A little late in posting my annual Year in Pictures, as I was travelling over Christmas/New Year’s and then was down with COVID immediately after coming back to Malaysia (still in recovery, actually). But I don’t want to break the ‘streak’ on this blog, which has been ongoing since 2015 – so here’s 2023 in pictures!

JANUARY

2023 was marked by some extreme highs and extreme lows, as well as lots of change. January was off to a rough start; the difficult work situation that I was in since September of the previous year persisted, and I was feeling increasingly burned out despite raising the issue with management. I ended up having a serious meltdown during my performance review. As in full-blown waterworks in front of an audience of my seniors and a new HR employee who had a terrified look on his face the entire time lol.

After much contemplation, I resigned from work, even though I didn’t have another job lined up. It was scary but liberating at the same time. Just the thought that I wouldn’t have to worry about work and deadlines so much I’d get insomnia, the anxiety I felt everytime I couldn’t get something done; it felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

FEBRUARY

The next month was kind of a downer as well, as the Hubs did not have his work contract renewed. Which meant that come March, we were essentially two jobless people lol. But I didn’t want to let that get us down, so we started planning for a roadtrip! That aside, we distracted ourselves with short visits around the city every weekend, such as to Tugu Negara (the National Monument) and the National Zoo.

MARCH

March rolled around and I had mixed feelings when I had to hand in my access card and laptop. I was with the company for just over a year, and it was an interesting experience to say the least; one where I learned lots of new things and met amazing mentors and people (as well as some not so amazing ones). I was looking forward to some well-deserved R&R though – after three years of being in a constant state of anxiety and burnout, I felt like this break was much needed. So, with our bags packed, the Hubs and I hopped into my tiny car and drove down the coast from Kuala Lumpur to the beautiful island of Pangkor.

It so happened that we visited during low season (it was Ramadhan, or the Muslim holy month of fasting). We stayed at a somewhat quiet side of the island. The beaches here are usually crowded during peak season, but it was almost deserted during our visit. It was like having a private beach, especially in the evenings when the sun would dip over the horizon, casting a gorgeous orange/pink hue over the island’s crystal clear waters. The Hubs and I went for long walks on the beach, digging our toes into the sand, listening to the sounds of waves lapping on shore. It was just what I needed to recharge after the madness that has been the past couple of months.

APRIL

Our roadtrip next took us to the island of Penang, known for its vibrant culture, heritage, food, and nature. We gorged ourselves on delicious Penang cuisine, explored its interesting streets and marveled at its cultural buildings, had a really expensive but unsatisfying steak dinner at a popular but overrated place, and got stung by mosquitoes at a centuries-old cemetery.

My favourite part of the trip, however, was forest bathing at The Habitat on Penang Hill. This world-class rainforest discovery centre is located within a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Being a city girl, I don’t have many opportunities to get in touch with raw nature. Just being in a place that is millions of years old, that has been around for such a long time that my human mind couldn’t possibly fathom in terms of my short years on the planet, was an extremely humbling experience. It made me feel that whatever problems I have, they’re just tiny, insignificant things in the grand scale of the universe. So why am I making mountains out of molehills?

MAY

After the high of the roadtrip, May was a relatively quiet month. I got lucky as an ex-editor of mine needed help with freelancing, so I was able to have some income flowing in. While it wasn’t what I was getting with a full time job, it was enough to at least cover some bills. I even got to indulge in little luxuries: a major bookstore brand was having a closing down sale and I snagged some pretty sweet titles at an absolute steal of a price.

JUNE

More strokes of good fortune came in, as my ex-company asked if I’d be interested to freelance for them on a retainer basis. Which meant I would be writing for them but at much reduced working hours. I felt like it was the perfect time to start getting into some writing again, and I wouldn’t have to deal directly with clients/management which was my main source of anxiety. This arrangement worked neatly for awhile.

Met up with a close friend to celebrate her birthday!

JULY – AUGUST

At this time I was fully invested in freelancing gigs, and thanks to my ex-editor passing on her contacts who were in need of copywriters, I was getting by pretty okay. It was liberating to be able to set my own schedules, without having to worry about clocking in on time. Most days I’d wake up at 10-ish (finally was able to get the sleep I needed), have brunch, and then work until 7 or 8pm. The only person I had to be responsible to and accountable for was myself.

Best of all, I got to spend a lot of time with the Hubs. We’d hit up flea markets, art festivals, and museums – places that didn’t require spending a lot of money – but where we were still able to spend quality time and create experiences together. After our nearly 2-year pandemic separation, all the time in the world with him never feels like enough.

SEPTEMBER

With travel now in full swing since the prolonged lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 (and somewhat tentative recovery the following year), more good fortune manifested as the editor had some press trips lined up. The Hubs and I got to go on a junket to Desaru Coast, a gorgeous beach destination off the coast of Johor. There, we got to take part in a six-hands dinner by a Michelin-starred chef in collaboration with the resident head chef of a luxury resort, as well as another up and coming chef from Penang. The entire thing was amazing, of course, but what I really enjoyed was that I got to take the Hubs along to experience dining food from a Michelin-starred chef for the first time. It was a night filled with magical textures and flavours and culinary combinations we never knew could exist – certainly one for the books!

September wasn’t all hunky dory, however. For years I had contemplated moving out of my family home but was held back by finances and emotional baggage. Then things happened which marked a tipping point that pushed me to finally take concrete steps and make living away from home a reality, even despite not having a ‘stable’ job and finances, so to speak. It was a mad rush to look for apartments, shop for furniture, etc. but also exhilirating to finally have my own space.

OCTOBER

I ticked an item off my lifelong bucket list when the Editor sent me on a press trip to Siem Reap. I’m a sucker for ancient history, and ever since watching Tomb Raider as a kid, I’ve always wanted to visit Cambodia’s mysterious, jungle-clad temples. I was also extremely lucky in that the itinerary was personalised and didn’t involve stuffing a tonne of activities into the programme, or having to mingle with other media (my social anxiety would have rocked itself off the charts).

I basically had a private guide who took me around Angkor Wat and its surrounding temples and patiently answered all of my nerdy questions — you can’t really ask for anything more on a cultural/historical trip! There was plenty of downtime to explore downtown Siem Reap as well. To be honest, over the nearly three years of not being able to travel regularly, I had become somewhat jaded and withdrawn thanks to being cooped up most of the time, and the trip was what I needed to remind myself how much I loved travelling, seeing new places, and experiencing other cultures.

October was also when I shifted to a new place, away from a city I had been living in for essentially my entire life. With it also came all the challenges and expenses of moving into a new home, from furniture shopping to arranging for pickups, to sorting out the mess of stuff (you never realise how many material things you have until you have to pack them up). Just buying the furniture and putting the deposit on the studio unit set me back close to RM10,000 – a significant chunk seeing that I didn’t have regular income. But it was a tradeoff to have more independence and to remove myself from a toxic situation which would have continued to erode my mental health.

NOVEMBER

The Hubs and I were settling down nicely, having finally unpacked all our things, and we were getting used to a routine of just the two of us. I was happy to continue freelancing, but I realised how difficult it was to support the both of us without a stable income, now that we were also renting and had other expenses like food and utilities to cover. So even though I didn’t think my mental health had recovered fully I started applying for full-time jobs. As luck would have it, I landed one almost immediately, in a field that was somewhat familiar (journalism) but in a totally different genre (education). Having come fresh from a large international startup with over 1,000 employees and was the very definition of corporate culture, some would call it a step back to join a small, relatively unknown family-run business. But I felt like it was a good start to reacquaint myself with the working world, without putting too much pressure on myself and burning out again.

Also finally visited the Borneo Market in Seri Kembangan!

DECEMBER

Ah December. Where should I start? Shit hit the fan this month – the major issue being the water pipes in our new home. There was a persistent dripping problem with the taps, and after asking not one but TWO plumbers to fix stuff (and thinking since they had replaced the parts, all was good), I woke up at 4am one morning to the sound of rushing water from our bathroom. Stepping off the bed, I was shocked to find our unit FLOODED almost all the way to the balcony. The electricity had also tripped for safety, so we were basically groping around the dark to try and see wtf was going on.

Our pipe had, apparently, burst and was spewing water uncontrollably. The force was so strong that cracks had started appearing on the walls outside, and there was water flowing all the way to the common corridor. To make things worse, the valves that controlled flow from the main pipe inside my unit were not working. Cue me stumbling down to the security guard’s office to ask for assistance, and it took a good hour before they were able to switch it off from the main water room (because maintenance wasn’t on site and the security guards had to go through a whole bunch of keys to unlock the room).

A small silver lining from this whole affair was that our electronics were not damaged, despite some of our laptop cables getting wet. The wooden shelves also look to be holding up fine as of me writing this. But boy was it a fun ‘welcome’ into a home I had moved into barely over two months ago lol. Most of our time was then taken up with having to supervise repairs. The drilling and banging wasn’t the worst part. It was not having water to use for several days in a row while repairs were being made. The Hubs and I ended up getting water from the nearby garbage disposal room and hauling buckets of them into a giant water container we bought just for showering.

While in the process of fixing the pipes, the contractor also noticed that the tiles in our bathroom were coming away from the wall due to poor workmanship – something we did not notice when we moved in as this is the wall closest to the door, and the tiles are dark coloured so it was difficult to see. Lesson from all this? Check and double check every nook and cranny of your rental home before moving in. The homeowner was okay to pay to replace the tiles, but we had to postpone the project to the new year as we had travel plans.

You know the saying goes that bad luck comes in threes? In our case, the wet walls (which we tried desperately to dry using standing fans – but there was no way our tiny little fan could have done anything) started growing mold after some time. Most of it was on the outside of the unit, but with spores blowing around some of it got inside the unit as well. We tried our best to clean and keep everything dry, but the mold kept returning.

Since the mold is out in the corridor which is a common area, we went to management several times to try and get them to sort it out – but of course, as many Malaysians will know – condo managements here are generally crap. I went 4 times in December alone, and even after coming back from our Christmas trip (and having to clean new mold spots) and into the new year, they still haven’t done shit.

But despite all this, there was a good note to the month. After two years in Malaysia, we were able to arrange a visit to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s with N’s family in the Philippines! Even though his initial reaction was stoic, I could sense his excitement as we got closer to our travel date and he rattled off all the dishes he was going to gorge himself on as soon as we got there lol. This trip was very different from my previous ones, as I was mostly playing ‘tourist’ on those occasions.

This time it was purely to celebrate with family and catch up with a couple of friends. I was also able to experience a part of N’s childhood when we visited his ancestral home. It was moving to see the tenderness in his voice as he recounted memories of when he used to play on the staircase of his grandfather’s home, and the regret that it would probably be the last he would see of it (the home is being sold). Of course, there was food, glorious food, all throughout the trip. I gained 2kgs in a week – but hey, we’ll worry about that in 2024.

And that was my year in review! A very eventful year – one in which I resigned from a job, went on a roadtrip, travelled to new places, moved out from my family home and into my own pad, tried freelancing full time, had my home flooded, found a new job, and much more. I hope 2024 will be kind to me, and to you too, reader!