.jpg) |
| We got Myanmar wedding portraits done the first year we were here. Super fun! |
And then because it is only milestones, I will start with - OMG, time really flew by! 3 years, baby! I survived!! 3 years ago, on exactly the same date, I arrived to rainy Yangon, luggages and all, and was picked up by MOH's colleagues. Traffic was ... huh? What traffic? :P I spent 3 weeks cooped up in a hotel (Shwe Gone Daing Hotel to be exact) and lived out of my luggage because we haven't settled our housing arrangements.
Coming straight from Cambodia, it was still a shocker. Especially the housing arrangement. Admittedly, I had been spoilt silly by my Cambodian landlady who cooked for me and even the slightest "Madame! The door knob is a little loose!" she'll send her handyman running up the stairs. Myanmar? The roof could blow away the landlord couldn't care less because you had already paid your year's rental in advanced. Fast-forward 3 years.... it's still the same. Oh, not exactly. Rental rates had quadrupled in the last 3 years. Don't get me started on the housing nightmare that I've had to experience since arriving to Myanmar. I've had my fair share of indoor swimming pools, indoor waterfalls and landlord who kicked us out.... Ahhh, but this year, this year, (Thank You Mr. B!!), the landlord had been kind, the apartment had no issues (except a tiny leak) and he'll renew the lease for us for another year with only a USD100 increase from previous rent. I'm not hopeful that the leak would be fixed, but I'll live. I just don't want to handle another move. Not in the middle of the rain, not in the middle of my nightmare project at work. And another bright side is - I'm all adjusted to this strange "water pump" thingy as well as "inverters" although ours had busted after 2 years. Let me tell you - that water pump thing - when we first arrived, we had moments where we flooded the house simply because we forgot to turn it off! Pretty sure I'm not the only foreigner to do that :P
Speaking of work........ Haha. When we moved to Myanmar, MOH expected me to stay home and be a housewife. It lasted all of 7 days before I wanted to murder him. First of all, I don't think I was born with the "tai-tai" spoon. Second of all, sure, I can do the housework but with no electricity and no water,....... you've gotta be kidding me :P So, right after the strangulation episode, he agreed I needed to get out and get a job, any job and then DBW sent a Lexus to pick me up for an interview and I was supposedly interviewing for the job as a cashier. She had seen my CV and naturally, she thought I was joking. I told her I was about to strangle my husband and I just wanted to get out of the house. I also told her I couldn't do full-time, to be fair because I have my own businesses which I still oversee. A week later, she offered me a consultant's job with a 3 hours x 3 days per week schedule. 3 years and millions of work bloopers later, I'm still here, still "officially" on 3 hours x 3 days per week... but you see, DBW, she had increased my salary since the first month at work. For the first time in my life, my salary scale had been increased at a tremendously fast rate in a short period of 3 years. Needless to say, the dream arrangement of 3 hrs remains just that - "official". LOL! Today, as a result of 'put your hands up! put your hands up!' I head up the digital team and I drive all digital efforts within the organization, aside from the CSR, IMC, HR stuff and a whole lot more. I supposed, I'm still very passionate about my work and most of all I am passionate about learning. I don't know retail except from maybe doing weekly groceries. But here I am. And oh - I also bring a helmet to work - for all the #bangheadonwall moments :P Sometimes, I also wonder if DBW increased my salary like... like a lot, because she knows that I am using it to help her people - the people of Myanmar.
3 years have also seen my voluntary weekends turn into an everyday job - #myOtherLife :P As most would know, MOH and I started a Youth Centre and a self-sustainability project for the Children of Tomorrow and the climb is still very much uphill. But like my passion with my job, I'm even more passionate with guiding and mentoring all these kids who had really difficult backgrounds and hence, difficult emotional and mental states. Again, steep learning curve. I'm not a trained teacher nor counsellor nor anything. Just using my heart to help them the best way I know how. And with the support of so many great and kind friends both locally and abroad.... I sincerely hope these kids have a chance at a better tomorrow. I'll be honest, some days, after lots of head-banging at work, I feel really tired and I would ask myself - OMG, what did I get myself into? What happened to just volunteering my weekends?? These are days where I feel, shiiiiiitee!! The climb is so steep, I'm gonna tumble and fall with all of them in tow! But most days, no matter how tired I am, when I see their smiles, I see their excitement over a small, tiny win....it becomes all worth it. So, the Youth Centre's lease will be renewed for another year as well. This year, I didn't go cycling 192km to raise the funds. This year, we offered the Centre out for rent for a 6 weeks workshop carried out by an NGO. So, yay! Rental settled! :)
You know, sometimes, I really do miss the Myanmar of 2012 when I first arrived (except the 7-hour power outages, no internet and USD350 SIM card that can't call properly problems :P)... I mean, back then, aside from the awesome no-traffic condition, there was like kindness in the air itself. There was no feeling whatsoever of people being out to get you because you're a foreigner. The rate for flagging down taxis started at 1,500 Ks. No need for negotiation. (Sometimes, I miss those Flintstone taxis too!! LOL!). Donation boxes filled with monies to the brim were placed right out there on the streets and no one would be guarding it and it'll still be there the next day! Everywhere, you'd hear of stories of thousands of dollars in cash returned to owners, laptops lost will be returned, hell, once MOH left his camera in the taxi and the taxi driver drove all the way back to his office to return it without expecting anything. We had a whole block of friendly local neighbours who invited us to their homes for food (and I so love the food!), who came up to check on us to make sure we're ok and we're settling in well into their country. The immigration staff were friendly, the people at the ticketing counter of Shwedagon Pagoda were friendly.
I'm actually really, really sad that I see this diminishing daily. Of course, I still have really nice local neighbours - there's an aunty who cooks for me too! But I don't expect the whole block of local neighbours to look in on us anytime cos these days, there are also whole blocks of foreigners. How many can they check up on? LOL! My saddest is to see the state of Shwedagon Pagoda now. I last went there in November of 2014. Nevermind that the staff was rude, but I felt so taken for a ride with the longyi crap that they made my godson rent when he wasn't even wearing shorts! That place used to give me so much peace, but today, it is dotted with ATMs and LEDs, it's a damn shame. Good thing is, we can see the Shwedagon from a far so when I go on my runs, I make it a point to say hi to Mr. B. But I wouldn't pay USD8 to go in there again. Sadder still is reading the expat forums and being warned about women taking taxis especially at nights. What happened to the safest city in the world? These days, you'd read of robberies, mugging and even petty thefts - like how we ourselves got a few pair of shoes stolen even though it is behind locked grills. (Eventually, I got fed-up and left a note outside in Burmese saying - "don't steal. If you need something, knock on my door to ask. I'm willing to help." The stealing stopped.) When we go out nowadays, we can see how everyone's faces are literally stuck on their phones - thanks to cheap SIMs and cheap China phones.
I suppose, that's the price people pay for building the road towards development. Still, I try to see the beautiful side of Myanmar. I'll never forget this scene I once witnessed - a young YCDC garbage collector ran across this big main road full of zooming cars to push a few hundred kyats into the hands of an old beggar woman. That moment, my heart was like... ohhh. So I very much still believe there are good and kind people everywhere. And they come in many different forms. We may not be rich, but we can still share what we have with people who are not as privileged as we are. The old lady whom I buy flowers from,... well, she's no longer at her usual spot and nobody knows where she went. I pray everyday that she is in a better place, is all.
I've just finished my 3rd winter, and an excruciatingly hot 3rd summer and seasonal changes are like that where your body gets adjusted to the season and then it changes and in Myanmar, it changes abruptly! So, counting my 4th rainy season - it means, I'm well-trained to battle the mold problems - I remember vividly the first year we arrived and the mold was like some sort of alien mold which just wouldn't die or go away....!! Aiyaaa!! I'm looking forward to my 4th winter.... but for now, I cannot wait for 6 months of dreary rain to go away.....
Myanmar's charms may be diminishing, and since I intend to call it my home (for how long? I don't know. We don't know. But we are after all, citizens of the world...).... I'll continue venturing out with my eyes wide opened in case I miss these little acts of kindness that always give me hope for this country and her people.
p/s : font-size changed for the ease of my Mama's and Papa's reading :)
 |
| Eating in the Shwe Gone Daing hotel room when we first arrived. I stayed 2 weeks.. But MOH had to be all hotel-cooped-up for 2 months. LOL! |
 |
| Cleaning out our 1st apartment, no water, no electricity, NOT HAPPY!! |
 |
| Back then, no car, no driver, life was a lot simpler :) Here taken after grocery shopping, jungle-trekking back home :) |
 |
| Cooking of the hta ma net! YUMMY! |
 |
| One of the many local community gatherings we attended... This here was the cooking of the hta ma net - a sticky rice thing that required a few strong men to cook |
.jpg) |
| Perhaps the funniest moment ever of my time in Myanmar - taking the Myanmar driving test! With bad translation and a simulator and adjustable parking space. LMAO!! |
No comments:
Post a Comment