come and gone. For dads, this was a special day to appreciate their presence in a child’s life. And most of us must have been planning to splurge in a surprise bash to fathers and make them feel appreciated. As I got up this morning, I was deluged with thoughts of how my dad showered his overflowing love, compassion and overprotected his girls all these years, little that I remember. Indeed, Father’s Day is a day to stop-remember-honor a father’s devotion in everybody’s life. After all, dad is the most powerful icon which made our life worth living. Take a bow, dad! So, today I am all set to bring before you a dedication which will win your hearts for sure exclusively for my loving father. I believe I and my sister made best efforts to make his day memorable. A simple but sweet celebration of his day (he just doesn’t want to trouble his little girls although we would love to give the most luxurious celebration). That is simply how his beautiful heart is.

Ever since I was a little girl till today, my dad has been a constant, loving resource with lots of inspiring stories, recipe for a good life, and words of encouragement. My bittersweet experiences in my growing years of life in a blasé family, I learnt the most essential message that is notable; Parents will always be our best friends in the world no matter what happens. And trust me, most of you reading this post will be beaming in conformity. In that sense, I would be more than happy to say I am gifted to have non-authoritarian parents.

If a mother is a girl’s best friend, then fathers will be a girl’s first hero in her life. Right from the day girl’s step into the world, she is all geared to carry the burden of life in her fragile shoulder. Before you knew it, the little girl has become a young woman, and nurturing her isn't easy at all. It is pretty daunting task for any father. Now that I am a big girl now, it seems pretty amusing to reflect back on those years when my dad gets little edgy over me and my sister just to make sure we are perfectly fine wherever we are. I wouldn’t say things have changed now since we have metamorphed into independent, young women. Ha-ha! We are still his little princesses and savoring his affection for as long as we have him around us. I truly believe that a woman's sense of worth as a woman, and as a person, is commonly rooted in her experience with her father.

It is a blessing if we are bestowed with a really awesome dad as a guiding star, well-wisher, best friend and also a pillar of strength. If mothers makes home a heaven, fathers plays the role as the foundation to shape a child’s personality. As a daughter I can strongly vouch that my dad is a source of inspiration for me all my life in various ways. He makes us girls shine like superstar.
As much as I can remember vaguely, I remember dad works hard to give his little princesses a good life. In his early days of career, his salary was meager and that was the reason when he was away on some nights when work seemed to have no end for him. Though he knew his girls need his affection during our growing up years, he made sure weekends were exclusively for us. He’d take us to the shopping mall for one day out as a family. Over the years as we grew up, dad would take us for a drive around the city to savor the panorama, indulge us to a fine dinner, or a quick getaway to nearby town or holiday resort just to enjoy the time together as a family while giving us the best of our childhood. The best time with dad will be shopping spree. Simply because dad always let us gets things that mom usually would not allow us to buy. On weekends, if we don’t go out, running errands around the house, washing car together or the recreation park near to our house were perfect for him to take us for a walk or exercise. For a busy man like him, dad will fit in the quality time however he can. And my dad made sure we knew he loved us through time with us.

 

As a daughter, I believe dad is their very first man we look up for love and thus setting the standards for our life partner that will enter our life at some point of time. In fact, I saw the beautiful and loving qualities of my dad in my husband when I first met him fours year ago. The prince of my heart whom emulates all the fine traits that I saw in my dad. Lucky me to have them both.

Dad, you are a gift in my life. Your daughters are proud of being blessed with a father like you. Nobody can fill in the place of yours in our life. You will always be our superhero whom deserves our affection, love and care. Thanks dad for making me what I am today, for giving me a life, adoration, fondness and warmth. Thanks dad for giving me an angel mother; to whom I can look up to and makes our life colorful than ever.

I love you acha!

Watch what you say next time

I’ve heard many times before about the dangers of saying the wrong thing and it comes back to you in a form of sticky situation. Things that you say on the Internet will eventually, come back to bite you in the ass. A sad trend I’ve seen lately is the number of people who tweet or facebook while they are not in the right mind. Of course, they may realize it’s a mistake the next day (when they are in sound mind) and hastily seek to delete the post. But, unfortunately, it is too late for the damage has been done. We should forever remind ourselves and those around us of what we say. Others will re-post to you or somehow print screen what you’ve said. Worse still, it haunts us back one some point in time.
 
A couple of months ago, a USM student who posted a bomb threat on his Facebook account would have regretted for the consequent mess he faced. He allegedly threatened to bomb PM's helicopter that would fly the prime minister for a visit to the campus on his Facebook posting. Apparently, he made a grave mistake which cost him his fate to be in despair. Had he been a sensible boy, he would have thought twice to post something stupid like that (as if he has guts to do so). This is the downside of social network and people’s rash decision to publish things on the net. 

 
Whoa whoa… I won’t begin to speculate as to what prompted him to post something like this over Facebook for his friends and the other netizen to see. I will, however, repeat myself once again… Watch. What you say. It’s not that difficult, people. Do not sign into your social network when you are drunk, infuriated, miserable or whatever other emotional state you are in. It’s fine to share things with your network. I’m not saying you shouldn’t. But if you cannot be coherent and sensible with what you’re about to say, do you dare to spell it out loud?

Social network like Facebook, Google+ and Twitter is for networking, not for you to invite more trouble for yourself. People should always be careful about what they say online. Watch out. Think about what the hell you are madly typing. It can be a message, a comment or even the shout out that you put up. Look out what have you written and try to make sense what you’re saying before you hit that post button. After that one click of the button, you are accountable for what you say and it will haunt you for the rest of your life. So the rule of the thumb is avoid from posting things on social network that you will regret sooner or later. Simply because one day, odds are good that someone stumble across whatever you say, and it will come back to haunt you. 

How many of us are conscious that social sites these days are paradise for ample personal information about oneself. And thus, most of the netizen are vulnerable since they are easy prey for criminals and who not. One would realize that there are so much of personal details can be found from someone’s social profile page. Usually, the photos and wall posts can give people a pretty good idea of who you are, where you are, and what you’re doing. Social sites have become a fad for younger generations and even more worrying is, it has influenced even the elderly generation. Funny right? More and more users are turning to Facebook, Twitter or Google+ to chronicle their lives and socialize with friends. However of lately, I’ve been learning from the words passing around that the actual intention of these networking sites is reaching way beyond. Photos and personal details shared have gone beyond the friend’s circle which is a grave concern today.


Another very controversial issue popped up recently when one insensible young lady posted racial slur remarks in FB creating a colossal uproar across various social echelons. I must say it infuriated all the Tamilians in Malaysia by the unjustifiably and tactless statement that she made. The provocation statement has taken the cyber world by storm. Now the bigoted lady is facing the music much to her horror. Police reports have been made against her for inciting hate amongst various ethnicity echelons. Worse still, her modeling career has been in turmoil as well. Anyway, we wouldn’t want such a person to represent the Indian women of Malaysia to global arena (only if she does). It would be an utter disgrace. 

The infamous lady is not someone that we all should emulate. Take this as a lesson to be learned on how to watch what you say and coordinate your thoughts or opinions in a more respectable way. Perhaps she was just too depressed with bad experiences with guys (of the ethnicity that she criticized) that led her to be over dramatic in her emotions that ignited her to post such remarks on her social site. Poor girl if only she was cautious of what she has written on her site, and aware the rights of being a victim of circumstances, she would have not been sucked into this turmoil. Instead if she was a smart women and knows her rights to practice, she would have lodged a report against whomever harassing her in her neighborhood. I am not going to probe into her character nor justify what she did was right or wrong as it is none of my interest. But all I can say this incident is good eye-opener for the rest of us.
 

I am an avid netizen myself. I have my fair share of saying ‘insightful’ things in my life in written form; blog, word press and FB note to some extent. But I am witty enough to say what I am suppose to say and not simply raise innuendo to incite hurt in others. I am sure some of my posts have infuriated people that took it personal when I didn’t even need to mention the name. Their conscience was pinched and guilt engulfed them so much so that they even made copies of it to disseminate it making me a sensationalized writer (Ironically). Ha-ha-ha. It was unpremeditated endorsement for my write-ups and eventually earning me the name of provocative writer. This didn’t hamper my passion of writing. I was provoked to further write more of challenging topics as I always do. It gives me something to write about and it gets down really dirty. After all I would call it as serendipity if it offends anyone undeliberately (I don’t mention names here or point out explicitly).

As a matter of fact, I love to ignite the substance of broad-spectrum of social dilemmas which mostly is confrontational. It interests me to go in depth about it. It annoys many people out there whom are disturbed by it due to the resemblance to their personality (some even feel that I am writing about them). If that’s what they feel, I feel sorry for them that I had to let the whole world see through my writing what is happening around the globe. And they just happen to be exactly like how I pen down my thoughts. Too bad they had to gulp down their guilt.

A weekend well spent

Last weekend was exciting (and it’s been something I looked forward) when I got back to my husband’s place to spend the weekend with him!!  After weeks of hectic schedule, finally we both made time for us to meet up for a quickie (super busy + super stressed). It was a lovely Saturday where we got to wind up ourselves. Just out of random, we both made up our mind to take an evening drive around the city to take a breather since the climate was super sweltering. So we hop into the car and my husband wanted to put his photography skills into action. I was excited to see the ‘photographer’ in action! It was this day that I became his ‘model’. 

Then… Ready, action, roll! Click! Click! Click! My hubby was rollin em’ with so much of passion! Pigeons, recreational park with burst of greenery, Sunway Water Park, heavenly garden landscape etc etc. I was in awe!

I have admired the work of many photographers for some time now, ever since I started having the passion with my not-so-great digital camera. Of course I didn’t own a DSLR but it will do with my simple camera for amateur like me.  But after our wedding, my husband quickly indulged himself into photography. Soon after, he got a DSLR for himself and started his venture whenever he travels, on weekends and during his leisure time. I was thrilled to know that there is a potential photographer in the make and that person is none other than my love.  The photo session cum time-together was perfect and we could have spent more than 3 hours driving around from one place to another finding for a beautiful location and interesting facet of nature that could capture our attention. 


I would love to post a few pictures of my husband’s shots! But I am yet to get it from him. Once I get the portfolio from him, I might update this post then. One thing for sure, he is simply amazing with his new toy and quickly picked up the skills to my surprise. I will be an ardent fan of his shots forever. Way to go sweetheart.

I seem to be getting energized after the trip although I was having lack of sleep and the fatigue of pretty occupied weekends.

Walk Down Memory Lane - Primary School Days

This morning as I was driving to work, I was slapped with nostalgic moments of my primary schooldays as I pass the Convent Primary School on my way to work. The beautiful memories came gushing and made me schmaltzy for awhile. Oh how I wish there was a time-travel machine in which with a zap of my finger, I can travel back to my childhood days. The memories were strong till it overwhelmed me the whole day. At the end of the day, I quickly flip through my photo folders after work and I came across one album which was filled with stacks of old photos of me during early age. Some photos are just God-damn random and some are candid’s.
I was thinking a majority of my readers do not really know who I am. So, what I plan to do with these folders, each filled with old school pictures is to take you guys for a walk down my memory lane. Oh jeez! My jaw dropped at the sight how plain and tomboyish I used to be. Can’t believe my eyes that it was me indeed!

So here it goes the nostalgia of my younger days in primary school…

I studied in three different schools during primary education where I almost forgot the name of my schools. It was due to the nature of my dad’s job that I moved from SRK Taman Meru, Ipoh, and then to an army based primary school in Gambang, Kuantan and for good at last I ended up permanently in a school in KL. So as to say, I lost in touch with friends from the other schools and the memories remain vague till today. Many say that Primary School is just a place where you “come and go”. They say it’s a place where you meet friends, go through childish situations, and then forget about the people and what had happened years later. But I still do cherish the little moments of the days where I transformed into a young women I am today. It shaped me with diverse characteristics, talents and it indeed showed me I had a rosy childhood compared to the unfortunate kids around me.

As I sat reflecting on my Primary School days, I would elucidate it as the most enjoyable days in my life. I was in SK Taman Koperasi Polis school where it was full of meaningful experiences and lovely friends. From a simple class monitor to the school prefect and finally a lead percussionist in the school musical team.

It was in this place that I actually grew up. From the very childish girl who would complain about little things to the girl who understood what real problems were and was eager to have them resolved. The independence that I grasped during the early days shape me into plucky, independent and confident women of modern days. My first class trip to Melaka, my passion in music kicked off in the grounds of that school till the dynamic Girl Guide member was just handful of activities I have mentioned here. But my experience is way beyond these.

From the first prize won in a Sport’s Day competition, to our first achievement in the inter-school choir competition and my most privileged musical performance headed by me and my best bud, Joanne at a hotel function in the heart of KL. We both were already trained in piano and organ respectively at that time. I can still remember the music teacher, Mrs Sri whom adores both of us and eventually coached us in music after school hours to polish our skills till we represented the school to district level (also our Girl Guide instructor). We were definitely her pet to the envy of others.

To many, they may have forgotten the friends they have met and the teachers who taught them in Primary School. But I still hold on to those memories created although I lost contact with the most of them whom actually left a lasting impact in my life. Those are the people who brought out the best of me, tap my talent knowing these qualities are needed for me to grow up and be who I really am. They believed in me, knowing who I will become later. Sadly the teachers that I adored and respected couldn’t watch what I have become today. They must be proud of their old student’s achievement.

What a lot of changes there have been over the years. It can be fun sometimes to remember what life was like when you were younger. The experiences will be many and varied as you may never forget for the rest of my life.

Love-Hate with performance appraisals

Once again it’s time for me to finally wrap up my FY by profiling the performance review into Sime Darby’s People Talent Portal. It’s like a football season where everyone walks in and out the meeting rooms with shots of coffee and laptops projecting their performance progress for their management team to evaluate individually how they fared in their task. I must acknowledge that my company has successfully designed a great system to recognize their employee’s talents and performance in their respective division for these two years since it was introduced in late 2010. Before that the performance appraisals went through many facets of changes that kept us wondering what the HR guys were doing! Apparently they failed in their KPIs for not developing a good KPI system for their employee.

The onset of this Talent Portal, most of us was in ambiguity since we didn’t understand a single thing even after their road show to brief us on the use and reason on why the HR implemented this system. Again they failed! Eventually when we began using it bit by bit and understanding the different aspects of this portal as time goes by that we finally appreciated it. However good it can be but the mere thought of going through 4 quarters of performance review with a panel of managers, self rating for your performance review and justifications for your competencies of the entire FY and worse thing is the KPI calibration meeting (which managers try to pull us down/up based on their liking) is painful and insidious. I guess most of the employee faces this same nightmare regularly. But why is this happening?

Traditional performance appraisals don't work for lots of reasons. It is more like a corporate sham whereby the exercise is the most insidious, tedious yet it has been a must-have in every organization performance evaluation system. Everyone does it and I believe almost everyone who has gone through it hates it so much. Many times we being scientists have raised the questions regarding the unfair performance evaluation for R&D to our director during our regular ‘Teh Tarik session’. How can you gauge a research executive if we accomplish our task (research project) in time but didn’t obtain the deliverables that we anticipate? Do you penalize us for the nature of science or acknowledge the effort and contribution? Reviewing performance is good; it should happen every day. But employees need evaluations they can believe, not the fraudulent ones they receive. They need evaluations that are dictated by need, not a date on the calendar. They need evaluations that make them strive to improve, not pretend they are perfect. Sadly, most managers are oblivious to the confusion they cause with performance reviews. To some extent, they don't know any better: This is how performance reviews have been done, and this is how they will be done. Since most bosses are told they can't give everyone top grades.

Ideally, a performance review is a key indicator of each and every employee’s performance objectively. However this is not the scenario in reality. This has become the practice of management domination where they send a message to their employees that the management’s opinion on our performance is the final call for career development, determinant of salary rise, perks etc. This exercise which was supposedly objective but I can tell you there is no such thing. For the past 4 years working in a R&D centre, I have experienced the totally different ratings of our performances simply when my department switched different managers (In the span of 4 years, my department was victimized with the switch of 4 managers). So where is the idea of fair and autonomous assessment? I don’t’ see it coming along over the years. All of us have prophesy that keeps ringing in our head that the bosses evaluation is really about their perception and subjected to nepotism more often than not. It is very unlikely for any employees to go up the career ladder if the managers does not ‘like’ you or even feels uncomfortable with you.

Obviously my company has a well established and efficient performance appraisal system, yet there are loopholes here and there somehow. Unless managers have some kind of strong intuition on how to spot an employee’s talents precisely and reward them accordingly, then it will be good. When HR came up with this idea of talent portal for their employees, transparency is the driving force to ensure a fair appraisal of their employees’ talent to be recognized. It is also meant to be the right platform for the employees to speak their mind to the bosses. However, any system implemented has shortcomings that affect us all in total. Some companies use the performance review session to point out employee’s weaknesses all the time instead of having a constructive session to find a solution to work it out. If a subordinate is not performing well, something is not possibly right. All talk and no action is pointless here.

During my KPI session with my boss, he didn’t not point out the weaknesses but rather told us that we are capable in what we are working on but learning is a process and we can spot on what are we lacking in terms of skills, knowledge etc and find solution to work it out as part of our people development which is more important than fulfilling the KPIs only. Well, it was put in a subtle way but I think it is true if you really give it a second thought. But my friends from other workforces are not so fortunate since their bosses tend to be too opinionated which on the long run it does ruin the confidence of employees on a personal level. Instead of being accountable for success only, the bosses should also be accountable for failures as well.
And the end of the day, performance review is a tool to blame the subordinates for any problems that is happening which I don’t think is fair. Eventually, it makes work lives miserable, the way it leaves employees feeling depressed and anxious. They end up having too little tolerance at home and that’s how family life becomes miserable too.

From my experience, my company has been a leader on leveraging technology to ensure synergy although they are some hitch. They have to make informed decisions and that can be a painstaking task if we can be in their shoes to understand. So both parties, boss-subordinate has to foster the communication and make efforts to reach a win-win situation. Only then the companies can tap talents and out of the box thinkers to reach the goal of the company. A constructive conversation is essential and it's become uncommon in workplaces these days. Only by hearing what the other person thinks, and putting that person's actions in the appropriate context, can you actually see what the person is saying and doing. This will lead to plans where together we can work towards the company’s goal in near future. The ultimatum will be drive towards results but not personality, ways to improve but not disapprove and last but not the least sustainability of the workforce. I believe performance reviews won’t get us anywhere (if the bosses persuade the subordinates to espouse their way of thinking) unless if it leverage on technology to provide more communication and transparency.
Time for new fiscal year performance plan architecture. Helluva work to come and I'm geared up for it!

Distance between two hearts is a test of true love

How a couple can remain close albeit living apart from each other after marriage? Each time I hear this, I wonder why it is a big deal. These are some of the questions raised by our families and friends ever since we got married recently. Is it a concern or a matter of tête-à-tête? I know some of them are genuinely concerned out of love for both of us. However, some questions in life, we don’t have an answer to it and I won’t lie that I prefer to lead the way to my life without knowing what is ahead of us.

People think that we're weird just because the belief that once you're married, you're supposed to live together. It just freaks them out. I am certain that we are not alone. Of recent times, I heard a growing number of young married couples are living apart (even in my office there are couples living apart and to my horror, they already have a baby! Can you imagine how hard this can be?). This is called the LDM (Long distance marriage) which isn’t really new. We are a young, career-driven couple, and if this is what we have to do now as long as we don’t have to do this later when we have a family already, then I’m ok with it. I would blame it on the rise of the cost of living that is the big factor of LDM.

Now, my husband and I have been married for a little more than 3 months, we both sit and reminisce what we had to endure during the dating years. And for that whole time we have essentially been in a long distance relationship. Little did we know five years ago when we got hooked up that we both will be staying apart even after wedding. I, live in uptown of KL and works as a scientist in a multinational corporation. On the other hand, Raj lives in Kulim 30km from Penang Island, where he works as an engineer. More than 400km away separates us but we are close in heart.

Raj, my husband, is a true gem. He works in the automation industry in US based company located in the heart of Kulim Hi-Tech Park. He goes out for business trip most of the time while I live and work in KL city. We are complete opposites: I am chatty, easy-going and I enjoy all things in the world of communications and science, hence why I work in the research industry and passionate leisure writer. Raj on the other hand encompasses all the personality traits of a stereotypical engineer. He is jack-of-all-trades, inquisitive of the gadgets around him, writing programme for his instruments from pretty much scratch. He is submissive at times, and will try to pose a simple solution to any question I direct his way. Although we are opposites, we complement each other with perfect fit.

I think I fell in love with him when I heard him say in the early stages of our relationship, "I want to live my life with you till my last breath”. I know it sounds cliché like some Hollywood romantic flick that I used to watch. It is cheesy pick-up line for guys to woo their girl. But I found his genuine love in his eyes and tone. He is like the romantic hero I use to admire in movies, I tell you. He very well knows how to make me happy and take good care of me. His interest in latest technology somehow entice me since we share the similar enthusiasm most often than not. He can’t spell to save his life, but I’ve seen him going all out to take good care of me. His concerns never fail to care for me. If I have had a bad day and he will be able to sense it.

I believe when we exchange the wedding vows, it simply means to love and cherish, every day of our life. True enough, it doesn’t imply that we both are physically together every day of our life. Family, friends, acquaintances—many have posed the question to me: "How do you do it, Nisha? Oh no I feel sorry for you to live apart" Or their eloquent gesture have thousand connotations. Most of the time, I shrug it off. It’s pretty annoying at times and I am getting jaded of it. Distance doesn't matter if you really love the person, what matters most is your honesty and trust for that relationship to work out.

I have cynically smiled at the funny reactions I get. Just because you do not see someone every day of your life doesn’t make them any less of your life. I truly believe in the test of our true love and it really reinforced our relationship. Despite the distance, we have a sterling tech-savvy relationship. Today’s technology allows us to talk at least more than three times per day, via Facebook, chat space or mobile phones and it just works fine for us more often than not. It keeps us connected together while we are far apart. 

We know this is not a permanent thing. My husband and I cherish the time we do have together and we are still very happy people. When we stay together, we have quality time together, and catch up with the things we left behind. We go to the movies, hop in for a long drive, enjoy late night cocktails and talk about where we would like to go for our next vacation. It's like the best of both worlds, I think. We got to spend our time together and then also apart. You appreciate the other person more when they come back. Of course it doesn't mean that we are choosing to live apart forever. The longest we have gone without seeing each other is 3 weeks. He came back probably five kgs lesser, a little shine to his face. I touched his sleek cheek and teased him that I have lost my cuddly teddy bear much to his tantrum. In fact he is becoming better looking than before!

Sometimes, even the best technology can’t help us by being together. Living apart is not something anyone hopes for. Distance living often means lonely weekends, having to attend celebrations as single, lack of shopping partner and even nothing to look forward after a long day at work. I have to admit though; this is one bandwagon I would have preferred not to have jumped on. But it’s the love for each other. We both know that despite the odds of life, we are going to have a beautiful life.

 

We learned our relationship could weather the distance and we appreciate each other more. But it wasn’t easy and certainly wasn’t something we wanted to do forever. Our family and friends think we’re crazy. I don’t think so. In some ways, I think this separation has brought about a renewed commitment to our marriage and to each other. Now, we work particularly hard at understanding one another. We don’t assume, as we once did, that we know what the other is thinking or even doing. We are looking forward to communicate in order to stay connected. Before life just gets into the way.

Of course it hasn’t been sweet and nice all the time. We’ve had our fair share of little misunderstanding but we somehow work things out mutually.  Being in a LDR takes a lot of maturity, sometimes more than either of us have. We’ve learned to give and take with each other a lot. Honey, I have always loved you before, and will always love you for time to come. We are one perfect couple although we are just not in the perfect situation and that is why they are many envying us when we both hold our hands and walked down the marriage life.