New Feeling

The month of March has been a month of "Hijra" for me. I moved to a new apartment in Dubai and also moved to my own apartment in Setapak, Kuala Lumpur. I took a 1 week holiday to sort out final renovation works for my new apartment. Although things did not really go as smooth as I planned (contractors delayed works, variation orders, broken lamps..etc) but eventually we managed to move in to No. 5-10, Apartment Madu Mas @ Setapak after waiting for 2 and a half years. This time I decided to hire a professional mover company so that I don't have to lift a thing. Their service worth every single cents of their fee (RM1350). They wrapped and boxed up everything in my house including the thrash in the dust bin.

Wrapped up

Later my wife and I learned that we have been keeping a lot of unnecessary things in our house simply because we thought we would use and appreciate it again in a future. But the truth is - and this is an important lesson I learned from this moving exercise - the moment we put or store a thing away, it means we no longer need it and its use has expired in our life forever. Unless we intend to build our own museum, there is no reason we should keep it and let it rot in our store room.

My Interior designer

For example I have been keeping all my university notes and files as I thought I would refer to it from time to time. But ever since I left classrooms I have never opened the old files because there is nothing in it which I cannot get from textbook in libraries everywhere. In fact I also realised that my class notes were not really reliable as most of the time it was written in a sleepy mode (wahaha).

Second example, my old clothes. I always thought that I can keep my old clothes for my son(s) later on or whoever wants it. But in reality keeping clothes in damped boxes are just creating a heaven for cockroaches and mice. It will take more than 20 years for my son to be in the same size as my clothes and by that time, the fabrics would have damaged. And unless I give it away immediately, nobody want to wear clothes kept in boxes for 2-3 years.

So after we moved in, I cleared out all the boxes and keep only things which we still use from time to time. It turned out that I have thrown away almost 1/3 of my stuffs.

I am enjoying a new feeling now. A feeling of a house owner. Although I live in Dubai, but my mind always wonders about my own house in KL. I am really grateful to my wife who took care most of the design and renovation works. I am really satisfied with her design and choice of colours. It really is a place which I can call home.

We managed to throw a mini house warming party (makan2 with doa) with my parents, siblings and a few friends. Next time we plan to hold a bigger makan2 by the swimming pool in our building.

In a TV room

Living Hall

Mini Makan2

Until the next makan2...

Things do not change, we change.

Henry David Thoreau
(1817 - 1862)

New Routine

It has been more than a week now since I moved in to my new apartment in Al Khan, Sharjah. My apartment is at the 45th floor. I enjoy the view of the Arabian/Persian Gulf and the Al Khan Corniche very much. In fact last Friday I spent the entire day at home which was a rarity in my life.

I was very anxious in the beginning about the traffic condition during the rush hours to work. But I discovered later that the traffic was not really bad. I have experienced worse than it. The only thing changed is that I no longer have a privilege of waking up at 8pm and drive to the office in 15 minutes. Now I can call myself a morning person. I wake up either at 5.00 or 6.00 am and drive out either at 7.00 or 7.30 am. So far I have never left my house later than 8.00 am. It is a good lifestyle to be a morning person. My parents always taught me about the benefits of being the early bird. One of the things that I look forward in my morning routine is to enjoy a cup of coffee/tea and sandwich at a petrol station in Al Awir Road (Refer to map: between E44 to E66) whilst enjoying the morning breeze of the desert and view of skycrapers in Shaikh Zayed Road. I love doing the breakfast on top of the hood of my Dodge. The breakfast in Al Awir Road is sort of a victory breakfast for beating through the morning traffic of the day. It motivates me to wake up and hit the road early in order to do just that.

My daily route.

But it is not always sunshine out there. Yesterday was the worse traffic I have ever had in this country. The UAE received a short but heavy downpour on Saturday's night and as a result a lot of roads in Dubai and Sharjah were inundated with water. One of the main causes for this is because there is no drainage system in UAE roads. Since UAE only received less than 6 cm of rain on average every year, the government has decided that spending millions for a drainage system is not worth it. Instead let give the motorists some worst traffic days every year for a change. So I spent 2 hours for my morning journey and another 4 hours on the way back. But after spending more than a year experiencing the Cheras - KL highway in the past, my mind and body quickly changed to 'zen' mode when I got stuck behind the wheel yesterday. Although I was exhausted but it did not alter my mood whatsoever. It was just a bad traffic day in a year...

The only thing that I regretted last night was I could not skype with my wife on the eve of her birthday 1 March 2010. God knows how much I miss her and Adrin especially on a special occasion such as her birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY Honey !! I look forward to see her in the middle of this month in Kuala Lumpur.


Before I call it a day, an incident happened when I arrived at my door step. When I wanted to open my door I realised that I left the only key to my apartment in my office ! Damn...what should I do !!? I just arrived home after 4 hours of driving and there was no way I want to drive back to the office just to get the key. So I called up the security guys to find out whether they keep a spare key. But they did not keep one. Luckily a security guy passed me a handphone number of a lock master who lives nearby my area. So I called up the lock master and he came with his tool bag and changed my door lock in less than 10 minutes. I was very grateful that he turned up as it was already 12.00 midnight.

The price of lock master service = AED175
The price of not checking my pocket before leaving my desk = stupid stupid stupid..

“The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.”

G.K Chesterton
(1874-1936)
English writer