2012 was the year we returned home. Afi had not yet finished her work but as our visas were expiring and we were running out of money there simply was no other option. We touched down on Malaysian soil on 9 February, and it was great to be home.
After taking the rest of the month reacclimatizing and getting things in order, I went back to work in March. We discovered that the university wouldn’t allow Afi to return to work before she submits her thesis. Thankfully, Omar found a place at the university childcare centre pretty quickly—Afi had put him on the waiting list since September—so Afi could work on her thesis full-time at home (or in my office at work).
We moved into a house in Sri Gombak. It’s small but we really like the location. Everything we may need is close by and the university is just a stone’s throw away. Aside from the master bedroom, we use one of the other rooms as a study and the other a store. As we wanted to settle down quickly so Afi could get on with her work, we filled the house with furniture from IKEA. We bought everything from IKEA because it is a one-stop shop and we could get all the information we needed from its online catalogue. Indeed, we started planning our purchase from before we returned.
We bought our electricals from my mother-in-law’s favorite local shop and got UniFi installed before we moved in so we’d have Internet access right away. Afi’s parents bought us a new LCD TV as a housewarming gift. It has a very useful USB port that we like very much, and connected to UniFi’s HyppTV means we don’t need to install an antenna or subscribe to Astro.
Just before we returned we ordered a powerful new desktop PC Afi would use for her work, and it was waiting for us when we arrived. It came preinstalled with Windows 7 but I installed Ubuntu alongside so she could run her usual programs. Later in April, we also bought a Galaxy Tab 10.1 for getting online and reading papers when we are not in the study. Finally, last month I bought a new notebook PC as my old 4-year old one was growingly showing worrying signs of age. So there are now five computers in the house. I still use the old notebook for P2P downloading, and am thinking of giving it a fresh Ubuntu or Windows 8 install. We’ll see how it goes.
Perhaps best of all is watching Omar grows. After seven months with just the three of us he had no problem at all adjusting the sudden introduction of relatives, teachers and friends. Now at eighteen months he’s grown more assertive of his preferences and more confident of his growing abilities. He knows exactly what he wants to eat (and where we keep or hide it), and wants to walk on his own when we are out at the malls.
Our living room wall is bare no more!
2013, Afi is submitting her thesis very soon while I will continue with my Ph.D programme. Meanwhile, we’ll keep on making improvements around the house: reorganizing the study, shelves for the storeroom, TROFAST for Omar’s toys, etc. When Afi returns to work we’ll also get to save towards buying a car. Most excitingly though, we will soon welcome a new member into the family.
This year will be a great one!
