Year: 2023

Tuesday was settlement day and I can now say that Dylan and I are officially homeowners! Woohoo! It probably felt so fast to our friends but the past two days were actually quite nerve-wrecking. The day before settlement, we received the summary of expected fees from our conveyancer and the bank had told them this: […]

Every dream has an inspiration, and mine was simply ambition and anger: a fiery desire to stay anywhere but the Philippines and an overwhelming sense of loss and frustration over what the Philippines had become. This was fueled by an inter-generational thread of betrayal by the home country. One of things my mum had said […]

I thought the pivotal moment that would make me feel “old” was when my back started hurting doing normal everyday things like moving houses and carrying boxes. I realise now that I was wrong. There’s this rite of passage called “buying a house” which currently feels like the defining moment of adulthood. There are many […]

“Fish onnnnnnn!” Dylan cheers from the backseat of the Nissan Pathfinder. In front of us are our kind-of new friends and we’re on the way to Rye to try some surf fishing. Well, the boys will, anyway. I packed Toni Lodge’s latest book, “I Don’t Need Therapy (and other lies I have told myself)” to […]

I’ve been having fun looking up wedding venues, in spite of some sleepless nights. This second engagement is very different from my first — where I didn’t even bother planning anything at all. Last time I had a lot of life-milestone requirements, a list of expectations that were left unticked, before I would seriously consider […]