In Motion

In every marriage, there are responsibilities and expectations. Many a time, these are unconscious ideas that we get from observing our own parents and upbringing, and we don't think about them until we get married and realize that our spouse has very different ideas based on his/her own upbringing. To examine your own set of ideas about roles, you can ask yourself the following questions: 1. Who should take care of paying the bills and filing taxes? 2. Who takes care of car maintenance? 3. Who does most of the grocery shopping and/or budgeting? 4. Who's in charge of banking, investments or deciding on insurance policies? 5. How should household chores be divided? 20/80? 50/50? Should they even be divided? 6. Who should drive when both spouses are in the car? If you have a somewhat traditional idea of marriage, the wife generally monopolizes the kitchen and home duties while the husband works longer hours at work to provide for the family (i.e. is the main breadwinner)...

Dear husband, Today's your 26th birthday. I know you don't like being in the center of attention, so I won't post on your Facebook wall. =P But I still do want to give you a proper birthday note, so here it is. After more than 8 years of dating, one tends to run out of birthday ideas. So it's nice to know that the both of us aren't big on birthdays - fewer expectations there, phew. I thank the Lord for bringing (and keeping) us together through all those years, and while I'm not the kind of person to say that you are DEFINITELY, WITHOUT A DOUBT the best person for me (because we both know you might die first and I might still remarry), I'm pretty sure you're among the best. =P Thank you for loving me when I'm unlovable, for being patient with my whims and fancies, for enduring my cold wars and crankiness, for being the better, more generous half of us. I am ever grateful that you always strive to model Christ's love for the church in our rel...

As some of you may know, I went to Maine recently for my brother-in-law's graduation. Well, not quite, since we skipped the graduation - I'd say it was more of a family reunion thing. Maine was really pretty and charming with bodies of water almost everywhere. The part that we ended up staying in, however, was rather rural with the nearest supermarket a half hour away. Perhaps that's a prerequisite for beauty - unspoiled nature can hardly be found in bustling cities. =P Overall, the vacation was a pretty chill one with one outing per day on average, and most of our time was spent bonding in the Airbnb house with home-cooked meals. Towards the end of the trip, Jia Wern and I went down to Boston since we were flying off from Boston Logan Airport and wanted to see the city a little. I mean, Maine's lovely and all, but almost every international friend I told about Maine didn't know it was a state, what more to say Portland or Mount Desert Island. Boston? Everyone...