Happiest of New Year to you! It’s still January so can lah 😉 Happy Lunar New Year as well, to all celebrating! To those who weren’t, bet you still enjoyed the wonderful long weekend – downpours aside.
I must say, we’re loving we cooler weather. What makes it more special is that we know it’s short-lived so truly cherishing it, every moment of the day.
Yes – we’ve been missing yet again. Consistent blogging isn’t really a resolution we can stick to from the looks of it 🙂 Having said that, we do love our blog and we do love the engagement so here’s an update on us!
But before that – on the feature picture. That darned monkey. Came into our room in Sabah, attracted by the coconut clearly, then almost attacked Coco#1 who was reading on the lounge chair. Coco#1 screamed and I think they both scared each other off for a bit. We closed the windows and watched as he sat on the table, eating our coconut. #wildlifeencounter
2022 Highlights
- Not a happy highlight but definitely the biggest – grief. It never really goes away. Always in our hearts and minds <3
- Busy, busy weekends with family and friends. It’s been quite tiring but it’s a wonderful, wonderful situation to be in. It’s one of the biggest reasons we love being in Singapore – it’s home. Where our family and friends are. From BBQs to celebrations to catch-ups and lots of walks in the park, it’s been a great year for relationships.
- Big Trips and Small Trips. Plenty of trips back home to Malaysia – It’s been wonderful going home with a relatively new-found appreciation for our childhood homes. The green, the quiet, the memories. Kota Kinabalu – yes, we returned to a place that we absolutely loved back in 2018 (Read: Amazing Borneo Part 1 and Part 2 and What it cost us in 2018). We spent an amazing few days on Gaya Island and what’s a trip without going up to Kundasang for the gorgeous mountain views. Lots of good food, trekking and fun with the little coconuts. We managed to throw in an anniversary trip to Phuket, first time we actually remembered on our anniversary itself! A girls trip to Hanoi and the final year end trip to New York to visit family and our nephew <3. Yep, we definitely travelled a fair bit in 2022. We feel…travelled out.
- Financially…
- Both Mr.C and I remain happily employed and contributing towards the nest egg, that continues to run along in the background and provide yummy, passive returns. Mr.C remains our Chief Investment Officer, and as far as verbal updates go, I believe he’s continuing his stellar performance. An auditor by training, perhaps an audit on this is due?
- We’ve both fell off tracking on spend, after YEARS of the habit. Somewhere in Q1, nothing mattered to me anymore – grief does that to you I guess. For the rest of 2022, we just made sure our spending choices were valid. So we’ve no real concrete clue to our actual 2022 monthly burn rate and frankly, I don’t care to go back and put things in order. I accept the imperfections in our tracking 🙂
- Getting more conscious about what we share publicly. A large part of this has been why we’ve not posted in sometime as well. The world is getting scarier and a lot of what we do, is for ourselves. While we’ll happily share with friends face to face, to share with the whole wide world? Hmm, so this remains in constant debate – do I really wanna share this piece of information, or not?
Has it been a good 2022? It’s been the worst in a very big way, but the best in other ways. Challenges are part of life and we don’t always get to choose what comes our way. The sun keeps shining, the world keeps spinning and we all just have to keep going. Along the way, we can be kind to each other, be there for each other and remind ourselves to appreciate what we have.
It’s a year where our financials took a backseat, although with a solid plan, we just kept to it and we’ve remained largely on track. It’s a year where we immersed ourselves in relationships and it’s been healing. A year of nature and a year off just being.
We wish you a very, very Happy New Year and we hope your reflections of the year past and hopes for the current year gives you happiness and peace.
Let me end with some pics from the Sabah trip, which I just put up! 🙂
