As per my annual tradition, I write a piece to commemorate our wedding anniversary so here goes :)
The last one year had seen lots of things changing and happening for the both of us here in Myanmar. I suppose, the most significant being MOH's career promotion - he decided that the grass might be greener on the other side and thus jumped over to the dark side - the client's side.
With the new role for him, there happened (and is still happening) a change in tide for the both of us. In the corporate world of Myanmar, I had chosen to take a back seat, focused instead on enjoying my consultant role at City Mart and making a difference to the lives of the underprivileged children that I work with here. Whilst for MOH - as the Head of Marketing for HTC Myanmar, he is becoming quite a mini-celebrity, appearing in various print and electronic media every other day. Strangers come up to him and say "Hey, I've seen you in the papers!" where as I am "Eileen who??? Oh Richard's wife." :P I had pledged full support when he wanted to do this and I am happy to say that he does have every bit of my 100% support. I do know for a fact that this job is very challenging and stressful for him and I also know in my heart that he does not enjoy the role. For some of us agency suckers - having the opportunity to work across a few different brands and products breaks the mundane of just working on one brand.
Anyway..... his new role and new levels of stress had led me to new discoveries about MOH. Friends and loved ones, may I please present to you - Gordon Ram-See. Huh - and you guys thought I was anal... :P Uh-huh. I had personally seen him working and boy - talk about anal, bitchy, sarcastic. And still - he manages to pull it all off with a poker-face. He isn't mean or nasty, just..... a very practical but sarcastic roaring Tiger (that's the nickname his local staff had given him! Behind his back! LOL!) Even though we both treat our domestic helps very well, Li Su our house-help and Ti Lone, our driver are more afraid of him than they are of me. With me, they can climb all over my head. It also seems as though I have suddenly ceased to be the bad cop. He is now the bad cop and I love using his name in vain :P
It brings me back to a recent strongly-worded email which he sent to our evil landlord. I've been emailing the landlord, asking him to fix the leaks and indoor flooding numerous times and the last response from the landlord was "Get out of my house now!" I was going to offer the other cheek and call truce but out of nowhere, MOH sent an email which basically slapped the landlord so hard, he probably didn't know what hit him. Surprise! Surprise! Never mess with the roaring Tiger these days.
One might think that this change of tide, or how some of my friends call it - this "power shift" would be unnerving, however, it wasn't in the wee bit such. In fact, looking back, it had been a very natural transition, if I may say so myself. Actually, I don't think it is a "transition". It is just as with any relationships, we are growing to understand each other better and better. If he's late home, I have my dinner first and keep dinner warm for him. (I don't know what's the fuss about insisting to wait up to eat together? If one is hungry, one eats first! Right?) Sometimes, he walks in, pretending to be all bossy-like and demands "Where's my food?" Most times, I would ignore him - it all depends on how his face really looks when he gets home. Haha. If he spoke to me haughtily over the phone - "Where's the car??! I need the car NOW!" - I don't scream back and tell him to speak to me properly. Instead, I quickly get into the car and make a face at Ti Lone and he'll know what to do. In instances like these, I end up having to tag along to whatever meetings he has to go to and experience what it is like to be a driver-in-waiting :P Thank God for mobile data in Myanmar now, I can work out of the car :P
Literally - my 100% support means I do not stand in the way of his work. I do the laundry (and since we no longer have a cupboard - it's awesome because the clothes go straight from the clotheslines to the sofa :P), the cleaning up of indoor waterfalls and indoor pools and the freaking alien-mould, I cook..... and then I have my own work to do - which no longer feels like a part-time job, by the way. Did I mention that I no longer cook for an entire week :P After being chastised over and over again for that by my "very supportive family and dear friends", I am now cooking twice a week :P Hello! I too have work :P And for that - I am patting myself on the back three times :P
All aside, I think the mutual understanding and support we have for each other had helped grow our relationship positively. And here's what keeps both of us, ok, ok.... me... going despite the utterly busy schedules we have, with visitors, be it friends or big bosses from HTC coming over and hardly having any 'us' time, is I know for a fact that MOH gets into bed every night, kisses me and whispers "I love you" into my ear, even though I may be fast asleep (or snoring like a pig as he would describe it). And there's the laughter - everyday. Even on the worse of days, we would make each other laugh, be it clowning around or just poking fun at each other or playing tricks on each other, we live for the laughs with each other. It is for these small little gestures that I know everything is intact, nobody is growing apart and our love is growing stronger.
And I know I have his full 100% support too in whatever I do. I am hell-bent on saving the world and he's my anchor because this Tiger prefers to think things through rationally. Case-in-point - I would of course love for every kid to be in the football team (emotional-thinking) but he says "not try hard in class, no football!"(hard-ass rational-thinking :P) When he can make the time, he's there with me on the weekends with the kids. Sometimes, out of the blue, from nowhere, he'd come up with a brilliant suggestion for me on what I can do with the kids, for the kids. I know too that he's 100% behind me when I start my Soup Kitchen soon :) ......
I feel that part of this anniversary piece would require an admittance to a certain incident which took place not too long ago.
Whilst we both love Myanmar, living and working here has its moments. I count my blessings and I've learnt to give the other cheek and overall, try to be zen about these so-called Myanmar moments. But you know what, I say this over and over again - if I can do it 100%, I'd be Mr. B himself :P So it was at this time period, with the new projects coming in from work and working till late even on off-days, the nightmare of indoor waterfalls, the stress of fighting with the landlord over the stupid apartment situation, the frustration of battling alien-mutated mould, no internet but feeble optics instead, horrendous traffic, what-have-you........ I had a meltdown.
It was a Saturday morning breakfast and MOH and I decided to try a new local shop which looked rather promising. I ordered the half-boiled eggs and toast. Now, you see, I only eat my half-boiled eggs with soya sauce and pepper. The pepper, no problem. But for the life of me, I cannot remember what the hell was soya sauce in Burmese and the waiter no speaketh the England!! I even went to the kitchen in search of soya sauce and they kept saying no, no, no. By the time I gave up, my eggs had turned cold and my toast had gone limp. I fiddled with my eggs and then I burst into tears! The poor waiter, oh God.... he was shocked (I did apologize to him guiltily on the way out). He must think me a real idiot for crying over stupid half-boiled eggs with no soya sauce. MOH..... MOH...... he let me cry for a bit and then asked me "Why? Somebody bully you izzit?" And just like that - he made me laugh. The very next day, he took me for breakfast again at Yakun - new franchise in Yangon. Now, being a Singaporean chain, you know they serve half-boiled eggs with thick black sauce. Not soya sauce. Guess what MOH did? He told me to wait and he walked across the street to a mom & pop shop to buy me a bottle of soya sauce - just in case I had another meltdown over eggs. I call that both being funny and being sweet at the same time. My heart melted - not over diamonds, not over any bling-blings. Over soya sauce. Go figure :P
A friend pointed out that these situations could either bring two people closer together or push them apart. Well, Thank You Myanmar for bringing us closer together - from the furniture-hunting on a shoe-string budget to the apartment-hunting (also on a shoe-string budget :P) to the mould wars, to the power cuts in the middle of the night in summer, to all your moments. Cheers! We still love you :)
And to my dearest MOH......... here's to a great 4th year as husband and wife. I now truly understand that love stories are really not made up of Leonardo DiCaprios and Titanic moments. They are made up of these :
1) Moments when you open your eyes, the first thing you see in the morning is a drooling, snoring partner next to you and you think - "oh God - I have to capture him on video!"
2) Moments when you come home to find indoor flooding, boxer shorts flung on the dining table and you say "I will make him eat his shorts!" but instead, when you see said partner, you pinch his fats and call him Fatty Jelly
3) Moments when you are feeling stressed and down over apartment situation and your partner takes you round the neighbourhood, knocking on doors to make enquiries despite it being 10 o'clock at night
4) Moments when your partner hogs the entire bed by sleeping diagonally and you squeeze yourself into a cocoon next to her and still caress her forehead and whisper "I love you" into her ear
5) Moments when in the middle of the night, your partner pinches you and accuses you of stealing her pillow and you jump out of bed to pick it off the floor and put said pillow into her arms
6) Moments when you know your partner is having a very bad day at work and you send him a text just to say "who loves ya, baby??? and can you pick up a can of WD40 on your way home?"
7) Moments when your partner takes the children's failure to heart and you have the balls to tell her "If you are able to save 1 out of 100 kids, you have done great" even though you know she won't believe it
8) Moments when your partner falls ill because she had been idiotic enough to run happy in the rain and you bite your tongue from saying "I told you so" but instead force medicine down her throat
9) Moments when you asked if weed would help alleviate your partner's pain - despite how ridiculous it sounds
10) Moments where you sit up all night fanning your partner with a blanket due to power cuts in summer
11) Moments where your partner is trying to deal with the death of a loved one and you tell her if it makes her feel any better, she can pinch / smack / bounce on your Jelly Belly.....
12) Moments where you and your partner fall ill from the stress at work and an awfully stressful apartment fiasco and you take one look at each other and then laugh because you understand the situation you are both in.....
I have a hundred more moments such as these and I look forward to the millions and zillions of them with you :)
_____________________________
"When you're close to tears, remember,
Someday, it will all be over,
One day we're gonna get so high....
Though it's darker than December,
What's ahead is a different colour,
One day we're gonna get so high.....
Cos we are gonna be, forever you and me...
We will always keep it flying high
In the sky of love......"
No comments:
Post a Comment