Sep 20 - No News is Good News

Last time I wrote was exactly 1.5 years ago. Obviously consistency isn't my strong suit.

The previous year was unbelievably amazing, almost too good to be true if I may say so myself, especially in forming the unison between my personal and professional lives.

- May 1, 2021, I arrived in the Netherlands as a resident, not a tourist.

- June 20, 2021, was my first working day at Ultimaker, a global 3D printer manufacturer.

- July 1, 2021, Luis and I moved to the prettiest bungalow (1-floor house / no-neighbor apartment).

- July 20, 2021, colleagues at Korn Ferry EMEA reached out to ask me to rejoin the team, based in NL.

- August 24, 2021, was our 8th year anniversary. To think that this blog has existed since August 2013!!

- September 2021, we did a big BeNeLux + Germany road trip visiting places and friends and families.

- November 1, 2021, I rejoined Korn Ferry, where I've been for almost a year now.

This year we're getting even more organized in terms of stuff to do around the house, plannings and types of houses we should go after. On the latter, we have placed offers on 4 different houses, all of our 'overbiddings' were too low, but that's a story for another day. 

Luis hangs out with my parents on video call every 2 days if not daily. I have over 140 dinner ideas, mostly yummy things we could make from scratch. We reserve Saturday early mornings to run errands and Sunday evenings to cuddle on the sofa watching each other's favorite movies.

Life is tough and everyone fights their own battles, but when God blesses, He goes ham.

Mar 21 - The Illusion of Being Apart

I woke up yesterday to his text requesting a full, detailed recipe of how I made the Hainanese chicken rice his family really loved. Before I went to sleep yesterday, he video-called me to ask which buttons to press on the washing machine and tumble dryer.

This guy surprises me in ways I had never seen anybody do before. He cracks me up with jokes so original people wouldn't realize they were meant as such. Or maybe it's because we think the same, and the times we don't, we still get each other.

He reminds me, without so many words, that distanced or skin-to-skin, phone calls or whispers, sharing a kitchen or doing laundry alone, a lot of me is him and a lot of him is me. Except he wouldn't in a million years keep a digital diary this obnoxious. :)

Mar 21 - Secret to LDR

Shared interests. And a shit ton of patience and commitment. And honesty. And luck. And a pocket full of money for those damn airline tickets and lavish holidays.

But shared interests.

The entire time I was in the Netherlands, Luis was on a Shopee Candy fever. I'm now addicted to OSM. He titled the screenshot: "Ichi the Housewife won the triple!"

Yeah, shared interests.

Mar 02 - The Married Life

 A friend and ex-colleague, Arky, asked me yesterday over chat, "How's the marriage life going?"

What a great question. With Luis being in the Netherlands and myself being in Indonesia, essentially performing a rather frowned upon Long Distance Marriage, the simple question forced myself to rake the most honest answer I could muster for the time being. My initial response was to write, "What marriage life? We aren't even together." 

But the sassiness didn't sit right as I discovered it to be an inaccurate depiction of the way I feel. Granted it's not ideal to be geographically separated from your significant other, it isn't cultivating distinctively more stress and/or odd feelings than the Long Distance Relationship we had mastered and been so familiar with 7.5 years prior to tying the knot.

That's when I realized marriage is technically a form of relationship. So nothing new, really, just him and me relying on videocalls and instant messages to keep each other updated with our tremendously different lifestyles. We're back to what we know very well, just now with extra bands on our ring fingers.

"It's amazing," so I replied.

Feb 20 - Long Story Short

I flew to the Netherlands to get married with basically zero preparation, so God had to do all the work. :) And what He did was nothing I could have ever come up with.

In total, I stayed for 2.5 months there and it was probably the best 2.5 months in my life. I witnessed first-hand how when you surrender, what needs to happen will happen.