Scent of Days Gone By

It's nearly 6 a.m. and I am awake, yes, awake on a saturday morning at 6 a.m. No, that's not entirely true. I was awake since 3.30a.m. after falling asleep on the couch last night. Since I have been sleeping for the past few hours, I am as awake as an owl. A few hours passed and my kids have been hassling me to let them out to relieve themselves.

The moment I opened the door from the garage to the yard, I was hit with the familiarity of my childhood days... the scent of morning dew and breeze. Momentarily, I was transported back 15 years (or so...). That scent reminded me of the early mornings (not so) long ago when we all had to get up at 6 a.m. to prepare for school. The early morning birds chirping and the smell, oh the smell! I love it sooo much.

It's like the dawn of a brand new day, that smell. So fresh, so enlightening, so nostalgic. It's funny how I am thousands of miles away from the place where I experienced this nearly every single morning for so many years, but the air still holds the same old fresh (how's that for an oxymoron? :P) scent! Makes you believe that it doesn't matter where you are, you will still be close to home... through these little but significant elements around you.

Not only does that scent remind me of waking up to go to school or walking through the school porch at 7 a.m. (God how I hated to go to school sooo early, but now, I think I miss it), it reminds me of all the other stuff that we do early in the morning, like first day of chinese new year, camping trips & school road trips with friends, sitting along the corridor of the classrooms before the morning bell rang, eating fried noodles or nasi lemak...

So many wondrous memories, how I wish I could rewind time and go back there again, and experience the innocence and the joys of being young and carefree. Yes, that is what the smell reminded me of... suddenly, I feel so old........ thanks to friends who are still close at heart, I am always reminded of those amazing years spent with them from childhood to adolescent years, and now, as young adults. I can't thank them enough :)

Fire Fire Burning Bright, In the Forest of the Night

As most of you would know, if you watch the news or listen to the radio, Victoria is facing their worst bushfire season this year. Weather has been quite radical and the fluctuation is so unreal. Currently, the bushfire around country Victoria has taken 130 lives. It is a very sad and harrowing time for people around Victoria, as almost everyone is touched by this disaster that has been described as bad or even worse than the Tsunami tragedy years ago.

I was out for a bit on the day when it was 46C and windy. It was like being in an oven. Literally being in the oven. Even when I was in the shades, the wind contained such high heat that I felt like I was burnt, even when I was in the shades! It was that bad, living in Malaysia for so many years, I have NEVER experience such heat naturally generated. And the day after that, the mercury dropped to 16C and raining. But the wind persisted. It is very scary indeed. How indecisive the weather can be, and the destruction it carries along.

Makes me wonder, will it come towards our direction? Should we be wary, and our kids at home when we are at work, are they gonna be save? We are thinking to put up a sign in front of our house that indicates that we have dogs in the house, so that if anything happens, at least their presence is known...... it makes me worry, seriously. You don't feel it until it's actually on your doorstep. Let's hope and pray the fire will go away.....

Exams....again!

I can't believe that I have to go through exams again!! Can't even remember when was the last time I went through an exam! This time round, it will be my professional exams. For those who don't know, in Australia, even by going through 5 long years of architectural tertiary education, you are STILL not allowed to call yourself an architect. You are only a GRADUATE architect. After you have accumulated enough hours doing all the different components of architectural work, then you are ready to do the exams so that you can call yourself an ARCHITECT, and carry more liability with you. =S

As for the exams, there are 2 parts. First, you need to do this multiple choice exams. Yah, ABCD. Sounds easy, eh? Especially when its only 8-9 questions to answer.... in 1 hour. What's that compared to SPM or the likes, eh? But hold your thought.. WRONG! It's actually harder than SPM, trust me. They are the most deceiving questions you can imagine, worded very similar from one to the other, and each question can have more than 1 answer! For every answer u get right, u get 2 points, and for every answer u chose that is wrong, 1 point gets deducted from you. There you go. On average, only about 50% of candidates pass that exam. :|

If you pass that first exam, you will have another exam to do... this time, it's oral. Yep, you read right. ORAL... INTERVIEW! This one, is even worse than the first, coz if you get a shitty architect doing it, he/she will give u a real hard time. *gulp*. The process takes around 45-60 minutes.. yes, WHOLE hour! And if you fail this one, u have to wait for 12 mths before you can retake it. And everytime you retake the exams.... there's a fee... A$300 for each exam... *sigh*

So, wish me luck again!!!

2009: The Highlight & The Lowlight

2008 has been quite uneventful, with nothing too huge happening. In a way, it's good as it means we had a bit to rest and relax. Although the economy went downhill in late 2008 which was a cause of some of our distress, as both of us are in the construction industry. Our industry is always the first to be hit when it comes to economic crisis. Seems that all construction comes to a standstill when that happens, probably because they all depend on the financial institutions for financial support! So, in just 2 weeks, almost 300 architects were retrenched... just in Melbourne! So you can imagine about the whole of Australia.

Fortunately, both of us are working in a small firm, which means we are more stable, since we don't deal with big massive projects but smaller residential developments and for myself, mostly private residences. Although we did see a drop in workflow, but heck, at least we are still going. We are very thankful for that. Hopefully, we will be able to keep our jobs throughout 2009.

Towards the end of the year, happy news came along, Manlok and I decided to take a step further in our relationship and tie the knot. =) So we started planning for the wedding, although it was another year ahead. But, planning ahead is not a crime, no? Just makes it easier for us when we are approaching closer to the actual date.

So, what does 2009 has in store for me? Heaps... the wedding and my professional exams *gulp*.

Highlight: The Wedding, Lowlight: The Wedding. It is definitely a great thing to look forward to, the wedding in December. We are very excited and I am lucky enough that Debbie is also having her wedding, so we have developed a 'hotline' of wedding discussions between us! NOTE: For those who read this blog and has a wedding to plan, feel free to join us! =)

Although we are excited over the wedding, but we do know that it won't be easy. As we are financing our own wedding, 'from head to toe', we have to work really hard for it. Having not much savings (if there are any at all! haha) we have to start from scratch. Luckily, we manage to get some private jobs to work on after hours... but that means we are working approx. 10-12 hours a day, as we get home from our day job and we will be working on our night job. Weekends are not free and easy anymore. We work through most weekends.

Still, money comes, money goes... Life is not easy trying to save up for a wedding! We are actually having a smallish wedding, but as we wanted it to be by the beach, it cost a little bit more than a wedding of the same capacity in a hotel. But Manlok said, it's a once in a lifetime event (we hope!) we should have it the way we both want it. Bit by bit we are trying to save and at the same time reduce the debt we have... *sigh*, in between the reception and wedding preparations to the dowry my mom is demanding (yes...)

We have been trying to cut cost by having a lot of DIY, from making our own leather headpiece, our own invites to retouching our pre-wedding photoshoot myself. I am going to only have 1 dress rather than a few, which will also reduce the cost of the wedding and we manage to find quite a good designer to do it for me at a very low price, really... below RM1k! =D As well, doing our pre-wedding shoots here saved us a fair bit too. As we have gone for a casual style, we used our own clothes and we paid A$90 for the shooting and A$400 for a small amount of images (retouched and originals). Well, that cost us less than A$500. =)

Well, plenty more to do...so wish me luck! Here's a preview of our pre-wedding shoot!