Goddess, I Am.

Who would’ve thought that getting married to a foreign man in this country would be so tricky? It’s an exercise in patience and strategy worthy of Soul Calibur IV on xbox 360. The paperwork alone is enough to give anyone a headache.

I, for one, need an NSO-authenticated birth certificate and something called a CENOMAR (Certificate of No Marriage, which pretty much states that I am, in fact, single). The Fiance, from his side, needs something called a CNI (Certificate of No Impediment, which pretty much states that he is, in fact, single), something that we can only get from the British embassy after paying a whopping £118 in fees (total). As if that’s not bad enough, there’s a 42-day wait! And these are all BEFORE marriage licenses and contracts and certificates and registrations.

Thank heavens I’m not going through the whole mess of planning a big (or even small) wedding party. That’s even more paperwork, waiting, and fees. If I had my way, I’ll elope with Steve tomorrow and ride off into the sunset. Now who says I’m not romantic?

I find myself wondering what I’m going to do when we do move West, and I realize that it really doesn’t matter. Sure, I’d like a glamorous job where I get to wear fashionable coats and knee-high boots, preferably in fashion, but I don’t really have the qualifications. If anything, my qualifications are anything but ideal.

I have a degree in IT, yes, but I promptly forgot about everything I supposedly learned the moment I graduated because I just wasn’t into it. I built a career in the call center industry, but it was mediocre, at best. Now I’m writing freelance, and I love every minute of it. I do know, however, that what I earn won’t be enough to live on in the big, bad, uber-expensive West, especially with retirement in mind.

I would love to work for a magazine; I like to think I’m good enough. But with all my research, I don’t think it’s ever going to happen when everyone seems to be looking for writers with the appropriate degrees. The same goes for advertising. Somehow, I don’t think anyone would take me simply because I’ve been writing online for a living for almost 2 years now.

Maybe I can be a shop girl; I’d love to work for a bookstore. Maybe I can be a bubblegum-chewing receptionist for some stuffy office. Or a waitress, even when I’m so clumsy that I trip on my feet on a regular basis. Who knows? I might find myself on an assembly line, putting together Ferrari parts. Any which way, I’m still wearing boots – preferably those sheepskin ones, ala Kate Moss.

Does it show that this whole “future” thing is freaking me out?

We’ve made some rather serious decisions over the past few days about the life that we’re going live together. Sure, living in the Philippines is easy, but truth be told, it’s almost impossible to make serious money around here. The same goes for the rest of Southeast Asia. So we’ve finally realized (or more accurately, agreed) that if we’re going to have a little nest egg to retire on in 20 years or so, we need to live in the West.

The easiest way would be to get married, of course. Then he can go back to the UK and find work, while I get the proper visas. With any luck, I’ll be in London in 6 months or less. But nothing ever sounds that easy (as if it would be easy to be away from him for months). For one thing, the world economy is in a bad state, so heaven only knows what sort of difficulties a returning British citizen might encounter back home. For another, The Fiance is completely averse to moving back to the UK anyway because Eastern Europeans who work for peanuts are taking the good jobs and all the benefits. We figured the UK would be a last resort.

Instead, we decided not to rely on just one place and weigh our options literally everywhere. Our best chance would be anywhere in the EU, and we’re leaning heavily towards the Netherlands (where my best friend, Kaye is). We also want to look into Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and maybe even the US (though I’m very skeptical about America, to be honest).

So it looks like we’re going to be busy, busy, busy within the next few weeks with assessments and point systems and what-have-yous. We’re also going to start working on the paperwork needed to get married (who knew there would be so many?!?!) so we can do it sometime in March. There’s a lot of uncertainty in the future, but I feel really good knowing that we’re doing something about it.

Wherever we go, I’m going to have to convince The Fiance to part with his gear for a while. It would be much too costly to ship everything out again – a hell of a lot more than the small fortune that we already paid to ship from Bangkok to Cebu. Maybe we can sell them all and just buy new stuff later when we’re more settled, or put everything in self storage – I don’t know yet.

One thing’s for certain: if we’re going to move, we have to be willing to leave a lot of things behind.

It wasn’t without sadness and a lot of regret that I finally put down the last book of the Twilight saga – sadness because I will miss the Cullens a lot, and regret because I could’ve slowed down a bit more just to make the experience last a little bit longer. (Truth be told, I would’ve finished all 4 books 3 weeks ago, but I’m the model of self-control.) I got way too attached to the characters, as what usually happens when I read a series, so now I have to start learning to live in the real world again. It’s a lot like losing friends, even family, and that’s always a hard thing. In this case, it’s a lot harder because I’ve always been enthralled by vampires.

My passion for vampire lore probably started when I was an impressionable youth collecting Christopher Pike’s The Last Vampire series, to the days when I spent hours upon hours contemplating The Vampire Chronicles of Anne Rice. They have always fascinated me. And beyond fascination, I’ve always really and truly believed with all my heart that they do walk the Earth in some form or another. After all, life is no good at all if we can’t believe in a little magic every now and again. I would say that I’ve met many vampires in the past (characters that I’ve come to know and love from the pages of books – Sita, Lestat, Marius, Armand, to name just a few), but it was the Cullens who best personified what I’ve always believed vampires to be like.

I wouldn’t say that the Twilight saga is the best thing I’ve ever read (that distinction still goes to Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides – fantastic writing!), but I can honestly say that it’s one of the best stories that have ever been told. It was one hell of a ride, from the swoon-worthy moments of Twilight to the awe of New Moon through the thrill of Eclipse to the poignancy (and corniness) of Breaking Dawn. One day very, very soon, I’ll be ready to take that ride again, but, for now, I’ll keep the Cullens in that space between waking and dreaming where they belong (and the bookshelf next to one of Steve’s tv stands).

I’ve finally managed to tear myself away from sweet-talking vampires and hormonal adolescent werewolves to do some serious writing over the past few days. I had no idea just how “out-of-shape” (for lack of better words) I was until I had to practically pull out all my hair and cry hysterically just to get my brain working. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Because this post is my first post for the new year, I’m going to do exactly what everyone else does: nitpick on the year that just ended and make resolutions that I’m not likely to follow (okay, maybe I will…ish). Yes, I’m a conformist like that.

On Writing

This time last year, I wrote article after article without having to struggle. Somewhere along the way I became less of a writer and more of a businesswoman. I became much too engrossed in the money I was making that I stopped finding joy in writing and saw it as no more than a means to pay the bills. The more I looked at writing as a job, the more I found myself hating something that I used to love.

This year, I want to write – and I mean, really write – again. I want to enjoy what I do again, have fun with words again, and essentially be a better writer. Maybe I’ll write a book, or maybe I’ll just blog more often, who knows? Oh, and I’m seriously leaning towards monetizing this blog. That’s as good an exercise in writing as any, though I’m still balking at the idea of writing about things that would be all wrong here. We’ll see.

On My Finances

I probably earned more money last year alone than in 4 years of working put together. So am I financially solvent? The answer is a dismal “I should be.“ I should have enough money by now to allow myself to be frivolous from time to time. I should have a lot more than a few hundred dollars in my savings account by now. But I don’t. I made a lot of mistakes last year. I spent too much, and although it’s for mostly good reasons, too much is still too much. I can’t help but feel cheated.

This year, I’m going to pay closer attention to my finances. I’m going to stop indulging myself and the people I love too often. I’ll spend wisely, live on less, and save what I’ve slaved over. I would like to invest on something and earn a bit of passive income to increase my retirement fund, especially when I’m hell-bent on being able to retire by the time I’m 40. I’m also going to start looking at insurance quotes for myself and The Fiance. I will be looking at several options within the next few months, and I hope to increase my savings many times over by the end of the year.

On Our Relationship

This year was a very significant one for myself and The Fiance. The end of February saw us moving in together when we’ve both never lived with other people (family excluded) before. Months later, he uprooted himself from Thailand and moved back to Cebu with me. Most recently, he asked me to marry him – something that I never expected, considering how he made it clear right from the start that he had an aversion to marriage.

But it wasn’t always happy, happy, joy, joy. We had some really bad fights – fights so nasty that we’ve almost called it quits. But we haven’t, and that matters most. No matter how bad it got (and mind you, the last one had me shrieking like a banshee at the top of my lungs – something that I never used to do), we were both always willing to talk things over and fix things as soon as we’ve both calmed down. I like to think that it has made our relationship stronger and that we now understand each other a lot better.

This year, we intend to get married. I don’t want anything grand, nor do I want a lot of people around. There are very few people who I can still call friends, and I suppose, in this case, it’s a good thing because I won’t be obliged to feed a hungry mob who have all but forgotten about me while I was in Thailand. I want my wedding small, intimate, and preferably costing no more than 20-Gs. (Man, I’m cheap!) Whatever. I just want to be Mrs. Young!

On The Family

Here’s one thing that I realized when I moved to Thailand in 2007: I can’t live without my family. Or I can, but I don’t want to. I don’t think anyone else in the world has a mum as awesome as mine and a sister as adorable, and I can’t remember why I even wanted to leave home in the first place (okay, I was bored out of my eyeballs). Indeed, there’s nothing like being away from home to make you want to go back to it.

This year, I want to build our little family venture into something big to give all of us more financial security, especially my sister and her baby. For some strange reason, we’ve all been hit by the entrepreneurial bug. We’re also studiously turning our money trees every morning and analyzing the feng sui calendar. Is this our minuscule Chinese heritage at work? Not a bad theory, as long as I don’t turn yellow.

On Travel

Last year, I vowed to myself that I will go to Europe this year. Unfortunately, my savings account isn’t going to make that possible anytime soon, so Florence will have to wait until 2010 at the earliest.

This doesn’t mean that I will be putting myself under house arrest. Au contraire! After being away for a year, I realized that Las Islas Filipinas actually has quite a lot to offer. Thailand’s beaches has nothing – and I mean, nothing – on our really good islands – and I should know because I made it a point to visit as many beaches as I could to see what the fuss was about while I was there.

This year, therefore, will see me and The Fiance traipsing through the archipelago and (hopefully) swimming with whale sharks. I also want to visit more of Asia – though I’m definitely not going back to Thailand, even if someone pays me a million baht!

On My Nails

This one deserves an entire section all to itself. After a lifetime of biting – no, eating – my nails like they’re Scottish shortbread, I finally managed to successfully grow them. Admittedly, it wasn’t by choice. I had a toothache so bad that I couldn’t partake on my usual, umm, diet (gross, I know), and before I knew it, my nails were nice and long and tougher than cow hooves.

This year, I’m going to keep my nails nice and long and tougher than cow hooves. I will have them trimmed, buffed, and polished in every pretty color of the rainbow. Who would’ve thought being a girl was this much fun?

So this sums up what I want this year. There are some things I didn’t include, like a MacBook and a vibrator (every girl has to have one, haha!), because they’re trivial, trivial, trivial.

(Belated) Happy New Year, everyone! Here’s to a year of love, trust funds, and French manicures.