Goddess, I Am.

Here’s something that I’ve noticed since I moved back to Cebu in October: there seems to be more foreigners traipsing through the city these days. From obvious tourists dragging their luggage around, to older folk who look like settlers, the number of non-locals around have probably increased at least ten times since I left in June of 2007.

The Fiance thinks these are people who’ve run screaming out of Thailand, and I’m inclined to believe him. Could it be that people are finally discovering everything that the Philippines has to offer? Or are people just sick of messy, dirty, overrated Thailand? I wonder.

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.

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.

For the first time in a long time, I’m breathing. And because I’m breathing, I’m blogging.

Much has happened in the month and a half since I last blogged, and I’m almost embarrassed to post again after I’ve neglected my poor (not to mention, pricey) dotcom. But when the alternative is letting my brainchild die a slow death like so many others in the past (not to mention Chin’s incessant emails of “pag-blog na ba!”), I have no choice but to hunker down and write – not about yoga, not even about getting wayward ex’s back (don’t ask), but about, umm, me. So here goes…

Sometime in September, The Boyfriend and I finally decided that we’ve had enough of Thailand, its crap, and its citizens (might write a long rant about that in the future) and that we should move to Cebu, my hometown, pronto! The rest of the month just sort of passed by in a blur of overpriced cargo shippers, panic packing, and evil landlords (might be included in said rant). Before we knew it, we were on a plane to the Philippines, saying goodbye and good riddance to the country that we just left.

We arrived in Cebu on the first of October, and since then, we’ve moved into a lovely 2-bedroom 2-storey house (no more crappy Thai studio apartments, weeeeeee!), bonded with our neighbors (namely my sister next door and my mum two doors down), and caught up with a few friends. The Boyfriend is adjusting quite nicely to the food (no more Thai shit on a plate), and naturally, I tried to eat everything that I missed the moment we landed, so I gained a few pounds and I’m now desperately trying to find an appetite suppressant that’ll help me successfully lose ‘em. We also spent a weekend at the fancy Alegre Beach Resort (courtesy of mum) where we frolicked in 5-star heaven, and found clown fishes a mere 10 feet away from the beach – you don’t get that in Thailand!

But probably the biggest news isn’t that we left Thailand barely 2 weeks after we decided to, nor is it the idea of The Boyfriend having to get used to a new city in a new country. The big news is – wait for it! – we’re engaged! I won’t go into the details anymore because Chin has done such a good job of telling it to all and sundry, but the fact is, I’m going to be Mrs. Young soon enough. No, we don’t have a date yet, and there’s no rush, really. The important thing is we’re going there, and I can’t wait for the rest of my life!

So here we are a month later – blissfully engaged, very well-fed, and considerably more relaxed than we have ever been in Thailand. I guess no matter how horrible the people are in that country, or how bad the food is, I’m still thankful that I did go when I did. It took a little over a year of living in Thailand to make me realize just how fabulous my Cebu is. Not only that, I learned to travel alone, live on my own, and enjoy my own company. I’ve come full circle, and somewhere along the way, I found the love of my life.

Now that, my dear friends, is what fairy tales are made of.