It's been a year marked by great happiness and at the same time, great loss. Like how blissful one gets life needs to counter it with an equal measure of grief. Yin and Yang. But maybe it's human nature to feel loss more acutely, or maybe it's due to the recency effect. For the most part of the last four months, I have been grieving over the loss of my dearest grandma. She turned ninety mid-year and was like a second mother to me and especially my brother. I do not know how to write about her that does our relationship even the slightest justice but I want to try. She had always been described as a woman of strength. How she raised ten kids of her own. How she raised the kids of her kids on her own. How she's always carrying bags of groceries back home whipping up feasts after feasts for those she loves. How even when her memories got foggy she never once forgets our names. You cannot imagine how thankful I am for that. Even up till her last days, she rather hold it out in the hospital for two more weeks after a bad stroke just so she could make it back home, back to her Jurong house, the house that built me and so many of her 子子孙孙. I just wanna say to her, you gave me more than I can ever thank you for and I want you to know that you have lived a good life and will be greatly, sorely missed. Thanks for letting me be with you until the end. I love you，我们的五代大母.
I guess one never stops, can never stop writing about grief. Because it stems from a place of love. And I got married to the man I love in January 2023. Ours is a love in the time of coronavirus. I mean, we met each other back in 2017/2018 but we practically did not speak to each other until 2020 when he broke the ice (and any silent treatment). I never thought I will be that comfortable around someone I actually like, but with Z love is not hard. I could be myself and he accepts me just the way I am. It's like the ugly tears smeared against my pillow in the many deep nights of my twenties all culminate to this one fortunate encounter. We planned the whole wedding thing in under four months sometimes I still dk how we managed to pull it off. Surely a bridal studio with more comprehensive services would help and we trawled the internet looking up bridal studios like it's the biggest project of our lifetime. And it was.
For Z, price point was almost definitely everything hahaha. But for me, I need to like their gowns, I need to like the looks of most MUA under their stable, I need to like the photographic results of their PWS and AD portfolio shots and Odelia Bridal hit all the sweet spots. This is when people use the #noregrets hashtag I suppose. Theirs is a small but mighty team and they never disappoint at any stage. Needless to say, we hit their studio every other weekend in end 2022. It's been a little more than a year but the studio was such a big part of our wedding planning it felt like Z and I did not actually do much planning ourselves ??? So kudos to the Odelia team (: Maybe one day I will write a more detailed post with photos and all. But of course, there were other wedding things like venue sourcing (we were deciding between Alkaff Mansion and MBS), wedding cards invites and the traditional chinese GDL and tea ceremony etc. to be done with (and of which AMD Wedding in Chinatown was a big help). The store owner even gave us a one hour briefing on the do's and don'ts of the traditional ceremony surely this requires passion for one to go beyond just selling products. I probably will just get down to writing more about wedding things in another post someday.
In other news, Z and I chose Japan for our two weeks honeymoon during their cherry blossom season last year. The places we went were all 打卡 landmarks but I have never been to the famous torii gates!! Never been to the famous bamboo forest!! Nor have I feed the deers famous for their politeness either!! So there, you basically have an idea of the places we went lol. Not to forget Naoshima Island -- a place I have wanted to visit for the longest of time for you guess it, Yayoi Kusama's famous yellow pumpkin. But really, Tadao Ando's architectures are just as much a highlight as the pumpkin the island is known for. I even got a really high fever on my first day on the island but thank god it subsided on its own after a good night's sleep. ANDDD ALSOOO WE WENT TO UNIVERSAL STUDIOS JAPAN! Sipping butterbeer at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in USJ was a bucketlist item. Their Doraemon ride was surprisingly thrillingly good too. I love that two weeks in Japan hahaha eating Doutor for almost every breakfast just because I can. Maybe I can do a photolog post someday as well.
I sure have so many things I can blog about but I rarely ever write in this space anymore. And now Im writing such a long ass post for the year that has passed. But 2023 has been special in its own way and it warrants some sort of recording. I was ART+ twice (in Feb and then in Dec), moved away from OCS office up to 5th Flr somewhere in Jun, attended my sister's wedding in Desaru in Jul and work wise, I sort of quiet quit in the second half of the year (quiet quit is a new term!!) before I really call it quits by the time December rolled around. Six years with the company and I really should have alot of things to say. But I struggled to find meaning in my work towards the end (maybe my grandma's passing played a part) and if I was smart and had really plan for my career, I would have and should have left somewhere in mid-year. Then perhaps I could have kept the work momentum going on but now I have other priorities that I would like to tend to. Probably no income streaming in for the most part of 2024 but I hope I discover and do things that can spark new joys. To a good long dragon year ahead xx