FaizalAzwin: 1st Year Anniversary {1.10.11}

almost 2 months after our anniversary i just had to post some pics of what we did for our first year anniversary. 


our anniversary fell on a saturday and actually 1st October is a state holiday (Official birthday of Yang di-Pertua Sabah) so no worries about taking a day off in the future hehee.


well the night before (friday) , i had my accounts and finance class T_T, spoiler habis kan baru berangan nak pegi check-in hotel ke apa. after class (around 10.30pm) i was so tired and really sleepy, siap tidur dalam kreta lagi on the way back. sampai rumah i dragged my feet upstairs to our apartment and almost immediately fell on our leather couch. ahhh heaven! by then it was already around 11.30pm and oh don't forget the fact that i was 14 weeks pregnant so i fall asleep easily :D


then i wake up from my sleep and all the lights are off and hubby is waking me up saying 'sayaaaangg, happy first anniversary!!!' he was standing next to the couch holding a whole indulgence cake wiff candles....12midnite suprise..heee sweet sangat2 coz he bought a cake while i was at school :)

alot of cake for just the 2 of us rite? hehe, that weekend my bro was at home so adalah orang tukang makan jugak.


on saturday we didn't go out in the morning, just spent quality time at home coz after lunch i had a 3 hour statistics class. how fun!! :p memang x fun la, but after it was over hubby picked me up and we got ready to have dinner in the city. this time we decided to try out dinner at Hyatt hotel :) food was good, ambiance was romantic and there was live jazz music :)

pinky daddy-to-be

eventhough we didn't do much but it was super-extra special coz our little miracle turned 14 weeks which meant we were at the end of the first trimester and happily entering our second trimester :) Alhamdulillah

november already. 18 weeks today.

my life now (cuma terbalik pasal class malam, siang buat assignment):- 

what i pray for

Aween the Batwoman; with a growing bump :D

kejap jerh, this week dah the third week of my master's classes ;p assignment dah due every week! macam tak leh keep track dah. waaaaarghhh. highlights of the past 2 weeks are:-


1) had a 2 day introduction course/talks in the first week (9am-5pm) and have classes start straightaway that nite (7pm-10pm) that was TIRING


2) classes had started right away, every nite from monday-friday (T_T) and saturday evening, 3 hrs per class. hence. i've become batwoman! only coming out at nite. oh i do feel that my skin is much more brighter than it used to be. hehe


3) assignments are poring in. apparently normal assignments require minimum 15-20 journals as references. erkk. fyi, reading educational material+aween=SLEEP


4) hubby has been going to the gym more regularly while waiting for my classes to be over. hehe. at least something good is coming out of this


5) got some new friends i made from my classes & still bangga-hidung-kembang when they are shocked to find out im married (dorg ingat aku kawin muda!), perasan awet muda totally gives boost to my adrenalin haha :D so trying to act as if im still an undergrad by dressing like them , but its getting harder when my tummy is starting to show...........thus the 'other' important update:

I'm Preggers :)

(pray for us xoxo)

believe me, it took me this long to hold my stories in my blog, that means it took me that long to sink in the fact i have a miracle growing in my belly. to be fair i'm starting to jot everything about my journey in the good old traditional diary= a hardcover book. 


but i'll be sharing the funny stories of how i had a lecture from the doctor on the birds and bees (becoz i was sooo in denial-x pecaye hehe) and little updates of si junior yang pandai isap jari nih, when i have the time. which i have alot of, but i have to dedicate that to assignments and television and movies and going out with husband hehe (yes please hate the unemployed-by-choice me, but im really happy!)


i dont have the facebook ticker-weekly updates becoz why would i want to remind most of the 600 ppl on fb (excluding those that have hidden me in their newsfeed, so maybe that would leave about 20 ppl) how junior is growing each week? im just not that into reporting to everyone, same as how i feel about telling your facebook community where u are every hour~ish, dorg ni x takut stalkers ke?


yeah2 cakap lebat, aku bukan condemn org yang buat, tapi aku kat sini announcing preggers, same jugak kan. hehe. in a way i know most of my readers are total strangers and the ones that do know me have their own extra effort to know whats going on in my life ye tak. hmm or is it preggers over-hormones speaking


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Well, im going to KL next week. Alhamdulillah pasal my parents are going to perform Hajj this year. me being the eldest, OF COZ, i worry about my 5 little rascals (even tho dah x brape little dah). camne dorg nak makan minum, kemas rumah? oh, my telephone bill is going up this following month calling them every single day.


Im hoping my parents gain their Haji Mabrur, dipermudahkan urusan & perjalanan and of course stay healthy and happy till they come back to us in December :) InsyaAllah

back to school

aku punye cter yang banyak sangat 'continuation' tu is still in drafts. but im excited to go back to school now that i got the offer, sebok sangat siapkan everything for registration this friday :)

haha, memang dorg salah eja 'Business' tu kan :p im excited, nervous, takut, semua lah, dgn otak berkarat ni & jumping totally into a different field from construction to business (^_^). hope i'll survive. aween goes back to school!!  wish me luck!!

from inception to departure - Part 3

(disclaimer: this story is only a re-telling of a fragment of my life, no form of defamation was intended)- continuation...


I had already set an interview date with the ID (interior design) company as they had to wait for their big boss to be free as he wanted to be interviewing us personally. Then I got a call from the previous company (refer to previous posts) to tell me I passed the Presentation part of the interview and was shortlisted for a face-to-face interview. wahh, agak terkejut. but I still went to both interviews.


Job interview No.2- I went to the interview at the company that made me go through all the tests & presentations. When I reached there I saw some familiar faces, we were put in groups of 5, then masuk kna interview sorg2. I was interviewed by the heads of HR, Legal & Research department, salah sorg dorg was the boss that had a lot of comments during my group presentation. jatuh jantung nampak dia, i thought i didn't have a hope at all, haha. Ended up, he was the quietest and most sporting. it was a casual interview, i only got one investment related question (thank god that i had a glimpse of 'the edge' that morning!) and towards the end we were joking about EPL and about me being born abroad. that was that, I went home feeling a bit hopeful

Job interview No.3- the following week I went to the interior design company for the interview they called for. I hopped on the lrt and stepped off at dang wangi station as the office was at jln sultan ismail. they were looking for a new Quantity Surveyor and there were a few other candidates there as well. I was the only Malay. We were put in the meeting room to fill the application forms and then called one by one to be interviewed by the boss. The interview went ok, quite formal and short. I just had to give a summary of my resume and he asked me some questions and it was over. on the way back out to the lift I ran into an old friend :) Haidar! she was as surprised to see me as i was to see her. "Aween u buat apa kat sini?", "i dtg interview kat company ni", and she said "haaaa, betulke? i work here! i really hope u get the job!" hehe.


It was a few days to raya, and the first answer i got was from the ID company. wah, agak terkejut jugak i beat all the non-bumis for the spot & salary was higher than the starting most of my friends had so i was happy with that. they wanted me to start right after the raya week :)


then it was raya and on 3rd day of raya, I got a phone call from the other company. it was kak norra, happy raya voice to break to me the happy news. hehee, starting date was another month, in november. and the following monday, i was going to work with the ID company. waaaaaa konfius! the offer letter with the ID company had already stated that if I withdrew the acceptance after signing I would have to pay them back a months salary. err, dgn pokainye x sanggup aku nak cari duit tu. so nak xnak aku pegi la jugak kja :)


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the working hours were 9am to 6.30pm, by 5pm I was already dozing off to sleep. there was not that much to do. my job title was junior QS, eventho the 'senior' QS above me was a diploma holder. For the first week, the only thing that didn't make me snooze off was lunch, usually with haidar & her friends. nak appoint QS baru, but xde kerja pun utk dibuat, I was practically asking every hour if there was something i could do, ended up I was reorganizing all the BQ's in the cabinets. thank god i didn't die of boredom, calculations were also pretty easy & not that challenging, most of the sq area was taken fron the designer's autocad drawings ;p


anyway, during the first week, I was also scheming & drafting my first resignation letter. hehe, kja x sampai sminggu dah buat surat tu kan. well the contract said if i wanted to quit i had to give a 2 week notice, so if i gave that by the end of my first week, it would be just in time to start off at the other company. i felt guilty, but guess i had to go for the higher pay & benefits. it was this week that i found out eija had got the same offer, apelagi, bergayut la aku dgn dia (oh i had to sneak off to the toilet to do that because the QS unit was so damn quiet, hence the dozing offs). After my 3 weeks (which I did make a few friends eventho short span of time) I was out of my first job and waiting for the next. hee


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end of Part 3

from inception to departure - Part 2

(disclaimer: this story is only a re-telling of a fragment of my life, no form of defamation was intended)- continuation...


I sent out emails to companies that were specifically looking for Quantity Surveyors. Honestly most of the were MNC's & GLC's, just decided to start off big before sending to consultancy firms, just to try my luck.


The next few days, I got a reply email from a company, but it wasn't for an interview, it was for a CRBT test (Critical Reasoning Test Battery), i didn't know what it was back then anyways. It was for their recruitment for Management Trainees. Apparently they use it when recruiting their scholars too. 


The CRTB test consists of:-


VERBAL EVALUATION (VC)


- the ability to understand written passeges and to logically evaluate arguments
- time: 30 mnutes

(test ni macam test English/Muet je aku rasa, they give u a paragraph and you answer from there)

DIAGRAMMATIC SERIES (DC) 

- The ability to reason with diagrammatic material.
- Time: 20 minutes

Example:
A	B	C	D	E

(yang diagram ni mencabar sket, you really have to understand & have a bit of an imagination to answer, yang aku tau ramai frust time test ni, the kid next to me was on the verge of tears nk jawab, thank god i had done some sample questions online, but still, the last batch of questions tu aku main colour je jawapan, x cukup masa :D)

NUMERICAL INTERPRETATION (NC) 

- The ability to understand tables of statistical and numerical data and to make logical deductions from them. 
- Time: 30 minutes 

(test ni cam maths plus statistics, agak macam spm jugakla but the time given tak sempat nak fikir lama2 if nak jawab semua)

the last sentence of the email stated "Panggilan temuduga bagi pengambilan Eksekutif Pelatih ini akan dibuat bagi mereka yang memenuhi markah lulus Ujian CRTB ini" so i thought cuba jelah kan.
the test was on the 9th Sept 2008, masa tu bulan Ramadhan ye, so off I was on the LRT, sampai sane memang ramai gile manusia, I was thinking already, I don't stand a chance! haha, we were called in batches, and sat for the 3 tests, I didn't make any long-term friends, I figured not worth if, masa tu habis around lunch time, lapar gile, but puasa kan, so balik rumah, tidoooooo

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around a week after that, got another email asking me to participate for the "Presentation of Management Trainee', it didn't say a thing about the CRTB test so i figured i passed, tentatively we had to present in groups, the email said it was better if we bought our own laptops, I didn't have a laptop in those days, so i borrowed my cousins one, seb baik becoz it turned out, I was the only one in my group that did.

the presentation was on 22nd Sept 2008, dah lagi sminggu nak raye dah time tu! haha, I arrived at the office just 5 minutes before 9 (sampai ke sudah datang keje tepat2 je), and the first person I met, was Encek Safwan ;p

mamat ni, tanye sepatah, jawab sepatah. sombong tapi rupanya dia kata dia pemalu, uwekk. time presentation ni boleh nampakla a few that stood out, (yang last2 end up jadi bestfriends aku jugak) hehe, namely Majjie & Aziz. Maj dah speaking macam foreigner & Aziz memang terrel menang hati juri, topic dia psal fast food if tak silap.


oh there was also one weird girl, time dia present siap ada lagu ke syair, i have no idea, but it was damn hilarious & unappropriate. sorry la girl, ni bukan interview nak masuk Malaysian Idol. jeez.


anyways we were all put into groups of 5, had to put up a simple slideshow and choose a topic from the list given, my group chose 'unemployment', a safe choice, and since i was the only one that brought a laptop, i made the slideshow. 


Each person in the group had to present one sub topic, i remember presenting my points, but one of the bosses in front kept on criticizing all of them, aku menjawab dah tahap bantai je, plus bengang he kept on picking on my points. time tu mmg ingat confirm pakcik ni x suka aku k. Well, after all that, went back home, once I reached setiawangsa I got a call from an interior design company & called me to come for an interview. of course i said yes. 

end of Part 2

from inception to departure - Part 1

(disclaimer: this story is only a re-telling of a fragment of my life, no form of defamation was intended)

2008

our final semester was over by April 2008, we were graduating in August, so in those 4 months i went to a total of 3 interviews. I was not looking for an immediate job, I wanted to start work after graduating (malas mode). I was already working part time at a consultancy.


Job interview No. 1- this interview wasn't even planned for, my bff Haida called me & asked me to go & try out for this interview she found in the paper, it was looking for Quantity Surveyors to work in Qatar. Mula2 memang malass sangat sebab rase belum ready, but lepas dipujuk Haida, ktorg pegi. oh still have a copy of the add:

haida siap highlight lagi tuk aku, thats how efficient she is :) so we went, we were interviewed seperately, by two Japanese guys, they were really nice & polite & even showed me a whole slideshow of activities in Qatar & their project. I was starting to get interested but didn't get my hopes up. Jauh kot Qatar! working 6 days a week ;p


a week after that i got a call from their headquaters in Qatar, they said i had succeeded the interview & they wanted to offer me a position straight away. I was unsure, but i just told them that i might be willing to accept & start only after i had graduated by end of August, they agreed & in the offer letter they emailed me, the starting date 1st September 2008.

Haida didn't get the offer, neither did our other classmate, so I was a bit skeptical about going by myself. So eventho I had already signed the offer letter (as they had to prepare a work visa for me), I started doing my research. I contacted my 2 seniors that were working & living  in the Middle East, Abg Farid & Abg Faizal (no not my faizal).I chatted with them through ym a lot & asked them every single thing i could think of. they were supportive, but a bit worried for me coz i was a girl & they were willing to help get me contacts if i decided to go :)


I was feeling prepared & ok with going there, 5 years contract. masa tu, sayang was already working in Sabah, I consulted him a bit, but me being the egoistic aween, if he said he supported me in anything i wanted to do, just that he was sad & worried about me, I really just thought he was jealous of me going elsewhere & trying to control me. betul, I really under-appreciated him then :(


In the mean time I was still in contact with the reps from Qatar, I asked them when I could sign the work contract to confirm. they told me the offer letter was it. okay, a one paged letter je? then after i kept on pressing them to sign a contract, they replied I only had to sign the actual contract when I reached Qatar. now that struck a suspicious cord.


I was unsure again & started asking Hunny (who was working in Dubai at the time) what I should do. She asked me the salary they were offering & told me it was way to low for me to save & survive, she said counter-offer the company, if not it wasn't worth it. after that I just felt like maybe I shouldn't go, takut!


sooooo, after thinking it through, i just decided to see how it went. if the company at the last minute offered to sign the contract in KL, i would at least consider, but they didn't. they kept calling & emailing me to remind me of my departure date & sent me the flite tickets & working visa. but in the end. i didn't go.


i decided to wait till my convocation was over before i started job-hunting, i sent out emails to a few companies on 31st August & waited to be called for interviews.

end of part 1

First month in Kota Kinabalu

Week 1

our flite to KK was on saturday, 16th July, my parents & lil' bros sent us to lcct (tickets were bought 5 days before-cekik darah!)

this was our first time going back to KK in the same flite, and 2nd time flying together, the first time was for our honeymoon ;p

hubby currently is addicted to angry birds- no comment

I was hungry as hell so I ordered the cheese pizza, my first try at it, it was ok, cheesy!

we reached our rented apartment (that we have already painted & bought basic furniture-sneak peak) & started unwrapping everything. it was exhilarating! & we slept at 3am that nite! haha. we also went to Sen Heng & bought essential electrical items

that evening we caught a glimpse of a rainbow in front of our new home :) the rest of the week hubby went back to work as usual & I stayed at home cleaning up & organizing everything. my car also arrived in KK 6 days after we did :) happyyyy (got the shipping contact from my high school friend Meera, whos moved to Kuching with her hubby)
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on 21st July, we got an sms early in the morning, our beloved aunt, Hajjah Sukiah, had passed away after an operation. i was shocked & sad coz i didn't get to see her at the hospital, when we had already planned to go visit her later that day ;'(

arwah aunt sukiah was the one who put the 

ring on my finger at our engagement ;'(

so for the following 7 days there were kenduri tahlils at their house.

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in this week we also went to Aizat's Borneo concert :) it was fun! & i bought his new cd & a badge (which i dont remember where i put, err)

besides Aizat, there was also Fuzz, Altimet, Amir Jauhari, and Jimmy Palikat (local sabahan singer)

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Week 2

Week 2 was spent mostly prepping up the house to receive our first guests, my parents! huhu. Also Astro, telephone line & streamyx (most important life line) all came in this week too. On the weekends we went back to Papar to fetch hubby's youngest brother to treat him to the movies (Captain America) & dinner coz he just bagged the 'Best Sportsman' Award from his high school, MRSM Kota Kinabalu. bangga la jugak :)

i did catch a few weird moments in this movie (when he was skinny), his head didnt exactly match his body, apparently the director said all of it was acted by chris evans, just that they shrunk his face n body. overall effects were ok
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on Sunday morning (31st July), the last day before Ramadhan, we were driving to Labuan to fetch my parents & bro. the journey from KK took about 2 1/2 hours. We parked my car at the Menumbok Jetty, the locals there rented out their front lawns for parking, so for an overnight fee we payed just RM10.

me & mama in Labuan

we were actually in Labuan coz my bro got an offer to further his studies at Institut Latihan Perindustrian while he was at his PLKN so we accepted the offer & bought the flite tickets to Labuan right away, the next 3 weeks he gets an offer from Institut Kemahiran Belia Negara Kinarut (which is just 10-15 minutes from my house), so we decided to accept that instead.

So, tickets were already bought, we planned for an overnite trip to Labuan, grab lotss of chocolates and go back to KK the next day. We had our first sahur this year at the foodcourt behind Grand Dorsett Hotel. hehe

one of the many duty free shops there

to & from the jetty we hopped on the small speedboats, took around 20-30 minutes

next day (1st Ramadhan, we left Labuan & drove back to KK)

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Week 3

This week was spent mostly with my family, shopping stuff for my bro, and registering him, mama went back to KL first, then by the end of the week abah flew back to KL, my bro comes back to my house when hes allowed to sleep out of campus, so ade jugakla muka familiar kat sini.

bajet muke comel?

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Week 4

well its bulan puasa, and so far I haven't had any off days yet! by a miracle i hope i get to fast for the whole month! amin aminnn. Iftar so far, there has been quite a few days we've eaten out, ermm, fast food sume covered, McD, KFC, Pizza Hut, Secret Recipe, & a few restaurants like Thien Thien (our favourite), Kenny Rogers & buffet outlets (rugi pasal aku makan sikit je) , and I have been (slowly) learning to cook, heheh, so hubby s now my guinea pig of food tasting :) , ok semalam dah cuba buat kuih raya first (simple je tuk org yang xde oven cam aku) choco cornflakes & sayur kailan goreng! kagum dgn diri sendiri :D haha

before the sprinkles (giant ran out of stock, grrr)

p/s: next week we're flying to KL for rayaaaa. balik kotaaa, oh oh oh, balik kotaaaa. hehe

The Tale of 3 Cities

London - Kuala Lumpur - Kota Kinabalu

LONDON

I was born in Westminster, the heart of London in 1985. Thus for the following almost 11 years of my childhood, I was a Malaysian kid growing up in the UK. With all my childhood days getting happier day by day, dad informed us that we were going to Malaysia for good. for a kid to leave her school, her beloved bestfriends, all the familiar places she knew from growing up. Well, it was hard. Very hard!

The last day at Heathrow airport was really sad for me, the day before my bestfriend dannielle had dropped by our house to say goodbye. We promised to be friends forever, and over the years, from air mail to fb, we still are :)

me & dannielle at our sports day

KUALA LUMPUR

We arrived in KL somewhere in March 1995. I was adapting. Adapting to being made fun of by my cousins (still had the difficulty of pronouncing malay words perfectly), adapting to having tanned skin (heheh, we couldnt stay away from the beach & the outdoors!) and most of all, adapting to not having my bestfriends around anymore.

Eventho we had come back in March, I only starting going to school in August '95. Why so late? reason being that my mum insisted I go to Convent Bukit Nanas (advised by our relavites -also former CBNers) and it was so hard to get into. So i had lots of time to learn Bahasa Malaysia in my own free time. I cried every single time I missed my old home/school/friends and this was the start of my life phase where i learnt to grow up, to mature, to learn.

While growing up in KL, I made new friends, some that I shall treasure for a lifetime, some just turned out to be my lost siblings :) and it was in Uni years that I met my soulmate. KL holds so many of our love stories, KL is also where we later got engaged and married..which brings us to our next city:-

KOTA KINABALU

After 16 years of school/uni/work life in KL, as of July 16th, 2011, I have moved to Kota Kinabalu, the Land below the wind to start my new life with my not-so-new hubby :) and to put things short, it hasn't been that hard to adapt.

from KL to KK



I guess its because I've been flying over to KK over the past 2 years for both work & personal reasons, but KK is still a city (eventhough not as full of skyscrapers in KL), and I am such a City girl.

starting a new life in a new city

Well this is just the beginning of something new, new environment, new family members, new friends and learning to be independant now that my mum & my lil sis are more than 1000km away from me (T_T). Life will stand still & be boring if we didn't take that big leap.

p/s: can't help gazing at the beautiful sea everyday. it still mesmerizes me. kengkadang bahaya pasal tngah driving pun tngok laut. erk

300 days of love!

today we have been husband & wife for 300 days :)

wouldn't have noticed if it weren't for our wedding ticker

it feels extra special because we are finally living together like a majority of married couples (total 18 days now)

the 300 days have been full of learning, patience, understanding & most importantly LOVE (scratch the fact we were apart for 70% of those 300 days) im soo grateful!!

tq for always taking care & pampering me :)

for making me laugh

for letting me win all the time. heee

and for always believing in me & supporting everything I do

theres always a reason to celebrate love rite?